Livefyre (discontinued) vs. PowerReviews

I was strictly the implementor of Livefyre (for my company only). That task alone was at least 3 weeks worth of work. From a user standpoint, Livefyre is a good product which is why this review is strictly about how difficult it was to implement. Therefore, if a colleague was to ask me if I recommend Livefyre, it's not a straight answer. Questions like, 'how fast do you need it?', 'how centralized is your user database?', 'do you want social login?', all come into question and were details that made my job not easy (hence, my review of 5/10 for suggesting it to others). Once implemented, Livefyre is a great product (notice my overall review is higher), but based on my experience with implementation, it certainly requires a senior developer's dedicated time and patience to set up exactly as desired. For smaller companies with small/simple user bases and websites, the process may be more straightforward, but from my experience, it wasn't out-of-the-box at all.

PowerReviews is a great tool for outside customers to leave reviews, however, it is not very friendly for the team that is taking the information, analyzing it, and trying to learn from it. Their website can be much improved for ease of use, additionally, it may just be my server, but it takes a lot of time for information to load, even if the review volume is 0. Just all the baggage that comes with the page loading makes it slow

Incentivized

• It's pretty flexible. There were only a few things we found that were too specific to our environment and could not be easily done.
• The out-of-the-box GUI design was decent. It was also configurable with limited custom CSS, anticipating the need for each company to customize the look and feel to suit their own needs.
• Basic interface is good, providing the necessary data points like total comment count. Visual effects are good too, with fade-in effects for new comments.
• They also provide back-end APIs to gather information about the "hottest" threads. We used this to construct our own "Hot Topics" section that could link users to the related article so they could comment themselves.
• Good support, even after implementation. They were always available by phone and even through realtime IM chats direct to their developers, skipping awkward non-technical middlemen.

• Their flexibility with moderation options works well for our business. We can moderate immediately, or have PowerReviews handle the first round of moderation.
• The back end reporting allows us to export and distribute review content on an automated schedule, helping our product managers get first hand feedback.
• Easy for customers to leave reviews, with some customization by product type built in and configurable for our products.
• Also relatively easy to drop visitors in to a review form for the exact product they've purchased.
• Good value compared to the other major player in the consumer review space.

Incentivized

• Obviously we all want it all free! So make it all free and woohoo!
• A complaint about the price point leaps is that they are pretty steep, goes from free to pricey real fast.
• The comment management tools although easy and fast are a bit limited.

• If you lack basic coding knowledge (or don't have someone on your team to set this up) it may be a bit of a challenge to get started.
• The backend has a bit of a learning curve to it, but can be worked through easily with persistence.

Incentivized

We are planning to continue using Livefyre comments on several of our blog properties due to its simplicity, transparency and speed of operation. We are actively researching it's more advanced features for some other platforms that need higher end results. Keep up the good work Livefyre.

It's really easy to implement that app but should improve some analytics.

Incentivized

From purchasing to implementation, the customer service/support was really perfect!

Incentivized

The team over at PowerReviews was always very helpful with us and our customer service team. They responded to any questions we had quickly.

Incentivized

I used Disqus about 5-6 years ago, but I've wanted to try the Livefyre app, and it was really quite a good experience for me.

Incentivized

PowerReviews provided the best balance of price and value. bazaarvoice is popular in the industry but when we compared pricing and features we did not see any compelling reason to spend more. PowerReviews also had the easiest team to work with in the sales process, and that has continued into the engagement.

Incentivized

• The heavy work is already done given that we take the time to implement.
• Very useful insights and AI powered delivery.

Incentivized

• Custom components and PowerReviews API can display positive customer feedback from an element.
• In return for honest reviews and answers to customer questions, we provide genuine and authentic feedback and let customers strain new products.
• Syndicated reviews help customers see how products work in real life, which increases trust in our website/business and the products and boosts conversions.

Incentivized