Your sales team conducts dozens of conversations per week, but what’s really happening in those calls? Which deals are stalling and why? Gong records your sales conversations, transcribes them, and analyzes with AI where your team can improve. It’s a Revenue Intelligence platform that turns qualitative conversations into hard data.
Who is behind Gong?
Gong.io Inc. was founded in 2015 by Amit Bendov and Eilon Reshef in San Francisco. The story began when Bendov, as CEO at his previous company, saw sales numbers declining. He dove into the CRM data, but it didn’t tell him why deals were falling through. The numbers showed what was happening, but not how or why. Bendov wanted to hear the actual conversations – the tone, the objections, the moments when a deal turned. He wanted to connect qualitative data to the quantitative numbers from the CRM.
That frustration led to Gong. The platform grew rapidly and raised a total of $1 million from investors like Franklin Templeton, Sequoia Capital, and Salesforce Ventures. In 2021, the company reached a valuation of $1.25 billion. In 2020, Gong acquired competitor Vayo to strengthen its position.
Today, more than 4,500 companies use Gong, including big names like LinkedIn, Shopify, and Slack. It has grown into one of the leading players in the Revenue Intelligence market, with a platform that not only records and transcribes, but also recognizes patterns that human managers overlook.
Who is Gong for?
Gong is built for sales teams, revenue operations departments, and mid-market to enterprise companies. If you have a sales organization with multiple reps conducting customer conversations daily, Gong provides the insights you need to improve coaching and win deals. The platform works best when you have enough conversation volume to extract patterns from.
For freelancers and small startups, Gong is probably overkill. The entry costs are high – think of a base platform fee of about $1,000 per year plus $1,200 to $1,600 per user. If you’re running a one-person business or have a team of two salespeople, there are simpler and cheaper alternatives. Gong delivers its value primarily at scale, when you’re analyzing dozens of conversations per week and want to provide consistent coaching to a larger team.
What can Gong do?
Gong is not a simple conversation recorder. The platform tackles the entire process: from recording to analysis to concrete action. Here are the key capabilities:
- Automatic call recording and transcription: Gong automatically records your calls via Zoom, Teams, or your phone and converts them into searchable transcripts. You don’t have to start anything manually. Users report the transcription quality as the best in the market, even with accents and technical terms.
- AI-driven deal insights and alerts: The system analyzes every conversation and sends alerts if a deal is at risk. Think of signals like an absent decision-maker, price objections that aren’t handled well, or a lack of next steps. You get objective data on the health of every opportunity.
- Sales coaching and performance analytics: Managers can mark specific moments in conversations and provide feedback. The platform also shows who talks the most, how often you interrupt, and whether you’re asking the right questions. This makes coaching concrete instead of based on gut feeling.
- Revenue forecasting: Gong combines conversation data with CRM information to make more accurate predictions about which deals will close. It doesn’t just look at what a rep says about a deal, but at what’s actually happening in the conversations.
- Integration with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Slack: All conversation insights are automatically synced with your CRM. You can also send summaries and highlights to Slack so the entire team stays informed. The Salesforce integration is particularly deep, but be aware: it can consume a lot of storage space.
- Mobile app for iOS and Android: You can listen to conversations and view insights from your phone. Handy for managers who want to give feedback on the go or quickly check a deal update.
The search functionality deserves special mention. You can search through all conversations for keywords, competitor mentions, or specific questions. Want to know how your team handles the question “Why are you more expensive than X”? Type it in and you’ll see all the moments where that came up, including which answers worked best.
What does Gong cost?
Gong doesn’t publish official pricing on their website, which is typical for enterprise software. Based on user experiences and estimates, you can expect to pay around $1,440 per user per year (approximately $1 per month). There’s often an additional base platform fee of around $1,000 per year.
There is no free plan and no free trial in the traditional sense. Gong works with a demo-driven sales process where you first speak with their team to see if the platform is a good fit for you. For small teams or startups, this is a significant investment. The ROI really comes when you use it at scale with a team of at least five to ten sales reps.
Users also warn that contract terms can be inflexible. You’re often locked into an annual contract, and scaling up or down during the year isn’t always easy. So calculate carefully how many licenses you need before signing.
What should you watch out for?
Despite its strengths, there are clear drawbacks that users encounter. Price is the most mentioned barrier. For small sales teams or startups, Gong is simply too expensive to justify. If you’re still figuring out whether you even need a conversation intelligence tool, there are cheaper alternatives to start with.
The Gong Engage module – designed for sales outreach – receives a lot of criticism. Users report that it’s slow, frequently buggy, and doesn’t have the quality of the core Gong functionality. If you’re looking for a tool for both conversation intelligence and outreach, a combination of Gong with a specialized outreach tool is probably more effective.
A technical issue that often comes up: Gong can quickly fill up your Salesforce storage space. Every conversation, every transcription, and all associated data get synchronized. For companies already pushing their Salesforce limits, this can mean additional costs. You need to think carefully about your retention policy and which conversations you really want to keep.
The learning curve for administrators is steep. The platform has an enormous number of settings and configuration options. That’s powerful, but it also means you need to invest time in setup and training. Multiple reviewers emphasize that you really need RevOps support to implement Gong properly. It’s not a plug-and-play solution.
Finally, some users experience delays in conversation processing. After a call, it can take a while before the transcription and analysis are available. For most use cases that’s not a problem, but if you want to give feedback immediately after a conversation, that wait time can be frustrating.
Gong alternatives
Gong is the market leader, but not the only option. Depending on your priorities and budget, there are alternatives that may be a better fit:
- Chorus.ai: Choose this if you’re already using ZoomInfo or looking for a more affordable alternative. Chorus was acquired by ZoomInfo and is often offered at a lower price, especially as part of a bundle. The functionality is similar to Gong, although users often find Gong’s AI insights slightly sharper.
- Salesloft: Choose this if you’re looking for an all-in-one platform for sales engagement. Salesloft combines conversation intelligence with cadences, email tracking, and dialers. It’s more focused on the execution of sales activities, while Gong focuses on analysis and coaching.
- Clari: Choose this if forecasting is your top priority. Clari is stronger in pipeline management and revenue forecasting than Gong. It also has conversation intelligence, but the strength lies in predicting outcomes and managing your entire revenue process.
For smaller teams, there are also lighter options like Fireflies.ai or Avoma, which offer basic recording and transcription for a fraction of the price. These do lack the deep AI analysis and coaching features of Gong.
Frequently asked questions
Here are answers to the most frequently asked questions about Gong:
What exactly does Gong cost?
Gong doesn’t have public pricing. Based on user experiences, you can expect a base platform fee of around $1,000 per year, plus $1,200 to $1,600 per user per year. The exact price depends on your team size, which modules you want, and your negotiating position. You need to contact their sales team for a quote.
Can I integrate Gong with my CRM?
Yes, Gong has deep integrations with major CRM systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics. All conversation insights, summaries, and deal alerts are automatically synchronized with your CRM records. Keep in mind that this integration can generate a lot of data, which impacts your CRM storage space.
Conclusion
Gong is the market leader in Revenue Intelligence for good reason. The transcription quality is excellent, the AI insights are valuable, and the coaching capabilities are unmatched. For mid-market and enterprise sales teams that are serious about investing in data-driven sales, it’s a powerful platform. But it’s also expensive, complex, and requires commitment. Small teams and startups are better off starting with a lighter alternative. If you have the scale and budget, and RevOps support to implement it properly, Gong delivers measurable value in deal insight and team performance.
