Customer.io

Pros

As a SaaS company, product data integration was a key decision factor when picking our MAP. Customer.io was by far the best at leveraging product data in emails and became a key part of our workflow to detect and activate leads from Product.

Cons

The initial setup was quite complex because of what we wanted to do, but the Customer Success rep was very helpful.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub and ActiveCampaign

Reasons for Choosing Customer.io

We wanted to go for a "best of breed" approach and did not need most Hubspot for Marketing capabilities. Also, data integration.

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

Data integration capabilities and a pricing structure that worked with our metrics.

Pros

It's very easy to use and does 90% of what you'd need to automate your marketing.

Cons

Some of the UI choices over time have become worst, like elements covering crucial elements (eg. minimap when editing an email), and their push to become more of a CDP than a marketing software has made the platform more cluttered for those who, like me, want to use it for marketing automation. Lastly, but possibly most importantly, the fact that we still can't DUPLICATE a campaign is absurd. Having to re-create campaign settings each time is such a time waste, for a seemingly obvious (And simple) feature.

Alternatives Considered

ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo

Reasons for Choosing Customer.io

Customer.io is much more capable of managing multi-channel campaigns, with complex segmentation.

Switched From

Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

Price and ease-of-use.

Pros

Its complete environment, allowing you to perform all your marketing, newsletter and scripting tasks with ease
Everything is fluid and clear, making it easy to use

Cons

Perhaps the campaign model is a little more complicated to learn, but on the whole it's a complete and reliable system

Pros

Great and quick customer service, broadcast function works well

Cons

The data functions and the somehow difficult interface of campaigns and flow-building

Pros

It is very easy to use, even for someone who is just starting marketing or is not a professional.

Cons

The functionalities are quite limited when it comes to marketing and that was why I switched.

Pros

It can send emails based on actions triggered within our app.

Cons

The pricing structure. It assumes clients are B2B businesses, not B2C or e-commerce.

Alternatives Considered

SendGrid and Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

User interface and the ability to send emails triggered by in-app events.

Pros

Customer.io has evolved so much since I started using it! In the beginning, we had to use a lot of workarounds like sending leads via Zapier but they've made huge quality-of-life improvements. We can either use our data connectors to facilitate lead management but they also have a form connector that makes this process a breeze.I love how easily Customer.io connects to our existing data structure and makes it super easy to break down data silos across our suite of tools. The integrations are really easy to use!The campaign builder is super flexible and allows us to not only send marketing comms to our users but also to clean up data and use it to automate basic tasks within the platform. Emails are very easy to setup, especially with the ability to save rows and use snippets. This saves us time when creating new content. We also frequently use the display conditions for email as we have different offerings for users in Canada VS the US. This helps us really customize the content to fit the users' needs.

Cons

While Customer.io does offer SMS/mobile messaging, it would be great if they integrated with more companies so we had more options here.

Pros

Customer.io is the Klavyo of email marketing sequences but for SaaS businesses in my opinion. We had a great experience with the software and it brought us great open rates once you have set up custom domain tracking. It's very easy to use as well for how complex the software is.

Cons

Frankly everything was great except the pricing which is a bit expensive when you're starting out. They have a free plan for 6 months but then it's a big jump from free to paid, wish they had an intermediate plan at the time. It made us considering other choices.

Alternatives Considered

SendGrid

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

I chose Customer.io because it was more adapted to SaaS softwares.

Pros

Even though at first it might have a longer learning curve (because there are several functionalities we can make use of), I think it compensates having the ability to create complex workflows for email campaigns: there are several functionalities available, and we're always able to create the flows we ideate. I particularly like the “draft” option to test campaigns I've just set up and made live and that we're able to integrate with other data platforms, that enrich our trigger and filter capabilities.Excellent customer support. Even though we're not on the Premium plan, any of the queries we submit are answered within 24 hours and have detailed explanations or workarounds for the issues presented.They also have interesting webinars from time to time, with quite specific topics and tips.

Cons

Unfortunately, we're unable to move a contact manually within a workflow; which is particularly important for exceptional cases that we might want to override the rules because of a human or sync error. Another feature I'd like to have (but also seems to be missing from most similar tools), is the ability to have custom reports – though I wouldn't need this very often, thus it's not a dealbreaker at this point.The pricing is somewhat expensive, and we're not able to temporarily downgrade the plan (if by any chance our business has a seasonality).

