UserVoice or GetSatisfaction?

We use UserVoice.

I don't understand why people are saying "UserVoice is too expensive" -- we're using the free version and it works great.

I like it better because:

1. It's simpler so you're more likely to get answers. Just say what you want, no deciding between feature, bug, message, question, etc..
2. It allowed anonymous users. You don't want to impose the friction of generating another account or giving a tool you don't know access to your Facebook or whatever.
3. It's free.

The advantage of GetSatisfaction is that it's more "forum-like." A grip about UserVoice is it's more like just a suggestion with very weak support for a discussion around that feature.

The key behaviour difference between them is that uservoice allows anonymous comments and getsatisfaction doesn't. At a practical level this means that you'll get more comments on uservoice than on getsatisfaction - for me this is more important than being able to track down every single poster.

BTW, both have free plans which are fine when you're getting started. It's not that big a deal to change later.

I've seen both. Startups tend to use UserVoice, and open-source projects tend to use GetSatisfaction.

Both offer very very similar product, but I have to say that just in using the two I much prefer to land on a GetSatisfaction page than a UserVoice one.

The only way to know which works best for you is to do a test of both and see which one you prefer - I have the feeling that this could turn into a 'religious war' where people like one and bash the other.

They're both great tools - no matter which you pick it would be hard to go wrong. That should take some of the pressure off your decisions - they are both already winners and would do what you want.

You can get started with either UserVoice or GetSatisfaction for free.

We're using UserVoice, because we found it works really well for a forum where your users can post feature requests and bugs/problems with your app. Right now, we are on the UserVoice free plan, but we will probably upgrate soon to a paid plan.

The one really big feature that's missing from the free plan is the single sign-on feature. This enables a user that is logged into your webapp to remain logged in after they click on the Feedback tab and go to the UserVoice support forum. The problem I am seeing is that users click on the Feedback tab, go to UserVoice, and post feature requests as Anonymous. This is problematic because there is no way for you to tell which user posted the feature request, and there is no way for that user to see your reply (unless they go back to the UV forum to check, which they probably will not do). If you know who posted the feature request, you'll also have the option to contact that person via email and have a back-and-forth conversation about his/her feature request.

If you're running a consumer site, you might not care to reply directly to specific users. We're running a b2b site, and we definitely want to reply directly to specific users posting feature requests.

UserVoice offers the single sign-on feature in their $89/month plan. GetSatisfaction offers that feature only on their $279/month plan. Obviously, the choice is clear.

We didn't evaluation GetSatisfaction as it required more from our users to put in feedback.

The challenge we found with UserVoice is that users can get confused with the top navigation band. Clicking on our logo on the uservoice page did not take users to the company homepage. We would need to get the high-end version of their product to customize this part and that is definitely an expensive proposition.

At the moment, we are debating using http://www.pligg.com/ or just a forum software on our site.

At our company, we were asking ourselves the same question, but ended up going with Assistly.

We love them. Feature-wise, we have our knowledgebase, Twitter, and Facebook comments all coming up inside the helpdesk along with email cases. It's nice having everything consolidated. They have really powerful macros which allow us to answer several help tickets at once. Their customer service is brilliantly fast and effective. If we ever have questions, they're answered the same day. They also have a live chat feature so that we can have real-time instant messages with our customers. It's costing us around $100/month, though we have several representatives with admin access. It would cost less with less people.

The interface is incredibly simple. They've transformed our customer service. Highly recommended.

Appreciate the nice comments about Assistly. Of course, these products all have their strong points -- at Assistly we just initiated a new pricing model, though, which gives every account their first Full-Time Agent absolutely FREE. Additional Flex (part-time) Agents are only $1 per hour of time used, which we hope will encourage companies to put all their employees in touch with the customer.

We've also added a gamification element to the product. We give you free Bonus Hours to use Assistly for free--just for using the product. We're not (entirely) altruistic here -- we think that the more your company uses our product, the more successful you will be, and the more Assistly you will need! Do you hear that Lion King music about the circle of life?

