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Astound Hosted Voice vs GoToConnect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Astound Hosted Voice
Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GoToConnect
Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
6th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP category, the mindshare of Astound Hosted Voice is 2.8%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GoToConnect is 4.7%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
 

Featured Reviews

BF
Admin features make it easy to customize and change, while Voicemail Transcription is fast and accurate
The most valuable feature is the admin platform that we work with. It allows us a very centralized approach for doing things and it allows us to manage and control everything right from the very top. We could do that before, but the features that we have with RCN seem more extensive than the previous company that we worked with. The Voicemail Transcription is more accurate than what we had with our previous company. Also, and I'm not sure if this is because it's a fiber line, we seem to get the responses and the transcription almost instantaneously, faster than what we had prior. We can do lots of things: We can do call groups, we can do work with our extensions, we can set up our account codes, we can take a look at call logs. There are a multiplicity of miscellaneous settings that are allowed for each user and for the Admin. There's a simplicity to it. It seems they use KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. It works for everybody because, when I'm not here responding to it, my technicians are; sometimes my network guy is; sometimes our students are interacting with it. It creates a very easy flow for working through the product and the interface. The automatic upgrades are the best thing that ever happened, because we don't see them, we don't feel them, we just know that they happened, after the fact. What they've done, at least for us, is that we haven't had or felt a crash whatsoever, nor have we felt the disruption as a result of the updates. That tells me that work goes into them to get them done right, and that they really test the code and test the information in updates so that they work properly.
JL
Puts everyone in the company onto a common platform, making support very easy and provided quick gains
There are probably two things that get used the most: * We now eFax pretty much everything. I no longer have fax machines and have to deal with paper. We had a situation where one person, specifically, would come onto a floor for a fax machine. After restocking the fax machine with paper, so that it could finish all the faxes that they got over the weekend, They would then convert all those things into PDF documents. By going to eFax, they're getting them as emails and it's already a PDF document. This saves a step, a lot of time, and effort. We are also able to provide fax machines to individuals at their desktop by having eFax. In my case, I have my phone set up to be both a phone and a fax line, so it just shows up in my email. * We use the hot desk feature a lot. We have so many locations. I actually have an office in three different cities. So, when I go to another city, I just punch in my code and the entire phone becomes my phone. All my buttons are the same. My voicemail is there. It rings at that desk, just like it does at my main desk. I like this feature better than FindMe, where it forwards to my cell phone or something else. There are just a lot of little things that go on when you are forwarding calls to an outside system. GoToConnect’s Dial Plan Editor enables us to visually set up and organize call routing configurations quite easily. This works out well for us because each site has different requirements. No site has an attendance; they are all automated attendance. For some sites, it is strictly that the call comes in and goes to a hunt group. Other calls and other sites have everything mapped out, where it is press "one" to get to HR, press "two" to get to sales, press "three", etc. Once you get to that, then you can drill down through individuals or functions. So, it's very nice to be able to go in, look at these things, see how they are done, and provide flexibility to it as well as being able to adjust scheduling. We are all in the United States, so we all have the same holiday schedule, but some of the hours are different. Depending on the location, they may work weekends or not. They may work from 5:00 AM until 11:00 PM or 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. So, we are able to uniquely configure all those things at each site. It has to be very flexible to do these things. It is easy to see. Like anything else, they walked us through how to create one of the more complex ones. After that, we were able to do our own and kind of manipulate it to do what we wanted from there. The Dial Plan Editor enables us to organize call routing configurations per site. We don't have the ability to see globally. However, from a single desktop, I can look at all our sites, one at a time, which is all I need.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"A lot of users use the voice to email, that's a nice feature to have. Voicemail will come to me as a .wav file and, if I have a phone, I can just click on the .wav file and listen to it. Or I can play it on my computer. Whether you have an Android or an iPhone, you'll be able to play it."
"The Hunt Group, is the most valuable feature... You can choose round-robin, you can choose priority-for-agents, you can choose the order of agents. There are all kinds of different mechanisms for the next operator to take a call."
"This solution is easy... Right now we have a 48-port switch, and at any point, if I want, I can throw in a larger switch, or add an additional switch, and I don't have to call anybody to install it. I can do it myself."
"We like the administrative features RCN has available. It is important that we can balance call loads through programming options, and have full control of our messaging, schedules, etc."
"The solution’s reliability and disaster recovery are amazing. Since their uptime is way over 90 percent, it builds my confidence. Secondly, since it's cloud-based, it's not my problem if the system's down."
"The Voicemail Transcription is more accurate than what we had with our previous company. Also, and I'm not sure if this is because it's a fiber line, we seem to get the responses and the transcription almost instantaneously, faster than what we had prior."
"This is what's cool about the RCN setup. RCN allows you to go to any web browser, at any time, and configure the phones... Our disaster recovery is: We log in to an RCN website... and we put in a new phone number for the incoming number. If you dial our number, it will actually go to that other number."
"As soon as we switched over to the RCN VoIP phone system, the clarity and quality of our calls improved and there has been no downtime."
"We now eFax pretty much everything. I no longer have fax machines and have to deal with paper. We had a situation where one person, specifically, would come onto a floor for a fax machine. After restocking the fax machine with paper, so that it could finish all the faxes that they got over the weekend, They would then convert all those things into PDF documents. By going to eFax, they're getting them as emails and it's already a PDF document. This saves a step, a lot of time, and effort. We are also able to provide fax machines to individuals at their desktop by having eFax. In my case, I have my phone set up to be both a phone and a fax line, so it just shows up in my email."
"It allows us to serve our clients from home exactly as though we were in the office."
"The automated system allows for control, including adding in MP3s for sound clips. This keeps businesses looking professional when customers call in."
 

Cons

"Wireless needs improvement... We're still looking for the quintessential IP phone, the one phone that will actually be SIP-enabled and use the WiFi and be able to carry through three [different] buildings."
"In our old system, you just dialed the extension directly, With this system, you have to put a "one" in front of it to trigger it. A lot of clients didn't know that and they'd keep trying to dial the old extension number and would get nowhere... It's been a little confusing."
"One area for improvement is the Web Portal. It's not a full-view screen, it's more like a minimized screen. You don't get the full view of your desktop. It's more like a five-inch by five-inch view. I think they said the software was designed that way. I don't know if there's going to be a newer version coming out later."
"I use the voicemail transcription feature but I'm not sure about the security of the voicemail system, as you can only use numbers for a password, and your direct-dial number is your username. That's kind of vulnerable to brute-force attacks. The passwords are limited to six digits, so I'd be a little concerned about security on that end..."
"If they had better ongoing-training options, for example, if they put something out on YouTube where you could just go and look for individual things that you need by looking at a video, that would be very helpful."
"The analytic part of it, the control panel, those are their biggest areas where they have to improve. There are competitors out there where, when you open the control panel, they have tons of analytics, the ability to add lines, to see which people are on the phone.... RCN has a great product, but they could make it outstanding with the right analytics and control panel."
"If they could improve on their response times, making them even faster than they are right now, that would be great."
"It should be easier to set up new phone additions to the network."
"We just had one service interruption, which was due to an upstream carrier. They sent us hourly updates, letting us know what was going on and that it was being worked on. It was down for about half a day."
"The ring delay could be improved. Our cell phones often continue to ring after we have answered the phone."
"We'd like pre-set computers with GoToConnect and all features embedded in laptops or other devices."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's very affordable. We're very happy with the pricing."
"We felt that pricing was fair because we chose RCN over quotes from several companies. It was reasonable..."
"RCN, as part of the deal, leased us phones at a reasonable price and each line was extremely reasonable as well."
"Pricing is great. If you're not careful enough, you might just order too many. For the service, the price is right. When you design it, if you mess up and you realize you really need then more lines, the price is negligible."
"We're okay with the pricing and licensing... It's based on the number of extensions."
"We looked at about five or six other companies but when RCN came in, they beat everybody hands-down, on both the features and on the dollars side. It prompted our people to say they hadn't seen numbers so low for the services you get."
"The pricing is very fair. They have very good pricing."
"The pricing is fairly fair... We had a really good rep and she did a great job of working out a contract and a pricing solution that was acceptable..."
"The way that we use the system, it does everything that we need it to do. It also does it at a very affordable price with good quality."
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Company Size

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Midsize Enterprise
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Comparisons

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Also Known As

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Jive Voice
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Citi Open Tournament
Dartmouth College, National Holistic Institute (NHI), Larry H. Miller Dealerships, Farmers Insurance, EMA Consulting, KAD Dental Staffing, Alberts, EMS Copiers, Dragon 2000, Kiernan Trebach, Saint Mary's College of California, Vallejo City Unified School District, Go Insurance
Find out what your peers are saying about Astound Hosted Voice vs. GoToConnect and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.