TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Ion Interactive vs. Microsoft Viva Engage vs. Socialtext (discontinued)

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    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

    Microsoft Viva Engage

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Viva Engage, formerly Yammer, is used for private communication within organizations or between organizational members and pre-designated groups.

    $24

    per year per user

    Socialtext (discontinued)

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ASocial Text was a tool that focused on social learning and includes Twitter-like microblogging capabilities. The product competed with MindTouch,Confluence, Jive Team Collaboration and other collaboration platforms. It was acquired by PeopleFluent in 2012 and is no longer available as a separate product, though similar capabilities are supplied by the PeopleFluent platform.

    $1

    Starting Price Per Month

    Pricing
    Ion InteractiveMicrosoft Viva EngageSocialtext (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    Managed Services + SaaS
    Custom
    per year
    Microsoft Viva Employee Communications and Communities
    $24
    per year per user
    Microsoft Viva Suite
    $144
    per year per user
    Socialtext
    $1.00
    Starting Price Per Month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Ion InteractiveMicrosoft Viva EngageSocialtext (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNoNo
    Entry-level Setup Fee$5,500 per customerNo setup feeNo 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.Microsoft Viva Engage is also available in some Microsoft 365 packages.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Ion InteractiveMicrosoft Viva EngageSocialtext (discontinued)
    Considered Multiple Products
    Ion Interactive LLC
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    86%
    Would buy again
    19 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    17 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    21 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Ion InteractiveMicrosoft Viva EngageSocialtext (discontinued)
    Content Creation
    Comparison of Content Creation features of Ion Interactive and Microsoft Viva Engage and Socialtext (discontinued)
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    7.5
    105 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Microsoft Viva Engage
    -
    Ratings
    Socialtext (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Ideation10.099 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content collaboration5.094 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Publishing
    Comparison of Content Publishing features of Ion Interactive and Microsoft Viva Engage and Socialtext (discontinued)
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    8.7
    120 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Microsoft Viva Engage
    -
    Ratings
    Socialtext (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Content hub10.0104 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Forms / Gated content10.0107 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Embedded CTAs10.0108 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content distribution8.093 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content promotion8.086 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content automation6.090 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Content Reporting & Analytics features of Ion Interactive and Microsoft Viva Engage and Socialtext (discontinued)
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    8.5
    118 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Microsoft Viva Engage
    -
    Ratings
    Socialtext (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Audience profiling and targeting6.091 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Closed-loop tracking and reporting8.095 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content performance analytics10.0116 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Campaign optimization dashboard10.0107 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of Ion Interactive and Microsoft Viva Engage and Socialtext (discontinued)
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Viva Engage
    8.7
    46 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Socialtext (discontinued)
    7.6
    1 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Task Management00 Ratings9.128 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Gantt Charts00 Ratings8.815 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Scheduling00 Ratings8.423 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Workflow Automation00 Ratings8.623 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Mobile Access00 Ratings8.843 Ratings4.01 Ratings
    Search00 Ratings8.343 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Visual planning tools00 Ratings8.926 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Communication
    Comparison of Communication features of Ion Interactive and Microsoft Viva Engage and Socialtext (discontinued)
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Viva Engage
    8.6
    49 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Socialtext (discontinued)
    7.2
    1 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Chat00 Ratings9.444 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Notifications00 Ratings8.349 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    Discussions00 Ratings9.748 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Surveys00 Ratings9.638 Ratings4.01 Ratings
    Internal knowledgebase00 Ratings9.338 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Integrates with GoToMeeting00 Ratings7.314 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts00 Ratings6.713 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integrates with Outlook00 Ratings8.632 Ratings00 Ratings
    File Sharing & Management
    Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Ion Interactive and Microsoft Viva Engage and Socialtext (discontinued)
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Viva Engage
    9.1
    42 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Socialtext (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Versioning00 Ratings9.728 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video files00 Ratings9.436 Ratings00 Ratings
    Audio files00 Ratings9.334 Ratings00 Ratings
    Document collaboration00 Ratings9.135 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access control00 Ratings9.035 Ratings00 Ratings
    Advanced security features00 Ratings8.433 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integrates with Google Drive00 Ratings8.014 Ratings00 Ratings
    Device sync00 Ratings9.528 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Ion InteractiveMicrosoft Viva EngageSocialtext (discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    Contently
