In 2019, GoTo purchased Jive Communications, an enterprise business communications company. It has since rebranded into GoTo Connect, offering a standard business phone system and contact center platform with strong unlimited international calling capabilities.
Aside from that, GoTo also offers a range of collaboration tools and IT management solutions.
You can use the links above to jump ahead to the products you’re most interested in or keep reading to see how GoTo Connect compares to similar products before dive into the details.
How GoTo Connect Compares to its Closest Competitors
Nextiva is our preferred cloud-based phone and contact center provider because of its long-term track record, strong focus on improving its voice products, infinite scalability, and comprehensive yet cost-effective solutions. If you don’t handle a lot of international calling, Nextiva can’t be beat.
If global calls are a major piece of what you do, Zoom, RingCentral, and GoTo Connect are the strongest.
Zoom offers simple phone systems without all the extra collaboration features at a fraction of the cost. You will have to pay extra for its unlimited international calling plan if you need it. But Zoom is the only one of the three to offer regional and localized calling plans outside North America, making it a very strong choice for businesses with locations around the world.
GoTo Connect only lets you purchase international phone numbers in a handful of countries, but its unlimited international calling capabilities are more robust, with support for 52 countries vs. Zoom’s 19. Aside from that, both GoTo and Zoom offer webinar and events management, standalone video conferencing software, and conference room solutions.
They have a very similar suite of products, but GoTo also offers advanced IT management solutions you won’t find with Zoom.
With RingCentral, you can use an existing international carrier and layer its features on top via PSTN. So, it’s strong if you already have a carrier you like but need to modernize it. Unlike the other two, RingCentral doesn’t offer unlimited international calling. But it does have much more advanced phone and contact center solutions for larger businesses.
Overall, GoTo Connect covers more channels than basic call center solutions like Aircall and Cloudtalk. But it has fewer AI, automation, customization, and advanced tools compared to more capable solutions like Dialpad and TalkDesk.
GoTo Connect Phone and Collaboration System
GoTo Connect offers a standard business phone system and collaboration suite with video, texting, team chat, and online faxing. It’s a great choice for US-based businesses that handle a lot of international calling, but that’s really the only thing that makes it stand out.
Overall, there’s nothing wrong with the system, but there are more established options with transparent pricing, better user experiences, and stronger customer service.
GoTo Connect Business Phone: The Good
Only one plan: You don’t have to dig through a bunch of feature lists to figure out which plan’s right for you. There’s only one option with all the standard phone features, which makes it a really easy decision.
Full collaboration suite: GoTo Connect is an all-in-one collaboration platform, including voice, video with up to 250 participants, online faxing, SMS, and team messaging. Video meetings include automatic transcriptions, customizable layouts, and breakout rooms.
International calling in 50 countries at no extra cost: Zoom also offers unlimited international calling, but only in 19 countries and it costs extra. With GoTo Connect, you won’t have to pay extra. You will have to pay per minute for other countries, though. Some users say they were able to get a discount if they didn’t need international calling, which may be an option if you know you don’t need it.
Standard phone features: From paging and intercoms to forwarding, transferring, and ring groups, GoTo’s phone plan comes with the same features you’d get from just about any system on the market.
Includes auto attendants and basic call routing: You’ll be able to record an unlimited number of greetings and set up auto attendants to route callers to the right place. The phone system also includes a rules-based drag-and-drop call routing editor where you can set business hours, routing rules, and custom schedules as needed.
A lot of complimentary toll-free minutes: Compared to RingCentral, you get 10x as many free toll-free minutes with GoTo Connect. While it’s not as many as Nextiva (1,500), you still get a lot.
Video and call recording: Users can record video meetings on demand at no extra cost. You can also set up your phone system to record automatically for everyone or for specific numbers, departments, ring groups, or conference rooms. Users can pause and stop recordings using the numbers on their touchpad. You’ll also get cloud storage so anyone with access can see recordings from anywhere.
Built-in notetaking: GoTo Connect come with a simple app you can use to take notes during meetings. It also has an AI smart assistant that can capture action items, highlights, and key points for you as long as you’ve recorded and transcribed the meeting. You’re limited to 2,048 characters per note—it’s limited compared to Zoom’s collaborative document editor, but it’s sufficient for quick unofficial notes.
Multi-location support: Admins can easily set up new locations and assign devices to them for streamlined administration. You’ll also be able to set up unique 911 services in each location.
