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Firstup

Firstup

Overview

What is Firstup?

Firstup (formerly Dynamic Signal & SocialChorus, merged in 2021) offers an Employee Communication and Engagement Platform that aims to create a connected, inclusive, and engaged workforce where people feel valued and empowered to be their best. Firstup can be used…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Firstup by Dynamic Signal + SocialChorus has proven to be a valuable tool for employees across various industries. Employees use Firstup …
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Dynamic and Determined

7 out of 10
October 07, 2020
Firstup is an optional communication tool for employees across our large organization. This tool helps us share news and other important …
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My Firstup Review

7 out of 10
October 02, 2020
Incentivized
Firstup is currently used organization-wide with the heaviest usage at our U.S. locations (does not work for most team members in China, …
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My life with Firstup

10 out of 10
September 06, 2020
Incentivized
We're using Firstup to better communicate with our front line associates across our company. It bridges a gap that currently exists …
Continue reading
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Awards

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Pricing

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What is Firstup?

Firstup (formerly Dynamic Signal & SocialChorus, merged in 2021) offers an Employee Communication and Engagement Platform that aims to create a connected, inclusive, and engaged workforce where people feel valued and empowered to be their best. Firstup can be used to generate UGC, enabling…

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  • Setup fee required

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Details

What is Firstup?

Firstup (formed from the merger of Dynamic Signal & SocialChorus in 2021) is an Employee Communication and Engagement Platform, committed to creating a connected, inclusive, and engaged workforce where people feel valued and empowered to be their best. From factory workers and field employees, to knowledge workers in any time zone, the vendor says hundreds of companies across every industry use Firstup’s web, desktop, and mobile applications to build aligned, productive, and actively engaged communities and employee advocates.

With Firstup, users can:
- Connect employees with the right information and resources they need to succeed.
- Communicate across channels so every message hits its mark.
- Enable employee advocacy and recruiting with quick, intuitive social sharing.
- Create an engaged community and collect actionable feedback.
- Reach deskless employees with an award-winning employee app.
- Measure everything to demonstrate value and optimize your strategy.

Firstup integrates with enterprise systems such as Microsoft’s SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Azure Active Directory, Salesforce, Workday, and Oracle HCM. Global organizations use Firstup’s technology, services, support, and education to transform the employee experience and drive transformative business results.

Firstup Features

  • Supported: Personalized News Feed
  • Supported: SmartContent and Feeds
  • Supported: Quick Links
  • Supported: Multimedia and Document Support
  • Supported: Content Translation
  • Supported: Broadcasts
  • Supported: Newsletters
  • Supported: Channel Integrations
  • Supported: Surveys and Polls
  • Supported: Commenting and Member-to-Member Messaging
  • Supported: Gamification
  • Supported: Shareable Content
  • Supported: Compliance Controls and Share Text
  • Supported: EMV Calculator
  • Supported: Responsive Dashboard
  • Supported: Analytics and Reporting

Firstup Videos

Firstup: Putting people first to lift companies up
Firstup: Reimagining a Better Digital Employee Experience for Everyone
Say hello to Firstup Email

Firstup Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesGlobal
Supported LanguagesEnglish, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish

Firstup Downloadables

Frequently Asked Questions

Firstup (formerly Dynamic Signal & SocialChorus, merged in 2021) offers an Employee Communication and Engagement Platform that aims to create a connected, inclusive, and engaged workforce where people feel valued and empowered to be their best. Firstup can be used to generate UGC, enabling employees to share on-brand content with their social networks​, and keep employees engaged with gamification (e.g. leaderboards, competitions, etc.), and through making their thoughts known through surveys and polls.

Elevate by LinkedIn, Staffbase, and EveryoneSocial are common alternatives for Firstup.