    Score9.9 out of 10
    Flock
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Flock
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    CoSchedule Marketing Suite
    Score10 out of 10
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    PathFactory
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Ion InteractiveMicrosoft Viva EngageSocialtext (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (135 ratings)
    8.9
    (59 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (22 ratings)
    9.0
    (11 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    7.4
    (17 ratings)
    8.8
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (18 ratings)
    7.0
    (12 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Ion InteractiveMicrosoft Viva EngageSocialtext (discontinued)
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Yammer is great when you have a company culture that encourages friendly collaboration and communication. It can be a great supplement (but certainly not a substitute) for bonding and sharing ideas and thoughts. Certain channels can be really successful, too, like a channel where people can post dog pictures or something fun like that!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    We use Social Text as a platform to air our issues with different departments. We voice our concerns and suggestions so we can help find a solution to the problems we incur on a daily basis. We need to have social text as an app so we can communicate in real time not only during work hours.
    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
    Microsoft
    • Providing a platform for social news in the company where "bottom up" topics can percolate freely across department
    • Social networking across the company where folks can divide their work into topics instead of teams
    • Basic collaboration within a group including document sharing with ability to pin documents to a team
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Version history - Always keeps the edited versions and one can revert back any time
    • Creating and Editing an article is very easy and intutive
    • Sharing the articles with peers
    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
    Microsoft
    • Although the social enterprise network works very well, there is room for some slight improvement - such as the ability to attract users. By being part of the Microsoft Office Suite, it is offered as an "add-on" and many overlook it and see it as unnecessary at first. It would be smart for Microsoft to sell it as its own product so it could gather more popularity as a "social network".
    • Giving an option to filter results could be better as well as giving an option to turn off the "recent activity" bar on the home page.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Search needs a ton of improvements. It was very slow a year ago
    • Search result quality was also not that good
    • I know they have improved their UI recently but when i used it last year it did not really have any design elements which could be used to make the articles look more presentable. It was important for us as we used it for external communication as well.
    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
    Microsoft
    Microsoft is dedicated to continual improvement on Yammer. They realize the value that Yammer brings to the table with their clients. In the short time that we have had Yammer implemented, we are just now beginning to see the strong impact it has on becoming more effective and efficient around collaboration.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    We have a lot of info in Socialtext already. It would be hard to get all that info out and port it to a different system
    Read full review
    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
    Microsoft
    Overall easy to use and intuitive, although limited in the possibility to personalize layout and look & feel of a site. Some functionalities are not easy to use, like document editing, but some others are quick and effective (posts and tagging above all). Performance and responsiveness of the Yammer site is typically acceptable, in my experience.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Reliability and Availability
    Ion Interactive LLC
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Very available
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Ion Interactive LLC
    Sometimes the editor can be a little slow.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    It's a simple product but it does provide value.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We have never had to use the support for Yammer. The tool works well and we have not come across any bugs. User Interface is simple and easy to use, similar to other forum type products, thereby removing the need for any extensive training. Team members are invited in and immediately are able to start using the tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    The training that Microsoft provides is very generic training for Yammer. I like the fact the training is short and easy to understand
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Microsoft
    We organically implemented the product
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Microsoft
    Our team briefly used Salesforce.com's Chatter product before switching over to Yammer in 2012. While Chatter is essentially the same product as Yammer, it left much to be desired. Chatter's design was (and remains) clunky and difficult to navigate. Yammer is a simple, easy-to-use product that offers similar functionality as Salesforce's Chatter.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    I frankly like Confluence better than socialtext because of the speed and the quality of search. They also have better design elements which can help make the articles pleasant to the eyes.
    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
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Microsoft
    • My company is pleased with the positive impact Yammer has created departmentally and on an individual basis with work flow efficiency.
    • Adversely, most old and new employees are more familiar with SharePoint, causing the company to pay for training for all current and incoming employees.
    • As Yammer becomes more widely used, the need for training may diminish, which is where we will see our return on investment, as the product clearly provides a more effective form of file sharing and communication between employees and their department.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • We get solutions to concerns much faster
    • We promote interactions with the other depts
    • We listen and have discussions
    Read full review
    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.