Competitor Comparison
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Gather Town Vs SoWork: Are You Working From The Best Virtual Office?
Everything you need to know to pick the perfect virtual workplace for your remote team.
Features Overview
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Different Meeting Types | ![]() | ![]() |
Customizations | ![]() | ![]() |
Slack-like Chat | ![]() | ![]() |
High Quality Support | ![]() | ![]() |
API | ![]() | ![]() |
Spatial Audio | ![]() | ![]() |
Mobile Version | ![]() | ![]() |
Team Analytics | ![]() | ![]() |
Integrations | ![]() | ![]() |
Meeting Recordings | ![]() | ![]() |
AI Meeting Summaries | ![]() | ![]() |
Office Happenings | ![]() | ![]() |
What Other Teams Say


Spontaneous Connections

A life-like digital work environment that turns the endless notifications and faceless video tile reputation of remote work into a human experience.
This is at the center of both Gather Town and SoWork. Both apps give your remote team a shared place. Where you feel like you're one team, working beside each other, no matter where in the world you actually are. You’ll see who’s in the office. Be able to walk up to available teammates for a video chat. Grab someone after a meeting to make progress on a project, or join in on a conversation you’d never have known about if it had happened in Slack or on Zoom.
The presence and 'water cooler' moments that a virtual office gives your remote team is transformative. You’ll unlock engagement, collaboration, and productivity in a way that traditional chat apps and video conferencing tools just can’t.
3.1 So where do SoWork and Gather Town differ?
The Gather team originally created Gather Town during the pandemic for events and social gatherings (get it, ‘gather’?!). When socials and events returned to in-person but remote work persisted, they pivoted the product to focus on work.
If you look at the product through this lens, you’ll see the social-first focus. From the items available to customize your office, to the types of between-meeting connections they encourage. The focus to-date has largely been around socializing at work. And for remote teams, this is an important part of the virtual workplace experience.
3.2 SoWork is different.

SoWork was originally created for remote work. Socialization is a core part of the SoWork virtual office experience, but it’s woven into the experience from a work-first perspective. Think: deep work zones where teammates can work beside each other. Interview zones so existing employees can wave ‘hello’ to a new hire. Collaborative work zones with pomodoro timers where teammates can crush work together and play between sprints. Analytics that encourage team connections to increase team performance.
So basically, socialization in SoWork has a purpose: to engage employees, bond teams, and ultimately drive high performing work.
3.3 AI and Data-Powered Tools
Remote teams using a virtual workplace have a major advantage. Their office is digital. It can use technology to level-up the team in ways the physical office never can. Gather data, generate insights, automate workflows...the digital office is the future of work.
But not every virtual office takes advantage of technology to supercharge your remote team. To-date, Gather Town hasn't focused here. They've been prioritizing socialization and customizations. We'll see where they go next!
3.4 SoWork was the first ‘smart’ virtual office on the market.
They’ve been using innovative AI and advanced work features for a while and they continue to develop this area.
With SoWork, you’ll get:
Actionable insights that save your remote team a lot of time.
Automated meeting transcripts and summaries with action items. Integrated with your other tools and housed in a single location so the entire team can access meeting documents easily.
Meeting zones with ‘smart’ functionality, so when you walk in you have everything you need to accomplish a task.
An AI-powered office assistant that retrieves information and gives employees personalized insights (in beta).
And more. The team adds new features every week.