The most common users of Firstup are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(33)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Firstup by Dynamic Signal + SocialChorus has proven to be a valuable tool for employees across various industries. Employees use Firstup as an Employee Advocacy Program, allowing them to share important company news, job openings, blogs, product launches, and other announcements with their social networks and email contacts. This not only helps build brand awareness but also empowers employees to promote the company's brand messaging on their personal social media channels, removing the pressure of sourcing their own content. In addition, Firstup serves as a primary means of communication with employees, delivering consistent, real-time messages to those working in different locations or without email access. By replacing a combination of emails and printed notices, Firstup ensures that all employees receive relevant information at the same time. Whether it is improving internal communications, bridging the gap between support office and field associates, or serving as a mobile one-stop-shop for accessing benefits information, Firstup proves to be a versatile solution for connecting desk and desk-less workers alike. Furthermore, Firstup facilitates employee advocacy and social selling initiatives by curating content for advocates to share with their friends and followers - ranging from health and wellness stories to company-related content. Overall, Firstup's range of use cases demonstrates its ability to enhance employee engagement, improve communication, drive brand awareness, and generate leads through its dynamic features and capabilities.

Intuitive and Easy-to-Use Interface: Users have consistently praised the intuitive and easy-to-use interface of Firstup, with many reviewers highlighting how it allows for a seamless experience in scheduling activities and sharing company news on social networks. This user-friendly design enables users to quickly perform tasks and contribute to spreading the company's message effectively.

Excellent Customer Service: The accounts team at Firstup has received numerous accolades for their excellent customer service. Reviewers mention that the team is attentive and prompt in answering questions, ensuring customers are set up for success and can make the most out of the platform. The support provided by the team contributes to a positive user experience and helps users feel supported throughout their journey with Firstup.

Amplifies Brand Voice: Many users appreciate how Firstup helps amplify their brand voice beyond social media pages, resulting in increased brand recognition and awareness. By extending reach and effectively communicating messages to a wider audience, organizations can establish a stronger online presence and connect with their target audience more effectively. This feature has been seen as valuable in enhancing overall brand presence.

  1. System Outages: Some users have experienced multi-hour outages in the past year, indicating a need for better fault tolerance within Firstup.

  2. Cumbersome App Updates: Updating apps, especially in the Apple store, has been described as cumbersome and requiring too many steps by some reviewers.

  3. User Management Challenges: Reviewers have mentioned that user management around rehires is problematic since there is no mechanism to unsuspend users automatically if they are part of a new user upload.

Based on user reviews, users recommend using the self-hosted version of Firstup instead of the cloud version to minimize service disruption. For Dynamic Signal, users suggest having dedicated admins for daily maintenance and promotion of the platform. Regarding SocialChorus, users recommend being patient in gaining a large number of active employees and being open to new ideas. These recommendations highlight the importance of considering specific deployment options, allocating resources for platform management, and fostering a supportive environment for employee engagement.

Reviews

(1-16 of 16)
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Anat Hazanchuk | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Firstup as our Employee Advocacy Program at PD. We use this platform to get our employees to share company news, job openings, blogs, product launches, and other announcements to their social networks/email contacts and spread brand awareness. We have the majority of our employees active on the program and it's had positive feedback!
  • Easy for managers to schedule out activities for employees to share with their networks.
  • Easy for employees to connect social networks and share company news directly within the platform.
  • Great customer service- the accounts team is very attentive and answer questions quickly to get customers set up for success.
  • Promotion of organic corporate content- would be great to get amplification of posts that are directly on the corporate channels instead of having them shared on individual employee accounts.
Firstup is a well-suited solution for companies that would like to spread brand awareness and get employees to be their number one ambassadors. Employees like to share/brag about the company they work for so why not use them as a driving force in spreading brand awareness!
October 07, 2020

