TrustRadius for Buyers

I used many other review websites such as IT Central Station to accompany TrustRadius. I liked that IT Central Station was able to provide a side-by-side comparison between two different software, as that is helpful in the process of elimination. I wish that TrustRadius would implement a feature similar to this for easier comparative analysis.

I used G2 Crowd and we also met with Gartner. The reviews of the 2 CRM systems we are considering were comparable. The ease of use with TrustRadius really helped complement other sources.

1. Google
2. Blogs
3. The company websites
4. Excel spreadsheet to keep track of who had what feature

I researched many sites on the internet, & found TrustRadius one of if not THE best. It complemented & confirmed what others said & vice versa.

I used G2Crowd and Quora. Quora had just a list of possible companies. I found G2Crowd messy: there are too many overlapping results. However, they do have one cool feature - they summarise the pros and cons of each company in a very short and efficient manner. They also have reviews, but I didn't find their website as transparent as TrustRadius.

I used other sites that are providing reviews - such as TrustPilot, for example. Although most of the other sites do not give you the more advanced options available on TrustRadius (comparisons, alternatives and such), using several different resources allows you to get a more complete picture regarding the specific product (if everyone complains about it, you may want to take that into consideration).

Of course talking with vendors and their references. What helps a lot is reading TrustRadius reviews before talking to referrals. That really helped me formulate better questions.

Mostly just information found on various sites via Google.

Reddit, Quora, G2Crowd, Siftery.

Reddit and Quora have more opinion-focused content, but you can get honest reviews.

G2Crowd tends to be too broad. Siftery is the biggest competitor because their comparison tools are very accurate.

I used the website of the product and reviews on the website to compare across various alternatives. I also used alternativeto.net.

White papers and technical documentation provided by the manufacturer

I read websites, blogs and other pages that make reviews. I do not like to stay with only one point of view. Many times, and to have more confidence, I look for different people to validate my point. This gives me confidence in the person who writes the review and how it is understood.

I've read a lot of detailed blogs which explained the pros and cons in more detail than usual. It was quite a long read which can be dreadful. By reading the reviews on this site, I was able to get a quick overview of the opinions and ratings of the product.

Looked at other review sites. Many were useful on price of tools but not balanced on independence of review process.

We spoke with the sales teams of the vendors we were most interested in, as well as looked at the vendor's sites. Often the vendors had some white papers and webinars that provided more information. However, it was a lot more time-consuming to go through these resources, and using TrustRadius was very valuable in saving us time by highlighting the pros/cons of each vendor.

I used the vendors' resources to ensure that I was seeing the most up-to-date product offerings, which were not always reflected in the TrustRadius reviews.

One example of another resource is Gartner. It is useful in being able to compare products and know about trends in that space. But I find it helpful to also real reviews from real users.

Mainly Google, I'll look around and find out what I can. It's also hard to find one place for reviews - most are scattered amongst different articles. People also heavily rely on word of mouth, so this allows small business to really be in the know when it's just a small team that hasn't had much experience.

I usually just google the product names I'm looking for, and hop around reading various results. Before TrustRadius, I didn't have a specific go-to site for reviews.

Just go on-line and browse, consumer reports!

Recommendations from people in my industry on FB and LinkedIn. Also, I have used the StackExchange's forums to get a point of view from a fellow professional. I feel like the use of all of these sources together constitutes the best I could possibly do short of purchasing the software myself and testing it.

We used Gartner and other analyst reports. They were helpful as a deep dive on the company and market position of products, but TrustRadius is better for knowing what "people like me" are experiencing with the product.

Also looked at G2.com, financesonline.com, capterra.com and softwareadvice.com. I like G2's grid - it seemed to include more software than the one on TrustRadius. I like that FinancesOnline provided their own score. That helps balance out the user scores. Capterra has these great speedometer type graphics that make the data easy to read. SoftwareAdvice does not allow you to search for a specific company and is difficult to use.

I use the vendor data then I call in other users for references. I read other reviews from other websites and compare each of the reviews to see how they all relate, confirm and complement each other. There might be other topics that the other reviews cover that are not always covered in the vendor data or other sources.

LinkedIn is a great resource for getting product information and feedback as well, and I am part of a specialized Facebook group that discusses products relevant to our business as well.

Understandably, this section isn't as relevant when reviewing the review site. But, I certainly had other review sites in mind when evaluating TrustRadius. Even sites like Yelp & TripAdvisor influenced my thoughts about TrustRadius.