Additional Meeting Tools
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AI Meeting Summaries | ![]() | ![]() | |
Transcripts | ![]() | ![]() | |
Meeting Recordings | ![]() | ![]() | |
Multiple Screensharing | ![]() | ![]() | |
Mobile Version | ![]() | ![]() | |
Focus Mode | ![]() | ![]() | |
Emoji Reactions | ![]() | ![]() | |
Noise Cancellation | ![]() | ![]() | |
Office Happenings | ![]() | ![]() | |
Low Bandwidth Mode | ![]() | ![]() |
Actionable Insights

Both apps offer analytics to Premium customers. They give your team insights into office engagement, meeting attendance, and team cohesion.
Analytics help you answer questions like:
Is our virtual office being used as expected?
Are any employees too disconnected from the rest of the team?
Is anyone over or underworking?
Which teams are collaborating and which aren't?
And more!
Mobile App
Whatever virtual workplace you choose, make sure they have a mobile app!
If your team can’t take certain calls in the office because someone’s on-the-go, everyone will have to switch to whatever video conferencing tool you used before. Then you’ll have more than one meeting tool. And this will impact the team truly adopting your office as the place to work from.
The good news? Both SoWork and Gather Town have mobile apps.
SoWork and Gather Town’s mobile apps allow you to:
Log into your office
See who’s online and available
Start a meeting with someone
See what meetings are taking place and join in
SoWork’s mobile app is more integrated with the office. It also has:
The latest office activity (e.g. Jesse gave Vinay an award for completing a big project). This helps mobile teammates feel connected to office happenings
AI meeting summaries, so teammates can easily catch up on-the-go
Chat

Integrations
Your virtual office needs to fit into your existing workflows. And both Gather Town and SoWork have integrations to do that.

7.1 Calendar
Gather Town has an in-app calendar that is separate from your Google Calendar. You need to add events to it in order for them to show up in your office and receive alerts. What’s on your Google Calendar is not reflected in your Gather Town Office.
SoWork integrates directly with your calendar (Google or Outlook) and pulls your events into the office experience. It uses your calendar information to help you work during the day. Like showing you only your next 2 calendar events so you can focus. Or giving you an alert 10 minutes before a new meeting is starting so you can wind down what you’re doing.
Both apps allow you to:
Change the location of existing calendar events to your new office. This helps your team switch over from your old meeting tool to your new one.
Create new meetings from inside the office. These meetings can have links where attendees arrive at specific zones, or at your desk.
7.2 Whiteboards
Both apps have in-office whiteboards that are integrated to a whiteboarding app.
SoWork has Miro and Eraser whiteboards
Gather Town only has Eraser
7.3 Slack
SoWork and Gather Town have Slack integrations. They both:
Alert Slack channels of meetings taking place in your office
7.4 Zapier
SoWork has Zapier integrations, so you can connect events in SoWork to any tool you want.
These are the events you can currently integrate to other tools:
AI meeting summaries (send to Notion, Slack, etc)
AI-generated meeting action items (send to Asana, Jiro, etc)
Meeting recordings (send to Google Drive, email, etc)
You can dig into SoWork's Zapier integrations here. They’re actively working on adding more - send them a live chat with your requests!
Gather Town does not offer Zapier integrations.
Customizations
Both SoWork and Gather Town offer skeuomorphic experiences.
If your remote team lives in video conferencing apps (like Zoom) or chat tools (like Slack), employees are just dots or tiles on a screen. And culture is reduced to gifs, emojis, and virtual backgrounds. Yikes.
A virtual office is completely different.
Team members exist as avatars navigating a customizable digital space. And that space isn’t just for meetings. It’s for all the in-between moments, too. Just like the physical office. The realism, natural interactions, visibility and spontaneity all come together to create a way more engaging remote work experience.
The big customization difference between SoWork and Gather Town is in the style of the art.
Why do we care about art in a remote workplace? Art affects realism. And realism in remote work has a surprisingly big impact on engagement. Gather Town is more of a pixelated, old-school video game.