Dynamic and Determined

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Firstup is an optional communication tool for employees across our large organization. This tool helps us share news and other important messages with employees who are not sitting in front of computers during their workday.
  • Intuitive, easy-to-use templates for posts, newsletters and email notifications.
  • Consistent upgrades and innovation that keeps the tool current with other apps.
  • Flexibility on how users can use the tool (i.e. comments, sharing photos, etc.) This decision is left to each organization, individually.
  • There is room for improvement to make this a primary communication tool, including more ADA compliance features for users, more robust reporting options for administrators and additional options to filter user profiles for an enhanced app experience.
  • Although our experience has been quite positive, I do think there is room for Firstup to learn from industries outside of their own. I feel some of their recommendations (and assumptions) are based on the experience inside their own walls. We don't run business the same way. And to assume we should do business their way for the sake of the tool seems like a misstep.
I stand behind Firstup and the form of communication they are working hard to integrate in the workplace experience across the world. Where I pause is the support structure. I've been lucky with the Customer Success Managers I've been assigned and I'm so grateful for their support and partnership. But when issues need to go above my CSM, I don't feel as supported. I feel more time is spent on telling us how we're incorrect (i.e. remedial explanations, unrealistic expectations to troubleshoot, etc.) than listening to resolve issues together.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Firstup is being used across the whole organization globally. We implemented it as an employee ambassador social program and have recently implemented it as our main internal communications platform. It serves our purposes for content discovery, easy sharing of thought leadership, and internal communications.
  • Breadth of features
  • Advanced customizations
  • Ability to fully manage the platform internally
  • Customer service
  • Pricing increases
  • Internal communication features, specifically as an email service provider
The platform is well suited for content curation, social sharing, and internal communications.
The platform needs improvements and more features for the email service features for communication.
Raleigh Decker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Firstup delivers consistent, real-time communications to our team of employees whether working in the plant or in the office. We used to rely on a combination of emails and posting printed notices by the timeclocks. Now, everyone in the company gets relevant, targeted information at the same time. This has been especially impactful during COVID-19 when half of our workforce went remote overnight.
  • ROI--Creating a business case showing the positive impact an app will make
  • Customization--We can easily send targeted communications to our team
  • Support--Even after the sale, we've felt supported by the sales team and the Customer Success team
  • We'd love to see a calendar added that would show key upcoming dates.
  • It would be awesome if the Message feature had a drop-down directory you could scroll through vs. requiring you to type a few letters before the potential names came up.
If you have fragmented communications, if you're not using an Intranet, Firstup will be life-changing.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
FIrstup is being used by several different teams across the enterprise. It helps employees share approved content to their personal social media channels. It helps remove pressure on employees to source their own content and helps us track performance.
  • Reporting
  • On-demand resources
  • Experience in the marketplace
  • Reduced customer success team
  • Automatic nudges for employees to log-in and share
  • UX lacks compared to other platforms
Firstup is a nice platform for the price; however, if your team wishes to have access to customer success and support, you will not find it with them.
October 02, 2020

My Firstup Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Firstup is currently used organization-wide with the heaviest usage at our U.S. locations (does not work for most team members in China, unfortunately). It is used primarily for internal communications to connect both desk and desk-less workers to need-to-know information alongside strategic storytelling.
  • While it can get complicated, Firstup allows for very advanced targeting of content to team members by location, role, shift, and more.
  • Firstup quick links offer a great way for team members to access commonly searched for resources like COVID protocols, payroll calendars, important contacts, local events, and more.
  • Native video sharing and embedding of Youtube videos is a great way to easily introduce a blend of content mediums.
  • Customer service could be improved in some areas.
  • There have been some recent availability concerns regarding server errors, etc. that have caused some frustration.
  • In terms of functionality, the back-end of the platform is very complicated and difficult to train other team members on how to manage.
  • The differences in targeting between posts and broadcasts can be confusing and difficult to manage well.
I think it's a great product that ultimately has a lot of room for improvement. If you're looking for a platform that's easy to set up and get team members trained on in terms of managing content and the back-end, I don't think Firstup is the appropriate solution. If you have time to invest and full-time team members who can dedicate themselves to being experts on managing the back-end, then this app is a better solution for you. If targeting communications, sharing videos, photos, and files to deskless workers is important, this is a good solution. Be very thorough in understanding the technology available to your team members (i.e. how many have smartphones, etc.). Also, you need to keep in mind that this will only work on iPhones in China. In our experience, most Chinese team members do not have iPhones.
September 06, 2020

