Gist vs. Kustomer

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Gist
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Gist is a unified marketing, sales, and support platform. It includes live chat, a help desk, knowledge base, email marketing, marketing automation, opt-in forms, and more.
$29
per month
Kustomer
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Kustomer is a customer service CRM platform built for managing high support volume by optimizing experiences throughout the customer service journey. Kustomer was acquired by Facebook in late 2020, but spun out in 2023 and re-launched as an independent entity, Kustomer, LLC.
$89
per month, per user
Pricing
GistKustomer
Editions & Modules
Professional
$29.00
per month
Premium
$99.00
per month
Enterprise
$89
per month, per user
Ultimate
$139
per month, per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GistKustomer
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll plans require an annual subscription and 8 users minimum.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GistKustomer
Features
GistKustomer
Chat Analytics and Reports
Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Product A and Product B
Gist
8.9
Ratings
3% above category average
Kustomer
-
Ratings
Chat history and transcripts8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat reporting8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat and web analytics8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Gist
-
Ratings
Kustomer
8.1
Ratings
1% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Gist
-
Ratings
Kustomer
8.5
Ratings
8% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Gist
-
Ratings
Kustomer
8.0
Ratings
3% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GistKustomer
Small Businesses
Olark
Olark
Score 10.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GistKustomer
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
6.7
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
GistKustomer
Likelihood to Recommend
Gist is perfect for SaaS I'd say, and perfect for long sales cycles with lots of lead nurturing involved, and for scenarios where you re-market via FB ads, because there's FB custom audience integration built into the workflows. Perfect for customer service and support. Really outstanding there. It's a little less suited to ecom but they're hammering out the finishing touches to make ecom cart recovery easier.
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It works really well for you to ask a teammate to review a case/email/message and provide some input since you can all review the same conversations and client accounts. They can also cover your inbox using your email handle in case you are out of the office suing some well deserved PTO.
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Pros
  • Gist provides endless ways of interacting with customers. I can chat and email with them, track their usage on my site, qualify them, add tags and other profile information, and so much more.
  • There is even an awesome live view that lets me spy on visitors to see how they're using the site.
  • The tools are powerful, easy to use, and constantly getting improvements. It seems like every week there is another update being rolled out that substantially extends the functionality or usability of the features in Gist.
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  • All customer data (past orders, communication with customer service, rewards account data) is in one place. This helps agents avoid confusion and reduces the number of tabs they need to open.
  • The Knowledge Base (or K Base) is very helpful. Any time we roll out a new policy or have a limited-time promotion, we can add all the relevant information and worksheets there for the convenience of the agents. That way they can stay in a chat while looking up the answer to a question.
  • We can seamlessly move from chat into email if the customer leaves or the queue times are too long. All the interactions will stay on the customer profile page, so they are kept up to date.
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Cons
  • Free plan limits are too low.
  • Chatbots should work not only for Gist's native online chat, but also for the other chat-based channels such as Facebook. (instead of having to use another software for that purpose)
  • Pricing structure - Support bot should not be an add-on but a core feature.
Read full review
  • For our team, the feature that defaults all notes to begin in "done" status is difficult. Throughout each day we need to have notes open and assigned back and forth to different teams, and we have to remember to manually "open" each note. There is too much room for human error with this setting, and it is easy for important notes to be missed if a user forgets to open the note.
  • Similarly, it can be hard to remember to assign emails/notes to a particular team in addition to a user. We almost exclusively work out of team inboxes, and if someone on Care writes an email to a customer, the email will automatically be "done" when it is created, and it will be assigned to the user who wrote it, but not also to the user's team. There are instances where an email needs to be snoozed for several days/hours with further action needed, and unless the user remembers to assign the email to their team it may "awake" from the snooze and not be visible to anyone except the user who created it. Similarly to my first comment, this leaves a lot of room for human error and is not very intuitive.
  • Personally, I do not love that all tickets/emails/notes are jumbled together in the same inbox. While this gives visibility to everything on the "to do" list at the same time, it can be visually overwhelming. We have created unique folders for certain types of projects or categories of work, but have experienced tech glitches or just the awkwardness of another step to manually read the note, determine what type of category it is, and then manually assign it to another folder. Would love to have things auto-sort and take out this manual lift.
  • I love the idea of the autopilot setting, but we have not been able to use this for our work because it sorts items based on time, and not based on priority. In our line of work, we may have an urgent situation arise that needs attention before an email that was sent in 60 minutes ago. The autopilot feature would push the email to my associates sooner than it would the urgent situation from 5 minutes ago. Due to this, we manually monitor inboxes and assign work to ourselves and others.
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Likelihood to Renew
Gist is a quite reliable service with a lot of added values. We don't need to pay for different Saas for these important features. If I had an issue the team was super responsive and helpful, that is essential for every business. The email delivery is great, so virtually no email has landed into spam folder
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Because there's no other tool like Kustomer
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Usability
Gist does pretty much anything you want it to when it comes to managing your contacts. Sometimes I wish it updated faster, but wait a few beats and it gets there. I really love that I can show a colleague how to use the chat messenger and they understand it right away. Very user friendly!
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There is a learning curve, but it is more than worth it, especially to have a dedicated resource pointed at Kustomer and any other software it interacts with. The basic implementation is useful, and powerful - certainly a MASSIVE upgrade over taking care of your customers in an email inbox or shuffling between multiple windows and applications! It is also set up really well to grow and reconfigure with your business. I'm a big fan.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
Because Kustomer is available when you need it
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Performance
No answers on this topic
Because ages load quickly, reports complete in a reasonable time frame, given their complexity
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Support Rating
I have communicated with their team multiple times and every time they have been very responsive, knowledgeable, and polite. They work to make sure you are happy and informed of what is going on. Better their team keeps up to date with their app, giving you new features, and keeping you notified and educated about what they are and how to use them. A+
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It’s a great tool that has helped our company and overall customer service. I believe if we were able to edit certain setting for our specific company that would be hopeful. We have been told before that certain desires of ours would make a change throughout all of Kustomer. Which is not something we would want, we would just want that to change for our business.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
Because they are very hands-on in training us and very approachable
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
It was very easy to understand.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Nothing really because it is easy to use. After an hour of using it, we're already getting the hang of it.
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Alternatives Considered
They both seem to have parity with each other with each having their own small advantages. I went with Gist because it was more affordable. Infusionsoft customer for almost 5 years and it seemed I was always working more on getting it to work instead of getting work done. Gist is so intuitive I had it setting up and running the basics in a few hours.
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I find it baffling how little data can be stored or associated with a customer in many other systems, and how difficult that can be to set up. It is fine if you already have a robust CDP that you can hook up and use to power your CRM, but it is rare that an organization has the resources or the customer-focus to rally behind setting up their customer service/experience team up for success. With a platform like Kustomer, you can actually evolve the relationship over time, or use the past experiences (number of contacts, purchases, previous issues, etc.) to power your next steps with a customer, making for a much more nuanced relationship with a human, not just a ticket.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
Because customer is flexible and scalable
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Return on Investment
  • Our ROI has increased significantly because of Gist's chat and app integration into our website. Contact forms are great but a real-time conversation means you can be more effective in meeting your customer's needs.
  • The additional features in the recent upgrade mean we can use Gist for more. They have always been effective for email campaigns, but the addition of the knowledge base and more effective workflows means we can automate more. This has saved us from buying more software.
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  • We’re getting so much positive feedback — which is not something you traditionally associate with a customer care team — because we’re making it effortless for customers to deliver both positive and negative feedback, and we can now resolve the bad feedback really really quickly.
  • Primarily from our increased efficiency with Kustomer, we’ve seen a significant reduction of $3 to $4 for every cost per contact.
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ScreenShots

Gist Screenshots

Screenshot of Live ChatScreenshot of Email MarketingScreenshot of Marketing Automation WorkflowsScreenshot of Knowledge BaseScreenshot of Meetings

Kustomer Screenshots

Screenshot of Example of a customer profile within Kustomer.Screenshot of Example of how Kustomer’s automated chats can save agents time by handling less complex requests automatically.