Ion Interactive vs. Stampli vs. Zerys

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

The Stampli tech is very good in processing our transactions and linking to our accounting system. And even for any pain points encountered, we have worked with their tech and customer rep teams (specifically [...]) to promptly resolve the matter in a seamless and pain free way (unlike our previous invoice processing provider).

I sold a few inbound marketing contracts with the expectation that I could find writers for the project on Zerys. We were looking for good writers that can understand the tone and branding of our business and after a few trials with some of the writers at Zerys, I finally found the one that understood us and then created amazing content in no time.

Incentivized

• 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

• Learning - Billy the bot learns much quicker than our previous OCR.
• Global lookup - we have multiple entities which creates a challenge for finding invoices entered in the wrong place. Stampli has removed this issue.
• Maximizing manpower - reduces the need for more personnel.

Incentivized

• The customization options for the written pieces you can request are endless and thorough.
• Some writers are very fast and effective, making our link-building process quicker.
• It provides notifications along every step of the writing process so that you always know where in the pipeline your content is.

Incentivized

• 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

• Only 1 template for vendor onboarding--we have multiple vendor "types" that would benefit from having tailored invites to the vendor portal
• The software doesn't locate invoice details (such as invoice total) after the 1st page
• Invoice discrepancy reporting could be easier and more robust

Incentivized

• There are instances where the writers don't understand the article to be written and don't give you the content you are looking for.
• The auto reporting feature needs some work. Too many email alerts and no option to change that.
• Hard to find good writers. Often writers only loosely follow directions so you end up reworking their content anyway.

Incentivized

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

I cannot imagine going back to pre-Stampli processes. Our jobs in the Accounting department (not just AP) have all become more engaging because we've cut out so much mindless, non-value added work: data entry, signing checks, stuffing envelopes, stamping envelopes, etc.

Incentivized

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

A lot of checks and balances in the system that are an accountant's dream - just takes some time to understand the new process to get up to speed.

Never an issue with downtime

Sometimes the editor can be a little slow.

Very fast and no issues with the Sage Intacct integration

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

We have a dedicated rep (who was also our implementation rep--they stay with you after implementation) who we can email whenever needed and meet with every quarter. There is a chat option within the software that gets responded to by a real person within minutes.

Incentivized

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

Excellent documentation, step-by-step instructions

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

We lost an AP employee right as we were deciding to implement, so we had to speed up our timeline. We went from signing the contract to fully functional system within 4 weeks. We did not dedicate any more than 4 hours per week during the implementation.

Incentivized

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

Tipalti was not system friendly to what we needed (syncing with NetSuite) and the implementation process was frustrating. We experienced delays and no responses from their team. Stampli has been the complete opposite! It's user friendly, from approvers to coders, reasonably priced, and their team members are responsive, caring, and genuine in getting you set up for success

Incentivized

Access to many freelancer writers covering a wide range of topics and the relative ease with which you can manage the writing and editing process with a freelancer writer is good. I believe Zerys has acquired a talented group of writers that are well-versed in a diverse number of topics. Zerys is reliable, and the customer service response is fast, which I greatly appreciate. I do not believe Zerys' interface is as simple as it could be, however.

Incentivized

I would not change anything

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

Ease of deployment both domestic and international

• 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

• The best testament to Stampli is that is has decreased DTP (days to process) by over 3 days.
• It has transformed invoice approval. No invoices are being sent duplicate times for approval by error. Stampli does a great job at identifying duplicate invoices.

• Zerys has allowed us to grow our linkbuilding campaigns much more quickly than we would if we tried to create all of the content in-house.
• We save so much time hiring outside writers to write content rather than writing it ourselves.
• We are able to take on more projects than ever because we can rely on Zerys' writers to get things done on time.

Incentivized