My life with Firstup

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We're using Firstup to better communicate with our front line associates across our company. It bridges a gap that currently exists between the support office and the field. We are currently in pilot (roughly 1500 participants), but we intend to launch company-wide in October. We will share company news, successes, and initiatives that we currently only share through in-restaurant meetings.
  • The app is extremely user friendly and similar to the type of apps our younger associates currently use.
  • The availability of quick links within the app is great to direct our associates to resources they tend to forget about.
  • On the back end, the experience has been seamless for our IT Crew who have helped to develop the app.
  • While having the app tied directly into Workday is great for many reasons, it also creates some amount of difficulty in targeting specific groups of people if they don't match the Workday hierarchy.
  • Our associates in the field use Workday on a limited basis, so remembering their Workday login information to log in to the app is challenging. It would be nice if they could have a different password for the app.
Firstup is great for sharing information with our front line associates. We currently have no channel beyond in-person meetings to communicate company initiatives to our crew. While Firstup isn't a replacement for that, it's a supplement. It serves as a way to reach people who may have missed the meeting. It also serves as a reminder and/or a way to reengage with topics we've already discussed. It's also a great way for our CEOs to get video messages out directly to associates. (This is something we can do for managers via email, but we cannot currently do for associates.) It's less suited for training. For the company, participation is optional, so this will always be a supplement and never the primary source of information.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Firstup is used as part of our global Program to empower our employees to easily promote our companies brand messaging. It is our key tool used as part of our employee advocacy program and helps us elevate our social media posts.
  • Splitting audiences so that content can be targeted.
  • Ease of use in terms of getting content onto the platform.
  • Wide range of functions/options.
  • Limitations on layout preference.
  • More functionality needed to be used as a social tool rather than an internal communications tool.
  • Confusing "native buttons" for engaging with social content.
Firstup would be best suited as part of an overall communications tool where social sharing is part of its goal but not the main one. Firstup would benefit from working on its social interactions to make them more prevalent for those looking to use it as a social amplification tool first.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Promote new ideas and products. Very helpful in getting our word out to the masses. Highly suggest because it is a great and subtle way to get our new products in front of the individuals (on social media) that would be the decision makers or the influencers to the decision makers.
  • Choosing when we can post.
  • Auto posting feature.
  • Informative.
  • Ability to share industry news to valuable connections.
  • Ability to relay messages on multiple platforms.
  • How to get more clicks.
  • Suggest posts for others within our organization.
  • Add a feature which shows which posts are "waiting to be posted," to void posting article twice.
We were launching new products and this was a great way to post articles and get the word out on our new products and or services. I have many connections on my LinkedIn and being able to share the most up to date industry news and events, is a very helpful tool. Maybe there is a way to connect it to events within our organization to share pictures that the group could share to LinkedIn, etc.

It is less appropriate for sharing opinion pieces and/or articles only concentrating on one aspect of a situation instead of multiple. It's great that we can share articles that are not just "organization specific" and more industry-wide.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Firstup is being used by our whole organization. It is our primary means of communication with employees. We also use the quick links as an entry point to many essential systems to drive users through the communication platform. It helps us reach employees where they are, especially for our employees that do not have email access.
  • It looks professional and creates trust.
  • They worked with us to ensure a seamless authentication for SSO.
  • It simplifies the back end article creation process.
  • It reports well on our outreach metrics.
  • Their weekly customer success meetings keep us in the know.
  • In the past year, we've had a couple of multi-hour outages. They could do better at fault tolerance.
  • The steps required to update apps is quite cumbersome, especially for the Apple store.
  • I have problems with user management around rehires. There is no mechanism to unsuspend users automatically if they are in a new user upload.
Firstup is good for when most of your users are on mobile. It is also a requirement that the links be accessible from outside your network. This was a challenge for us. We found the desktop app to be redundant to the web site. The only benefit was the alerts you would receive while it was open. If your employees are not comfortable with online communication, be prepared for extra work. I could also see it being less useful in a small company where you have fewer "stories" to tell.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Of course, my organization uses DS for its designed purpose--to communicate with associates across the enterprise about events, accomplishments, and important announcements. But we leveraged Firstup early to be the mobile, one-stop-shop for associates to access information about their benefits. It isn't a required resource, but the majority of associates use it because of the convenience it provides.
  • Intuitive user experience
  • Simple administration
  • Strong product support
  • No deep links to other apps
It works great for our hourly, geographically distributed workforce. It's not only a resource to look up benefits, but also a resource for learning about benefit options associates may not know exist. By making it the opening browser page, it's an easily accessible resource for our computer-bound associates as well. It's a one-stop-shop for associates, and as the functionality grows it will become even more useful.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Firstup was rolled out to all corporate employees at our organization across the U.S., but our primary focus was to use the platform for Employee Advocacy - giving employees a quick way to share news about the company with their external audiences. Thus, we focused use of the platform to a targeted group of internal influencers. The plan is to grow this group of users every year to eventually integrate the whole organization.
  • They take the time to listen and partner with you to find solutions and opportunities to best take advantage of the platform.
  • Firstup is great at using data to help build internal business cases for the benefit and value (ROI) of employee engagement for the organization
  • Helping their clients network and connect with other clients to solve common problems, together.
  • Would be great to have better visibility to the roadmap for new integrations or solutions that DySi is working on.
  • Finding better solutions to integrations with other internal platforms an organization has.
Firstup is a great tool for newer companies that don't already have a suite of platforms that they already use, as it offers a great one-stop-shop for internal communications and employee advocacy. Their apparent focus is on the platform as an internal communications tool and resource tool for companies.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Firstup to better enable employee advocacy and social selling initiatives. It is open to the entire organization, but used primarily by Sales and Marketing. We use it to provide employees with curated content they can share to their social media channels to drive brand awareness, web traffic and lead generation.
  • Firstup does a great job with account service, especially onboarding as a new client.
  • The platform supports a number of integrations (off the shelf and custom) to better connect the tool across your marketing stack.
  • The DySi UI can always continue to improve to help platform managers better manage their user community.
  • More robust social sharing functionality would be great to see.
Works adequately as a social selling platform, in that the basic functionality is there. Recent improvements have really positioned it as a full-featured internal comms platform.
August 26, 2020

