Not top recommended (based on 15 years of similar platform/solution experience)
Updated March 01, 2023

Not top recommended (based on 15 years of similar platform/solution experience)

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Braze

Customer engagement - specific channels are email and SMS. We do both promotional and transactional email out of Braze.

Pros

  • canvas UI
  • canvas testing
  • ability to have multiple environments

Cons

  • reporting is seriously lacking and very clunky
  • SMS is not well integrated - subscription / opt status is set up differently than email (feels like a bolt on)
  • SMS overall - response is extremely slow on anything SMS. Don't seem to have any internal SMEs and features are not well integrated into the platform. Cannot get send usage and they pass along all carrier fees.
  • account management/customer success
  • Drag & drop email editor is still very clunky
  • SMS - no access to incoming messages
  • SMS - link tracking just rolled out in 2023 and is still not fully available
  • Preference center isn't customizable
  • automation
  • facilitating customer engagement
  • performance measurement
  • minimal technical/dev knowledge required to manage
  • none yet
Braze has a bit easier UI - more marketer friendly than Adobe Campaign and SFCC. Better journey/canvas function than Oracle and Listrak. Probably better functionality for mobile app than Oracle (I haven't used Braze for mobile app but did use Oracle). Braze has the least capabilities on reporting. Oracle was much better on list health/deliverability management. None do SMS as well as a true mobile platform like Vibes, but I would say Braze is middle of the road among these that I've listed. Braze has only been better on account services than Adobe.

Do you think Braze delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with Braze's feature set?

No

Did Braze live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of Braze go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Braze again?

No

Probably great for mobile app (push, IAM) or mobile app plus email. Wouldn't recommend over some other options for just email, just SMS or email + SMS channels only. We've been surprised by some additional fees along the way, too. They were not fully transparent about carrier fees during the sales process so that has been a significant extra cost that we didn't plan for. Be sure to ask about that if they quote you SMS message CPMs.

Braze Support

Very responsive and helpful on simple questions, but not great other than that. They do not have a way for the customer/user to escalate a ticket. You have to contact your rep and in some cases, they don't respond within 24 hours so you have no idea if they have escalated it. There is no phone number for an urgent issue - you have to rely on email.
ProsCons
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Quick Initial Response
Not kept informed
Escalation required
Difficult to get immediate help
Professional level
Yes - It was not addressed immediately, or not communicated on the status once we reported it. We have had two bugs that we reported - on both we had to ask what the issue was once it was resolved. On one, we discovered it was fixed before support knew. They rolled out one of these bug fixes on a Friday two weeks before Christmas - very bad decision for a platform with many large retail clients that have peak business at this time. We were also not notified the bug fix was going in because they said it was "minor", however it caused a huge issue with a transactional email failing for multiple days.

Using Braze

Canvas is probably the best feature they have. Easy to build journeys and to build in A/B testing components, etc. Drag & Drop and a lot of the campaign creation elements are not as good as other platforms. Some pieces require very technical skills, like connected content. Their catalog function is supposed to be an easier solution for this, but it only houses static data, so it doesn't work for things like a product catalog.
ProsCons
Easy to use
Not well integrated
  • Segments, although you cannot build nested or any combined AND/OR logic on standard segment creation
  • Basic canvas building
  • Reporting
  • HTML and Drag & Drop email builder
  • deliverability - their processing of hard bounces and repeated soft bounces lacks maturity

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