GoToMeeting vs. Zoom Review: Which Is Better For Work & Online Meetings?

While video conferences were already common pre-Covid, the use of such services skyrocketed when quarantine measures were put in place. It replaced face-to-face meetings that were normally conducted in offices, schools and even regular doctor's appointments. As so many have become accustomed to this type of meeting, it's proven to be a very useful and reliable alternative. Web video conferences could even well be on their way to become the new norm.

We look at two major players in web video conferencing services: Zoom and GoToMeeting to find out which one is better for work and online conferences.

Zoom

Zoom’s Basic plan is free to use and allows up to 100 participants and group meetings of up to 40 minutes, while offering unlimited one-on-one meetings. Although Zoom offers a competitive Basic plan, it may not be enough for businesses and enterprises.

Upgrading to either a Business or Enterprise plan increases a meeting’s duration to 24 hours and can host 300 to 500 participants. Also, video conferences on upgraded plans can be branded with the company logo. For security, Zoom makes use of SSL encryption, AES 256 bits encryption and password-protected meetings.

GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting offers a free plan not mentioned on the website, called GoToMeeting Free, which limits meetings to 40 minutes. GoToMeeting has varied options for businesses namely Professional, Business and Enterprise which include upgraded features like unlimited meetings, no time limits, screen sharing and HD video.

If you do upgrade to a Business or Enterprise plan, you can use other features like the automatic transcription of recorded meetings, note-taking and unlimited cloud recording. For security, GoToMeeting makes use of SSL encryption, AES 256 bits encryption and risk-based authentication which is a better option than passwords.

Features

Call Recording

Local recording is available on both Zoom and GoToMeeting where it automatically saves recoded data on your local machine without any limits to meeting duration. However, the local recording does not extend to the mobile app for both video conference platforms. For this, you’ll need cloud call recording, which is available on their paid plans.

Zoom offers the cloud recording feature on its paid plans, however with a limited capacity of 0.5 to 1 GB depending on the plan. You also have the option to extend these capacity limits but it isn’t free. GoToMeeting on the other hand, offers unlimited cloud recording as part of their paid plans. It also features an archive of your recordings that you can browse, search and share. As cloud recording is essential to any company, we think GoToMeeting nailed this feature.

Video Conferencing

Both Zoom and GoToMeeting offers 1080p video and features fine-tuning options to adjust video quality. This feature, which is present in both platforms, allows certain vantage points to be seen in the presentation, focus on the presenter and even display the attendees in grid view.

Zoom offers up to 49 screens to be displayed simultaneously. It also lets you customize the aspect ratio and choose the webcam. For fine-tuning, it dedicates a feature called “Touch Up My Appearance” that softens features and is perfect for environments with harsh lighting. On the other hand, GoToMeeting offers up to 25 simultaneously displayed screens. Even with less number of screens available, GoToMeeting has more detailed fine-tuning settings, which are all adjustable including brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, sharpness and gamma. As you can really fine-tune thanks to GoToMeeting’s detailed settings, we prefer it over Zoom’s limited fine-tuning feature.

Pricing

Both Zoom and GoToMeeting offer competitive pricing for their plans. Zoom offers annual plans while GoToMeeting offers monthly plans so it’s more flexible, which we like. However, GoToMeeting’s pricing does come out a bit more expensive if you choose to pay monthly as compared to their annual fee which comes out the same as Zoom's. The latter’s highest tier is priced at $350 a year while GoToMeeting does not list its rate, but can be customized depending on bundles.

All in all, we prefer GoToMeeting for work and online meetings for its professional features, seamless reliability, security controls and affordable rates.

Check out GoToMeeting’s affordable plans here.