Optimizely Commerce Connect vs. Thrive Leads

Our experience may be unique because we opted for an Optimizely team to implement our website/console set-up and connection to our PIM and ERP. The experience may have been different with a 3rd party or it may not have. That said, we have been live with our primary website for almost 2 years and I still do not consider it was ever "done". We have been going back and forth on functionality issues and bugs since launch. I have low confidence that changes made the previous day will 100% be online the next - so my team rechecks the work they did the previous day to ensure everything is online. The addition of a second channel and enhancement requests have compounded the issues. I feel this product would work fine with singular or less complex market SKU offerings.

Incentivized

I have yet to find a similar system that is as easy to use and comes with the type of support that Thrive Leads does. Sometimes support is a bit slow, but they always get back to you and nine times out of ten they can fix any problems on the first go. The flexibility of the form plugin itself is also excellent.

Incentivized

• Episerver has a robust discount engine. This engine, combined with "visitor groups" allow our marketing department to categorize customers and offer a variety of discounts to targeted customers at specific times.
• Episerver has a full-featured, storefront experience that can handle everything you might want for an e-commerce website.
• Episerver offers A/B testing that can be helpful for trying out new content ideas and tracking the results.

Incentivized

• Easy to use
• Beautifully designed for excellent customer experience
• A/B testing capabilities

Incentivized

• Support. Episerver used to have direct support and access to the tech team to discuss and resolve issues. The new support portal is not enough for developer needs.
• Quality Assurance. We find issues in the Episerver code that should have been resolved in QA before release.
• Sales. Episervers sells the framework as a solution while showing Alloy. While it helps Episerver sell more, it puts the implementation partner into trouble as the client thinks they bought the solution. Episerver does not provide a solution. It provides a framework that you can build a solution on.

Incentivized

• Experienced a few bugs and slowdowns on high traffic sites
• Could use more flexibility for tagging leads in our email provider
• Occasionally stopped working in the back end — needed customer support to help

Incentivized

Really want to be able to spend more time and resources on rolling out new things with Episerver but at the moment we seem to be fixing alot of issues and pain points with the way our system was setup.

Incentivized

The administrative interface is largely intuitive and relatively easy to use. The complexity of business needs and ability to customize can affect this (i.e. you have to set up and develop with the user in mind), but the basic structure is largely solid. There are some areas of redundancy (such as Commerce Manager overlapping with other administrative areas) that can sometimes cause confusion or offer some functions in one place, whereas other related functions are managed on a completely different page.

Incentivized

Thrive Leads can be easily used by anyone who has the basic skills to work within the WordPress environment and who has the knowledge about lead capture and segmentation. As a lead capture tool, I think it's use is restricted to obtaining contact information in different settings, which it does flawlessly.

Incentivized

We had an incredible team at Episerver Supporting us with the go live, reviewing our integration, and pushing our integration partner to deliver a quality product

Incentivized

In general, the support is great. When living in a different time zone, the support can seem slow but it's not. Most of the time, any issues I have get sorted out quickly and if it's not the first time, it generally gets fixed on the second go. Their knowledge base is good too although sometimes it's hard to search. Not usually their fault, more that users don't title their problems better.

Incentivized

Fully understand what is OOTB feature of the platform before proceeding to develop. Then implement a customization of key features once you can prove they are working as OOTB to make them more user friendly and productive for the business. Eg pre order and e gift card

Incentivized

Optimizely Commerce Connect offers a very wide range of features for admin users. There is less a need for an IT specialist or programmer to be involved when changes need to be made.

Incentivized

I've used Optin Monster and Poptin on other projects. Both are good software for different use cases. Poptin is great if you are scrappy, just getting started, and you need a proof of concept and want to keep costs low until you've tested the market. Poptin isn't anywhere near as easy to use as Thrive Leads, but that $0 price tag is meaningful while you are just getting started. OptinMonster isn't as easy or intuitive to use as a builder, but the advantage is that more VAs have used Optin Monster as have used Thrive Leads, so you often don't have to do as much training. I would consider OptinMonster in cases where a website isn't build using Thrive Themes and where an incumbent VA is already well versed in the software.

Incentivized

• Positive: We have a usable website - better than what we had before and we are seeing a constant increase in adoption.
• Positive: Counter associates are using the website to help customers.
• Negative: Too much time being spent QCing previous work.

Incentivized

• Grew our email list quickly through opt in offers
• Decreased time to build campaigns manually
• Increased donations from email subscribers

Incentivized