I've heard of some companies offering tokens instead of coins, is this the same thing?
Usually, people are confused and use them for the same meaning. Actually they are different. If you notice on coinmarketcap, they categorize it into coin and token.
If cryptocurrency is created from their own blockchain (ex: NEO, XLM. XRP, ETH, BTC,..), we will call it "COIN".
If cryptocurrency is based on other smart-contract platform, we call it "TOKEN" (ex: Qtum is based on Ethereum platform)