Podium vs. SmartCustomer

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Podium
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Podium, formerly Repdrive, is a ratings and review management platform from the company of the same name in Provo, Utah.
$249
per month 3 users
SmartCustomer
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Founded in 2006 as Sitejabber, SmartCustomer is a reviews platform that helps businesses elevate their online reputation and visibility. Brands can use SmartCustomer to source feedback and surface reviews across various channels, resulting in expanded reach and business growth, with connections based on trust and confidence. SmartCustomer states that their review platform is both funded by the US government’s National Science Foundation and an official Google review partner.N/A
Pricing
PodiumSmartCustomer
Editions & Modules
Podium Essentials
$249
per month 3 users
Podium Standard
$409
per month Unlimited users
Podium Professional
$599
per month Unlimited users
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PodiumSmartCustomer
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PodiumSmartCustomer
Considered Both Products
Podium
Chose Podium
In my opinion, Openphone is 10x better. Literally 1/5 the price.
Chose Podium
Just selected Podium as it had a partnership with our parent dealer company, a choice we do regret today
Chose Podium
We haven't tried or looked at others. However, we are now looking at 8X8.
Chose Podium
Reviewvio was terrible. Actually, it was always done and having "bugs" that keep things from working properly. And we have attempted to cancel the subscription and they are still charging our card.
Chose Podium
I can't recall the 'other' company we considered this year, but Podium won out because of the 'team chat' feature. It is our primary means of communicating with one another, both one-to-one and via teams/groups.
Chose Podium
Similar but Birdeye is less expensive.
Chose Podium
Podium had reached out to me years ago and stayed in touch. I felt they were the best and most professional company. Some others in our industry had tried competitors with mixed results. I did not even shop around when we went with Podium.
Chose Podium
We had the advantage of Podium integrating with our point of sale software already so that was a huge plus. We also felt that SMS gave people more freedom to communicate at their pace on their mobile device rather than being tied to a web browser or figuring out which tab they …
Chose Podium
I haven't looked into the competitive platforms yet but I will be doing that.
Chose Podium
used to use "Skipio" for texting and "social climb" for reviews, using all different systems for something one product can do, is just a pain! So it has been FANTASTIC!

We use Podium all day every day and we had to log in to multiple account systems to do all the things that …
Chose Podium
I have never heard of any of these other companies. I met Podium at the Las Vegas Furniture Market Trade Show and signed up right away because I could see the value in it. The sites we see most reviews on are Google, Yelp, and Trip Advisor. I didn't know there were more …
Chose Podium
We have evaluated multiple smaller companies that do not appear on TrustRadius including Swell, Yext, Solutions by Text, and ReviewInc. We currently utilize Podium for its integrations with our point of sale system and the fact that they have negotiated the cheapest rate on …
Chose Podium
The other software we have used which I will not name has an incredibly clunky UI that is straight out of the '90s. On top of that conversations are hardly organized making it difficult to manage multiple conversations. Podium is faster, more efficient, easier to learn, and …
Chose Podium
We used Reputation.com in the past. We were receiving tons of negative reviews from their email blasts.
Chose Podium
BirdEye was not easy to use and it did not give us the features we were looking for such as SMS and our employees would not use because it slowed them down with little ROI.
Chose Podium
To be completely candid, I have not used another review software other than Podium. I've worked here for just over 2 years, and our company had just started using Podium. Podium has been useful and successful for our team; therefore, there has not been any reason for me to …
Chose Podium
Their product is up to date and always improving. The other software we were using was more expensive and ancient in the software world.
Chose Podium
Very comfortable, however, where Podium offers a flat rate for all of its services, Reputation.com has an "al la carte" approach where you select the services you wish to use.

