Communications for small groups

This question came up on the Community Emergency Response Team list.

--- In CERT@yahoogroups.com, "h0chus_p0ckus"  wrote:
>

> But does anyone have suggestions for really outstanding software, which can do more? Like, voice conferecing, so you can "call the group" and have everyone's phone ring for a conference call? Or, send a group email to the same list, instead of creating different lists in different apps?
>

I have had good success with cel.ly and groupme.com where both have free accounts.  The Virtual Operations Support Team group on Twitter uses the latter as a callup text message effort.

Both have the capability for groups to send messages from the web and text.  The former also pushes messages out to email.

I also use Rondee.com for quick and dirty conference calls.  I have toyed with the idea of having a "perpetual" conference bridge that folks could call into, if they get a dial tone.  Having a GETS card will help the likelihood of the call completing. http://gets.ncs.gov/

Free Conference Call http://freeconferencecall.com and http://www.totallyfreeconferencecalls.com/ are alternatives.

I have an account at http://www.dialmycalls.com/ and have used

Our VOST also uses Skype for conference calls and text messaging.

You might also look at AnyMeeting and SmartMeeting for cheap GoToMeeting alternatives.

If you have a small team, you might enjoy callingpost.com as well as http://groupcall.me/ and http://crowdcall.me/.  I have had good results with the former and latter.  I have little experience with GroupCall.

Then there are the "walkie-talkie" applications such as ZELLO and TIKL.  Zello allows "channels" for small groups and works across multiple platforms, including the PC.

How would you answer?