GoToConnect Review: The Best Phone System for Startups

Our extensive research into the world of business phone systems has singled out GoTo’s product, GoToConnect, as the best phone system for startups, offering brilliant value for money.

When choosing a phone system, we recommend comparing four key factors: inbound and outbound communication features, pricing, integrability and scalability, and customer support channels. In this review, we’ll evaluate how well GoToConnect measures up to these criteria, as well as exploring its features and pros and cons, and explaining why it’s the top pick for startups.

How much does GoTo cost?

GoToConnect plans

• Basic: from £10 per user, per month
• Standard: from £21 per user, per month
• Premium: from £44 per user, per month

There’s no question about it – GoTo excels when it comes to price. During our in-depth research, we compared prices from eight different phone system providers, examining the features on offer at each pricing tier. GoTo’s prices earned a top score of 4.5 out of 5, which is the highest pricing score we awarded!

This may seem at odds with the fact that GoTo isn’t the cheapest of the providers we compared. For example, Vonage’s most expensive package costs just £16.50 per user, per month compared to GoTo’s £44, while bOnline starts at just £6 (plus VAT) per user, per month, compared to GoTo’s starting price of £10.

The reason GoTo beat these competitors in our pricing analysis is because it offers the best value for money. For relatively low monthly subscription costs, it offers a variety of features and benefits, including unlimited domestic minutes on all plans, and unified communications channels, such as instant messaging and video conferencing. The fact that GoToConnect scored well (4.4 out of 5) in our scalability analysis also contributes, as it means the system can scale with you, and you won’t have to pay for expensive upgrades down the line instead.

The pros and cons of GoTo

✓ Offers the best value for money

We’ve already discussed the fact that, of all the UK providers we analysed, GoTo offers the best value for money. Scroll up to our section on pricing to learn more about this!

✓ Very easy to scale

We’ve also already mentioned the fact that GoTo did well in our evaluation of its ability to scale alongside your business, scoring 4.4 out of 5 on this front. But what makes GoToConnect such a scalable system?

• On the Standard plan upwards, GoTo doesn’t impose any user limits, so you can add as many users as you want as your business grows
• Call queues and ring groups are available on all plans, so you can easily manage growing volumes of calls
• You can set up localised phone numbers on all plans, so customers from across the UK can contact you free of charge
• GoToConnect’s customisable call routing and call flow designer enable you to easily direct growing volumes of calls to the right people or teams
• Call recording and analytics on the Standard plan upwards make it easier to train and assess new team members
• Video conferencing and team messaging are available on all plans, so your growing team can keep collaborating (although video meetings are limited to just four participants on the Basic plan).

✓ Great reputation among users

Across customer review sites G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and TrustRadius, GoTo has achieved an impressive average user review score of 4.4 out of 5 – which speaks volumes! Head down to the user review section on this page to read some useful examples of real user reviews.

✘ Smaller variety of features

GoTo scored a middling 3.7 out of 5 in our features comparison. It doesn’t offer as extensive a variety of features as 8×8 (read 8×8 review), RingCentral, Vonage, and Dialpad, all of which achieved higher scores in this criteria of our research.

GoToConnect does come with an excellent variety of inbound communication features, including virtual receptionist, customisable greetings and hold music, voicemail to text, and more. However, some valuable features such as call barge, call whisper, and call monitoring are only available on the Premium plan.

Plus, other management features, such as call transcripts and the ability to create and track your own SLAs, are missing entirely from GoToConnect. And, in terms of team collaboration, task management features and document sharing capability aren’t available in the UK. Of course, if you run a small business, it’s unlikely you’ll need such features anyway. However, if you work for a larger business, you should weigh up the importance of these features to your team.

✘ Few ready-made integrations

It’s also worth noting that GoTo doesn’t come with as many ready-made software integrations as some of its competitors, scoring a low 2.6 out of 5 in our analysis of its integrability.

As far as CRM systems, GoToConnect is only set up to integrate with Salesforce and Zoho, while other providers offer a much greater range. Internal live chat integrations are limited to Slack or Hipchat (although GoToConnect does come with its own team messaging platform), while ready-made external live chat, analytics, and workspace integrations are non-existent.

All that said, GoToConnect does come with an open API, so you can create your own integrations for whatever software your team uses – it’ll just take a bit of technical know-how.

✘ No 24/7 user support channels

When introducing your business to a brand new phone system, it can help to know that support from the provider is available 24/7. Unfortunately, while GoTo does boast a user forum, an online knowledge base, a phone support line, email support, and onboarding support, it doesn’t keep any of its lines open 24/7, or offer a convenient live chat service to give quick answers to your urgent queries.

