Livefyre (discontinued) vs. WebCEO

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.

If you are just wanting to have a web page without any idea of wanting to gain exposure for it via Google or social media channels then WebCEO is probably not for you. However, if you are like me and my Graceful Touch blog project where building a stronger and stronger backbone of digital success is important to you then WebCEO is without question your number one place to go.

• It provides and allows comments and comment management that is fast, seamless and shareable.
• Having used disquss, WordPress comments and many others I like Livefyre better for its seamless integration and transparency
• It is really nice that they have a range of services from free to enterprise with increasing functionality and benefits.

• The on-page optimization tools help a lot in researching competitor keywords, competitor traffic, and backlinks and Google search queries. We are able to compile this data to enhance online content and optimize our promotional channels.
• Keeping track of a wide array of functions with tools that show us what has been done and with percentages of completion. This helps us to share tasks like projects with team members so they can easily see which parts o their work still need attention
• Providing our clients, and our sales crew, with detailed as well as Summary data for explaining to clients what areas of their sites need attention and how their campaigns are succeeding (or lacking) in different geographical areas.

• Implementation was not easy. Although flexible, I personally wrote at least 1,400 lines of code to get this implemented over a few week's time.
• The social login aspect is cool, but again, hard to implement. They did not write any of those modules, although they could have. This required senior-level developmental skills and a knowledge of how social media is interfaced with programmatically. Lots of questions arose from this and it was difficult to implement with virtually no help from Livefyre, other than to provide the hooks into their system for when users were validated. I had to write at least 2 separate login/redirection scripts to accomplish this flow.
• CSS tweaking was tricky. We could override lots of common CSS classes, but to get things just the way we wanted it, I ended up writing LOTS of jQuery listeners and functions to transform the output into exactly what we wanted. This was a surprise since the software was sold to us as being 'fully customizable'.
• Documentation was sufficient, but not great. Getting the flow of the callbacks that are fired wasn't clear at first, and sometimes did not work as expected.
• It should be noted that, after this review was published, Livefyre contacted me stating they now have better documentation and process for implementation (for version V3, specifically) and urged me to revise this review. However, I can only write of my experience with V2, and it WAS difficult to implement over 3 weeks of dedicated time. Another developer on my team implemented version V3 and his evaluation is very similar to mine, claiming much difficulty with the CSS customization.

• Its hard to say any negatives on WEB CEO, probably that there are so many tools to use haha! However as previously mentioned the support team are only a click away to help explain anything.
• The dashboard can be overwhelming with a lot of metrics displayed. This can be customised though to display what you want. The same goes for the menu items, a lot of useful tools! But just have to learn the layout and where everything is located.

We feel we have a real partnership with Livefyre and we both make each other better. Their customer service has been phenomenal even during a time of rapid growth.

I didn't even hesitate to renew my subscription to Web CEO. It has become the #1 tool in my arsenal and I use it at work, on my personal projects, everywhere! I literally don't know what I would do if I didn't have access to this software anymore. This software has been crucial in the success of my clients and my websites.

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

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

In general it is easy to use. Some of the functions take a little getting used to and first time through it is not obvious what needs to be set up first. It would be a great improvement to have a central setup screen where all of the data required by each module could be entered in one go.

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

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

Most support networks focus on answering questions as WebCEO does. With my experience with WebCEO, I now call those the average support providers. Then there are the exceptional support providers who really go to the next level in making sure you are taken care of. While WebCEO certainly does this I've decided to remove them from qualifying at this level. Instead, I made a whole new category for their support called extraordinarily amazing. They respond in a timely fashion. Offer great value along the way. But then even have fun what with their unnecessary but great graphics that they include in their support. This is the upper edge of everything and leaves me with a huge smile on my face.

You can start using Web CEO in under 5 minutes so the implementation is very minimal. Simply setup your projects for your sites, hook them up to Google Analytics and your good to go. You can start analyzing data and viewing keyword tracking results in no time at all.

We felt Livefyre was more innovative and better at SEO. It felt like we were working with a partner for the long haul who was interested in our business and how to improve it.

Of course, each of these tools has its pros and cons, but Web CEO provides by far the most insights about your website and your competitors and helps you to take informed action to improve your ranking and site traffic.

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

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

• I would say that as a tool. Web CEO has a decent amount of kick to it. I just think that it is lacking that knockout punch that its competitors have
• The social metrics and competitor metrics are great, they just don#t have that zing to them. I think some GUI tweaks would move Web CEO onto the next level. It is a pity, as Web CEO is one step from greatness.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info