Gist

SLICK Messenger Bot + Full Email Automation

Comments: Been using Gist for years now--replaced Active Campaign for me--and I'm able to do all the same things with a messenger bot, too!

Pros:

Gist's messenger bot is very powerful and you're able to put it on your website as well as all your subdomains. It's become the #1 way my visitors prefer to interact with me. I had no idea how much interaction I was missing until I installed it. Then add full email marketing and you're really flying!

Cons:

Gist is working to improve their speed through the browser. I wish the free plan allowed for use of webhooks like the paid plans do. But $29/mo isn't bad!

Streamlining Customer Communication and Marketing Efforts with Gist

Comments: Overall experience is good. The platform is feature rich and is hardly down

Pros:

Gist plays a crucial role in our organization as a communication hub that allows us to effectively engage with leads both on our website and through email. By using Gist's chat and email features, we are able to quickly respond to inquiries and questions from potential customers and provide them with the information they need to move further down the sales funnel.In addition to its communication features, we use Gist as a CRM to manage customer relationships. With Gist's contact management features, we can easily track customer interactions on our website and record important details such as their interest and preferences. This helps us better understand our customers and provide personalized service.Gist's email marketing platform is also a key tool for us. We use it to send out newsletters and other marketing materials to our customers and prospects. With its customizable templates and easy-to-use interface, we can create engaging and effective email campaigns that drive engagement and conversions.

Cons:

The integration plugin on the website can slow down the website speed, as shown on Google PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix. A few times, the platform is slow to send notifications to us when there's a lead/customer using LiveChat on our website.

Great CRM that is both simple, but powerful

Pros:

Gist has been essential to allow us to build processes, categorize leads, and manage interactions with our clients. We started to implement it as we wanted a good overall solution for the platform and kept using it for the last two years for the business. The leads trackers is super basic, but that simplicity worked for us to track the different lanes and statues of our clients and their projects. The chat bot was by far the most affordable option for us, and allowed our customers to simply reach out anytime they had a question.We did have a few questions for them a few times, and their customer support was a bit slow due to timezones, but they were always able to get to the bottom of the issue.

Cons:

Gist's platform has become a bit bloated making it hard to find certain options until you get familiar with how it works. Most of the settings are intuitive, but there are many times when you think a setting should be in one place, and it is in a submenu somewhere else. Not too bad once you get used to it, but after using it for a while, you do get a feel for how it is organized.Also, some of the tools are not super intuitive to setup and integrate with your existing solutions. They do support Zapier, but that requires a Zapier subscription to master the implementation.

+6 months I asked to have my billing information removed...

Comments: After I had this experience with the emails I told them to delete my billing information as I didn't want to be charged another $200 in December when the addons I purchased were due to renew. Its been 6 months and I just took matters into my own hands. I had to add a prepaid gift card to the billing info, switch the default card to this junk gift card. After this I could finally delete my actual credit card. I was not going to fight them on a chargeback this december. This companies support has really become crap like the rest of their services.

Pros:

The idea of using this software to run a ton of other things was very appealing, but it fell way short of this goal, left me very disapointed.

Cons:

I received emails telling me that my ability to send emails was suspended for sending spam. I was not sending spam, and somehow the double optin email form I had on the site was the only thing sending out emails. So on 2-3 different occasions I had my account suspended for spam I wasn't sending out. They always verified that I wasn't sending out anything and quickly restored my access. Then the time when I actually did have something to send, I had a page that was only viewable if you had a password that was given out on a business card. If you entered your email there, it would send you out something very specific for a hiring event I was trying to do. This flagged my email again as spam. Again a password protected page with a double optin, and my legit emails were flagged as spam. It was too much.

Gist is a powerhouse in the making

Pros:

The fact that EDMs, transactional emails, support chat, bots and knowledgebase features are all in the one place, connected by automation triggers and workflows is very useful. The scope of personalisation you can achieve by combining all these elements on top of a single user database which includes user behaviour is powerful.

Cons:

Some features a still underdeveloped such as the pop-ups, but I do see the Gist team making steady progress and am sure these items will be developed.