With more realistic art, SoWork is able to display items of cultural significance - team pictures, images of company milestones - in a way that Gather Town can't.
Teammates in SoWork can leave gifts, celebrate, and express their company pride in ways that just aren't possible in other products, SoWork makes virtual experiences feel like in-person human moments.
8.1 Office Customizations
Gather Town and SoWork offices are fully customizable. Both apps have:
Themed map templates that your remote team can move into and adapt as desired
Blank maps if you prefer to start from scratch
The ability to knock down walls and restructure the office
Tons of furniture options
Themed items, so you can create an office vibe that represents your culture
Signs, labels, meeting zones. To organize the office around a purpose.
Interactive objects, like whiteboards, notice boards, integrations
And so much more


Where do SoWork and Gather Town differ?
Gather Town focuses on having a wide variety of mapmaking functionality.
They have a lot of event options because of their prior event focus
They have an API that can be used to create your own office objects, like an item that looks like your pet.
SoWork also offers a lot of variety and pets, but focuses more on what remote teams need to build a strong, high-performing culture. Things like:
Meeting zones with thoughtful coworking functionality, like pomodoro zones.
Extensive desk customization, so employees really get engaged.
Realistic art paired with items like team photos, logos, and awards to really make the digital office feel real.
8.2 Office Customizations
In the virtual office, your character represents... you! So both Gather Town and SoWork allow you to customize how you look.
Gather Town and SoWork officer fun, diverse options.
Maybe you want to be a pirate? Or batman with a skateboard?
SoWork's art style makes everything look more real.
This impacts how connected someone feels to their character. Does it really represent them? This level of self-expression is hard to do remotely and critical for employee engagement and team performance.

SoWork's realistic art means you can make company-branded clothing.
There's a reason we give teammates swag. We know how company-branded clothing drives a feeling of pride and connectedness to the team.
8.3 Engagement & Bonding
Both Gather Town and SoWork focus on team engagement and bonding. Again, we see their origins influencing how they do this.
Gather Town's history of focusing on socials and events comes through - team engagement and bonding centers around games, play, and space customization.
They do have a few office-specific capabilities, like the ability to leave a note on a teammate's desk for their birthday.

SoWork approaches engagement and bonding through the lens of team performance.
Teammates can engage in real-time by chatting above their head, without breaking deep work.
Meetings can be celebrated using emojis, without interrupting the flow.
Teammates can give each other gifts to recognize their work achievements or cultural impact.
So both products encourage team engagement and bonding. But Gather Town focuses on fun and social for the sake of... fun and social. While SoWork integrates play and bonding into work to drive team performance.
Support
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Talk to Sales Team | ![]() | ![]() |
Email Support | ![]() | ![]() |
Live Chat Support | ![]() | ![]() |
Will come to your Office | ![]() | ![]() |
Can go to their Office | ![]() | ![]() |
SoWork prioritizes fast, high touch customer support.
They are available on all common channels, usually respond in minutes, most days of the week. They take customer feedback seriously, and dedicate solid roadmap space to what their customers ask for.
SoWork is available in unconventional ways, too.
Like you can walk straight into their full-time office and talk to the founders.
Gather Town customer support channels are slower and more traditional.
You need to fill out a form or sign up for a meeting with sales to speak to someone on the team.

Both products have extensive help center sites, where how-to guides cover almost every feature in their digital offices.
Onboarding
A big question on leadership's mind when adding 'virtual office' to the tech stack is: how do I move my team in?
SoWork and Gather Town have in-app tutorials.
SoWork also has themed checklists so you can discover the features you need most.
After completing the in-app tutorial, you'll have access to a culture checklist and a productivity checklist. Each checklist helps you find the latest and greatest features for those categories.
SoWork can come to your office, often on very short notice.
Need help finding a feature? Want your team to have a live demo? After ideas for setting up your new office? Reach out to the SoWork team using their in-app live chat and you can get someone (often a founder) to swing by your office.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, Gather Town vs SoWork comes down to the product priorities.
Gather Town is like a fun, social hangout spot with a touch of work.SoWork, on the other hand, is a remote work powerhouse with team bonding woven into the work days.
The best product for you depends on your remote team's unique needs. Make sure you check out our SoWork vs Kumospace article if you'd like to see another comparison!