TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Dovetail

    Score8.6 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    Dovetail, headquartered in Sydney, aims to enable the world to create better products and services through deep customer understanding. Dovetail states they empower 45,000+ people, from agencies to universities to Fortune 100 companies, to make sense of their customer research in one collaborative research platform.

    $0

    for a single individual, channel, and research project

    Meltwater

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/AMeltwater Media Intelligence platform is a set of public relations software tools for media monitoring, social media monitoring, and collecting brand insights. The four areas of functionality are Monitor, Analyze, Distribute, and Engage. (Note that this product combines features from the vendor Meltwater's former Buzz, Press, and News products.)N/A
    Pricing
    DovetailMeltwater
    Editions & Modules
    Free
    $0
    for a single individual, channel, and research project
    Professional
    $15
    per month
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    per year
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    DovetailMeltwater
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual billing on the Professional plan.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    DovetailMeltwater
    Considered Both Products
    Dovetail
    No answer on this topic
    Meltwater
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    90%
    Would buy again
    45 Answers
    63%
    Would buy again
    20 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    33 Answers
    62%
    Delivers good value for the price
    16 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    90%
    Happy with the feature set
    45 Answers
    69%
    Happy with the feature set
    22 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    22 Answers
    63%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    15 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    91%
    Implementation went as expected
    32 Answers
    81%
    Implementation went as expected
    22 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    DovetailMeltwater
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
    Score5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Optimal
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Cision Communications Cloud
    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Optimal
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Cision Communications Cloud
    Score8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    DovetailMeltwater
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (50 ratings)
    7.2
    (73 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.1
    (4 ratings)
    10.0
    (10 ratings)
    Usability
    6.7
    (49 ratings)
    5.6
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.9
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (29 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.1
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    5.6
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    5.6
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.9
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    5.9
    (2 ratings)
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    5.2
    (2 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    DovetailMeltwater
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Dovetail
    Well suited for: A product team with one FT person dedicated to research and operations to ensure the DT stays up to date, since its automated connectors are not that robust for lower plans. Eg., Salesforce doesn't work great without an enterprise plan, and you have to use outside automated workflows to feed in data from other sources of user feedback (e.g., Google Docs, Sheets). An enterprise team with more engineering time to dedicate to customizing their user research workflows.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    Meltwater is well-suited for agencies that have an engagement team who is looking to service a variety of client needs such as social media reporting, public relations outreach, and community management. If you're looking to have a platform serve just one need, you can still use Meltwater but will get more bang for your buck if you are needing a variety of tools.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Dovetail
    • I really like the User Interface, how easy it is to have all your research data in one project and how visual it is to understand where are things. It does have a good User Experience.
    • I like how nice and easy it is to create categories or use the ones auto generated as a starting point. It is very easy to create a color coded set of categories that help make sense of the data.
    • I like how easy it is to see the video snippet of a specific highlight.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    • Media research - you can search for relevant publications and journalists to add to your media list.
    • Earned media coverage - you can search for coverage of your brand and find news stories that also include data that may be useful (how many people did the story reach for example).
    • Building media lists - if you have no current existing list, you can build and export one in Excel for example.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Dovetail
    • As mentioned up top, the contextual errors that occur in AI analysis.
    • Your IA and discovery routes were better before; this overhaul was unnecessarily complex and frustrating to navigate.
    • I find assigning names clunky. Batch uploading data, or even agentic API plugins for drive or user testing, would make this more seamless.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    • The dashboards are not user-friendly, customizable (color, font size, etc.), or worthy of presenting to a client. All of the insights from a dashboard get pulled from the platform and placed into a more client-friendly presentation.
    • Paywalls for certain publications connected to who-knows-what. DowJones racket limits media monitoring capabilities and results in manual searches for a growing number of publications.
    • TVeyes, the broadcast monitoring arm of the media monitoring capabilities, just needs TLC and to become more client-facing. Currently, the links produced to share clips look sketchy, and they have a relatively short shelf life.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Dovetail
