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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Podium

    Score7 out of 10
    N/APodium, formerly Repdrive, is a ratings and review management platform from the company of the same name in Provo, Utah.N/A

    Zendesk Sunshine Conversations

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/AZendesk's Sunshine Conversations (formerly Smooch.io) lets users unify messages from every channel into a single conversation, and build interactive messaging experiences anywhere. Smooch was acquired by Zendesk in May 2019.N/A
    Pricing
    PodiumZendesk Sunshine Conversations
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    PodiumZendesk Sunshine Conversations
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    PodiumZendesk Sunshine Conversations
    Considered Both Products
    Podium
    No answer on this topic
    Zendesk
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    58%
    Would buy again
    19 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    58%
    Delivers good value for the price
    15 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    64%
    Happy with the feature set
    21 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    52%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    15 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    59%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    PodiumZendesk Sunshine Conversations
    Small Businesses
    Affinity CRM
    Score9.2 out of 10
    GoTo Connect
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Hunter
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Quadient Inspire
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Quadient Inspire
    Score9.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    PodiumZendesk Sunshine Conversations
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.9
    (43 ratings)
    7.6
    (5 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    7.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (13 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    PodiumZendesk Sunshine Conversations
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Podium
    Podium is well suited for several types of businesses. If you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, Podium would be a great way for you to ask that customers leave you a review online sharing their awesome experience. For medium to large businesses, Podium review invites can be automated through the company's customer management system, allowing the use of Podium to be simple and not timely, even with a large customer base. It may not be appropriate for a large company to manually send out individual review invites
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    Is a cost-effective platform that will help you to have a better communication with your customers and users. Easy to integrate with most common platforms with key reporting features if you care for customer experience. In terms of compliance, does a great job on the ability to check customer data and where is stored, for GDPR this was a key feature.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Podium
    • 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!
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    • Connects all customer data
    • Easy to connect
    • Easy to use reporting
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Podium
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    • Support for special characters (ñ and accents)
    • Better integration with exsiting tickets in ZenDesk
    • Android App is lacking
    • Support for mobile browsers
    • Support for iOS devices
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Podium
    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!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Podium
    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.
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    No answers on this topic
    Reliability and Availability
    Podium
    We haven't had any outages or issues whenever we need it over the last few years of use
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Podium
    It moves quickly and has no issues with delays. Performance is good as it is a web-based tool
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Podium
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Podium
    We only had a hard time getting our technicians to remember to send the review invites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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 effective or flexible as Podium so we have been using Podium at those dealerships alongside Digital Air Strike. We also recently started a trial use of ReplyPro which is a service that monitors review sites and writes customized responses to positive reviews and suggested responses to negative reviews. I'd like to see Podium add this as part of their service so we can consolidate 3rd party vendors and manage every aspect of online reputation management from one place.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    First and foremost, we are able to send responses quicker. In the past, a team member had to go out every morning and share queries. That meant we would take almost 24 hours to respond. Now with Zendesk Sunshine, we had automated the conversations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Podium
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Podium
    • 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
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    • Overall I have great experience with Zendesk Sunshine Conversations
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots