GoToMeeting

If you’re looking for the best video conferencing software for your business, GoToMeeting has a lot to offer. This platform makes key features like HD video, meeting recording and transcription, and screen sharing standard, plus, it offers options for hosting webinars and conference calls.

In our GoToMeeting review, we’ll cover everything you need to know to decide if this video conferencing platform is right for your business.

These are the plan options for GoToMeeting (Image credit: GoToMeeting)

Plans and pricing

GoToMeeting offers two plans for small and medium-sized businesses: Professional and Business. Only users who are hosting a meeting need to purchase a subscription—joining a meeting is always free.

The Professional plan costs $14 per user per month and gives you unlimited meetings with up to 150 participants. You also get a personal meeting room, all of GoToMeeting’s integrations, and administrative tools like single sign-on.

The Business plan costs $19 per user per month and enables you to have up to 250 participants in a meeting. It also comes with unlimited cloud storage for recorded meetings, an automated transcription service, and collaborative tools like a whiteboard and in-meeting notes.

GoToMeeting also offers several add-ons, such as GoToWebinar ($20 per month) for hosting webinars. You can try out GoToMeeting for free for 14 days before committing to a plan.

Features

GoToMeeting has an impressive list of standard features that make it easier for your business to host collaborative video conferences. All video conferences are streamed in high definition by default, and there are no time limits on your meetings. In addition, you can set up a dial-in conference line for phone participants, host a personal room that’s always active, and send messages between participants during meetings.

We especially like that GoToMeeting makes screen recording available to all users. Business subscribers receive unlimited cloud storage to store high-resolution meeting recordings, and they can get automated transcription of meeting audio on request.

GoToMeeting offers chat between participants, screen sharing, and the option to record any meeting (Image credit: GoToMeeting)

Screen sharing is a standard feature for all GoToMeeting users, but you’ll need a Business plan to get access to more advanced in-meeting tools. With this plan, you can launch a virtual whiteboard for participants to mark up presentations or turn over control to a co-host or any participant. Unfortunately, GoToMeeting doesn’t currently support in-meeting polls or quizzes.

GoToMeeting also recently introduced a note-taking feature, which enables you to type notes directly into an editor within the video conferencing window. While this feature isn’t strictly necessary, we liked that you can instantly send out your notes to all participants as soon as a meeting ends.

From the GoToMeeting dashboard, you can join a scheduled meeting or share meeting invitations (Image credit: GoToMeeting)

Interface and in use

GoToMeeting offers apps for desktop and mobile, as well as a web interface. We found that all three are modern and extremely straightforward to navigate.

From the primary dashboard, you can easily copy an invitation to your personal meeting room to paste into an email. You can also schedule a one-time meeting with a dedicated online room. 

We liked that you can leave most of the default settings alone, so the scheduling process only takes a few seconds. If you want to password-protect your meeting, add a co-organizer, or personalize your meeting room link, you can easily do all of that, too.

Another thing we liked is that GoToMeeting integrates with several popular business platforms. You can automatically sync scheduled meetings with Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar, for example. There’s also a plugin for Slack that allows you to launch meetings straight from your communications workspace, and a plugin for Salesforce that enables you to instantly launch video meetings with customers.

GoToMeeting offers 24/7 phone support and a detailed online help center (Image credit: GoToMeeting)

Support

GoToMeeting offers 24/7 phone support. You also have a live chat option, although this only connects to a chatbot. Thankfully, GoToMeeting has a very detailed online knowledgebase where you’ll find answers to most common technical questions.

You can lock meetings so that new participants must be approved before joining (Image credit: GoToMeeting)

Security

GoToMeeting has a number of security features, which is exactly what we’d like to see from a business-centric video conferencing platform. SSL encryption, 256-bit AES encryption, and single sign-on are standard features. In addition, you can add a password to your meetings and lock your meeting room at any time so that new participants must be approved before they can join.

The competition

GoToMeeting competes directly with Zoom for businesses’ attention. The two compete closely on price and are almost indistinguishable when it comes to screen sharing and meeting scheduling. However, we think GoToMeeting offers several key advantages.

First, you can host up to 150 participants for an unlimited amount of time with a Professional plan. Zoom’s comparably priced Pro plan limits you to 100 participants and 30 hours. In addition, if you want features like single sign-on and audio transcription in Zoom, you have to upgrade to a plan that costs $19.99 per user per month.

Final verdict

GoToMeeting is a very robust video conferencing solution for small and medium-sized businesses. The platform makes high-definition video, screen sharing, meeting recording, and top-notch security measures standard. It also offers handy integrations with popular business software like Outlook, Google Calendar, Salesforce, and Slack. 

For the money, we think GoToMeeting beats out Zoom and gets almost every aspect of video conferencing right.

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