Gizmo is a later arrival to the Internet telephony space staked out by Skype. While both offer free telephone calls over the Internet, Gizmo had the price advantage for landline phones, at 1 cent per minute for U.S. calls. But then Skype cut its price to zero, announcing free calling to all landline and mobile phones in the U.S. and Canada, at least through the end of this year. That left the question: Other than in price, how do they compare?

Not surprisingly, I was not the first to ask. A search quickly turned up several articles comparing the two. Here is a sampling:

To sum these up, the bottom line seems to be that Skype has the upper hand in infrastructure and network, while Gizmo offers more varied features — such as call recording, which is great for podcasters, and free voicemail. Gizmo is built on open-source standards and therefore compliant with other open-source net calling services. Several reviewers report better sound quality with Gizmo, while others noticed no appreciable difference.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.