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Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. Ion Interactive

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued)

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/ABased on the former Coremetrics, IBM Digital Analytics is a discontinued analytics product. IBM acquired Coremetrics in 2010, and re-branded the platform to the IBM Digital Marketing Optimization Solution. Product support was ultimately provided by Acoustic, but the product is not a part of the company's plans going forward.N/A

    Ion Interactive

    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Ion is an enterprise-grade content experience platform that empowers modern marketers and designers to create no-code interactive content experiences integrated with their CRM or marketing automation tools.N/A
    Pricing
    Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued)Ion Interactive
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Managed Services + SaaS
    Custom
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued)Ion Interactive
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee$5,500 per customer
    Additional Details—ion’s Build Anything SaaS platform provides organizations with an entirely new and agile interactive content marketing capability. It enables non-technical marketers and designers to create, test and measure an unlimited number of all types of interactive content marketing experiences. It includes unlimited seats, experiences, tests, customization, phone and email support, analytics and more.
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued)Ion Interactive
    Content Creation
    Comparison of Content Creation features of Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) and Ion Interactive
    Feature
    Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Ion Interactive
    7.5
    105 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Ideation00 Ratings10.099 Ratings
    Content collaboration00 Ratings5.094 Ratings
    Content Publishing
    Comparison of Content Publishing features of Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) and Ion Interactive
    Feature
    Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Ion Interactive
    8.7
    120 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Content hub00 Ratings10.0104 Ratings
    Forms / Gated content00 Ratings10.0107 Ratings
    Embedded CTAs00 Ratings10.0108 Ratings
    Content distribution00 Ratings8.093 Ratings
    Content promotion00 Ratings8.086 Ratings
    Content automation00 Ratings6.090 Ratings
    Content Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Content Reporting & Analytics features of Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) and Ion Interactive
    Feature
    Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Ion Interactive
    8.5
    118 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Audience profiling and targeting00 Ratings6.091 Ratings
    Closed-loop tracking and reporting00 Ratings8.095 Ratings
    Content performance analytics00 Ratings10.0116 Ratings
    Campaign optimization dashboard00 Ratings10.0107 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued)Ion Interactive
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    Matomo Analytics
    Score9 out of 10
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    Score9.9 out of 10
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    Lead Forensics
    Score8.9 out of 10
    CoSchedule Marketing Suite
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Chartbeat
    Score9.2 out of 10
    PathFactory
    Score8.3 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued)Ion Interactive
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.0
    (24 ratings)
    10.0
    (135 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    5.8
    (18 ratings)
    7.0
    (22 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.4
    (17 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    2.3
    (4 ratings)
    10.0
    (18 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.9
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued)Ion Interactive
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    IBM analytics has continued to improve upon the days of being the original core metrics. After using the updated version for quite some time, it has been great at providing the needed analytics to measure ROI and goal performance for our quarterly KPI's. It has resulted in a great increase in web engagements although we are a midsize company, smaller outfits may not need such an expensive option.
    Incentivized
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    Ion Interactive LLC
    If you want to choose a quick start template and fill in the fields with your content, Ion will be fantastic for you. We've done this with whitepapers and quizzes and it's been great and extremely easy to use. If you have an exact idea of what you want, and a background in web development, you may get frustrated. Ion has some quirks that make it tricky to fully customize - everyone once in a while I really just want to go into the HTML and make some changes, but can't. If you are looking to reuse a piece of content for specific targeting (industry or account-specific), Ion is great. The dynamic substitutions are great and very helpful.
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    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • IBM CXA comprises an acquisition called Tealeaf. This tool has deep heritage and this is evident in its present-day capabilities.
    • The Universal Behaviour Exchange or UBX puts the concept of personalisation at the forefront. The ability to combine physical (analog) and digital transactions to create the complete picture of a customer journey, is a stand out benefit.
    • The solution does not have to involve the purchase of software. IBM CXA can be sold as a service bundled with analytics as a service. This not only lowers the cost of ownership, it gets around one of the principal issues. Strong staff with design and analytical capability to drive the solution and deliver tangible benefits.
    • The seamless integration of Watson AI services to help with the heavy lifiting. Watson reinforces the analytical focus this solution has and can learn to recognise situations specific to a company.
    Incentivized
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    Ion Interactive LLC
    • Quick Starts make it so easy to get started.
    • Real-time updates are awesome and save a ton of wasteful process.
    • The combination of user friendliness for simple things and the flexibility to do more complex things is great.
    • Chat support is excellent and deeper-dive support has been super helpful.
    • The ability to use these tools in the cloud or embedded has given us tactic flexibility.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • The user interface is in Flash, which can be very frustrating and slow at times. Apparently, this is to be transitioned in a future release.
    • Can only segment the last 93 days of data. Any historical segmentation beyond the 93 days must be run in Explore (which is credit based, and has its own limitations with the number of credits per month, based on the initial contract with IBM).
    • Reports can only display 93 days of data at a given time for custom date ranges. There are pre-programmed date ranges setup with IBM during implementation (last week, last month, last quarter etc.), but are not flexible enough to answer more specific questions.
    • Certain reports cannot have segments applied, making answering some simple questions a bit more tricky. For example, I can create a segment around mobile devices and apply it to the marketing channels report, but I can't create a marketing channel segment and apply it to the mobile reports.
    • Built in API calls allows for nice report design and automation.
    Read full review
    Ion Interactive LLC
    • Ion University, while stacked with a wealth of information, is difficult to navigate from a troubleshooting perspective. The tutorial videos are all very helpful, but they are also very long. Sometimes I would want to search for how to address a particular issue I was struggling with and it would be a two-minute segment buried in a 45-minute video.
