After being bought out by Microsoft, Skype is no longer such a great deal for multi-user video conferences. The only free offering is two-party video conferencing. Both parties must be Skype members, of course.
An up-and-coming Skype competitor, Oovoo.com, offers three party free video conferencing, and a more price flexible plan for multi-party video conferencing.
I did some comparison shopping today. Readers might be interested in the following specifics:
General Skype pricing information: http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/prices/
If you want to have more than a two-person video conference using Skype one person in the group must be subscribed to Premium. The cheapest rate for a Premium subscription is currently $4.99/mo. paid 12 months ahead.
Oovoo, an up-and-coming Skype competitor, offers a very nice product. Yesterday I did a free Oovoo one-to-one video conference with a friend and we really liked the experience: simple setup, cleaner interface than Skype’s, easy to use control panel, clear and crisp video.
Oovoo has a pay-as-you-need-to-use-it plan that makes sense for organizations conducting only occasional multi-user video conferencing. This plan includes a lot of other nice features such as desktop sharing. You pay for Oovoo credits to fund this plan.