Podium vs Weave: Which Is Better?

Podium vs Weave vs Emitrr – Introduction

Choosing the right communication software for your business in 2023 can make all the difference. 

In todays fast-paced and connected world; an automation tool that drives Customer Engagement and Growth is essential. 

From streamlining new customer acquisition to helping with retention through follow-ups, reminders, and reviews – the right software can help your business spread its wings and have a profound impact on your business’s success. 

Finding a software that can help you 

• Manage customer reviews across multiple platforms, 
• Provides text messaging & calls for communicating with customers and prospects,
• Integrates with multiple platforms
• Is HIPPA compliant, and offers secure and encrypted communication options
• Helps you understand your online presence and campaign success through analytics

are some of the key features that your software choice needs to have!

In this blog, we will be taking a deep dive into three of the most potent business communication software on the market – Podium, Weave, and Emitrr; and examine their features, pros and cons, and unique advantages. 

Whether you’re a budding business or just starting out, this comparison will help you make an informed decision, ensuring that you harness the full potential of technology that is provided by these tools.

Podium vs Weave vs Emitrr – Ratings & Reviews

Ratings and reviews are crucial to understanding how users feel about the product. 

Ratings

Let us take a look at the ratings of Podium, Weave, and Emitrr to understand how businesses feel about the product. Capterra, the #1 website for choosing better software, has the following ratings for the three platforms:

Overall Rating: The Overall Rating takes into consideration multiple aspects of the lifecycle of the products – from deployment to use to customer support. 

• Podium is rated at 4.3 stars
• Weave is rated at 4.2 stars
• Emitrr is rated at 4.8 stars

Let’s break down what contributed to the higher rating of Emitrr when compared to Podium and Weave.

• Ease of Use: Ease of use can be defined by a few important characteristics-
  • How easy is it to deploy the product
  • How well it integrates with other software
  • The end-user experience of the product
  • How streamlined the dashboard is, and
  • How compliant it is with HIPPA

The Ease of Use Rating for Podium is 4.4 stars, Weave is 4.2 stars, and Emitrr is 4.8 stars. This illustrates Emitrr is the Easier to Use software of the three ensuring a very small learning curve for your team. 

• Features: All three software come with a bunch of essential business communication features. Podium locks most of the must-have features for a higher price. Weave misses out on some essential features like Customer Surveys and Missed-Call-to-Text. Emitrr on the other hand offers a tailored feature list according to your business’s unique requirements – charging for features that you use and nothing more.  

The feature rating for Podium is 4.3 stars, Weave is 4.1 stars, and Emitrr is 4.8 stars. Providing core features with high optimization makes Emitrr better than Podium and Weave. 

• Value for Money: Pricing is one of the major considerations when choosing between alternatives. Are you paying a fair amount? Is the pricing justified for the features your business needs? Let’s take a look at the pricing of the three platforms: 

The ratings for value for money are self-explanatory. The cost of Podium is the most to unlock even the most basic features. 

The ‘Essentials’ package of Podium starts at $249 and only offers dashboard access to 3 team members and allows only 1000 contacts. The basic Weave subscription starts at $399, and on top of that businesses have to pay a $750 setup charge. Even the most essential Review feature is an add-on of $100. 

Emitrr offers all the significant features of both Podium and Weave, adding on some unique features driven through extensive research of the Customer Journey while keeping the costs manageable and flexible. You only pay for what you use with Emitrr.

• Customer Service: Whether it’s Onboarding, Account Management, TroubleShooting, or resolving Technical Issues, the software of your choice should have robust customer support that answers your queries and solves your problems in seconds – not days!

Here’s the customer service rating comparison between the three software:

• Podium customer service: 4.1/5
• Weave customer service: 3.6/5
• Emitrr customer service: 5/5

The customer service rating of Podium is 4.1 stars, and of Weave is 3.6 stars, but Emitrr’s customer service shines with 5 stars. The fact that Emitrr provides 24/7 live support in the form of calls, messages, chats, and emails (Tickets), along with a full-fledged knowledge base makes it the highest-rated in customer service.

• Likelihood to Recommend: “A strong likelihood to recommend reflects the true value a product or service brings to its users.”

The likelihood to recommend score for Podium is 67.8, Weave is 64.3, and Emitrr is 92.8. 

Emitrr has the highest rating across all aspects, with a very high likelihood to recommend rating. A superior product is only possible with customer satisfaction, and Emitrr strikes hard there.

Podium vs Weave vs Emitrr – Reviews

Reviews are crucial to understanding what customers say about your product.

