Customer.io vs. HCL Unica

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Customer.io
Score 9.4 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Customer.io is a customer engagement platform that enables marketers to build sophisticated automated messaging campaigns. With access to real-time behavioral data, users can create personalized and relevant messages to engage and retain customers. This includes sending emails, push notifications, SMS, in-app messages, and more through a visual building experience. Built for scale, Customer.io boasts users among over 5,300 companies, sending over 17 billion messages per year.N/A
HCL Unica
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
HCL Unica is available as a cloud or on-premise solution that provides fully integrated marketing automation software for enterprise. It includes enterprise marketing automation tools that optimize marketing activities, to ensure excellent customer experiences and data privacy.N/A
Pricing
Customer.ioHCL Unica
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Customer.ioHCL Unica
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional DetailsEssentials: For startups and small teams engaging customers on their mobile and web apps. - Up to 5,000 profiles*, Send Emails, Push, In-App, and SMS, Visual Workflow Builder, Segmentation, Two Workspaces, Email Support, Customer Community Premium: For high-growth companies looking for greater control over their messaging outcomes. - Everything in Essentials, Custom Data + Message Volume, Premium Product Features, Additional Workspaces, 90-day Onboarding Program, Premium Email & Chat Support, Managed Deliverability, Dedicated IPs, Parcel Pro Licenses, HIPAA Compliance Enterprise: For at-scale companies looking to create world-class customer experiences. - Everything in Premium, Managed Infrastructure*, Customer Success Manager, Quarterly Success Reviews, Technical Account Manager*, Audit Logging & Data Governance*, Parcel Business Licenses, Migration Support*, *Available by consultation.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Customer.ioHCL Unica
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User Ratings
Customer.ioHCL Unica
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Customer.ioHCL Unica
Likelihood to Recommend
This tool is well-suited for companies looking to run email marketing campaigns or send out newsletters regularly to their users/customers. The workflow setup is especially useful for companies who want to send specific emails based on user behavior - i.e. they've not logged in recently, have bought a specific product, haven't opened any emails, etc. This could also be useful for freelancers like me since you can create different workspaces within Customer.io. I have configured it this way to handle email marketing for a few of my clients, and the software keeps everything organized and separate. This might not be the best tool for small businesses, considering the price. It may be better to start out with a cheaper email marketing tool, and then if/when necessary, scale-up with a tool like Customer.io.
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Extremely well integrated in the TelCos and Financial Services areas. Retail & Online Gaming are the next big sectors. Real Time capabilities via IBM Interact are starting to come to the fore as marketers start to understand the necessity for true reactive CRM. Additional functionality using IBM Distributed Marketing is also another very powerful area for the future, allowing regional marketers to fill out web based forms, which initiate and run flowcharts & email delivery automatically.
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Pros
  • Ease of use, a good tool for non programmers, or not so tech savvy people.
  • Great support, willing to help a lot, by chat, calls, or screen sharing.
  • Fast updates, it's a newer tool, but they are coming with fixes and updates fast.
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  • Campaign treats a marketing campaign as a discrete entity that is made up of one or more flowcharts, which are in turn comprised of one or more processes.
  • IBM Campaign performs actual data manipulation live.
  • Users do not need to know SQL to design campaigns.
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Cons
  • I may be missing it in the UI, but a place to see the list of emails who qualify for a certain email.
  • One easy to view chart of all our automated/lifecycle emails to see what a given user would see over their customer journey. (This is really just a feature request/idea - the product itself is really awesome.)
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  • Not suitable to small industries even if they really want to use. It would be great to have a lighter version to let any company use in order to make more customers.
  • It would really great to have support team available whenever having the issues / difficulties with in the tool itself. At least able to respond asap.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
I know Unica well and can make it do just about anything I need it to do. I love the abiity to call in custom code along the way for extremely complicated scenarios and optimum performance. Situations that would steer me to other applications are: If already a heavy SAS user with Enterprise Miner and/or Enterprise Guide I would seriously consider SAS CM; if already owning Teradata platform would seriously consider Teradata RM.
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Usability
It is really difficult to leverage all the neat features without a developer. I actually think the base software could be really great for a small business if the price is right, but there are so many things you *can* do but have to know how to do them or have access to your website and the ability to code.
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I think it is easy to use, if you don't have to do to complex selections.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
I didn't use the Unica support since it is with IBM, only before.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
- We had to rebuild a part of the datamart afterwards to tighten up and simplify the selection process. But as it was too time consuming to rebuild all the existing campaigns, we no run campaigns on different versions of the datamart. - The response tracking of the campaigns never worked out well, it was impossible to implement a direct response where there is a link between the lead and the response in our operational process
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Alternatives Considered
We used Autopilot in the past. It worked well but the integration wasn't very good, considering they only used cookies. We have a very complex system right now to be able to track every customer, and it was expensive but worth it. Autopilot worked very well when we were starting, but then it didn't track purchases, it wasn't easy to change a customer attribute, and so on (this was a few years ago, probably they have improved a lot). It was more visual and better to create huge workflows. . Mailchimp was the first program we used. It's very basic but good at what it does: sending a newsletter to your small database. It has integrated very well with other services and we haven't used in a lot of time, but certainly was grown a lot so it must be doing things fine. I also tried Active Campaign but it was almost the same as Autopilot.
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The contact history and the response history are so powerful. You can track whatever you want to help the call center to push relevant offers to our customer. In addition, predictive models can be built, with patience, in IBM Campaign. If you have some complaints from the call center about any campaigns, you can easily validate it into the contact or response history.
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Return on Investment
  • Helped increase our new user engagement with our cloud-based software
  • Helped our sales team identify clients who had dropped off and stopped interacting with our software
  • Helped our sales and customer service team track which clients were completing their full registration process
  • Helped our marketing, sales, and customer service team identify key features and messaging with A/B testing for different campaigns
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  • We’ve been able to send out Thousands of communications and generate over 1 billion touches per year because of the speed and flexibility of the tool.
  • We’ve helped our marketing partners achieve or exceed some very lofty goals in the past two years because of the tool
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ScreenShots

Customer.io Screenshots

Screenshot of data-driven or manual segments that can be created in the no-code builder for recipient lists, campaign triggers, filters, and conversion goals.Screenshot of the code editor for email, that helps navigate code and iterate.Screenshot of account performance, visible at a glance from the Dashboard view.Screenshot of drag and drop messages, time delays, and branches where desired, to build cross-channel campaigns.Screenshot of triggered campaigns based on forms submissions, customer attributes, customer actions, and dates.Screenshot of localization for global audiences. One message can be delivered in multiple languages.