- Persistent 2D office: Keep a shared workplace open throughout the day so distributed teams can see where colleagues are working.
- Nearby conversations: Use spatial audio and walk-up interactions for quick discussions without scheduling a meeting link.
- Presence and focus controls: Show available, focused, or meeting status and let each person control which nearby conversations are heard.
- Meetings and screen sharing: Run scheduled or instant sessions with meeting chat, multiple shared screens, reactions, and music.
- Recordings and AI notes: Record supported meetings and create notes and transcriptions for teammates who need the context later.
- Persistent messaging: Provide public and private channels, direct messages, group messages, threads, and permanent meeting chat.
- Google Calendar connection: Schedule meetings, update status from the calendar, and keep time-based context visible in the office.
- Workspace customization: Start from templates and let teams arrange rooms, desks, and more than 200 objects in Gather Studio.
- Compact work views: Offer Simplified View and Mini Mode for teams that need presence without keeping the full office map onscreen.
Gather.town
Persistent virtual office for distributed teams and spontaneous collaboration
Updated August 18, 2026
Gather.town Overview
Gather is a virtual office for remote and distributed teams. A customizable 2D map shows who is around, while nearby audio and video, scheduled meetings, and persistent chat handle daily conversations.
It works best when coworkers share some working hours and want quick, informal interaction. Guests must enter the virtual office, so a standard meeting link is often easier for one-off external calls.
Key Features
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Essential | $12/member/month billed annually or $15 billed monthly | Custom office, meetings, recordings, chat, AI notes, and listed app integrations |
| Custom | Contact sales | Larger offices, custom onboarding, hybrid solutions, SSO, and Essential features |
Gather does not list a standalone free plan. Its free trial lasts 30 days, includes every feature for up to 50 teammates, and requires no credit card or setup fee. Custom remains a quote-based paid tier.
Pricing source: Gather pricing
Pros
Competitor |
Pros |
|---|---|
| Kumospace | Gather combines a persistent 2D office, nearby conversations, meetings, permanent chat, AI notes, and more than 200 editor objects. Kumospace also offers spatial rooms and office customization, but Gather gives teams a published object library for building the map themselves. |
| Roam | Rooms, desks, and more than 200 objects can be arranged on Gather’s game-like 2D map. Roam shows live presence and office rooms and centers more of its product on AI help, so Gather gives office managers a documented object library for changing the visual workplace. |
| SoWork | Gather gives as many as 50 teammates a 30-day trial with no card or setup fee. SoWork offers a seven-day trial with no card, giving Gather teams 23 additional trial days and a stated participant limit for testing meetings, chat, AI notes, and the editable office. |
| WorkAdventure | Gather is a managed service with meetings, persistent chat, calendar status, AI notes, and an office editor already included, while WorkAdventure provides the spatial map and video calls but asks teams to choose hosting and embedded outside tools. Gather removes those hosting and tool-selection steps from initial setup. |
| Webex Suite | The Gather office map stays open all day, and nearby audio or video starts when coworkers walk together. Webex Suite begins with calls, scheduled meetings, messages, and collaboration apps, so Gather makes visible presence and walk-up conversation part of the workspace itself. |
Cons
Competitor |
Cons |
|---|---|
| Kumospace | Kumospace provides desktop and mobile apps, a built-in whiteboard, meeting annotations, and workspace analytics. Gather has browser and desktop access, screen sharing, and meeting notes but lists no mobile app or built-in whiteboard, two gaps for teams that join from phones or sketch together. |
| Roam | Roam’s office-aware assistant works across meetings and team messages, produces summaries, and can schedule follow-up work. Gather creates AI meeting notes and shows calendar status without one assistant acting across messages, meetings, and calendars, a link Roam documents inside the same virtual office. |
| SoWork | SoWork provides Simple, World, and Mini views, calendar-aware status, and automatic meeting documentation within its virtual office. Gather has Simplified View, Mini Mode, calendar status, and AI notes as well, while SoWork adds a manager-focused view of presence and meeting records that Gather’s feature page does not list. |
| WorkAdventure | WorkAdventure can run on a company’s own servers and place documents, task tools, whiteboards, and Microsoft Teams links inside a map. Gather remains vendor-hosted and uses its listed integrations, so technical teams needing hosting control or embedded work tools get options that Gather does not publish. |
| Webex Suite | Webex Suite covers business calling, formal meetings, webinars, whiteboarding, Cisco room devices, and central administration, while Gather focuses on a browser and desktop virtual office for daily remote work. Companies running large external events or physical meeting rooms need products Webex lists and Gather’s current feature page does not. |
Reviews
- Reddit — r/gathertown thread (Community thread; no aggregate rating published; 21 RSS entries): Teams in the thread describe using Gather all day for availability, informal chats, social events, and offices with roughly 300 active people. Others keep Slack, Teams, or Zoom for structured work, and one hybrid team stopped because existing chat and video tools covered its needs.
- Trustpilot (Open review platform; Rating: 2.0/5 from 26 reviews): The latest reviews focus on version-two bugs, removed features, login trouble, billing errors, unanswered support messages, and unstable browser or mobile use. A smaller set still praises the virtual-office idea, sense of belonging, and remote-work experience.
- G2 (B2B review platform; Rating: 4.8/5 from 366 reviews): Review patterns praise spontaneous conversations, visible presence, team connection, customization, and easy movement between rooms. The recurring complaints are high resource use, lag or crashes on older devices and weak networks, missing features, and an initial learning curve.
- Gather Testimonials (Vendor-selected testimonials; no aggregate rating or sample count published): These are vendor-selected testimonials, not an open rating pool. Featured teams report fewer chat messages and meetings, quicker feedback, visible availability, and stronger remote culture; the page does not present a score, sample count, or a comparable set of negative comments.
- Product Hunt (Product community reviews; Rating: 4.8/5 from 10 reviews): The ten community reviews praise drop-in chats, guest invites, team connection, and daily use as a virtual office. Critical comments mention voice chat failing until users reconnect and office edits that sometimes do not save.