Alternatives Considered

ActiveCampaign, Sender, SALESmanago Marketing Automation, SendGrid, Drip, GetResponse, Omnisend, Mailchimp, Mailjet and Intercom

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

Customer.io had more functionalities and/or better deliverability rate than GetResponse, Sender, Omnisend and Drip. It had also much better support than Sendgrid. It was less expensive than Salesmanago, Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign, though these options seemed also very complete and with excellent support. Mailjet was close when taking the final decision, as it also served well our needs and would be cheaper; that would be most likely our plan B. Finally, Intercom was also considered, but we ended up discarding the option as there was no specific email marketing plan. The functionality is available, but ends up not having a competitive price at all.

Pros

Very easy to set up and manage. The visual workflow builder, webhooks, integrations, and API are my favorite.

Cons

It's a bit expensive, especially if you have too many users, since Customer.io bills you based on the number of customers available in your account.

Alternatives Considered

Leanplum

Reasons for Choosing Customer.io

Because OneSignal doesn't have proper email and SMS marketing capabilities.

Switched From

OneSignal

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

We started using it with the startup program and then loved it!

Pros

The UI/UX is really great and intuitive. It comes with a lot of features and different channels. It can be used by many different types of people, from not knowing how to code at all, to more advanced users. Enabling complex possibilities.

Cons

Setting up our dedicated preference center required quite some time and resources. Plus it did break native campaign tracking as well as the native unsubscribe button. But they are coming with a new feature on this side really soon.The second pain is focused on data analysis. There is quite some interesting data point, but it can quickly get tough when you try to extract specific behavior or data point. They know about it and are working also on this big part of the product.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub and Segment

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

The core product strength, the great UX, a comprehensive and competitive pricing

Pros

The automations are the best part of the software. We can easily create any type of campaign and manipulate it for our needs.

Cons

It would be cool if we could just duplicate a workspace entirely with all the segments and campaigns instead of recreating everything. Another thing that would be cool is being able to do a dynamic wait. Or have a queue type of system built-in for webhooks.

Alternatives Considered

Constant Contact and Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

It auto-populated the customer attributes when we linked up Segment. It also had better logic control.

Pros

Easy to setup, easy to use. No constraints (unlimited comms, events, properties). Loaded with great features. Affordable for small companies. Great support.

Cons

Got a hard time setting up a couple features, but support is very responsive and got this done quickly. Otherwise, nothing really.

Pros

Easy to use! SSO is great. Very user friendly and support is very kind.

Cons

The HIPAA version was very expensive to sign for a small start up

Pros

Very easy to integrate with our platform. It has changed the way we look at customer engagement.

Cons

Customer profiles can be difficult to manually add and remove from marketing segments

Pros

Customer.io makes it so easy to create professional emails. I was able to jump in with very little training because the email-building features are so intuitive.

Cons

I've only been using Customer.io for about 3 months. So far I haven't run into anything that I feel needs improvement.

Pros

One of the biggest pros of using Customer.io is the ease with which you can set up and automate email campaigns. The platform offers a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to create customized campaigns without needing to know how to code. Additionally, Customer.io offers a variety of templates to choose from, which can save time and simplify the process.Another pro of using Customer.io is the level of customization available. Businesses can create highly specific customer segments based on behavior, demographics, and other factors. This allows businesses to target their messages to specific groups of customers and tailor their campaigns accordingly.

Cons

One of the main issues is the learning curve. While the platform is relatively easy to use, there is still a lot to learn in order to make the most of its features. Additionally, the pricing can be steep for small businesses, which could make it less accessible.Another potential downside is that Customer.io is focused primarily on email marketing, which means that businesses may need to use additional tools to cover other communication channels like social media or SMS.

Pros

It just does all of the things I need it to do and most are intuitive.

Cons

Sometimes there's weird quirks that you have to learn and figure out, but its not frequently.

Pros

I've been using CIO for an year and a half, and from the start I liked their clean UI and how visible everything is. Customer.io lets me be very creative when it comes to engaging people with emails. Their approach based on users behavior is fantastic and can create a lot of scenarios which would be hard to do with other tools. I can create really long flows that stretch for months, have each email in there be triggered or filter out users on the fly. Did I mention the awesome A/B tests? Very helpful support team as well.

Cons

I'd like an easier way to delete user profiles instead of mailing support to delete in bulk. Also, would love to have a way to download an automated report for all the campaigns instead of doing it manually.

Pros

- Easy to use
- Integrate with Segment
- Constant updates

Cons

- Could be complicated if it's your first Marketing Automation tool but you get the hand of it quickly

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Pros

My favorite thing is that they recently added functionality to remove duplicate email addresses from sends. Thank goodness!

