Braze is a customer engagement platform that enables relevant and memorable experiences between consumers and brands. With Braze, global brands can ingest and process customer data in real time, orchestrate and optimize contextually relevant, cross-channel marketing campaigns.
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Iterable
Score 8.8 out of 10
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Iterable is an AI-powered customer communication platform that activates customers across channels in real-time. With intelligent personalization, dynamic content, and a cross-channel suite, Iterable helps brands create seamless, data-driven experiences across email, SMS, push, and in-app notifications.
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kvCORE
Score 6.6 out of 10
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The kvCORE platform is described by the vendor, Inside Real Estate in Draper, as a next-gen solution for modern brokerages and enterprises to run their entire business on one platform.
We chose Braze when vetting (against Klaviyo + Iterable, and coming from Ortto) because we felt it was the biggest level up for us. It allows us to own cross-channel messaging in one place and we felt like it was the only platform that was truly going to level up our Lifecycle …
Braze and Iterable stood out as the best two customer engagement tools for us, but the level of support and out-of-the-box features offered by Braze pipped them slightly ahead of the competition. Overall, they showed the tool as the best solution we needed, specifically to our …
Braze is superior top Iterable, full stop. Their partner integrations gives us more freedom to choose the vendor that fits our company the best, not forcing us to choose the one vendor that's compatible or resigning to having siloed data. Also, the Braze team goes the extra …
Braze was built with mobile at its core, offering strong support for push, in-app messaging, and mobile SDKs ideal for app-driven businesses. Iterable, while solid in email and web, is generally less mobile-native by comparison
I actually really liked Iterable, but was forced internally to switch platforms due to its inability to handle our volume and its rising costs. Iterable was much easier to use out of the box, and I preferred much of its UI, but ultimately, our business outgrew it. We spent 9 …
We have a worldwide userbase, and the fact that Braze has teams all over the world made us feel reassured that we can tap into their expertise if needed.
Braze is by far the most user friendly tool. The frequency and usability of the super regular product releases they roll out really sets them apart in a stale marketplace historically dominated by Salesforce, Adobe and other big players. They think App first - critical in the …
Braze fit our use-case. Every CRM/CEP has their positives and negatives and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It's worth doing your due diligence on your current needs and assessing future needs as well. Sometimes scalability will be a priority and Braze will facilitate …
Usability - If you are experienced with ESPs, Braze is simple and straightforward to learn after an initial exploration into the tool. Tooling, Products, and Features - Braze is a robust tool that enables my team to build complex lifecycle marketing programs without needing …
What really impresses me about Iterable is that it has the power of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and the easy-to-use interface of Braze, but what really sets it apart is its customer support. We have a dedicated team that we can access anytime who is there to advise on campaign …
We did not use Braze specifically however when we were deciding between Braze and Iterable about 6 years ago we decided to go with Iterable because it was able to provide the data security requirements we needed to function as a business.
Taxi for email works as an easy to use drag & drop editor, but no better than Iterable which also offers a way of sending cross-channel campaigns to customers. Braze looked like a great platform, however the sales team were super pushy and really put us off the product, with …
If you're still using SFMC do yourself a favor and explore some of the newer options available. Iterable is a strong competitor unless you need the B2B and account based marketing/support teams all in a single platform. Klaviyo is great and best for small-medium size companies …
Iterable's geolocation paired with catalog items was something Braze and other platforms just couldn't do. Many tried to offer a workaround, but there just wasn't a legitimate solution anywhere else.
Iterable had the most robust personalisation features (handlebars, data catalog, snippets, robust segmentation) and multi-language support. Additionally, security features were higher than those of other alternatives. Close follow-up was Braze, and other platforms were compared …
Iterable was more competitive in pricing, the segmentation technology was extremely advanced and fast in comparison with the competitors we analysed, and deliverability and reliability of the system have been fantastic.
We have been on Iterable for about 2 years and in that 2 years have evaluated other platforms, considering doing another migration.
The key reason we have stayed with Iterable is the ease of running (largely automated) omni channel comms with a complex data structure. We have …
Verified User
Executive
Chose Iterable
I can't provide a direct comparison as I have not executed marketing communications with other CRM tools before. Of course, having used Pipedrive as a CRM tool for sales and lifecycle management, I would definitely choose Iterable for complexity and ease of use. The only …
Iterable has much more flexibility than other platforms I explored. Personalization in particular is something Iterable does better than the competition.
Verified User
Director
Chose Iterable
Far and away, Iterable is easier to use and more cost-effective. While Iterable may not have the bells and whistles or integrations that some of their competitors offer, Iterable can still meet the large majority of business use cases and is easy to use for marketers. As I …
the main reason why we pick Iterable over the other software is first, it's broad functionality, this is one of the most efficient tools when it comes to its functionality. Second, it price range, it's affordability, we find Iterable cost efficient as we mainly used it on a …
Compared to other email products i've used, Iterable's good and simplifying everything and making it easy to use for any type of marketing. They also have a great UI for all their products.
Iterable is generally better than many providers at handling large data sets and making them usable. Their workflow builder is one of the best, if not the best, I've seen and used. They also beat some other providers by having the number of channels they support and their …
It was a difficult choice at the time; both platforms provide a friendly user interface, tools to easily create your campaigns (flow-like tools), and SDKs and integrations with platforms like Twilio. We finally chose Iterable for its Catalog feature to "upload" data to their …
Based on the way that we send emails, we decided to go with Iterable. We loved the different features that they had. The main decision for us was the option of the catalog. We saw great potential for this feature and it has definitely helped us tremendously with our email …
We like the API the most, it seemed the most straightforward, it is easy to update profiles and user traits. Additionally, we use segment and we wanted something that could be a source and a destination in Segment. We also like the identify calls so you can track a customer …
Braze is a fantastic tool if you're looking to build a large number of CRM journeys using complex canvas structures and maximising use of customer data to segment and personalise. There are numerous tools to ensure each channel is maximising impact and engagement. Braze offers great features for testing, managing message frequency and control groups and using dynamic attributes and liquid code. If you're looking to limit your use to single-send campaigns with no or few automations, I don't think this is the right tool. From my experience, many Braze users also use external tools for analytics rather than Braze's native analytics.
Iterable is a highly robust platform for omnichannel management with advanced personalisation capabilities, and it is among the best in the industry. It does it without being technically overcomplicated, thereby surpassing older industry standards that require developer-level knowledge for advanced personalisation or targeting setups. One thing where Iterable shines is the CSM programs they assign to clients that truly nurture them to reach the full potential of the platform and achieve business goals. There are a few shortcomings here and there, but I haven't seen any platform without them, and overall, the enablement that Iterable allows far surpasses other alternatives.
I think if you have a very large brokerage and can afford to pay for a fully customized set up then it may be worthwhile. I would make sure you have a dedicated support team, not an account manager. In my opinion, the account managers are worthless and will not respond most of the time. We are on our second account manager in 9 months of using the system and cannot get in touch with him. In my experience, the account managers have no knowledge of how the system works or how anyone in real estate would want it to work. Obviously, I can only say this for the two managers we have had so far. I would steer clear of this system unless you want to spend a few thousand a month for a system that, I feel, will impede your business rather than improve it.
Canvas feature has been really good for creating customer journey paths and long-term messaging campaigns.
They have been addressing feature requests to continue to improve the Canvas feature. One of the simplest but most-handy features is allowing Delay steps wait for a very specific date on a calendar -- so you can plan seasonal campaigns or when you have evergreen-style drip campaigns it allows for avoiding public holidays/etc.
The catalog feature provides a lot of use-cases and flexibility for personalizing comms or customizing comms for whitelabeled versions of our standard comms (for our B2B2C scenarios).
We use the catalog as a repository of our B2B2C brand info, messaging customization - it basically allows us to offer a whitelabeled configurable version of our optimized automated in-life comms in the branding of our b2b customers.
Customer Journey creation - the platform easily creates a visual path for the marketing team to curate messaging based around timing, channel, behavior as well as add split testing logic and exit criteria so we target only the audiences we want.
Customer Success - one of the best teams I've ever had the pleasure of working with. I'm able to move so much quicker because they really create a helpful partnership.
Audience segmentation, the platform is easy to work with even if you're a first time user, they do a great job of visually showing the logic and the and/or/none type rules.
It sends unwanted canned responses to potential clients that you haven't approved. You must figure out how to use it to make them stop. This was day 1.
If you like to learn using many many different videos to learn a product, then this maybe for you.
Enabling GIF/videos to be directly uploaded on to Braze's platform
Easier way of creating canvases; right now it is too complex for someone new who is starting off in the company to understand what things do and where things are
Ability to track duplicate user profiles within the entire audience segment
Automated deduplicating email addresses/phone numbers in each targeting segment; right now it's done manually after extracting csv files
Insights. I think this is the biggest downfall of Iterable, the insights and analytics area is really not good at all. We have almost stopped using it all together in favour of just using Mixpanel (but now we're paying for 2 platforms). Things we can do in Mixpanel that we can't do in Iterable:
- custom conversion windows
- more scalable reports
- comparing multiple events
- setting up alerts that trigger to slack
Segmentation - building segments and organizing lists that are already built.
- relative dates can be confusing but are a critical piece of building lists
- unable to compare multiple events
- we have a pretty good naming structure for our lists but with so many daily users, no good way to organize them (with labels or folders) and searching for a list requires you to find the exact word we end up re creating dynamic lists each time
- static lists don't show you what rules were used to create the list
- no way to see changes over time
Improved ways of collaborating. There's no way of knowing if other people are editing a list, template, campaign or journey. easy to overwrite each other's work
I've been an Iterable user for about 4 years, at 2 different companies. SinceI started using Iterable I think the number of bugs has increased.
I wish Iterable did a better job testing releases so we're not the ones discovering issues so frequently.
