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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    OutboundEngine

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AOutboundEngine provides a hands-off way for small business owners to market and grow their business. The product aims to provide small businesses with what big companies have achieved with marketing automation. The service aims to help users keep in touch with clients and prospects with professionally designed, branded campaigns. Benefits include: driving engagement, surfacing warm leads from current contacts, generating referrals and repeat business from their existing contacts, social…

    $199

    per user

    Ion, by Rock Content

    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Ion is an enterprise-grade content experience platform that empowers modern marketers and designers to create no-code interactive content experiences integrated with their CRM or marketing automation tools. Ion helps enterprises to build brand awareness and increase conversions and lead generation enriching their contact database with declared, high intent data. Ion helps brands launch quizzes, ROI calculators, assessments, interactive infographics, and other interactive formats in…N/A
    Pricing
    OutboundEngineIon, by Rock Content
    Editions & Modules
    Essential
    $199
    per user
    Value
    $299
    per user
    Premium
    $499
    per user
    Managed Services + SaaS
    Custom
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    OutboundEngineIon, by Rock Content
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup Fee$99 per user$5,500 per customer
    Additional DetailsMore information is available on the vendor's website.ion’s Build Anything SaaS platform provides organizations with an entirely new and agile interactive content marketing capability. It enables non-technical marketers and designers to create, test and measure an unlimited number of all types of interactive content marketing experiences. It includes unlimited seats, experiences, tests, customization, phone and email support, analytics and more.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    OutboundEngineIon, by Rock Content
    Considered Both Products
    Elm Street Technology
    No answer on this topic
    Rock Content
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    75%
    Would buy again
    41 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    74%
    Delivers good value for the price
    37 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    75%
    Happy with the feature set
    41 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    67%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    84%
    Implementation went as expected
    46 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    OutboundEngineIon, by Rock Content
    Email & Online Marketing
    Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of OutboundEngine and Ion, by Rock Content
    Feature
    OutboundEngine
    8.1
    49 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Ion, by Rock Content
    -
    Ratings
    Mobile optimization8.643 Ratings00 Ratings
    Email deliverability reporting7.649 Ratings00 Ratings
    List management7.943 Ratings00 Ratings
    Lead Management
    Comparison of Lead Management features of OutboundEngine and Ion, by Rock Content
    Feature
    OutboundEngine
    5.3
    38 Ratings
    24% below category average
    Ion, by Rock Content
    -
    Ratings
    Automated sales alerts and tasks5.338 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social Media Marketing
    Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of OutboundEngine and Ion, by Rock Content
    Feature
    OutboundEngine
    7.8
    47 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Ion, by Rock Content
    -
    Ratings
    Social sharing and campaigns7.847 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Creation
    Comparison of Content Creation features of OutboundEngine and Ion, by Rock Content
    Feature
    OutboundEngine
    -
    Ratings
    Ion, by Rock Content
    7.5
    105 Ratings
    7% below category average
    Ideation00 Ratings10.099 Ratings
    Content collaboration00 Ratings5.094 Ratings
    Content Publishing
    Comparison of Content Publishing features of OutboundEngine and Ion, by Rock Content
    Feature
    OutboundEngine
    -
    Ratings
    Ion, by Rock Content
    8.7
    120 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Content hub00 Ratings10.0104 Ratings
    Forms / Gated content00 Ratings10.0107 Ratings
    Embedded CTAs00 Ratings10.0108 Ratings
    Content distribution00 Ratings8.093 Ratings
    Content promotion00 Ratings8.086 Ratings
    Content automation00 Ratings6.090 Ratings
    Content Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Content Reporting & Analytics features of OutboundEngine and Ion, by Rock Content
    Feature
    OutboundEngine
    -
    Ratings
    Ion, by Rock Content
    8.5
    118 Ratings
    8% above category average
    Audience profiling and targeting00 Ratings6.091 Ratings
    Closed-loop tracking and reporting00 Ratings8.095 Ratings
    Content performance analytics00 Ratings10.0116 Ratings
    Campaign optimization dashboard00 Ratings10.0107 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    OutboundEngineIon, by Rock Content
    Small Businesses
    monday marketer
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Contently
    Score9.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LocaliQ
    Score9 out of 10
    CoSchedule Marketing Suite
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Contently
    Score9.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    OutboundEngineIon, by Rock Content
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.3
    (60 ratings)
    10.0
    (135 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    7.0
    (22 ratings)
    Usability
    6.4
    (6 ratings)
    7.4
    (17 ratings)
    Availability
    8.8
    (27 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.9
    (24 ratings)
    10.0
    (18 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    OutboundEngineIon, by Rock Content
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Elm Street Technology
    OutboundEngine does a referral campaign and I've been able to close a couple of deals based on getting in touch with people who engage with this campaign and state they could use my services in the next 6 months. This is a great follow up tool for those you may or may not know are going to be needing your services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Rock Content
    If you want to choose a quick start template and fill in the fields with your content, Ion will be fantastic for you. We've done this with whitepapers and quizzes and it's been great and extremely easy to use. If you have an exact idea of what you want, and a background in web development, you may get frustrated. Ion has some quirks that make it tricky to fully customize - everyone once in a while I really just want to go into the HTML and make some changes, but can't. If you are looking to reuse a piece of content for specific targeting (industry or account-specific), Ion is great. The dynamic substitutions are great and very helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Elm Street Technology
    • The content that they generate to send to our clients is relevant and the clients want to engage with us. It makes us appear more professional and consistent, even though we are a smaller company.
    • It helps us stay in touch with clients and helps us stay top of mind. We are able to generate more new business leads if we are in consistent contact with current, former, and potential clients.
    • Their customer service and support is outstanding. All my questions were answered and I went into the program feeling confident and knowledgeable.
    Read full review
    Rock Content
    • Quick Starts make it so easy to get started.
    • Real-time updates are awesome and save a ton of wasteful process.
    • The combination of user friendliness for simple things and the flexibility to do more complex things is great.
    • Chat support is excellent and deeper-dive support has been super helpful.
    • The ability to use these tools in the cloud or embedded has given us tactic flexibility.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Elm Street Technology
    • I do not like the use of drawings to attract new customers, and they have ignored my requests to eliminate that for my personal emails.
    • I do not like it when a competitor in my immediate market has the same posts. It cheapens the service or makes it appear that I am simply sharing another's post.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Rock Content
    • Ion University, while stacked with a wealth of information, is difficult to navigate from a troubleshooting perspective. The tutorial videos are all very helpful, but they are also very long. Sometimes I would want to search for how to address a particular issue I was struggling with and it would be a two-minute segment buried in a 45-minute video.
    • Again, getting back the self-guidance side of things. I think a lot of the tutorials are set up in a way that makes sense to Ion, but not as much to the end user.
    • I think the controls admins use when creating new users could be a bit more straightforward.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Elm Street Technology
    The biggest issue is poor ROI. The second biggest issue is rigid customer service process, lack of a sense of urgency, and inability to reach out to upper management with issues.
    Read full review
    Rock Content
    We use it for every landing page and we plan on only doing more dynamic content creation. We dont see that option coming in-house any time ever in the future. ION has a very robust platform for us to work with that really allows us to do more for our customers in regards to having the one-to-one conversation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Elm Street Technology
    Overall, OutboundEngine is very user friendly. It is simple to set up and explore, and if there are any issues or questions, the customer service team and account managers are always available to help. They are very knowledgeable and were able to explain everything in detail to me. The program is easy to navigate and helps me stay organized, and an uncomplicated and straightforward solution was exactly what I was looking for
    Read full review
    Rock Content
    Usability is straightforward, with extensive documentation and tutorials provided to ensure landing pages are built to specifications and can be optimized for performance. Built-in platform funnels give insight into customer dropoff, success/failures, and conversions (at a glance). Setting up a landing page can be done quickly and easily, with numerous integrations (CRMs like SalesForce, for instance) supported
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Elm Street Technology
    I haven't had to contact Outbound Engine because I haven't had any application errors or unplanned outages. I basically have had such a trouble free experience with them that I haven't had to call. Everything is automated and I get a notice to review every isse. I suppose if I personalized the newsletter a bit more and added some of my own articles, I would need to contact them, (which I should really start to do) but so far things have been so on point, I haven't felt the need.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Rock Content
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Elm Street Technology
    No answers on this topic
    Rock Content
    Sometimes the editor can be a little slow.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Elm Street Technology
    The customer service was excellent! Everyone I spoke to was kind and knowledgeable. My account manager was easily reachable. Setup of the OutboundEngine program was explained really thoroughly, and we knew how we could best use the product to meet the needs of our clients and get our online and social media presence off the ground.
    Read full review
    Rock Content
    The ION support team is amazing. There has not been a single issue they they could not solve for me. If there is a feature or request that they do not have, they have even, on occasion, created custom scripts for our team. *Update 6/5/17 - ION has continued to delight on multiple occasions. I appreciate their attention to detail and ability to solve whatever issue I have. After 3+ years of use and support, ION still has my full endorsement.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Elm Street Technology
    No answers on this topic
    Rock Content
    They offer a great amount of online training, videos, articles, etc. There is usually an answer available if you run into an issue. I would recommend taking advantage of the online training they offer. I wish I would have done it sooner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Elm Street Technology
    No answers on this topic
    Rock Content
    There were a lot of things we learned about the tool once we really got in and got our hands dirty. Being hands-on was essential for our team to be able to utilize ION in the most effective manner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Elm Street Technology
    I selected it for the ability to have an automated system do 3 things all at once, social media posts, emails and the instant communication with the chat box. I have never seen a chat come through that lead to a helpful client touchpoint. I have never used another product but have since begun to weigh some of the less expensive options.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Rock Content
    I was not the decision maker to choose this over Uberflip, but the UI is much more appealing to me. It's incredibly easy to use, clean, and from a backend standpoint, it requires little to no tech savvy'ness. Our team has really enjoyed using it and has required no training what-so-ever.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Elm Street Technology
    No answers on this topic
    Rock Content
    Separate client portfolios enable scalability, however, some elements are still grouped for all accounts so it's difficult to scale for an ad agency with multiple clients. Would prefer totally separate sections of the platform for all clients with each element housed separately.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Elm Street Technology
    • One client identified how one article I sent that he read saved him from having to replace his entire AC system.
    • One client actually thought I was sending this to him personally because I valued him
    • One of the above transacted with me twice for over $3M in sales
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Rock Content
    • Though we have not had the service long enough to see any measurable outcomes, we've been able to create interactive web content faster than ever before
    • The speed with which we can build interactive pages and re-use assets has been critical as projects we've done with Ion have made their way around and more and more internal clients have said "me too" for their own projects
    • It is very pricey at $28K for the base annual subscription (dropping to $24k after the first year), so depending on your budgetary situation, that may make no sense for your team--but we had contract money set aside for a company to build us a microsite for around the amount, so we just used it for Ion instead and will now be building the microsite ourselves using it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    OutboundEngine Screenshots

    Screenshot of Automated Social Media MarketingScreenshot of A personalized snapshot of your account activity and warmest leads.Screenshot of Personally designed, tested, and automated emails

    Ion, by Rock Content Screenshots

    Screenshot of ion empowers your other marketing technologies to deliver higher fidelity, data-driven scoring, targeting, segmentation and personalization.Screenshot of The types of interactive experiences the ion platform can create is near-endless. These are the most common types used by our customers: Assessments, Calculators, eBooks, Interactive Infographics, Interactive White Papers, Landing Pages, Lookbooks, Quizzes, Resource Library, Solution Finder.Screenshot of See what our customers are saying about our platform and services!Screenshot of Starting at $2,000 per month, you get an unlimited, scalable interactive content platform with our full feature set. Including: Unlimited experiences, unlimited use of Quick Starts, Unlimited Seats/Users, Unlimited A/B/n Testing, Unlimited Sell-Side Experiences, Unlimited Phone, email & chat support, unlimited analytics... PLUS a FREE custom-branded theme that can be applied to all of your experiences.Screenshot of You have the option to start from a template or entirely from scratch. Our Quick Start template library includes more than 100 fully tested, responsive and flexible interactive experiences you can brand, customize and launch.Screenshot of ion is the only interactive content platform that provides the scalable foundation to grow from one interactive experience to one thousand interactive experiences. With ion, interactive content development complexity, long timelines, high costs and maintenance problems are replaced with freedom and agility.