Firstup

Score9.1 out of 10

33 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Firstup are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Intuitive and Easy-to-Use Interface: Users have consistently praised the intuitive and easy-to-use interface of Firstup, with many reviewers highlighting how it allows for a seamless experience in scheduling activities and sharing company news on social networks. This user-friendly design enables users to quickly perform tasks and contribute to spreading the company's message effectively.

Excellent Customer Service: The accounts team at Firstup has received numerous accolades for their excellent customer service. Reviewers mention that the team is attentive and prompt in answering questions, ensuring customers are set up for success and can make the most out of the platform. The support provided by the team contributes to a positive user experience and helps users feel supported throughout their journey with Firstup.

Amplifies Brand Voice: Many users appreciate how Firstup helps amplify their brand voice beyond social media pages, resulting in increased brand recognition and awareness. By extending reach and effectively communicating messages to a wider audience, organizations can establish a stronger online presence and connect with their target audience more effectively. This feature has been seen as valuable in enhancing overall brand presence.

Reviews

16 Reviews

Get Firstup for your Employee Advocacy Program

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 24, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Firstup as our Employee Advocacy Program at PD. We use this platform to get our employees to share company news, job openings, blogs, product launches, and other announcements to their social networks/email contacts and spread brand awareness. We have the majority of our employees active on the program and it's had positive feedback!

Pros

Easy for managers to schedule out activities for employees to share with their networks.
Easy for employees to connect social networks and share company news directly within the platform.
Great customer service- the accounts team is very attentive and answer questions quickly to get customers set up for success.

Cons

Promotion of organic corporate content- would be great to get amplification of posts that are directly on the corporate channels instead of having them shared on individual employee accounts.

Likelihood to Recommend

Firstup is a well-suited solution for companies that would like to spread brand awareness and get employees to be their number one ambassadors. Employees like to share/brag about the company they work for so why not use them as a driving force in spreading brand awareness!

Anat Hazanchuk

Sr. Social Media and Content Manager in Marketing at PagerDuty (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Dynamic and Determined

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

October 7, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Firstup is an optional communication tool for employees across our large organization. This tool helps us share news and other important messages with employees who are not sitting in front of computers during their workday.

Pros

Intuitive, easy-to-use templates for posts, newsletters and email notifications.
Consistent upgrades and innovation that keeps the tool current with other apps.
Flexibility on how users can use the tool (i.e. comments, sharing photos, etc.) This decision is left to each organization, individually.

Cons

There is room for improvement to make this a primary communication tool, including more ADA compliance features for users, more robust reporting options for administrators and additional options to filter user profiles for an enhanced app experience.
Although our experience has been quite positive, I do think there is room for Firstup to learn from industries outside of their own. I feel some of their recommendations (and assumptions) are based on the experience inside their own walls. We don't run business the same way. And to assume we should do business their way for the sake of the tool seems like a misstep.

Likelihood to Recommend

I stand behind Firstup and the form of communication they are working hard to integrate in the workplace experience across the world. Where I pause is the support structure. I've been lucky with the Customer Success Managers I've been assigned and I'm so grateful for their support and partnership. But when issues need to go above my CSM, I don't feel as supported. I feel more time is spent on telling us how we're incorrect (i.e. remedial explanations, unrealistic expectations to troubleshoot, etc.) than listening to resolve issues together.

Verified User

Manager (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Full-service platform with some minor areas of improvements needed

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 2, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Firstup is being used across the whole organization globally. We implemented it as an employee ambassador social program and have recently implemented it as our main internal communications platform. It serves our purposes for content discovery, easy sharing of thought leadership, and internal communications.

Pros

Breadth of features
Advanced customizations
Ability to fully manage the platform internally

Cons

Customer service
Pricing increases
Internal communication features, specifically as an email service provider

Likelihood to Recommend

The platform is well suited for content curation, social sharing, and internal communications.
The platform needs improvements and more features for the email service features for communication.