In app message. We've had issues with this tool/channel starting at implementation. It feels like it never made it's way out of beta, despite us paying for it now.
The app team offered to do working sessions with us to understand how we use it day to day and never followed up on that. There have been no improvements to the tool and any time we run into another issue with it (although Jena in support is great) it takes forever to diagnose or we are told the issue cannot be replicated. It just feels like we have constant issues with this tool.
We've actually onboarded to another tool (not ideal for omni channel) for some in app messages because this one has so many downfalls and is so buggy.
Self serve documentation is great when you have an idea of what you're doing but not entirely sure. It is not easy to understand for people who are newer or less well versed in the platform.
Their support is good, but wait times can be long. They want you to use their chat, but then when you ask your question, it can be a several hour wait time between responses. The people are nice and resolve your issue. But I think chat is for quick back and forth communication, not something with a long delay. Also, you can only really do it effectively on your computer, not on your phone.
It's proving very tough to track leads from campaigns we are running ourselves. If your website converts a lead, it really just gives you the website source, and even that only some of the time. It would be great to create custom sources and have kvCORE track that traffic and lead via some sort of UTM tag or URL parameter.
Some of the load times aren't great. When I load up my database, it takes a while to actually display. Also, when a lead is claimed in a pond, you have to refresh to be able to contact them. Then once you add a campaign, you have to refresh again to see the tasks that fire. This is a bit clunky.
The app is great, but there is still some limited functionality. It would be great to access and claim leads from a pond on the mobile app. Also if you could get push notifications when new leads are added. Our time to lead sucks, and that's because kvCORE doesn't alert you super quickly.
We are on a mission for an omnichannel experience for our customers and are already making good progress with Braze able to fully support and optimise this
It is an easy-to-understand platform, thanks to its design and accessibility. You can, for example, easily find any users and their data, check exact volumes of segments, follow the history of messages sent, and create reports. We can connect Braze with other platforms for analysis or email design (Snowflake, Hightouch, Stripo...).
It doesn't deserve a zero because you can access contacts and get reminders to contact them. In my experience, you can not use the system for proper communication with both prospects and their spouses.
Iterable is there like 99.9% of the time. However, when it goes down, it grinds us to a halt. Most of the time, outages are an hour or less, but if that's at a peak time, it can be a nightmare. That said, when the worst does happen, there are frequent updates and an easy situation tracker that give you an estimate of how much longer you'll have to wait for the issue to be resolved.
The API is super quick. The UI can be a little sluggish depending on what you're loading, but overall Iterable performs great. Iterable appears to do a good job of making processes async so that one action isn't blocking another.
Very responsive and helpful on simple questions, but not great other than that. They do not have a way for the customer/user to escalate a ticket. You have to contact your rep and in some cases, they don't respond within 24 hours so you have no idea if they have escalated it. There is no phone number for an urgent issue - you have to rely on email
I've never experienced any issues with Iterable. As I and my colleagues have learnt the system and it's features, response to questions and advice from our account manager is always quick. Kevin knows the product well, and with the few tricky questions has hasn't been able to answer he's been quick to get back to us.
I love kvCORE's support. Having the little chat feature in the bottom right of my screen the whole time I'm working takes away any stress or worry about using it. When I first started using it, I learned its features by clicking and trying things, and more than once I had to go into the chat support and ask how to undo or fix what I had done. I don't think I've ever waited more than 5 minutes to get a reply back and it being almost instant and right there on my screen allowed me to continue working and know immediately when my question had been answered.
It's really well explained, there are lots of documentation about all topics. When we want to perform in a specific area, there are always a dedicated path. For each new feature, there is always some videos explaining the purpose and the new functionalities. Also I used to do the certification which allows me to show my achievements in my business environment.
Braze is just the best one when it comes to aesthetics and usability, which matter when you're working every day, making complex or even simple changes to highly contextual campaigns for multiple stakeholders. Even without following tutorials, you just get it instantly and start crafting journeys very quickly. And they continue to keep adding new features at a rapid pace, so credit where it's due.
As mentioned previously, I was hired to do a migration from ActiveCampaign, and I stayed for 2 years as a power user of Itearble. Since leaving OneVision Resources, I have continued to volunteer my time in a regional user group, which I would not do if the platform, product, and company were not so strong and so marketer-forward.
Konversion and BoomTown are the only two I have used. Both have their things to recommend. Since I used Konversion, using kvCORE was simpler and I was able to upload my contacts seamlessly. This made adopting a new system easier and less likely to have a gap in contacting customers.
We've definitely tested scalability, and it's no line - it works. The process is pretty easy. Most of the times it goes off without a hitch. Any time we do encounter issues, our support team is quick to get on the job and very communicative as they work us through a successful launch.
I do not have hard numbers, as I am not in the department that deals with those kinds of quantifications of impact. However, I do believe the use of Iterable has been a positive thing for us in providing more comprehensive data that is useful when dealing with customer tickets.
