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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Customer.io

    Score9.1 out of 10
    Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
    Customer.io is a customer engagement platform that enables marketers to build sophisticated automated messaging campaigns. With access to real-time behavioral data, users can create personalized and relevant messages to engage and retain customers. This includes sending emails, push notifications, SMS, in-app messages, and more through a visual building experience. Built for scale, Customer.io boasts users among over 5,300 companies, sending over 17 billion messages per year.

    $100

    per month

    Leadfwd

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/ALeadfwd, from the company of the same name in Staten Island, combines B2B Prospecting, Sales Outreach and Account-Based Marketing. It replaces the former INBOX25.N/A
    Pricing
    Customer.ioLeadfwd
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Customer.ioLeadfwd
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsEssentials: For startups and small teams engaging customers on their mobile and web apps. - Up to 5,000 profiles*, Send Emails, Push, In-App, and SMS, Visual Workflow Builder, Segmentation, Two Workspaces, Email Support, Customer Community Premium: For high-growth companies looking for greater control over their messaging outcomes. - Everything in Essentials, Custom Data + Message Volume, Premium Product Features, Additional Workspaces, 90-day Onboarding Program, Premium Email & Chat Support, Managed Deliverability, Dedicated IPs, Parcel Pro Licenses, HIPAA Compliance Enterprise: For at-scale companies looking to create world-class customer experiences. - Everything in Premium, Managed Infrastructure*, Customer Success Manager, Quarterly Success Reviews, Technical Account Manager*, Audit Logging & Data Governance*, Parcel Business Licenses, Migration Support*, *Available by consultation.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Customer.ioLeadfwd
    Considered Both Products
    Customer.io
    No answer on this topic
    Leadfwd
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    14 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    9 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Customer.ioLeadfwd
    Email & Online Marketing
    Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Customer.io and Leadfwd
    Feature
    Customer.io
    -
    Ratings
    Leadfwd
    7.4
    2 Ratings
    4% below category average
    WYSIWYG email editor00 Ratings7.02 Ratings
    Dynamic content00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Ability to test dynamic content00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Landing pages00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    A/B testing00 Ratings3.22 Ratings
    Mobile optimization00 Ratings6.22 Ratings
    Email deliverability reporting00 Ratings9.62 Ratings
    List management00 Ratings8.62 Ratings
    Triggered drip sequences00 Ratings8.82 Ratings
    Lead Management
    Comparison of Lead Management features of Customer.io and Leadfwd
    Feature
    Customer.io
    -
    Ratings
    Leadfwd
    8.0
    2 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Lead nurturing automation00 Ratings8.42 Ratings
    Lead scoring and grading00 Ratings7.32 Ratings
    Data quality management00 Ratings7.72 Ratings
    Automated sales alerts and tasks00 Ratings8.52 Ratings
    Campaign Management
    Comparison of Campaign Management features of Customer.io and Leadfwd
    Feature
    Customer.io
    -
    Ratings
    Leadfwd
    7.0
    1 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Calendaring00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
    Event/webinar marketing00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Social Media Marketing
    Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Customer.io and Leadfwd
    Feature
    Customer.io
    -
    Ratings
    Leadfwd
    7.5
    1 Ratings
    0% above category average
    Social sharing and campaigns00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Social profile integration00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Customer.io and Leadfwd
    Feature
    Customer.io
    -
    Ratings
    Leadfwd
    6.3
    2 Ratings
    16% below category average
    Dashboards00 Ratings6.52 Ratings
    Standard reports00 Ratings6.32 Ratings
    Custom reports00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Customer.io and Leadfwd
    Feature
    Customer.io
    -
    Ratings
    Leadfwd
    9.1
    2 Ratings
    19% above category average
    Role-based workflow & approvals00 Ratings8.82 Ratings
    Customizability00 Ratings7.92 Ratings
    Integration with Salesforce.com00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Integration with SugarCRM00 Ratings9.62 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Customer.ioLeadfwd
    Small Businesses
    Simplify360
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Vbout
    Score9.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Braze
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Bloomreach
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SAP Service Cloud
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Iterable
    Score8.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Customer.ioLeadfwd
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (20 ratings)
    8.2
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    9.2
    (12 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Customer.ioLeadfwd
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Customer.io
    Talking from the perspective of a marketer at a SaaS with average. 50K email subscribers, Customer IO has been an excellent tool for us. Our requirements include sending users newsletters, marketing emails, and transactional emails, running lead-nurturing campaigns, and more. For a comprehensive use case like ours, CustomerIO is great. While it also has a learning curve, when you have such requirements, it’s worth it. I don’t think CustomerIO is the best fit if you have basic requirements like only weekly newsletter emails.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Leadfwd
    I think Inbox25 is a great fit for companies outgrowing lower-end, disconnected email marketing applications. Companies with a more formalized marketing organization that send a lot of emails (tens of thousands monthly or more) will be better served with a product like Inbox25 that is less complex, easier to use, and much more affordable (30% lower by our experience) from the larger marketing automation products on the market. Our company has 3 full-time marketing staff with over 100,000 contacts (with valid emails) that we target in various direct and drip email campaigns and Inbox25 fits our needs just fine. I suspect that we may outgrow the product eventually but I think it'll meet our needs just fine for many years to come.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Customer.io
    • Managing users, attributes and events. You are easily able to modify any user, based on their ID, and add or remove attributes, assign events to them. That makes it very easy to segment later and to assign them to several campaigns based on behavior. Just a warning: this integration isn't so easy (at least it wasn't for us).
    • Creating workflows of campaigns is very easy. You can quickly create behavioral campaigns based on attributes, segments and add elements to the workflow. You can send an email, then wait, then send another, then exit the campaign if they converted, etc. The workflow is easy to configure and very powerful for automation.
    • We don't use many email templates (we make them in MJML) but it's very easy to add senders, to change templates and in general to test designs.
    • Deliverability works very well, at least for us. It sends emails pretty fast and without issues.
    • Exporting is very quick and easy. Importing wasn't a feature until recently, but it works well too.
    • Seeing activity it's also useful. In general, logs are awesome (be it of a customer, of activity on the site, email sends, etc.).
    • We don't use environments, but it might be very useful for a bigger company.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Leadfwd
    • SugarCRM integration
    • Ease of building workflows
    • Responsive, helpful support team
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Customer.io
    • Price is quite expensive for Premium or once you get into high volumes of contacts.
    • Depending on how you'll use it, it may require some help from developers to set up.
    • Despite the support being great, you have to email them, there's not chat feature.
    Read full review
    Leadfwd
    • Inbox25 is in a growth phase and has transformed their product pretty fast. With that comes an increased need to continually learn how to leverage new features.
    • Tutorials and product documentation exist but it is relatively minimal. They overcome this with personalized, one-on-one training that is recorded for future review using a project management platform.
    • Inbox25 has expanded beyond Sugar CRM to include Salesforce.com integration. I'm not sure if they plan to add integrations to other applications but they are positioned well for growth.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Customer.io
    Super intuitive and easy interface to start off with. There are not a lot of guides and the documentation is helpful but not super extensive, but even if you're a little technical, you can easily figure most of the things out by yourself. Everything is super easy to start with and the platform does not overwhelm you with a lot of options, or data.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Leadfwd
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Customer.io
    My experience with their support team has always been great. Very quick to respond, have an online chat, and are very helpful. They helped me resolve any issues I've had every time in a professional and knowledgeable manner. We've now switched to another tool, and I can't even compare the service level we get there to customer.io
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Leadfwd
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Customer.io
    Customer.io was really the first pure, full-featured drip email program on the market and as far as I know, it's still the simplest and best overall for that specific function. SendGrid has also added drip campaign features, but I would seriously evaluate Customer.io against any other drip email provider because they really have all the key elements you need to make it work.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Leadfwd
    Different platforms stack up particularly well for different use cases. INBOX25 is our default choice for SugarCRM users.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Customer.io
    • Positive impact on the sales side. I'm not sure about the specific ROI (you have to include the designer and the time it takes to set up) but you certainly get back the investment in a few months, once you are able to scale your email marketing.
    • Customer experience is way better by having more segmented, contextual and accurate messages sent to them.
    • Integration is costly and it will take several days or weeks to be fully achieved. Expect to invest some money on this.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Leadfwd
    • We have successfully moved cold suspects to leads and leads to opportunities, and opportunities to customers with Inbox25. We are just now starting to realize more value given that we've only recently started using the more advanced drip marketing and lead scoring features.
    • When we used the pay-as-you-go version we were paying just pennies per email and remained CAN-Spam Act compliant. It was harder to quantify the ROI then but it was apparent that email marketing was working and moving prospects from one sales stage to another. It was also very useful for re-engaging prospects and promoting products and services to customers.
    • Our total investment in the advanced edition is less $30,000 annually and we expect the ROI to be less than one year. It could have been sooner if we'd have been more thoughtful in our initial implementation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Customer.io Screenshots

    Screenshot of data-driven or manual segments that can be created in the no-code builder for recipient lists, campaign triggers, filters, and conversion goals.Screenshot of the code editor for email, that helps navigate code and iterate.Screenshot of account performance, visible at a glance from the Dashboard view.Screenshot of drag and drop messages, time delays, and branches where desired, to build cross-channel campaigns.Screenshot of triggered campaigns based on forms submissions, customer attributes, customer actions, and dates.Screenshot of localization for global audiences. One message can be delivered in multiple languages.