Ceros Studio vs. Knak vs. VerticalResponse

Ceros is fantastic for companies who can afford it. It's not ideal for startups who don't have the budget for it. If your company or agency is interested in creating interactive content, but you don't have the skill sets in-house to develop or code them properly, Ceros is for you

Incentivized

If you have Marketo or Pardot and have emails that might be somewhat simple to slightly complex, without the budget for a developer, Knak is the right solution for you. If you have complex emails that require a lot of code or customization and have the in-house resources, Knak might not be the perfect solution

Incentivized

For businesses requiring advanced email marketing features like sophisticated automation, in-depth analytics, and extensive customization, VerticalResponse might fall short due to its limited featuresVerticalResponse is ideal for small businesses or freelancers who need a simple, straightforward email marketing tool. Its ease of use and basic features make it suitable for those without extensive technical expertise in email marketing

Incentivized

• Easy to use and adopt user interface. If you know basic Photoshop, you can use this.
• Encouraging roadmap - the product has gotten better every year. The company obviously listens to client feedback.
• Smart, dedicated client team - always checking in, comes with new ideas, generally nice people. We always love our meetings with them!

Incentivized

• Well designed templates
• Easy integration with Marketo
• New templates all the time and a big library to choose from
• Mobile-optimized templates

Incentivized

• I love the ease of list builder because we often times have a lot of data to import. It would be simply impossible without this tool, considering the amount of customer data we have for any one given email.
• We really enjoy the ease of use of the HTML wizard as well. It helps even a novice be able to make a beautiful and attention grabbing email.
• The dashboard is functional and easy to find when you need with a quick search.

Incentivized

• A direct to consumer model
• Price point is high, but understandably

Incentivized

• Sometimes there are issues with buggy code
• Updates sometimes will break emails

Incentivized

• The type face is small. Not sure if this is to avoid overwhelming the reader, but I could see this being an issue with vision-impaired people or people who don't see small print well.
• Sometimes I find it takes multiple clicks to make one simple change. I wish there was a search field at the top of the screen that allowed me to jump directly to a client's entry to update it there.

Product is easy for both technical and non-technical people to use. A cost effective solution for sending out large number of messages. We can manage unsubscribes by individual accounts, so we can have multiple multiple accounts combined to maximize our buying power on credits. Effective API for sending/receiving data makes tool a valuable asset.

I truly love this product. We are moving to an all-in-one system next year and my greatest fear in doing so is how much I will miss this platform. Although we are excited for things ahead, I will always keep Vertical Response in my back pocket incase I don't love the new platform as much

Incentivized

Never had an issue with uptime

No issues

Our CSMs have always been 100% and their support team typically responds within an hour or two. Their design/build team also worked with us on perfecting several experiences and are always mindful of how a project is going. One of their designers didn't really understand one of our requests and the project took more rounds of revisions than in previous projects, but they rectified the issue and the project came out well in the end. That outcome probably only happened in the time it did due to our CSM consistently checking in and getting feedback throughout the project - unfortunately, not something that happens enough with all our partners.

Incentivized

At Vertical Response the help desk associates are courteous, knowledgeable and helpful. You can tell they enjoy what they do. And clearly, they are well trained because most times, the first point of contact is able to resolve any issue you may have. There have been very few times where an associate has needed to get back to me or escalate me to a supervisor

Incentivized

Basic functions and online help...we used what was needed, at the time, and will continue to explore other online trainings as our functional needs expand

Salesforce integration never worked right. We had to abandon.

Ceros takes what would be difficult to accomplish in the Adobe suite of products and makes it easy. When it comes to user experience, user interface and customization options, Ceros is a much better alternative than Adobe. However, Adobe is the trusted name and some may be more comfortable with Adobe products

Incentivized

Marketo has email templates and you can, of course, create your own - but Knak makes it so much easier to create templates that are nice looking and mobile-optimized.

Incentivized

In addition to using Vertical Response personally I also manage email marketing for clients that already use Mailchimp, Robly and Constant Contact. While most of these platforms all offer similar features I choose Vertical Response first if the client does not have a platform in place. Typically I am also teaching the client how to use this tool and the Vertical Response visual interface is very easy for me to teach a client how to navigate and create their own campaigns.

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• Increased win rate during presentations.
• Elevated content appearance.
• Engaged audience more.

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• Great return on time investment
• Great return on our strategy to get new communications out the door

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• We were able to blast out promotions our company was having to customers which created an increase in business.
• By blasting out any service issues, it keeps our customers informed so that they are not wondering what is going on.
• Allows us to store unsubscribed emails so that we are not constantly pestering people who do not want to be emailed.

Incentivized