    Because we are really happy with the tool and it’s capabilities at the moment. The price increase is the main issue we can have but the features are getting better and better. It really saves a lot of time for our team and allow us to collaborate more efficiently with certain stakeholders that often did not réalise how much research we conduct. Now they can just have a look to it by themself!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    Meltwater works well for our organization and has allowed us to meet our internal goals. We are always open to new products and services that may be able to provide similar or better features; however, our experience has been that many of Meltwater's competitors are not up to the task.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Dovetail
    it is relatively intuitive but it does take some practice to get used to the platform and understand the capabilities and limitations. There are also times that we have run into issues where the people we are sharing reports with either cannot view them or access is not provided. Additionally, the ability to export any of the video clips or snippets has created some frustration since we want to include the great findings that Dovetail helps put together, but need to bounce between screens or share after-the-fact rather than embedding it directly into a readout deck.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    Once you get some basic training it's pretty easy to use. I would like to see training manuals, or instructional videos to help me explore features I'm not currently using.
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Dovetail
    I’ve never had any access issues with Dovetail, so I don’t see any problems in that area.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Dovetail
    Regarding performance, I would say it’s satisfactory. Adding data and transcriptions is really fast and efficient, and can be done in the background, so I’m never hindered by these aspects. However, all the new AI-generated features are still somewhat slow to run. It’s nothing major, but it should improve in the future.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Dovetail
    Support was good, especially when it comes to the capability of your support agents and engineers. But as i am located in Europe, the difference in the time zone made it hard to communicate with your offices and kept my work way back
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    Our account rep at Meltwater went dark for a long time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, our new account manager reached out to set up a meeting. Apparently, they had a big shakeup in the company, and there were some personnel changes. Our new account rep was great in discussing the platform's capabilities that were available to us and even offered to schedule a follow-up meeting with his technical team to introduce our new social media team members to the platform and how it could help them with their jobs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Dovetail
    No answers on this topic
    Meltwater
    Again, really in-depth and helpful for a program that is really easy to use.
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Dovetail
    The training went very well, and we co-built it to really address our needs. I also think it was beneficial to have feedback coming from someone other than myself (since I manage the tool), as it helped reinforce the points I wanted to highlight. The team’s feedback on the training was very positive.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Dovetail
    No answers on this topic
    Meltwater
    You are only allowed 15 users, so make sure you've identified who will have access to use the tool.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Dovetail
    We looked at a few other options, Marvin and Reforge Insight. They were both pretty cool platforms that operate largely or entirely on AI, but neither quite fit our needs. Reforge Insight was cool, but it did not have all the features we needed from Dovetail, and switching to Marvin felt like a massive undertaking. We have so much data in Dovetail that the "cost" of leaving feels monumental. Besides, Dovetail fits our needs right now.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    I was looking for a full-service option. I did some research. What really sold me was the presentation. They offered products that were helpful, and I wasn’t even aware of them. It is more expensive than the other products that are out there, but you get more. The other companies are good, but Meltwater Media Intelligence is more full service.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Dovetail
    It’s very expensive, and we use a lot of features in beta. I think we could also be rewarded for our usage and frequent feedback on the tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Dovetail
    Management is quite straightforward; it’s easy to change access if certain stakeholders need to use it. The repository features are accessible to all teams, making it a good entry point into the tool. The more people use it, the more powerful the tool becomes, so it seems truly scalable to me. The limits are more financial, in terms of accessing additional features.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Dovetail
    • Having a centralized research space is a game changer. Makes it so much easier to hand over research if working with new people and have system in place (using the templates). Saves so much time. We don't have hard numbers on the hours saved but we are much more efficient using Dovetail than without.
    • The tagging system in general is amazing and allows for consistency in topic marking. This was non-existent for our team before Dovetail and now we can do much more granule reports with exact # of times something was said with accuracy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    • As a PR firm, we rely on the media databases that [Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform] supplies to deliver the media exposure that they expect from us.
    • We utilize their tracking of media hits for our overall reporting to our clients.
    • Both of these are advantageous in helping us to not only keep our existing clients happy but also to gain new clients (and, in turn - revenue), as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Dovetail Screenshots

    Screenshot of an automate workflow with AI: Agents track every customer signal and act on what’s important before they turn into problems.Screenshot of an example of an automated transcript with structured note-taking that anchors insights in the voice of the customer. This uses AI-powered Chat and Search to offer instant answers grounded in data—whether it is in Dovetail, Slack, or Teams.Screenshot of the AI Dashboards that help spot risks before they escalate, act on new opportunities.Screenshot of the dashboard to connect Dovetail to an existing tech stack, including Slack, Linear, and various meeting recording tools.Screenshot of where to automatically clustering customer issues into prioritized themes and trends. Useful for surfacing actionable product opportunities from high-volume ticket data.Screenshot of real-time dashboards that aggregate sentiment, NPS, and app reviews into a unified view of the customer experience.