Examples: Auto-sending review request, responding to messages sent back by customers, in-depth …
Chose Podium
We use Digital Air Strike at our two GM dealerships because it is one of a small list of reputation management companies authorized by GM as part of their SFE program. Digital Air Strike surveys our customers and invites them to write a review about our dealership. It is not as …
SmartCustomer
Chose SmartCustomer
Sitejabber is a great tool for collecting genuine customer feedback to promote organizational growth while giving buyers and customers the confidence to explore before making a purchase.
Chose SmartCustomer
Sitejabber has provided us with many benefits and resulted in us with great customer service, handling any issues faced by customers, and competing with real businesses. Whereas Trustpilot, we believe there were many reviews left by scammers for businesses that were not legit.
Chose SmartCustomer
I generally buy a lot of software. I check reviews on TrustRadius, Capterra, etc., for software reviews. Sitejabber is lacking in these cases, so for now, I will stick to these websites for software reviews.
Best Alternatives
PodiumSmartCustomer
Small Businesses
Yext
Yext
Score 7.4 out of 10
Growave
Growave
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Yext
Yext
Score 7.4 out of 10
PowerReviews
PowerReviews
Score 7.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Yext
Yext
Score 7.4 out of 10
PowerReviews
PowerReviews
Score 7.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
PodiumSmartCustomer
Likelihood to Recommend
6.8
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
PodiumSmartCustomer
Likelihood to Recommend
The way we use Podium is that when the customer agrees to purchase a vehicle and is waiting to go into the finance office for paperwork (which can be anywhere from a 10-60 minute wait), the salesperson sends the review invite while sitting with them. The customer is more likely to write a review during some downtime, while they are excited about their new purchase, and happy with the salesperson who has been serving them.
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It is suitable for the online shopping experience. It gives confidence when you buy on a website you just came to know, and it has good ratings on Sitejabber. It is suitable for fashion, electronics, and marketplaces. I wish they added more SaaS and WordPress-related ratings on the platform, bringing in a whole new category of users to use Sitejabber.
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Pros
  • Maintains conversations indefinitely, so we are able to go back to confirm details from conversations.
  • Provides the ability for our company to have a 'team' messaging platform where we can communicate with one another via single person to a single person, groups where we can add/subtract members of the group... this is invaluable to our organization.
  • Until today(!), we could 'share' or forward a message to one another; oddly, that feature disappeared just today, so I'm hoping it's a glitch!
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  • Customer reviews.
  • Customer complaints.
  • Customer feedback.
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Cons
  • Account manager communications: I had been asking my Podium account manager for integration with our CRM tool for over 8 months before my account manager fell silent. After another 6 months, I proactively reached out only to find out that the integration had been in Beta for months and 8 other companies had already integrated. It was frustrating that my account manager did not remember a key request and make the Beta available to me the minute that it was open.
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  • I would like Sitejabber to extend the capabilities of the free version, it currently has several limits.
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Likelihood to Renew
Again, Podium has been so wonderful in the year and a half we have been using it, we are able to integrate it with our CRM and use alot of the available features. The most helpful has been getting TONS of reviews on MULTIPLE sites through Podium!
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No answers on this topic
Usability
While giving our clients the ability to leave a review was there, we had much worse results and got fewer reviews through the Podium portal than we did by sending our clients simple email requests, or simply having our service staff ask for a review while still on the clients' job sites.
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No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
We haven't had any outages or issues whenever we need it over the last few years of use
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No answers on this topic
Performance
It moves quickly and has no issues with delays. Performance is good as it is a web-based tool
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
I have to send an email to get information. They have a chat system but I end up having to go through my rep for account questions. It was a little frustrating to not have a direct phone number to call with questions. I would like to see a helpline added.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
We only had a hard time getting our technicians to remember to send the review invites.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
To be completely candid, I have not used another review software other than Podium. I've worked here for just over 2 years, and our company had just started using Podium. Podium has been useful and successful for our team; therefore, there has not been any reason for me to search for a new company. We are happy with Podium
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Sitejabber is a great tool for collecting genuine customer feedback to promote organizational growth while giving buyers and customers the confidence to explore before making a purchase.
Read full review
Scalability
Its easy to scale to different departments as needed. We initially began using it to solve one problem and as new features became available it was easy to scale this and include other departments who could benefit from its tools
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • I am glad there are card readers now, sales team members too often try to just send a request instead of taking payment onsite.
  • It's made capturing messaging leads much easier.
  • It's worth the cost but if it did a few more things it would be worth a lot more to us. Document signatures, surveying after jobs, even geotagging of photos/reviews for SEO
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  • Helped our business to overcome issues faced by customers which have increased conversion rate.
  • The reviews has helped us fix the UX issues on our website.
  • Our customer services were not resolving issues on time, because of the reviews left by others we have hired more staff on customer services to tackle issues.
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ScreenShots