Podium customer reviews

Key Pros:

• Ease of use

Key Cons:

• Expensive
• Bad customer support

Key Pros:

• Messaging transparency makes getting reviews more effective

Key Cons:

• Lack of Integration with software like Quickbooks and PestRoutes

Key Pros:

• Makes capturing reviews easy

Key Cons:

• Multiple issues, and unable to get clarity on what was causing them

Key Pros:

• List of features

Key Cons:

• Terrible Customer Service
• Billing Issues

Pros of Podium

• Integrates well with CRMs
• Core Features are present
• Automated Social Media posts for 4 stars and above rating

Cons of Podium

• Podium customer service is pathetic
• Contractual obligations with hard-to-cancel subscription
• Expensive, with bare minimum features
• Does not integrate with software like Quickbooks and PestRoutes

Weave customer reviews

Have a look at these Weave customer reviews below:  

Key Pros: 

• Streamlines services of businesses
• User friendly 

Key Cons:

• Inaccessible Customer Support
• Expensive product

Key Pros:

• Professional Appearance
• Specifically made for healthcare businesses

Key Cons:

• Features are bundled at a high cost even if you don’t need them
• Not entirely HIPPA compliant

Key Pros:

• Features

Key Cons:

• Regular Technical Glitches
• Long resolution time for issues
• Lacklustre Customer Service

Key Pros:

• Features

Key Cons:

• Customer Service is not helpful
• Abrupt price hike after 1-year contract

Pros of Weave

• Feature-rich business communication tool
• Customers can pay for services via text

Cons of Weave

• Non-HIPPA Compliant
• Technical Glitches and Issues 
• Lacklustre Customer Service

Emitrr

Key Pros:

• Responsive Customer Service Team
• Constantly adding features for better user experience

Key Pros:

• Ease of use
• Negligible Learning Curve

Key Pros:

• Streamlines daily interactions with clients

Key Pros:

• Tailored for every business’s unique requirements
• Value for money pricing

Key Pros:

• Feature rich with high level of customization
• Value for money

Key Pros:

• Completely HIPPA compliant

Pros of Emitrr

• Comprehensive HIPAA Compliant model
• Tons of Features
• Competitive Pricing
• Excellent Customer Support
• High level of customization
• Integrations across all major CRMs, PMS, EMR, and other platforms
• Constantly Evolving to add more features

Cons of Emitrr

• Some features are yet to come

Podium vs Weave:

List of additional features offered by Podium

• Podium app
• Podium chatbot
• Podium api
• Podium live chat
• Podium payment
• Podium reputation management
• Podium review management
• Podium texting
• Podium transcription
• Podium VoIP
• Podium webchat

List of additional features offered by Weave:

• Weave mobile app
• Weave messaging
• Weave VoIP
• Weave forms
• Weave desktop app
• Weave scheduling
• Weave portal & dashboard

Key highlights: When it comes to additional features, Podium offers much more than Weave.

Podium vs Weave: Alternatives

Check out companies like Podium and Weave below, if you are not that sure about either of these two options.

Alternatives to Weave:

Some of the best alternatives to Weave include, Emitrr, Brightlocal, Yext, etc.

Alternatives to Podium:

If you are not sure about using Podium then you can look at some of the best Podium competitors such as Emitrr, Birdeye, Chekkit, etc.

You can also look at this blog on Podium alternatives to know more!

Podium vs Weave vs Emitrr – Overall Comparison

Let’s see how the three software stack against each other in terms of features –

Features

1. Review Management: Nothing sparks more trust in your business than reviews by real customers. Review management software helps you automatically collect reviews online on the platform relevant to your prospective clients. The review management software also compiles all reviews across different review sites into a single dashboard for you to take action seamlessly. 
2. Business Messaging: Customers can reach out to your business through various channels, and it’s hard to maintain seamless conversation across all of them. A business messaging software brings all conversations from different channels to a single platform for you to respond to. And the more powerful softwares also automate replies!
3. Call Management: Does being a business owner mean forgetting what after-hours and weekends are? Not anymore! Business communication software helps your business by answering new customer calls, converting them to two-way text messages, and responding automatically ensuring no appointment is missed. 
4. Text Management: People prefer texts over calls. According to a study, 75% of Millennials prefer texting over Talking. Text Messages also have over 98% open rate, making them a highly effective communication channel. Any business communication software should provide your business with the following text message features –
   1. 2-way text messaging
   2. Group text messaging
   3. Missed call to text
   4. Broadcast/Bulk SMS
   5. Schedule-based text
   6. Text follow-ups (reviews, cancellations, payment, birthday wishes, reminders)
5. Integration: Different businesses have different pre-established software or technology stacks such as EMR (Electronic Medical Records), PMS (Practice Management Software), and Scheduling Software that the new communication software needs to integrate with.
6. HIPPA Compliance: Being HIPPA compliant means all interactions and conversations are end-to-end encrypted. This is vital for Healthcare businesses but also gives any other business an added advantage as the data related to your customers is safely stored and processed to ensure no invasion of privacy. 

Emitrr: The Better Choice Over Podium And Weave

After comparing the ratings, reviews, pros and cons, and pricing we can conclude that Emitrr is the better choice when compared to Podium and Weave:

1. Emitrr has better support. 
2. Emitrr is completely HIPAA compliant offering secure and encrypted business communication.
3. Emitrr has unique features like:
   1. Missed Calls to Text
   2. Webchat to text
   3. Text Follow-Ups
   4. Schedule-based texting
   5. Group Text Messaging
   6. Highly Customizable Deployment
4. Emitrr offers businesses to choose the features they want to use, and only charges for them.
5. Emitrr is priced competitively.

FAQs

Conclusion

The right software for your business depends on a lot of factors, but if you are looking for a software that handles all your business communication and review requirements, is HIPPA compliant, helps you grow your practice – and are confused between Podium and Weave, maybe you need to rethink your options and check out Emitrr. 

Confused between Podium and Birdeye? Check out our in-depth analysis here to make an informed choice!