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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    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
    Ion InteractiveMeltwater
    Editions & Modules
    Managed Services + SaaS
    Custom
    per year
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Ion InteractiveMeltwater
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup Fee$5,500 per customerNo setup fee
    Additional Detailsion’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
    Community Pulse
    Ion InteractiveMeltwater
    Considered Both Products
    Ion Interactive LLC
    No answer on this topic
    Meltwater
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    63%
    Would buy again
    20 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    62%
    Delivers good value for the price
    16 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    69%
    Happy with the feature set
    22 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    63%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    15 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    81%
    Implementation went as expected
    22 Answers
    Features
    Ion InteractiveMeltwater
    Content Creation
    Comparison of Content Creation features of Ion Interactive and Meltwater
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    7.5
    105 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Meltwater
    -
    Ratings
    Ideation10.099 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content collaboration5.094 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Publishing
    Comparison of Content Publishing features of Ion Interactive and Meltwater
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    8.7
    120 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Meltwater
    -
    Ratings
    Content hub10.0104 Ratings00 Ratings
    Forms / Gated content10.0107 Ratings00 Ratings
    Embedded CTAs10.0108 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content distribution8.093 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content promotion8.086 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content automation6.090 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Content Reporting & Analytics features of Ion Interactive and Meltwater
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    8.5
    118 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Meltwater
    -
    Ratings
    Audience profiling and targeting6.091 Ratings00 Ratings
    Closed-loop tracking and reporting8.095 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content performance analytics10.0116 Ratings00 Ratings
    Campaign optimization dashboard10.0107 Ratings00 Ratings
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    Ion InteractiveMeltwater
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    Score10 out of 10
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    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprises
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    Score8.3 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    Ion InteractiveMeltwater
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (135 ratings)
    7.2
    (73 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (22 ratings)
    10.0
    (10 ratings)
    Usability
    7.4
    (17 ratings)
    5.6
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (18 ratings)
    10.0
    (29 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    6.1
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Ion InteractiveMeltwater
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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.
    Incentivized
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    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
    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
    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
    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
    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
    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.
    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
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    Usability
    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
    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
    Performance
    Ion Interactive LLC
    Sometimes the editor can be a little slow.
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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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    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
    Ion Interactive LLC
    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
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Meltwater
    Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    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
    Read full review
    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
    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.
    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
    Scalability
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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
    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
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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.