Streamlined device management: There’s a centralized administration dashboard for viewing, configuring, and managing devices connected to your system. From it, you can add new devices, view extensions, see IP addresses, configure device-specific settings, and remove devices.
Potential Drawbacks of GoTo Connect’s Phone and Collaboration Suite
Limited inbound routing options: There’s a call flow builder, but you won’t be able to use IVR, ACD, or smart routing options unless you upgrade to GoTo Connect’s call center plans. There are cheaper options out there—like Cloudtalk—that give you more advanced routing options and capabilities.
Low SMS limits: Every user is limited to 80 SMS credits per month. RingCentral gives you 200 and Nextiva gives you 2,000. Multi-media messages will cost you 3x credits and you’ll have to pay $0.0055 per message that exceeds your limit.
Documentation is a mess: In most of GoTo’s training documents, you’ll see two sets of instructions for everything. There’s one set for its old system and one for the new. GoTo acquired Jive and rebranded it to GoTo Connect several years ago, so they’ve had plenty of time to switch everyone over to the new version. For whatever reason, they haven’t. Certain help desk articles also mention old plans that no longer exist. There are even still have some features that require technical support to configure because it’s not yet available in the new interface. Overall, it’s confusing and really clutters up all of their documentation.
Call recording is clunky: Rather than having start, stop, and pause buttons, users have to dial specific numbers on their number pads. You also can’t start recording in the middle of a call—if it’s not automatically enabled for their number, they have to touch the right numbers before the call starts. On top of that, every user with recording access can listen to anyone’s recordings, not just their own.
No pricing transparency: Many users say they were able to negotiate features and pricing, which is nice. However, there’s no indication whatsoever of how much you’ll pay before you talk to them.
Potential bugs and hit or miss support: It’s not uncommon for new updates and feature releases to break existing features or introduce new bugs. Over time, they’re smoothed out but it can be a frustrating experience when things randomly stop working or suddenly work in a different way. To make matters worse, customer service is hit or miss—the quality largely depends on who you’re connected with.
Check out our complete list of the best business phone systems to see how GoTo Connect compares to the top options on the market.
GoTo Connect Contact Center and Customer Engagement Platform
If you handle interactions across multiple channels, including voice, social, messaging apps, text, and live chat, and have customers all over the world, GoTo’s contact center plans may be a good fit for you. It tends to be on the more expensive side, despite it missing a few common features for midsize sales and service teams.
It has a few unique capabilities, particularly for text-based communications and international calling. But it’s otherwise a standard solution that doesn’t stand out in one way or another.
GoTo Connect Contact Center: The Good
Also includes international calling in 50 countries for free: Like its phone plan, every call and contact center plan lets you make calls to a large number of countries at no extra cost.
Advanced routing options: You’ll be able to route inquiries based on skills or intelligent call routing algorithms designed to connect customers with the right agents. You can also configure custom queueing rules with advanced triggers and conditions. While these aren’t unique to GoTo, skills-based routing an custom queueing aren’t always an option, especially with lightweight call center solutions.
Includes all collaboration tools: Many contact center solutions don’t cover the full suite of collaboration channels—video, team chat, file sharing, and faxing. However, GoTo includes them with every plan so you don’t have to pay for two separate tools.
Live chat widget for your website: You can configure basic chat queues and pre-chat forms to collect customer information from an embedded chat widget on your site. You can set up welcome messages, set its location, and style it to match your brand. Inquiries can go into a shared inbox or through a routing configuration to match them with the right agent.
Facebook and Instagram messaging on every plan: Social media management isn’t always covered, especially in more entry-level call center solutions. While you have to be on the top tier for other social media platforms, you can bring in Facebook and Instagram messages no matter the plan you’re on.
Tagging and dispositions: On the top two plans, you can set up a custom tagging system to organize calls or other inquiries to identify trends, common complaints, and more. You can then use these tags to filter analytics to drill into the metrics that matter most to your team. After interactions are complete, agents can label them with the outcome they reached—this makes it easy to see the why behind your analytics and what happened during an interaction at a glance.
Auto queue callback feature: One of GoTo Connect’s more advanced queueing features is the ability for callers to stay in the queue without having to wait on the phone. If they choose to do so, they’ll get a call when it’s their turn, leaving them free to do something else while they wait.
