TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

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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

    Salesforce Agentforce Service

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AService Cloud is a customer service platform that helps businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries and issues. It provides tools for case management, knowledge base, omni-channel support, automation, and analytics, enabling companies to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.

    $25

    per month

    Pricing
    Customer.ioSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Starter Suite
    $25
    per month
    Pro Suite
    $100
    per month per user
    Enterprise
    $165
    per month per user
    Unlimited
    $330
    per month per user
    Agentforce 1
    $550
    per month per user
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Customer.ioSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    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.ioSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Considered Both Products
    Customer.io
    No answer on this topic
    Salesforce
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    91%
    Would buy again
    52 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    88%
    Delivers good value for the price
    43 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    14 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    53 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    9 Answers
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    39 Answers
    Features
    Customer.ioSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Customer.io and Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Feature
    Customer.io
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    7.9
    81 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.279 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings7.857 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.267 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings6.962 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings8.779 Ratings
    Ticket response00 Ratings7.978 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Customer.io and Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Feature
    Customer.io
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    8.7
    76 Ratings
    8% above category average
    External knowledge base00 Ratings8.567 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.874 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Customer.io and Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Feature
    Customer.io
    -
    Ratings
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    7.9
    81 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Customer portal00 Ratings7.858 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings8.037 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings7.451 Ratings
    Email support00 Ratings8.880 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings7.870 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Customer.ioSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Small Businesses
    Simplify360
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Braze
    Score8.7 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SAP Service Cloud
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Customer.ioSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (20 ratings)
    8.7
    (100 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.2
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    9.2
    (12 ratings)
    8.2
    (22 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.4
    (45 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (7 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (20 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Customer.ioSalesforce Agentforce Service
    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
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    Salesforce
    I think Service Cloud is best suited for medium to large operations that require both proactive and reactive service. It’s a great fit for post-sales support. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for very small companies because it can be quite costly, and many of the features may go unused. Salesforce also performs best when you have a capable team managing it, so it’s important to consider your organization’s size and readiness before starting. Once you do, I recommend exploring other parts of the Salesforce ecosystem—Service Cloud works even better when integrated with Sales Cloud, since it allows better visibility across teams.
    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
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    Salesforce
    • Email to case is an interesting piece of it. The threading is very strong, sometimes too strong, but it does very well at handling the incoming emails.
    • The omnichannel routing, using skill-based routing is really effective.
    • Pathing. So making the workflow and helping the team understand what it is that they're trying to do, what they have to accomplish, those step-by-step pieces. That's really helpful.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Salesforce
    • We had a principle initially to try and use Omni as much as we can from the user experience perspective, but have found that fairly restrictive. It was very difficult to actually get the right customer experience and customer engagement going. So we're actually on a journey at the moment to replace all of our Omni with Lightning web components that gives us that flexibility. That's probably one area where we've had some challenges in terms of how we've used the product out of the box.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Customer.io
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Professional edition works best for a small company with lower call volumes and is very useful but as you grow exponetially I think it has limited ability to do all the things we want to - SLA management, defect, release management to name a few. Reports and dashboards being available in real time.
    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
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    Salesforce
    I had Salesforce experience prior to using Service Cloud which made it a little easier to learn and navigate, but overall my team (some who had no Salesforce experience) caught on very quickly and found Service Cloud to be easy to use.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Customer.io
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Working on an application that caters to customer needs requires a platform that acts as a mediator between the actual person and the client. This mediator handles the customer and resolves many of their doubts, helps them map through the entire process, and automates the processes. Such a platform is Salesforce Service Cloud. For queries that cannot be serviced by the platform, it creates a separate ServiceNow ticket for us, and it is assigned.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Customer.io
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    The Salesforce Service Cloud generally has very good performance, however the overall new Lightning user experience can bring that down. For example, if you have too many tabs open, then it can take a while for the Lightning UI to load. This UI is probably not well equipped to handle loading of all of that information at once, but Users tend to leave their tabs open all day long. It can also be fickle depending on which browser you use, what extensions you have installed, and whether you've cleared your cache. This can be the downfall with any software as a service though, not just Salesforce
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Salesforce
    Salesforce offers support, although it generally gets routed to overseas support teams first, and once they are unable to help, it gets escalated up the chain to higher tiers. Frequently, the answer back from support is that there is no native solution, and we either have to turn to the AppExchange for some solution provided by another developer, or custom build our own solution.
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    In-Person Training
    Customer.io
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Our in-person training was provided by our implementation partner and it was quite good. This was in part because we were already working with them and so it naturally leant itself to a good training relationship. And because they were building our customizations and configuring things, they could then provide training on those things naturally.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Customer.io
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Trailheads are great but it was often unclear what actually applied to our organization. This made it difficult to get a whole lot out of it. Part of it is that because the basic Salesforce features didn't quite work for us, we had to add customizations, which then nullified a lot of the training.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Customer.io
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    I would go through an implementation very differently knowing what I know now. It was difficult coming from systems we liked in post-sales service and having to adapt to the clunky and underwhelming feature set in Salesforce. I would trim back our expectations
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Salesforce
    We selected this product because we already had some competencies in Salesforce. We own a Salesforce partner with expertise in this area, and on top of that, Salesforce purchased it — it was originally called Velocity. When Salesforce decided to acquire it, that finalized the decision for us.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Customer.io
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    The product has scaled up with our company growth just fine. No issues here other than slowness in clicking around and running reports
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Salesforce
    • We have cut our service team in half over the past 5 years due to the efficiency of the tool
    • The amount of direct inquiries to our technical team is less than 10% compared to the number support tickets that get entered in the system for them to work in a more organized manner
    • Responses are 100% more timely because tickets can be responded to by any individual in the queue or on the team, as opposed to direct emails to just one person
    Incentivized
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    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.

    Salesforce Agentforce Service Screenshots

    Screenshot of Workflows and OrchestrationScreenshot of Service CatalogScreenshot of Contact Center