Dynamite Firstup!

Jordan McDaniel Hinkebein | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Firstup is used by our sales teams, marketing team, and execs to build brand awareness about different specialty services we provide, case studies we have done, and company news. We use it to promote ourselves and our brand on social media. It helps our teams because they don't have to come up with the posts themselves - marketing handles that, and the team just shares it to amplify the voice.
  • Extremely easy to use - from a management standpoint and a user perspective.
  • Helps amplify the brand voice beyond brand social media pages.
  • Gets our brand recognized and raises awareness.
  • Shares "wins" within the company about new hires, promotions, cool projects, etc.
  • I manage an exec's account, and I wish I could log in to my account and toggle to his to manage it rather than having to log in separately. Other than that, I truly can't think of anything!
It is well suited when trying to amplify your brand voice and get your brand recognized beyond just your brand social media pages. Firstup also allows the marketing team (or whoever owns the account) to use the brand language and ensure the posts are on-brand because we write the posts, and then our users just share the posts to their personal accounts.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have approximately 2,000 associates using Firstup as the platform for our employee advocacy program. We curate content for our advocates and then they pick and choose what they would like to share with their friends and followers. The content ranges from general health and wellness stories to other stories more related to our company.
  • The platform is easy to navigate on the user end.
  • Firstup has a top-notch customer success team that is always available to help you get the most out of the platform
  • The reporting data that the platform provides is very useful and customizable. You can break down activity by the post, by the user, and several other ways.
  • The admin console can be a little confusing at times (specifically, setting up leaderboards)
  • The Firstup platform no -longer tracks Facebook reactions, comments, and reshares.
I believe it is phenomenal for one-way communication and article sharing. We only use it for advocacy, but I can see how the capabilities of the platform would make for a great employee communication system. Messaging can be targeted and sorted to specific audiences and you can even get stats on how the messaging was received/read. I love DS for its content curation system. You can set up RSS feeds to be reviewed for easy publishing, accept submissions from users, or manually add your own content. It allows you to maintain a personal touch on something that is seemingly automated.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Firstup was implemented across our entire organization, everyone from the marketing team to our DevOps engineering team had access to the program. It was implemented to help share our story on social media and to help build personal brands of our employees through thought leadership posts.
  • Makes it easy to post on social networks
  • Spread the news of a company with just a few clicks
  • I would have liked to have more communication directly with a customer success rep during implementation
  • Setting up social posts
  • Automating more of the system on the backend
Firstup was very good at making it easy for our employees to share the news of our company, however getting engagement from all groups found to be difficult. We did many trainings, competitions, but could not get engagement on all levels. People either really saw the value of the product or never signed in.
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