OutboundEngine vs. Referral Factory

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
OutboundEngine
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
OutboundEngine provides a hands-off way for small business owners to market and grow their business. The product aims to provide small businesses with what big companies have achieved with marketing automation. The service aims to help users keep in touch with clients and prospects with professionally designed, branded campaigns. Benefits include: driving engagement, surfacing warm leads from current contacts, generating referrals and repeat business from their existing contacts, social…
$199
per user
Referral Factory
Score 9.4 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Plug-and-play software to build and track customer referral programs, officially certified by HubSpot. Offers a drag-and-drop campaign builder and advanced white label customisation without writing a line of code. Includes access to 100+ editable referral program templates, designed by marketing experts. Every template integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Intercom, Zoho, Zapier and more. Referral Factory also offers webhook functionality, an advanced API, and multiple Zapier…
$95
Pricing
OutboundEngineReferral Factory
Editions & Modules
Essential
$199
per user
Value
$299
per user
Premium
$499
per user
Starter
$95
per month
Basic
$200
per month
Pro
$300
per month
Enterprise
$1,400
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
OutboundEngineReferral Factory
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup Fee$99 per userNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMore information is available on the vendor's website.
More Pricing Information
Features
OutboundEngineReferral Factory
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
OutboundEngine
8.1
48 Ratings
6% above category average
Referral Factory
-
Ratings
Mobile optimization8.143 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.348 Ratings00 Ratings
List management7.743 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
OutboundEngine
7.8
37 Ratings
7% above category average
Referral Factory
-
Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks7.837 Ratings00 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
OutboundEngine
7.9
46 Ratings
9% above category average
Referral Factory
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns7.946 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
OutboundEngineReferral Factory
Small Businesses
Kentico Xperience
Kentico Xperience
Score 7.1 out of 10
OutboundEngine
OutboundEngine
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Kentico Xperience
Kentico Xperience
Score 7.1 out of 10
OutboundEngine
OutboundEngine
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Kentico Xperience
Kentico Xperience
Score 7.1 out of 10
Influitive
Influitive
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
OutboundEngineReferral Factory
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(59 ratings)
9.5
(20 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(5 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.4
(26 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.9
(24 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
OutboundEngineReferral Factory
Likelihood to Recommend
Elm Street Technology
OutboundEngine does a referral campaign and I've been able to close a couple of deals based on getting in touch with people who engage with this campaign and state they could use my services in the next 6 months. This is a great follow up tool for those you may or may not know are going to be needing your services.
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Referral Factory
As a digital marketing manager of multiple clients, one of the biggest challenge is to build brand awareness and acquire new customers with good lifetime value; Referral Factory is a perfect tool to leverage current client base to generate new clients and adds loyalty to the current clientele. However when the services are personalized to each client and each client have different requirements than Referral system is least appropriate.
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Pros
Elm Street Technology
  • The content that they generate to send to our clients is relevant and the clients want to engage with us. It makes us appear more professional and consistent, even though we are a smaller company.
  • It helps us stay in touch with clients and helps us stay top of mind. We are able to generate more new business leads if we are in consistent contact with current, former, and potential clients.
  • Their customer service and support is outstanding. All my questions were answered and I went into the program feeling confident and knowledgeable.
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Referral Factory
  • The platform is user-friendly with various types of guidance such as chatbot, videos, and articles, to assist the users.
  • Referral Factory provides diverse methods of advertising referral programs, offering templates for a wide variety of industries that users can tailor to fit their brand guidelines.
  • Referral Factory provides a detailed dashboard with key performance indicators to help marketers adjust referral campaigns to maximize conversion rates.
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Cons
Elm Street Technology
  • I do not like the use of drawings to attract new customers, and they have ignored my requests to eliminate that for my personal emails.
  • I do not like it when a competitor in my immediate market has the same posts. It cheapens the service or makes it appear that I am simply sharing another's post.
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Referral Factory
  • The UI needs some improvement to really smooth out the workflows. Overall it's not bad, but could always be better.
  • There isn't good documentation on how to configure and use the solution. It's like they assumed they built to be obvious enough to where anyone can figure it out, but for things that have more nuances, users could really benefit from some tooltips and/or documentation.
  • Pricing is pretty high, it would be nice to have a lower tier so businesses with a small income stream can start to benefit from referral programs.
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Likelihood to Renew
Elm Street Technology
The biggest issue is poor ROI. The second biggest issue is rigid customer service process, lack of a sense of urgency, and inability to reach out to upper management with issues.
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Referral Factory
No answers on this topic
Usability
Elm Street Technology
Overall, OutboundEngine is very user friendly. It is simple to set up and explore, and if there are any issues or questions, the customer service team and account managers are always available to help. They are very knowledgeable and were able to explain everything in detail to me. The program is easy to navigate and helps me stay organized, and an uncomplicated and straightforward solution was exactly what I was looking for
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Referral Factory
Referral Factory's overall usability is great. The interface was really easy to learn and use and there are also helpful video tutorials if you have any questions along the way while building your new campaign. The process of sharing the referral link is also really easy and Referral Factory provides multiple methods of sharing the link which is a nice feature as well.
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Reliability and Availability
Elm Street Technology
I haven't had to contact Outbound Engine because I haven't had any application errors or unplanned outages. I basically have had such a trouble free experience with them that I haven't had to call. Everything is automated and I get a notice to review every isse. I suppose if I personalized the newsletter a bit more and added some of my own articles, I would need to contact them, (which I should really start to do) but so far things have been so on point, I haven't felt the need.
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Referral Factory
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Elm Street Technology
The customer service was excellent! Everyone I spoke to was kind and knowledgeable. My account manager was easily reachable. Setup of the OutboundEngine program was explained really thoroughly, and we knew how we could best use the product to meet the needs of our clients and get our online and social media presence off the ground.
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Referral Factory
We have been very grateful for the ongoing support from the Referral Factory team who have gone above and beyond not only to help us get set up but have provided great insight into how to optimise our campaign
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Alternatives Considered
Elm Street Technology
I selected it for the ability to have an automated system do 3 things all at once, social media posts, emails and the instant communication with the chat box. I have never seen a chat come through that lead to a helpful client touchpoint. I have never used another product but have since begun to weigh some of the less expensive options.
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Referral Factory
I was using a few other places but they were very expensive so I would decide to go with Referral Factory. I do not have to play anually for this software to use, so monthly makes it more beginner friendly aswell and I could easily test it out and see if I would continue or not. I am glad that I could use and continue Referral Factory.
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Return on Investment
Elm Street Technology
  • It has provided a consistent email message to my clients
  • It has provided a consistent social media presence for my past clients
  • It has helped me obtain and correlate customer reviews
  • Unfortunately I cannot say that I have any direct information that a sale was generated directly as a result of OutboundEngine. I feel that it has but I have no measurable proof of this
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Referral Factory
  • ⦁ Time saving with AI feature that can generate a campaign easily and quickly.
  • ⦁ Quick to create and run a referral program; allowing me to reach new potential customers and reward existing customers, which in turn results in increased sales momentum.
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ScreenShots

OutboundEngine Screenshots

Screenshot of Automated Social Media MarketingScreenshot of A personalized snapshot of your account activity and warmest leads.Screenshot of Personally designed, tested, and automated emails

Referral Factory Screenshots

Screenshot of customization options without any codeScreenshot of an automated request for a referralScreenshot of templates Of pre-built referral programsScreenshot of rewards and incentivesScreenshot of integrations to automate the referral program