Assistly is trying to shake things up a bit -- but we're never going to change our commitment to deliver Customer Wow to our own customers. If anyone posting here has any question or needs information about Assistly, just write to us, or call us, or see us on Facebook, or Twitter . . . we'll get right back in touch!

Both of them are way too expensive. To me that means there is room for a new entrant in the market.

But, if you "must" go with one of them, just line of the pros and cons of each, weigh them, and make your decision. It's not going to be the same answer for everybody. Some people want anyone to be able to comment/feedback, others only authenticated users. Lots of other differences.

Uservoice.

GS is too expensive and requires your users to sign up. They won't bother.

Uservoice is good except for the voting method. The fact it punishes the most vocal users is silly. Uservoice does let anonymous users vote and create ideas though.

Basically GS is the high end premium solution for well funded startups: integrate it with your log in system and build it bespoke into your setup (songkick did this, works quite well) uservoice is the clunky cheap software. We use it.

We use GetSatisfaction for our website. The base-level plan is free, and includes widgets to get feedback from your website. The next step up is their recently announced $19/month plan. We're still using the free version at the moment, and it works fine for now.

Remember that unless you're in the business of making web forum software, tools like this probably don't fall into your core competency. It's much better to buy off the shelf (at a reasonable price) than to build and host your own.

I also use GetSatisfaction. Benefits:

• Users can subscribe to new topics that interest them so they can get involved
• GSFN handles communication with users including subscribing/unsubscribing
• It's dumb easy to set up

Cons:

• It is really, really public
• If you don't have a community of users willing to post on the web, you will look like an ass

That's pretty much it. The worst thing is a forum that isn't updated.

Sometimes I get "user support envy" when thinking about Zendesk and Uservoice but damn, I got enough stuff to do without implementing my own.

Very happy with gsfn.

Product info: B2B, average sale price ~$300

You could look around for open source alternatives. This looks interesting: http://www.openecho.org/ This would solve Alex Solomon's problem with the lack of single sign-in as it could probably be integrated into your existing login system.

No need to choose. We use Uservoice on our site for customer feedback ($45/mo with 50% startup discount). We chose it because the interface was cleaner, and the pricing much lower. We also set up an account with GetSatisfaction, though, and may link to it from our help section. More of a way to respond to customer problems, than get feature input. Still experimenting with the latter, though. Also looking at Zendesk.

One big difference is what happens when you click on the feedback widget... this may have started out as a way to provide ideas to help startups but GS has taken it to a different areal... it seems to have evolved into a crowdsourced forum crossing all sites.

On Uservoice: you get a list of ideas suggested by users

On Get Satisfaction you can decide what to have:

Ask a question or view top questions or subscribe to other unanswered questions..

Suggest an idea and view top ideas.

Report problems or give praise.

Allowing unregistered users to participate is an option in both get satisfaction and uservoice.

I agree with Denis - UserVoice allows users to post comments and suggestions without having to login. Although i prefer the GetSatisfaction solution overall, this single point is enough to determine my decision. Why put a barrier in front of someone who wants to give you feedback?

Just wanted to pop in and mention that we do offer a 50% discount on any of our plans for the first 12 months for any startup that is under 2 years old and pre-revenue. When signing up, just enter the coupon code onstartups101.

@Wes: Agreed, we're a little limited in that respect. We will definitely be improving the Feedback Tab this year.

If anyone has any specific questions for me feel free to ask here or drop me a line at the address below!

Evan Hamilton

Community Manager, UserVoice

evan at uservoice dot com

Get satisfaction is ridiculous because all admin users have to be 'employees' and have to wait 4 days to get approval from Get Satisfaction itself, when UserVoice lets people join admin almost instantly.

UserVoice has its own issues. There is no way to disagree or give negative votes and the voting system is ridiculous. GetSatisfaction is simpler from user's perspective. I also tried BubbleIdeas which provides more controls and a better UI than GetSatisfaction but it seems expensive.

Robert A.

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