GoTo’s standout features explained

Customisable call routing

We’re big fans of GoTo’s unique ‘Dial Plan Editor’, which gives you an easy, visual way to plot out your call flows using a simple drag-and-drop function. In particular, if you want to set up an auto attendant that routes calls to different extensions, the Dial Plan Editor provides a distinctively easy way to do this. You can also set up business hours and out of hours rules.

Simple contact centre workflow

Similarly, GoTo also comes with a contact centre dashboard that’s been designed to simplify your contact team’s workflow (if you have one). Dashboards for each agent summarise daily and weekly activity as well as showing assigned queues and the number and status of each agent’s calls.

Flexible softphone app

Like all modern VoIP systems must, GoTo Connect comes in the form of mobile and desktop apps that enable you to take calls, send messages, and join video meetings from a device of your choice, without needing a desk phone. This flexibility will prove invaluable for teams that work remotely, or on a hybrid basis. The system is also accessible via browser.

What kind of business is GoTo best for?

As we’ve mentioned, GoToConnect is our favourite phone system for startups, scoring an unmatched 4.7 out of 5 in our evaluation of its suitability for very small businesses. But what exactly makes GoToConnect so good for startups? Let’s examine:

• Great value for money: as we’ve explored, GoToConnect comes with the necessary small business features at very reasonable prices.
• Easy setup: GoToConnect comes with onboarding support, as well as an easy Dial Plan Editor to set up your call routing, and in-built unified communications channels so your team can start collaborating easily.
• Professional communication with your customers: virtual receptionist, customisable on-hold music, recorded greetings, voicemail capability, and local numbers are all available on GoTo’s cheapest plan, so you can start giving customers a polished experience right away.

If you’re past the startup stage, check out our guide to the best phone systems for small businesses.

How does GoTo compare to its competitors?

At the very start of this review, we talked about the four key factors you should compare when choosing your next phone system provider. Let’s take a look at these all-important points and see how well GoTo’s phone system compares to its competitors.

1. Inbound and outbound communication features

GoTo offers a flawless range of inbound communication features, including those listed in the comparison table above – all of which are generously available on all GoTo’s price plans. Notably, none of the other phone system providers we compared offer all these features on all plans – so when it comes to offering a slick, professional experience to customers when they call you, GoToConnect is ahead of the competition.

However, GoTo does miss a couple of the outbound communication features that competitors provide. Custom call lists, for example, can be created with 8×8, Nuacom, Dialpad (read Dialpad review), and Vonage, but not GoTo. Similarly, GoTo doesn’t come with features like auto dialer, power dialer, and predictive dialling, whereas 8×8 and RingCentral do offer these (at an extra cost, though). That said, these features aren’t necessarily part of the industry standard, and you might well decide you don’t need them.

2. Price

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: when it comes to value for money, GoTo beats all the competitors we researched. This is thanks to the generosity of GoTo’s pricing packages, the cheapest of which comes with unlimited domestic minutes alongside all of our favourite inbound comms features.

That said, if you’re looking for sheer affordability, you’ll find there are competitors out there with cheaper packages. bOnline’s prices are cheapest, ranging from £6 to £15.50 (plus VAT) per user, per month, while Vonage’s range from £9 to £16.50 per user, per month, and RingCentral’s sit at £7.99 to £29.99 per user, per month.

3. Integrability and scalability

As we’ve mentioned, GoToConnect doesn’t come ready to integrate with as many software platforms as its competitors do. During our research, RingCentral, 8×8, Vonage, bOnline, Nuacom, and Google Voice all achieved higher integrability scores than GoTo, with RingCentral providing the strongest variety of ready-made integrations (read our RingCentral review for more).

On the flip side, GoTo does shine when it comes to how easily it can scale alongside your business. We found that GoToConnect is easier to scale than Nuacom, Dialpad, bOnline, and Google Voice. But it doesn’t quite beat 8×8, RingCentral, and Vonage: the easiest systems to grow and evolve with your team. Read more in our Vonage review.

4. Customer support channels

It’s worth knowing that GoTo doesn’t offer as many user support channels as 8×8, RingCentral, Dialpad, Vonage, or Nuacom. The glaring omission is a live chat support channel, which GoTo doesn’t provide, but all these competitors do. Similarly, none of GoTo’s contact channels are open 24/7, whereas 8×8, RingCentral, and Dialpad all provide some way of reaching their support team in the dead of night.

Does GoTo have good customer reviews?

When you’re looking for a new phone system, investigating users’ experiences and insights can be an extremely valuable way to work out whether a system is right for you or not.

So, it’s reassuring to know that GoTo’s reputation is absolutely stellar, with an average customer rating of 4.4 out of 5 across a number of business software review sites. Let’s take a look at some of the most useful GoToConnect reviews on the world wide web: