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The 5 best Gather.town alternatives for remote teams
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The 5 best Gather.town alternatives for remote teams

Discover the best Gather.town alternatives and get a connected virtual workspace that’s built for true collaboration.

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Like a game of Tetris, there are a lot of moving pieces when you’re managing a remote team. To prevent the pieces from backing up—and encourage true collaboration—your people need visibility on where everything and everyone is, and what they’re working on. 

To address this, popular virtual offices like Gather.town, and Gather.town alternatives, are designed to bring teams together in a virtual space. 

But they’re less suitable for bringing ideas together—and you need to be careful not to get distracted by all the shiny visuals. 

People miss working side-by-side and spontaneous chats over coffee, but recreating the office in digital form isn’t the solution. Your employees don’t miss a floor plan or fake plants, they miss the ease of working together. That’s why, to create a great remote culture, leaders should look for a platform that facilitates teamwork, not pretends to be an office.

In this article, we’ll look at some Gather.town alternatives like Switchboard, Kumospace, Remotion, Topia, and Teemyco to compare features and pricing. We’ll show you how Switchboard helps create a truly connected space where your teams feel like they’re working side-by-side—so everything easily falls into place.

Want a virtual workspace that’s designed for true collaboration? 

Switchboard lets you share everything from files to smiles with your remote team. 

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Gather.town alternatives: overview 

If your team is spread across multiple time zones, you need a dedicated virtual workspace that lets them collaborate and build relationships at the same time. 

Here are some virtual office features that should be on your list: 

  • Real-time communication through video chat and virtual rooms 
  • An engaging multiplayer experience 
  • Persistent rooms that save your work so you can pick up where you left off
  • Virtual whiteboards, comments, sticky notes, and in-room chat
  • File sharing capabilities 
  • Works with popular third-party tools 
  • Data security and encrypted infrastructure  

Before we dive into the product details, here's a quick visual overview of each option.

Gather.town alternatives comparison chart

Want a more detailed product analysis? Keep reading! 

By the way, we haven't included Zoom on this list as it's not a direct competitor on the virtual workspace front. However, you can check out our post on Zoom vs Gather to see how they compare.

Top Gather.town alternatives to connect your remote teams 

Here are the top Gather.town alternatives on the market, all catering to slightly different remote team needs and setups. 

1. Switchboard: best for remote and hybrid collaboration

Switchboard goes beyond traditional virtual office tools with persistent meeting rooms that keep the party—and productivity—going. Source: Switchboard

Switchboard is a collaborative digital workspace that lets you and your team work together on documents and apps inside a virtual room—without having to share your screen. It’s designed to foster team connection, collaboration, and productivity through intuitive meeting and project rooms. 

Switchboard lets you communicate creatively with remote employees in real time with video, audio, and chat. You can also work side-by-side allowing everyone to scroll, type, and browse the same document simultaneously. 

You can create cloud-based virtual rooms for brainstorming, host spontaneous meetings with your team, and connect with clients in an interactive space. 

Compared to Gather.town, Switchboard is much more intuitive for virtual collaboration and easier to fit into your existing workflow. Virtual offices like Gather require you to design your office and get the team used to a whole new way of working. It’s like clearing a line in Tetris, just to find another awkward shape blocking you from making progress. 

For hybrid teams, Switchboard makes it easy to pop into persistent meeting rooms that are easy to find, no matter where you are. This helps everyone feel like they’re working together, whether they’re in the office or not, and helps maintain momentum on work-from-home days. With Gather, you’re navigating a metaverse with tons of bells and whistles that feel more geared toward entertainment than hybrid collaboration. 

Throughout meetings in Switchboard, you can also explore any file in the room, moving around and viewing whatever you want without getting in the way of others. Best of all, Switchboard saves all your files after every meeting, so you never need to download anything or repopulate the room again.  

Key features: 

  • Shared online workspace and rooms for recurring meetings
  • Web-based canvas to add multiple apps, websites PDFs, and images side by side
  • Persistent rooms that save your work
  • In-meeting video, audio, and chat
  • Secure, fast multiplayer browsers for instant collaboration
  • Screen sharing for native apps
  • Built-in whiteboard 
  • Presentation mode
  • In-app support
  • Google Calendar integration
  • Unlimited rooms for 1:1s, meetings, and projects
  • Meeting recording
  • No integration required for web-based apps—they all work
  • Room permissions for members and guests
  • Sections to organize documents and apps
  • Host not required for members to enter a room
  • Up to 50 participants 

Pricing: 

  • Free: Includes limited features, rooms, and members for small teams or individuals.
  • Pro: $15 member/month for up to 200 rooms and 500 members plus Switchboard AI and additional storage.
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing.

Best for: 

Switchboard is currently designed for remote and hybrid companies (up to 50 people) that want to quickly get up and running and enjoy the feeling of working together in the same room. It's a great option for teams that need a dedicated, interactive space for meetings and projects.

2. Kumospace: best for large dispersed companies 

Screenshot of Kumospace’s virtual office floor plan
Kumospace’s virtual office resembles an in-person office floor plan to help large remote teams visualize their work environment.  Source: Kumospace

Kumospace acts as a virtual office space where you can host events and work with your team. It’s designed to reduce the number of meetings you need with features like nudges and live chat. So instead of scheduling a meeting to discuss a project at a later date, just nudge your colleague in real time to get their attention and resolve issues fast. You can also see where your teammates are within your virtual environment, for a more connected, “in-the-office” feel. 

With Kumospace, you can select a host or a co-host and use the spatial audio to choose who you want to speak to in a virtual room. This makes it a useful option for hosting large-scale events that still feel intimate. You can also use it to work, network, and chat with others within and across teams to build cohesion. 

Like Gather.town, Kumospace is great for co-working with your team, but that can often mean working on separate projects or tasks at the same time in the same digital space. It’s also one thing to co-work with your team and another to collaborate in real-time or async on the same project in the same space. 

Key features: 

  • Live chat 
  • Virtual office 
  • Video conferencing 
  • Virtual events 
  • Hosts and co-hosts 
  • Screen sharing 
  • Spatial audio 
  • Security 

Pricing: 

  • Free
  • Professional: $8/month per user 
  • Business: $16/month per user 
  • Enterprise: custom priced

Best for: 

Large distributed teams looking for a place to hold comprehensive virtual-office-based events. 

See here for a deeper dive into Gather vs Kumospace.

3. Remotion: best for remote software engineers and developers

A screenshot of a colleague joining a virtual coworking room in Remotion
Remotion helps remote engineers work together on technical projects just like they’re in a physical office. Source: No Hq

Remotion is a virtual meeting platform for engineers to collaborate and resolve technical problems together. If you can’t meet in person to review code and solve bugs, just share your screen to let other developers draw, copy, scroll, and open content like it’s on their own computer.

Remotion’s interactive, simultaneous screen-sharing experience is perfect for coding together and sets it apart from Gather for specific use cases like these. For developers, it’s like seeing all your incoming Tetris pieces before they drop into place. 

You can also use the code editor function to copy code from screen share and edit it with your team in real time, which helps make collaboration more engaging and productive. 

This app is relatively new and is still in beta, but it’s a good choice if you need a straightforward, free virtual meeting tool that offers visibility into technical problems. Note, though, that it only works on Mac and you need to sign up for a waitlist for the 3.0 version.  

Key features:

  • Audio and video conferences 
  • Interactive, side-by-side screen sharing 
  • Live code editor 
  • Meeting room for up to 40 participants
  • Currently only available for MacOS 

Pricing:

  • Free while in beta

Best for:

Small remote teams of up to 40 people who are looking for an engaging video meeting tool built specifically for software engineers and developers. 

4. Topia: best for virtual events

Screenshot of a remote team using Topia to go to a virtual park
Topia’s virtual office space lets you go on virtual outings and host online events with your team. Source: Topia

Topia is a virtual office space that prides itself on bringing the metaverse to your remote team. It lets you create virtual worlds–including offices, parks, and even shopping centers where you can spontaneously interact with your people or create compelling virtual event spaces for clients. For example, you could create an art gallery showcasing your NFT collection, or a virtual showroom for all your best projects and testimonials. 

Similar to Gather.town, Topia is like an old-school video game, where you’re on a quest to interact with different avatars (aka, members of your team). It also lets you visualize your remote work setup and simulate real-life events to encourage employee engagement and connection. For example, marketing teams can host video calls in a digital strip mall, to visualize potential product placement and spark inspiration. 

With Topia, you can automatically connect audio and video when you’re in close “physical” proximity to your teammates. So you can host a real-life water cooler chat with up to nine participants, without planning a meeting in advance. 

However, with virtual offices like Gather and Topia, you and your team can spend a lot of time on interior design and decoration of digital rooms. So if you’re just looking for a virtual space that's easy to use, where everyone can find each other and get stuff done, it might not be for you. 

Key features: 

  • Interactive and customizable virtual spaces 
  • Audio and video conferences 
  • Built-in integrations 
  • Screen-sharing 
  • Virtual events and live streaming 

Pricing: 

  • Free 
  • Community: $100/month for up to 20 users
  • Enterprise: custom priced 

Best for: 

Remote or hybrid companies that prioritize hosting engaging and interactive virtual events over closely working together on projects. 

5. Teemyco

Teemyco is a digital office that helps teams unify their virtual workspace. It enables people to see where their colleagues are, and what they’re doing, like taking a call in the phone booth, conducting an interview in the interview room, or jumping into a meeting. 

It lets teams decorate and personalize their office space, and even include team-specific or branded objects. With Teemyco, you can engage your teammates by sending them flying emojis, stories, and kudos hats—boosting trust, empathy, and awareness among team members. 

Key features: 

  • Customized office floor plans
  • Document sharing 
  • Flying emoji reactions and stories 
  • Guest links and external conferencing 
  • Simultaneous screen sharing 
  • Personalized offices 

Pricing: 

  • Free trial 
  • Monthly plan: $7/month per user
  • Annual plan: $8/month per user

Best for:  

  • Remote or hybrid teams with complex organizational structures. 
  • Remote or hybrid product design or computer software teams looking for simultaneous screen-sharing functionality for collaborative coding and cross-checks.
Screenshot of Teemyco virtual office floor plan
Teemyco gives you a visual and spatial understanding of your virtual office floor plan for increased team empathy and communication. Source: Teemyco

Gather.town alternatives: get the multiplayer experience

As a leader of a highly collaborative remote team, you need to keep your eye on a lot of moving parts when your people are spread across time zones or regions. So it’s tempting to try and recreate the office online to give people a place to come together. 

However, while people might miss things that go with a physical office–like side-by-side work and water cooler chats—it takes more than a few sticks of digital furniture to build team cohesion and foster collaboration. 

That’s why remote leaders need to find the right virtual collaboration platform–not just a virtual office–to boost employee morale, productivity, and camaraderie. 

In this piece, we reviewed Gather.town alternatives Kumospace, Remotion, Topia, and Teemyco. These are all great options for getting dispersed teams together and visualizing your setup—but they fall short when it comes to easy collaboration. 

Switchboard gives you a more collaborative way of working by letting you work together in real time or async and build a sense of community and togetherness. By acting as an intuitive virtual hub where people can always find each other and get work done, it turns a game of employee Tetris into an engaging multiplayer experience—with all the pieces you need to succeed. 

Want a virtual workspace designed for true collaboration? 

Switchboard lets you share everything from files to websites to videos with your remote team. 

Sign up for free

Frequently asked questions about Gather.town alternatives 

Is Gather a metaverse?

Gather.town is a virtual office metaverse that lets you visualize where your colleagues are in your remote or hybrid work environment. Unlike traditional video conferencing tools like Zoom, Gather lets you see who’s working, where they are, and what they’re doing in the digital space. 

What can I use instead of Gather.town?

There are many Gather.town alternatives you can use to boost remote team collaboration and share more with your team. For example: 

  • Switchboard
  • Kumospace
  • Remotion
  • Topia 
  • Teemyco

Are all great virtual office tools but if you’re looking for a truly interactive virtual workspace, Switchboard is the best choice. It lets you share and save everything in persistent meeting rooms—taking remote collaboration to the next level. 

Are there games on Gather.town?

Yes, you can play games on Gather.town and use third-party integrations and templates to augment the virtual reality experience.

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Want a virtual workspace that’s designed for true collaboration?

Switchboard lets you share everything from files to smiles with your remote team.