Cons

Segmentation is tough. And we set up our account based on customer ID so we have kind of a data mess in there (multiple accounts with the same email address). But as long as you're using it as intended, for customer communications, it's perfect.

Pros

- Easy to navigate
- Newsletters and campaigns

Cons

- None yet -- maybe that I can't attach a file?

Pros

When we build new apps or startup prototypes for clients, Customer.io is one of the most reliable tools in our stack. It makes customer communication SO easy and intuitive, allowing you to easily group customers into segments, trigger communications based on specific events, etc. The API is easy to use too, and makes it really easy to integrate with your app at a deep level. I couldn't imagine life without it!

Cons

The only real complaint is pricing. If you are bootstrapping and don't have a ton of money to spend, it can be pretty prohibitive.

Pros

- The Features and customizations available

Cons

- The complications to bring about the automation.

Pros

It is a really detailed tool. Found it very useful to send out multiple emails in a flow. Allows you to create a workflow through which you can plan the email sent to customers. You can even put conditions to send it to specific users. Provides a number of integration options with other tools to interconnect the entire process.

Cons

As I mainly use it to build and send emails. The creating emails part does get tedious at times. The drag and drop builder isn't the easiest to use. It also has a limited amount of templates

Pros

Functionality is really great. It is easy to use, and the flow of setting up campaigns and broadcasts makes perfect sense. I've used the drag and drop as well as uploaded HTML into different campaigns. Testing is good, the omni channel approach all in one section is super helpful. It's built like a marketing manager had a say but a developer and engineer understood all the actual requirements.

Cons

Analytics and the reporting, as mentioned previously. The conversion rate should be more adjustable to show people who entered journeys and converted vs just how many emails were sent and conversions. It makes changing up campaigns a little tougher, but still doable with exports and managing the analytics manually.

Pros

I find the product to be user-friendly and enjoyable. The campaign builder is my favorite feature as it allows me to create intricate journey flows with ease. The 'wait until' action block has been a game-changer for me as it has minimized the need for engineering resources.

Cons

I've been using Customer.io for 6 months now and honestly, I don't have any complaints. Seems like for every issue I've had, the support team is dedicated to unblocking me. There are always ways to improve a product, but in terms of important game-changing features, they really thought of everything.

Alternatives Considered

Klaviyo and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing Customer.io

Customer.io saved us money and engineering resources. It was easier to use at our current size.

Switched From

Braze

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

Cost and level of support

Pros

I really like how easy it is to setup an email campaign and automate it according to users different attributes. We have a lot of onboarding campaigns going on in all languages and it is the best software we have with this kind of funcionality. Also, broadcasts are very simple to create and easy to track. The UX/UI of the platform is perfect, definitely the best one we have among the e-mail senders we use.

Cons

The template creation is very limited, forcing us to use other softwares and exporting the HTML code to customer.io. Also, the contact database is kind of messy, not very easy to find people, organizing contacts or filtering them.

Pros

customer.io is easy to use and very versatile. It has met all of our email marketing needs for both our web and mobile app.

Cons

customer.io has a bit of a learning curve at first with some of the advanced/pro features like customizing email messages, deploying api triggered messages, etc.... but the interface is very easy to use and when I had questions I could always get a hold of support for help.

Pros

The UI/UX is very smooth and clean, and customer service is spectacular. As someone who has used many ESPs, it's very important to me that I can work smoothly without interruptions. In my career, CIO stands alone in UI/UX among competitors. Our account representative is always available for help and consultations, and is always bringing value to our relationship.

Cons

It would be nice if there was an out-of-the-box solution for opt-in forms, but it integrates well with our third party app so this isn't a big deal. What they lack here is completely made up for in the quality of their platform and their integrations

Pros

- lots of needful integrations, e.g. BigQuery, Google Sheets- a simple to use, yet highly sophisticated tool for Email Marketing and Marketing Automation- Push notifications support- in-app messages support- webhooks - possibility of advanced segmentation of users by their attributes and behavior

Cons

- slightly limited drang&drop email editor

Pros

I like going to customer.io to crease sub segment of our users. The ability to filter user by attributes is very simple to use.

Cons

User filtering options can be more flexible

Pros

Getting set up and using customer.io was an easy experience. All our user attributes came straight via segment and we were able to target users based on their event behaviours within our product immediately.

Cons

The one thing I dislike is the load times between pages - compared with our other platform (Hubspot) its night and day with how quickly each page loads.

Pros

The platform has a steep learning curve, but once you get past that phase, it's truly powerful. Things that seemed impossible with other email clients are feasible with Customer.io. The drag and drop editor is also much better and runs much more smoothly than others I've used.

