TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Sparkcentral (discontinued) vs. Slate for Admissions

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Sparkcentral (discontinued)

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ASparkcentral was a social customer care solution and cloud-based customer engagement platform that catered specifically to customer care teams within large enterprises, enabling them to deliver real-time social customer service. Sparkcentral was acquired by Hootsuite in January 2021. The product has since been discontinued.N/A

    Slate for Admissions

    Score7 out of 10
    N/ASlate is a platform for admissions and enrollment management, student success, and alumni/advancement, from Technolutions in New Haven. Designed and developed exclusively for higher education, Slate by Technolutions supports the student and donor lifecycle, and provides a unified interface to CRM, outreach and communications, travel management, online applications, online reading, student success and retention, and alumni and donor engagement.N/A
    Pricing
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Slate for Admissions
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Slate for Admissions
    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
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Slate for Admissions
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Technolutions
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    4 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Slate for Admissions
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Khoros Service
    Score8.5 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Brand Embassy (discontinued)
    Score7.9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Slate for Admissions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (16 ratings)
    10.0
    (9 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.7
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.2
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Sparkcentral (discontinued)Slate for Admissions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    Sparkcentral has an extremely dedicated customer service team The platform UX is brilliant Reports are very detailed & easy to export The system is stable more than 98% of the time Queue management is extremely easy They need to work on a mobile app / making the website mobile friendly The ability to add more social media channels is essential
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Technolutions
    I would recommend Slate, by Technolutions for any higher education institution, big or small. Though there is a higher cost associated with Slate than most other options, it's well worth the price. The level of detail that you're able to gather, maintain, and query on within your student data is far beyond anything I've experienced with other systems. These insights help you pinpoint areas for action and improvement so that you can pivot when necessary, helping you reach your enrollment goals quicker and more efficiently.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • The biggest advantage of the Sparkcentral platform is its "inbox zero" philosophy. With this, our customer support requests are queued within the app, and agents need to work down the queue to keep it empty.
    • The app is designed from the ground up for customer care - instead of taking a generic social platform, and sprinkling in some customer care tools. Everything about Sparkcental is designed for helping our customers.
    • Sparkcentral allows us to do much better CRM. We can make customer notes, see recent interactions, determine who helped the customer (and when).
    Read full review
    Technolutions
    • Managing contacts.
    • Smart communications (drip email campaigns).
    • Real-time data management.
    • End-to-end control of product (or instance of).
    • Allows for easy to implement segmentation via smart rules and queries (data sets).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • In the beginning our team had the option to see what another user was typing as they responded to a post. With the latest update, this was taken away. That feature was key for us to shadow agents remotely who are still in training to provide real time feedback.
    • Our company has a number of different brands that we manage. Having a truly unified queue would be a great addition for us!
    • The bulk resolve should allow the option to select on the posts that you wish to resolve instead of selecting a time frame for bulk resolve. Often we find that marketing posts generate more volume in the evening. However, there are sometimes posts where the customer needs assistance during that time. So, if we were to bulk resolve for a certain number of evening hours we would potentially miss a customer's concern through that option as it is currently. But, if the option was to go through and select on all marketing posts and then bulk resolve you would ensure that you are not missing a post where a customer needs assistance.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Technolutions
    • Being able to have students register at an event without needing a wifi network
    • Easier way to update records for individuals who move to a different organization
    • Being able to start an application first without needing to immediately set up a user name and password.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    Sparkcentral has never given us a good reason to consider any other option. Aside from all the positive points I mentioned in previous areas of this review, something else that has really impressed us is their customer service (makes sense, they're a customer service company after all!). Any time we have a question or concern, we send them an email and we get a response almost instantly.
    Read full review
    Technolutions
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    The system meets all my expectations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Technolutions
    It's incredibly usable and easy to figure out. It's modern and does exactly what we need for it to do
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Incredible customer service team that replies back very quickly, follows up on the reported issue till it's resolved in a very timely manner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Technolutions
    While I do wish they had actual representatives that we able to come to you for trainings for implementation and new users, I understand that a big draw is the money that is saved by instead investing in knowledgebase, which is it's online tutorials for different functions of Slate.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    Sparkcentral does what it has offered to do, where other software made empty promises, Sparkcentral delivers. They also inform us, anytime they are undergoing maintenance or when Twitter or Facebook has an API change, where in previous cases we would have to discover this ourselves.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Technolutions
    We had been on Recruitment Plus- it has been sunsetted, so we were forced to move. I also looked at Fire Engine Red. Slate seemed far and away the most robust CRM/Admissions solution.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • Customers appreciate fast responses to the things they post on social media. This tool allows that to happen.
    • The dashboard allows us to keep up with how many are waiting in our queue so we can keep up with how busy we are during the day and manage it.
    • Customer satisfaction has seemed to increase while using this tool.
    • Being able to add notes with the customers address and phone info is awesome as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Technolutions
    • We aren't really a business, per se, but a nonprofit university. However, Slate[, by Technolutions] does allow us to easily sort applications into categories for different departments to review. And it provides a clear trail of who is looking at various documents when--and how long it takes to process them.
    Read full review
    ScreenShots