Owler vs. Zoho Social

This is a free service, so it should be compared to free and low cost alerting (e.g. Google Alerts) and PE/VC funding profile (e.g. Crunchbase) services. Owler is well suited for competitive intelligence professionals, named account reps, and marketing professionals tracking company news (web mined company mentions and press releases) and social media (blogs, Video, YouTube). The alerts are high precision and tag for three key events (M&A, Funding, Exec Changes). It is the alerting and social media tools which are the key strength of the service. The company claims two million profiles, but only has 60,000 with full address information. Content includes competitors, user polls, and funding / M&A data. Owler should be viewed as a free complement to other online company research tools, but it lacks the depth to replace subscription services. Missing content includes long business descriptions; financials and discrete sizing data; family tree linkage, and executive profiles (only the CEO is covered) While they offer list building functionality, it is quite thin and non-downloadable. As such, I would not recommend Owler for sales and marketing prospecting at this point. A unique feature is a set of company polls about the direction of the company and CEO performance. Unfortunately, the response rates are often too low to be statistically meaningful.

Zoho Social excels at multi-channel social media management with intuitive scheduling and analytics. The platform integrates seamlessly with CRM, enabling personalized customer engagement. Best suited for small-to-medium businesses managing multiple social accounts. However, advanced AI-driven insights and competitor analysis features could be enhanced. The reporting dashboard is comprehensive but could use more customization options for enterprise teams.

• Owler enables the user to quickly find the data and information that he or she needs.
• I appreciate the customizable dashboard where you can set alerts and track companies you select.
• The latest news regarding the funding rounds of startup companies is especially helpful.
• The top competitors to companies provided by Owler often give me a great point of reference for my competitive analysis.

Incentivized

• Content sharing to all our social media accounts at one place
• Warning about platform specific issues, also giving choice not to include problematic platforms
• Showing statistics of our shares as a table so that we can understand about the impact of our specific posts.

• The information provided is useful but at times the variation with other websites and tools is substantial which makes it difficult to rely solely on owler
• Information only about bigger companies is available not for smaller and research on smaller ones are important as there are not many tools that do that
• There are few companies that appear as defunct or do not exist but in the actual market there is a lot going on with them and being in market intelligence industry owler needs to capture that
• It would be great if they provide revenue or growth of the in the past three years or so. As it would save our time and efforts to some extent
• They need to maintain the database in aperiodic manner with precise information

Incentivized

• I wanted to use the ability to have Zoho queue the posts, but I wanted to choose the start time of the first post for a few days in the future and I did not find an easy way to set that.
• I wish there were a box with a cheat sheet of the sizes that each social media platform allows for it's video and pictures in the dialogue box for posting so I can be sure to choose appropriate content.
• I do think it's a bit expensive, especially for my needs, but I like the ease of use. I will continue to do what I can to get this service discounted until I can no longer afford it.

Incentivized

Not really an applicable question as this is a free service, but if they charged $100 / year (GageIn's price) I would still license the service.

Zoho Social is the BEST! I have found the perfect solution to social media marketing! It is extremely affordable and I highly recommend it! Create a post once and post it to 5 or more social media platforms! LOVE IT!! :)

I think it's well designed but always room for improvement. Maybe more customization in layout or information presented. Maybe even a layout that allows comparison and ranking of companies in a similar industry or vertical, or company size, and geography

Incentivized

The reason behind assigning this rating stems from the software's remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate intricate functionalities with an incredibly user-friendly interface. It strikes an exceptional balance between sophisticated features and ease of use, making it a standout solution in its category. The software's attention to user experience, coupled with its comprehensive project tracking capabilities, has undoubtedly left a positive impression. This rating reflects my appreciation for how effortlessly it empowers teams to manage projects, collaborate effectively, and achieve their goals with utmost efficiency

I have yet to see the platform down or running slowly, but there have been multiple instances recently (Q2 2015) when the user links to a news story and Owler gives an Oops message. Users simply click on the story a second time and the story is displayed. This is a nuisance bug. I also have a sense that the system is not processing alerts as quickly as before, but I haven't tracked this closely, so I could be wrong about it.

The news precision, which is the most important feature for me, is very accurate. They have editors review the news to ensure it is properly tagged by company and event type.

Problems have been closed quickly and professionally.

I have not needed support for Zoho Social. This comment requirement is confusing to me as I must find text to fill the requirement of a minimum of 50 words. There should be a non-applicable button that allows either user to skip a question or then require a shorter explanation like in my first sentence. Geez, now I have to give a rating while never using the feature.

Focus on setting up companies that have limited news coverage first. Public companies are well covered and it is easy to track them. Furthermore, the surfeit of news around public companies can crowd out smaller companies with less news. It is smaller companies where you are most likely to see a benefit in their tracking of news, blogs, press releases, and videos.

I believe Lead411 and Owler go hand in hand, rather than one over the other. I believe Lead411's contact generation is far stronger based on the cost, but Owler allows you to broaden your horizon for prospecting whereas Lead411 is more of a user-driven search rather than an platform-driven search.

Incentivized

Zoho Social is a great social media management tool that allows businesses, and individuals, to manage multiple social media accounts, schedule posts, track analytics, and engage with followers. It competes well with other social media management tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social, Agora Pulse, and Hubspot. Zoho Social stands out for its integration capabilities with other Zoho applications and affordability for small to medium-sized businesses. Each tool has its own strengths and weaknesses, and businesses should evaluate them based on their specific needs and goals. The biggest fallacy for Zoho is its restriction on scheduling tools on the free plan who have social and personal needs. I believe this can be circumvented by Zoho periodically making an advertisement to one's feed.

• The personalisation of emails has definitely helped us to earn a higher reply rate, with the knock-on that this will be helping with future deals.
• Keeps us very relevant in our conversations with contacts. They are often impressed by the research and knowledge we have on their company and how we have aligned ourselves to help. Again, small differences at the start of calls but this will be helping with the number of opportunities created.
• Reduces SDR prospecting time. Quick and easy to get updates allowing them to process a great number of accounts on a daily basis.

Incentivized

• Through customer targeting, we end up having more clients intending to buy our products and we make some profits.
• Also, Zoho Social has automated analytical capacity, which acts as a source for primary research, and we incur no other expenditure on the same.
• Lastly, Zoho Social includes all social pages and other platforms that audiences visit, giving us a huge segmentation or support.

Incentivized