Cons

I'd say the biggest con is that it's a bit pricey. It can also be a bit overwhelming at first because there are so many features, but you just have to push through the learning curve.

Pros

Customer.io is an excellent email marketing platform. I made the switch from a lesser-known (and cheaper) platform that I had been using for a few years. I can clearly see the difference now, and I'm happy to pay more for the ability to engage my customers more effectively and access a wider range of marketing features, all in one place.

Cons

Customer.io is not yet the ideal platform for my projects. One limitation, for instance, is its restricted template language.It also lacks the ability to filter and count incoming events and dynamically insert these values into emails.

Pros

We love to be able to act based on everything that our customers do on our platform and our website. Campaign workflows are easy to build and maintain and UI is very intuitive.

Cons

We basically manage all our customer data in C.io and not being able to having KPIs and analytics related with customer actions and events is a little bit frustrating.

Pros

- really really good for customer journey communication, easy to build trigger based automation.- easy to integrate with many marketing, CRM & Data Tools- automatize SMS, Email, Push notification- highly functional for Campaign automation

Cons

- User interface bit tricky to get used too with it

Pros

It is very easy to use and the features are very intuitive.

Cons

Can't think of any. But i wish they could launch new product features faster

Pros

I'm kn the startup plan, and this product is an absolute requirement in my toolbelt. If Customer.io went away I would ne lost 🥹🥹🥹.

Cons

Nothing. This product is completely amazing lol.

Alternatives Considered

Outreach

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

The Startup Plan is amazing

Pros

Possible to make super complex flows. Pretty much replaces doing everything custom in our backend.

Cons

Nothing to dislike really. A bit complicated to use for new users, but probably because it's so powerful.

Pros

The customer service is superb. There was a learning curve to customer.io which customer service helped me with.

Cons

There are no features of customer.io I dislike

Pros

The features and capabilities offered are great for the price. Strong Customer Service as well.

Cons

Sometimes our/their APIs don't push data correctly.

Pros

The ease of use and the flexibility it provides

Cons

Sometimes the integration process can be a bit cumbersome.

Pros

1. Ability to customise communications using events and segments2. Responsive customer support

Cons

1. Very expensive for a start up2. Flow for within branches still need optimisation as users can not move from one branch to another if their status/attributes changes.

Pros

It's so easy to use, their sales and support team is the absolute best, and their features are way above average.

Cons

Nothing, I love it. I wouldn't change anything.

Pros

Despite never using Customer.io before, it was relatively easy to learn. Some features have a learning curve for sure, but I'm always able to figure them out plus the support from our CSM (shout out to [sensitive content hidden]!) and the deliverability team has been amazing. So grateful for them!

Cons

I'd love to have more customization in the email builder, and the ability to add a drop-down question in the subscription preferences center.

Pros

Customer.io is a pretty good, capable tool. Easy to get data in and easy to create communications and journeys for your customers.

Cons

I pay monthly and they will not allow me to right-size my usage to a lower amount until a year has elapsed. Really odd.

Pros

Using customer.io helped us create personalized messages to our clients based on what their job positions. The website is easy to use and the support team is really helpful.

Cons

Sometimes it's hard to understand their pricing schemes and some of the features are only available if you pay more. Also, the reporting could be more detailed

Pros

I've worked in many email marketing tools over the years and Customer.io is by far the easiest to use for every member on our marketing team! The drag and drop tool has really helped us achieve the same brand look across every email we send - and it's easy enough that even our copywriters can create emails. No designers or developers needed!

Cons

The only limitation is that I wish the dashboard and interface was a bit more user friendly. I feel like the image library is buried. I feel like there's so many impressive C.io features get hidden. I also wish you set your "Email Settings" in your Team Profile and those settings could be applied to every email instead of manually inputting them each time.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Mailchimp and Intercom

Reasons for Choosing Customer.io

We were not happy with the usability of Intercom for our Marketing Emails. The functionality of C.io was seamless and so easy to use for our entire team. As a designer, I was able to create a library of row designs tailored to our brand library so now anyone on the team can throw together a branded, well-designed email. C.io has made my job SO much easier!

Switched From

Intercom

Reasons for Switching to Customer.io

We had various demo calls with the alternative products listed above and C.io stood out to our entire team. The ease of use was unmatched. It was exactly the platform we had been looking for.

Pros

It's pretty simple to use and it has nice design, gets the job done

Cons

It has crowded UI. It's a bit hard to get around.