    • Again, getting back the self-guidance side of things. I think a lot of the tutorials are set up in a way that makes sense to Ion, but not as much to the end user.
    • I think the controls admins use when creating new users could be a bit more straightforward.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    IBM Digital Analytics is a great solution for our clients and I believe they offer the best solution for the retail space. We have access to IBM support via email or live chat and they can answer many of the reporting questions that come up. IBM is receptive to our feedback of the product so I am confident they will continue making improvements
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    Ion Interactive LLC
    We use it for every landing page and we plan on only doing more dynamic content creation. We dont see that option coming in-house any time ever in the future. ION has a very robust platform for us to work with that really allows us to do more for our customers in regards to having the one-to-one conversation.
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    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    Very easy to implement and use.
    Read full review
    Ion Interactive LLC
    Usability is straightforward, with extensive documentation and tutorials provided to ensure landing pages are built to specifications and can be optimized for performance. Built-in platform funnels give insight into customer dropoff, success/failures, and conversions (at a glance). Setting up a landing page can be done quickly and easily, with numerous integrations (CRMs like SalesForce, for instance) supported
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Discontinued Products
    Never had any issues
    Read full review
    Ion Interactive LLC
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Discontinued Products
    As reports are templated, the system is pretty quick. Sometimes you have to wait a bit for a report to render. Or you might have to re-load the page. But there is no real issue here and the system is on par with other similar systems.
    Read full review
    Ion Interactive LLC
    Sometimes the editor can be a little slow.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Overall, the level of support is very good and I would say it is a strong asset of the solution. However, you can sometimes feel that there is a difference of level among the support team.
    Read full review
    Ion Interactive LLC
    The ION support team is amazing. There has not been a single issue they they could not solve for me. If there is a feature or request that they do not have, they have even, on occasion, created custom scripts for our team. *Update 6/5/17 - ION has continued to delight on multiple occasions. I appreciate their attention to detail and ability to solve whatever issue I have. After 3+ years of use and support, ION still has my full endorsement.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Discontinued Products
    Online training is really great. One of the best assets that they have. Lots of great videos, pop quizzes at the end of each module. Fantastic. Other tools have similar features, but not as good.
    Read full review
    Ion Interactive LLC
    They offer a great amount of online training, videos, articles, etc. There is usually an answer available if you run into an issue. I would recommend taking advantage of the online training they offer. I wish I would have done it sooner.
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    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    See previous comment: reading and understanding the encyclopedic implementation guide is a must.
    Read full review
    Ion Interactive LLC
    There were a lot of things we learned about the tool once we really got in and got our hands dirty. Being hands-on was essential for our team to be able to utilize ION in the most effective manner.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    Much of the work we did in IBM Digital Analytics could have been answered through Google Analytics, a much simpler, agile and FREE solution set. Not mention, given the vast number of Google Analytics USERS, free and actionable support is simply a click away ... this compared to IBM Digital Analytics fractured and often absent support service.
    Read full review
    Ion Interactive LLC
    I was not the decision maker to choose this over Uberflip, but the UI is much more appealing to me. It's incredibly easy to use, clean, and from a backend standpoint, it requires little to no tech savvy'ness. Our team has really enjoyed using it and has required no training what-so-ever.
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    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    This solution can support large amount of data and transaction. The way that user management features are built, it shows it is meant for large organizations.
    Read full review
    Ion Interactive LLC
    Separate client portfolios enable scalability, however, some elements are still grouped for all accounts so it's difficult to scale for an ad agency with multiple clients. Would prefer totally separate sections of the platform for all clients with each element housed separately.
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    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • We spend too much time trying to work around bugs on the new UI.
    • We spend too much time trying to figure out how to make certain segments work because support and the knowledge center are lackluster.
    • Our sales rep is very unresponsive and leaves us searching for a lot of answers on our own, including what other products we may benefit from that IBM offers.
    Incentivized
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    Ion Interactive LLC
    • Though we have not had the service long enough to see any measurable outcomes, we've been able to create interactive web content faster than ever before
    • The speed with which we can build interactive pages and re-use assets has been critical as projects we've done with Ion have made their way around and more and more internal clients have said "me too" for their own projects
    • It is very pricey at $28K for the base annual subscription (dropping to $24k after the first year), so depending on your budgetary situation, that may make no sense for your team--but we had contract money set aside for a company to build us a microsite for around the amount, so we just used it for Ion instead and will now be building the microsite ourselves using it
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Ion Interactive Screenshots

    Screenshot of ion empowers your other marketing technologies to deliver higher fidelity, data-driven scoring, targeting, segmentation and personalization.Screenshot of The types of interactive experiences the ion platform can create is near-endless. These are the most common types used by our customers: Assessments, Calculators, eBooks, Interactive Infographics, Interactive White Papers, Landing Pages, Lookbooks, Quizzes, Resource Library, Solution Finder.Screenshot of See what our customers are saying about our platform and services!Screenshot of Starting at $2,000 per month, you get an unlimited, scalable interactive content platform with our full feature set. Including: Unlimited experiences, unlimited use of Quick Starts, Unlimited Seats/Users, Unlimited A/B/n Testing, Unlimited Sell-Side Experiences, Unlimited Phone, email & chat support, unlimited analytics... PLUS a FREE custom-branded theme that can be applied to all of your experiences.Screenshot of You have the option to start from a template or entirely from scratch. Our Quick Start template library includes more than 100 fully tested, responsive and flexible interactive experiences you can brand, customize and launch.Screenshot of ion is the only interactive content platform that provides the scalable foundation to grow from one interactive experience to one thousand interactive experiences. With ion, interactive content development complexity, long timelines, high costs and maintenance problems are replaced with freedom and agility.