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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Critical Mention

    Score8 out of 10
    N/ACritical Mention headquartered in New York offers their eponymous media monitoring platform for public relations and crisis management.N/A

    Podium

    Score7 out of 10
    N/APodium, formerly Repdrive, is a ratings and review management platform from the company of the same name in Provo, Utah.N/A
    Pricing
    Critical MentionPodium
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Critical MentionPodium
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Critical MentionPodium
    Considered Both Products
    Critical Mention
    No answer on this topic
    Podium
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    71%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    58%
    Would buy again
    19 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    57%
    Delivers good value for the price
    4 Answers
    58%
    Delivers good value for the price
    15 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    71%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    64%
    Happy with the feature set
    21 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    52%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    15 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    83%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    59%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Critical MentionPodium
    Small Businesses
    Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
    Score5 out of 10
    Affinity CRM
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Cision Communications Cloud
    Score8 out of 10
    Hunter
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Meltwater
    Score7.6 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Critical MentionPodium
    Likelihood to Recommend
    1.6
    (21 ratings)
    6.9
    (43 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    7.0
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (13 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Critical MentionPodium
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Critical Mention
    Critical Mention is great for schools/businesses/etc. that want to know when they are in the news. Sometimes a brand's reputation can suffer greatly if you are not aware of an issue that was posted by a competitor or media outlet If you are not in the news a lot, there is no need for this product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Podium
    Podium is well suited for several types of businesses. If you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, Podium would be a great way for you to ask that customers leave you a review online sharing their awesome experience. For medium to large businesses, Podium review invites can be automated through the company's customer management system, allowing the use of Podium to be simple and not timely, even with a large customer base. It may not be appropriate for a large company to manually send out individual review invites
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Critical Mention
    • Critical Mention's customer service is excellent. Any time we've had a challenge finding a clip or anything, they are on top of it and go above and beyond to make sure we have what we are looking for quickly.
    • The ability to create tailored clips of each mention and quickly share them is unparalleled.
    • The reporting feature is fantastic. It makes it very simple to pull detailed reports and share them with interested parties.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Podium
    • Maintains conversations indefinitely, so we are able to go back to confirm details from conversations.
    • Provides the ability for our company to have a 'team' messaging platform where we can communicate with one another via single person to a single person, groups where we can add/subtract members of the group... this is invaluable to our organization.
    • Until today(!), we could 'share' or forward a message to one another; oddly, that feature disappeared just today, so I'm hoping it's a glitch!
    Read full review
    Cons
    Critical Mention
    • I believe the one frustration I have with searching in general that if the closed captioning is not correct on the broadcast end Critical Mention will miss that data. Which is not a Critical Mention issue and does overcome depending on the search. Also, it would be great if you wanted to capture a complete 30 minutes newscast, it could be done by using the search. The clips need to be about to handle 30-minute programs.
    • One nagging issue when using Critical Mention is that it does not save e-mail addresses when sending a report and this requires a waste of time having to type in e-mails that should be able to be pulled from the customers' contacts.
    • Also, it would be great if you wanted to capture a complete 30 minutes newscast, it could be done by using the search. The clips need to be able to handle 30-minute programs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Podium
    • Account manager communications: I had been asking my Podium account manager for integration with our CRM tool for over 8 months before my account manager fell silent. After another 6 months, I proactively reached out only to find out that the integration had been in Beta for months and 8 other companies had already integrated. It was frustrating that my account manager did not remember a key request and make the Beta available to me the minute that it was open.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Critical Mention
    I gave this a 5 only because I do not make the decisions to renew. When I used this at my previous company, I also recommended to the decision maker to renew this tool as it was a crucial piece to the overall client objective
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Podium
    Again, Podium has been so wonderful in the year and a half we have been using it, we are able to integrate it with our CRM and use alot of the available features. The most helpful has been getting TONS of reviews on MULTIPLE sites through Podium!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Critical Mention
    It's great for quickly looking up a specific clip, but this platform makes it difficult to select and accurately report on a high volume of clips
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Podium
    While giving our clients the ability to leave a review was there, we had much worse results and got fewer reviews through the Podium portal than we did by sending our clients simple email requests, or simply having our service staff ask for a review while still on the clients' job sites.
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Critical Mention
    No answers on this topic
    Podium
    We haven't had any outages or issues whenever we need it over the last few years of use
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Critical Mention
    No answers on this topic
    Podium
    It moves quickly and has no issues with delays. Performance is good as it is a web-based tool
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Critical Mention
    Look, Critical Mention follows up on an or phone call immediately or in the AM the following business day. I have called them after hours and get a live person to work through any issues that may have come up. Support seems to be job one with Critical Mention.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Podium
    I have to send an email to get information. They have a chat system but I end up having to go through my rep for account questions. It was a little frustrating to not have a direct phone number to call with questions. I would like to see a helpline added.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Critical Mention
    Critical Mention implementation was easy and fast. Their support and training were awesome.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Podium
    We only had a hard time getting our technicians to remember to send the review invites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Critical Mention
    Burrelles is confusing and outdated. Critical Mention works on the side of the account team and understands our needs better. I was able to share hundreds of outlets that I wanted to be included in my online search and Critical Mention added all of them in less than a day I was seeing better results in my searches. The possibilities with Burrelles seem limited while Critical Mention's online monitoring service really lets me craft reports the way I want to
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Podium
    We use Digital Air Strike at our two GM dealerships because it is one of a small list of reputation management companies authorized by GM as part of their SFE program. Digital Air Strike surveys our customers and invites them to write a review about our dealership. It is not as effective or flexible as Podium so we have been using Podium at those dealerships alongside Digital Air Strike. We also recently started a trial use of ReplyPro which is a service that monitors review sites and writes customized responses to positive reviews and suggested responses to negative reviews. I'd like to see Podium add this as part of their service so we can consolidate 3rd party vendors and manage every aspect of online reputation management from one place.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Critical Mention
    No answers on this topic
    Podium
    Its easy to scale to different departments as needed. We initially began using it to solve one problem and as new features became available it was easy to scale this and include other departments who could benefit from its tools
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Critical Mention
    • Every week the department I am a part does dozens of searches on Critical Mention. We use it as our primary search engine for all things broadcast.
    • One negative aspect is that we do not know where Critical Mention gets their audience viewing numbers from so we just have to take it as their word.
    • Another negative aspect is that we are limited on the amount of time that one clip can be so we have to share several clips of the same show with our clients.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Podium
    • I am glad there are card readers now, sales team members too often try to just send a request instead of taking payment onsite.
    • It's made capturing messaging leads much easier.
    • It's worth the cost but if it did a few more things it would be worth a lot more to us. Document signatures, surveying after jobs, even geotagging of photos/reviews for SEO
    Read full review
    ScreenShots