Podium

Podium makes it effortless to connect with Facebook users. The ease of interaction is so simple. We are catching leads that wouldn't have been possible before Podium.

The help desk is through their chat and it's not the best and sometimes pretty frustrating.

I chose the platform because I thought it was the only real option to replace ZipWhip which ends service in December. They were listed as a recommended vendor.

The people. They started out great, but at the onset I told them that most of the features they offered we wouldn’t use. And they didn’t have a Chrome extension, which we used a lot. But we needed a new text service as ours was going away. The cost was about 3x what I was paying and that was for the lowest level of service and they lock you in to a contract for a year. But I didn’t know of another option.I found Text Request, which is almost ZipWhip exactly, less than 48 hours after I signed their contract. I was transparent with them about Text Request really meeting our needs and price point perfectly and we weren’t paying for a bunch of features we wouldn’t use just to get texting. I asked to cancel before we even onboarded. They declined and said someone from legal would reach out. No one from legal reached out. They offered to move me to a more basic plan with a lower price point which, as I felt locked in, was willing to look at after I got back from vacation. Upon my return from vacation I reached out twice but that was the last I heard from [sensitive content hidden]. Out of the blue I got an email from another person at Podium cancelling my account. It just felt like a yucky experience overall. It felt like they are more interested in getting paid than making sure the platform is the right fit for their customers.

There’s absolutely no produce company. Other than the fact that they’re very good liars. They con you into signing up under false pretenses. They have zero communication. The only reason they have good reviews is because you can’t write -ones on any other social media accounts and I’d like to know where the reading five star reviews on Google when there’s no Google review to be found.

Yes, they are absolutely a con! They lied and misrepresented their business and strategies to me overcharged me. I had to dispute with my credit card company through several months, and now I’m being harassed by them for an outstanding bill of a month and a half of service that I never received. I’ve requested to speak to people and above positions with no luck and now I’m gonna have to have my attorney get involved. Do not do any business with this company.

I love the texting capabilities with podium. When a customer signs up for an appointment with my booking software (Acuity) they get a text from a real phone number that they can respond to. Other services send a text from a number that does not accept responses. This has by far been the best feature with podium for my business.

Getting the initial integration setup was a bit more complicated than I would expect, but once the integration was setup it has been smooth sailing.