Co-browsing via chat: Co-browsing is one of GoTo’s newer features. It lets agents initiate a shared browser experience where they can control the customer’s screen. They’ll be able to see what they see while also showing them where to click. Agents can highlight areas and draw directly on the screen to further illustrate what they’re doing and why. All of this happens seamlessly without existing the chat so the conversation can continue uninterrupted.
AI-powered chat analysis: Released in late 2023, GoTo integrated OpenAI to automatically score interactions. The tool provides an overall sentiment score, a summary, whether a follow up is recommended, and insights into how the agent reacted.
Potential Drawbacks of GoTo Connect’s Customer Engagement Solution
No workforce management features: Most mid-level to enterprise contact center solutions come with forecasting, scheduling, and shift-management tools to help large teams optimize their schedules. They’re usually reserved for higher tiers, but GoTo Connect doesn’t offer them at all—there are integrations for third-party software, but you’ll have to purchase it separately.
Doesn’t have an automation or workflow builder: Like workforce management, automation builders are a common feature of contact center solutions for midsize or larger businesses. GoTo has a call flow builder, but it pales in comparison to the things you can automate with other solutions.
Cheapest plan is very limited: GoTo’s entry-level call center plan only includes a few extra features compared to its standard phone system plan. It comes with a shared inbox, live chat widget, Facebook and Instagram messaging, bulk SMS campaigns, and customizable dashboards. It doesn’t have skills-based routing, screen recordings, feedback management, quality management tools, or anything like that.
Feedback is limited to text-based communications on most plans: You can create simple surveys that to send out via text communications, but phone questionnaires and IVR surveys are only available on the most expensive plan.
Auto dialers are only available on the top tier: Most contact center solutions include auto dialers on multiple tiers, but you’ll have to be on the most expensive plan to use GoTo’s auto dialers. You can create manual call queues on the top two tiers, but its most powerful outbound features are only for top-paying customers.
Analytics and reporting are clunky: Many users say that the data you get is too surface-level to be useful for most people. On top of that, a lot of folks have a hard time exporting data out of the platform.
It’s very new: GoTo’s contact center solution was just released in 2022, making it significantly newer. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, it’s had a lot less time to gather and implement feedback. It’s also not GoTo’s main product—the company as a whole offers nearly a dozen tools, so they may be spread very thin.
Contact Center Plans and Pricing
GoTo Connect doesn’t publish pricing for any of its phone or contact center solutions. However, there are three distinct call and contact center plans to choose from with wildly varying features.
They all include everything from the standard phone system including collaboration tools, which is great.
But the way its more advanced features are split across plans may make it less cost-effective, depending on what you need. With that said, you can negotiate different features and price points, so the plans you see on their website may not be the only way to slice and dice what they offer.
The general consensus is that GoTo Connect is on the expensive side for the functionality it offers, but you’ll have to get a custom quote to decide if that’s true for you.
See our list of the best call center solutions to learn more about how it stacks up.
Additional GoTo Products and Services
GoTo has a ton of different types of software under its umbrella, from webinars and events management to advanced IT solutions for technical support teams.
While this review is focused on GoTo Connect, we still wanted to cover its other tools from a high level.
Collaboration Tools: Meetings, Webinars, and Training
GoTo Meetings, GoTo Webinar, and GoTo Training are all centered around video, but vary in the features and functionality they offer.
The simplest solution is GoTo Meeting. It’s a standalone video conferencing solution for meetings with up to 250 participants. It also includes team messaging. Check out our complete GoTo Meeting review or our head-to-head GoTo Meeting vs Zoom comparison for more details.
For larger gatherings, you’ll have to upgrade to GoTo Webinar. It comes with a range of analytics, audience engagement, and ticket management features for simple webinars to complex multi-day events.
GoTo Training is a bit different from the other two—it’s a full learning management system with gamification, certificates, built-in payments, engagement features, custom branding, and more. You can use it to train your own team, host online courses, and onboard new customers.
IT Management and Support
If you have technical staff that offer support or need remote device access, GoTo’s range of IT management tools may work well for you.
GoTo Resolve is its all-in-one solution. It includes all three of GoTo’s IT tools: Rescue, GoToMyPC, and Miradore. As such, it covers a wide range of features, like remote access, a full ticketing platform, asset management, scheduling, remote monitoring, and more.
Enterprise users will get more out of LogMeIn Rescue. It includes a lot of the same functionality but is built for a larger scale.
If you just need remote access or device management, you can buy GoToMyPC or Miradore separately.