Verified User

Strategist in Marketing (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

World's Finest Employee Communications App: Firstup!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 2, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Firstup delivers consistent, real-time communications to our team of employees whether working in the plant or in the office. We used to rely on a combination of emails and posting printed notices by the timeclocks. Now, everyone in the company gets relevant, targeted information at the same time. This has been especially impactful during COVID-19 when half of our workforce went remote overnight.

Pros

ROI--Creating a business case showing the positive impact an app will make
Customization--We can easily send targeted communications to our team
Support--Even after the sale, we've felt supported by the sales team and the Customer Success team

Cons

We'd love to see a calendar added that would show key upcoming dates.
It would be awesome if the Message feature had a drop-down directory you could scroll through vs. requiring you to type a few letters before the potential names came up.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you have fragmented communications, if you're not using an Intranet, Firstup will be life-changing.

Raleigh Decker

Senior Director of Communications in Corporate at World's Finest® Chocolate (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Firstup is a nice platform to dip your toes in the employee advocacy waters

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

October 2, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

FIrstup is being used by several different teams across the enterprise. It helps employees share approved content to their personal social media channels. It helps remove pressure on employees to source their own content and helps us track performance.

Pros

Reporting
On-demand resources
Experience in the marketplace

Cons

Reduced customer success team
Automatic nudges for employees to log-in and share
UX lacks compared to other platforms

Likelihood to Recommend

Firstup is a nice platform for the price; however, if your team wishes to have access to customer success and support, you will not find it with them.

Verified User

Employee in Marketing (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

My Firstup Review

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

October 2, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Firstup is currently used organization-wide with the heaviest usage at our U.S. locations (does not work for most team members in China, unfortunately). It is used primarily for internal communications to connect both desk and desk-less workers to need-to-know information alongside strategic storytelling.

Pros

While it can get complicated, Firstup allows for very advanced targeting of content to team members by location, role, shift, and more.
Firstup quick links offer a great way for team members to access commonly searched for resources like COVID protocols, payroll calendars, important contacts, local events, and more.
Native video sharing and embedding of Youtube videos is a great way to easily introduce a blend of content mediums.

Cons

Customer service could be improved in some areas.
There have been some recent availability concerns regarding server errors, etc. that have caused some frustration.
In terms of functionality, the back-end of the platform is very complicated and difficult to train other team members on how to manage.
The differences in targeting between posts and broadcasts can be confusing and difficult to manage well.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think it's a great product that ultimately has a lot of room for improvement. If you're looking for a platform that's easy to set up and get team members trained on in terms of managing content and the back-end, I don't think Firstup is the appropriate solution. If you have time to invest and full-time team members who can dedicate themselves to being experts on managing the back-end, then this app is a better solution for you. If targeting communications, sharing videos, photos, and files to deskless workers is important, this is a good solution. Be very thorough in understanding the technology available to your team members (i.e. how many have smartphones, etc.). Also, you need to keep in mind that this will only work on iPhones in China. In our experience, most Chinese team members do not have iPhones.

Verified User

Professional in Human Resources (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

My life with Firstup

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

September 6, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We're using Firstup to better communicate with our front line associates across our company. It bridges a gap that currently exists between the support office and the field. We are currently in pilot (roughly 1500 participants), but we intend to launch company-wide in October. We will share company news, successes, and initiatives that we currently only share through in-restaurant meetings.

Pros

The app is extremely user friendly and similar to the type of apps our younger associates currently use.
The availability of quick links within the app is great to direct our associates to resources they tend to forget about.
On the back end, the experience has been seamless for our IT Crew who have helped to develop the app.

Cons

While having the app tied directly into Workday is great for many reasons, it also creates some amount of difficulty in targeting specific groups of people if they don't match the Workday hierarchy.
Our associates in the field use Workday on a limited basis, so remembering their Workday login information to log in to the app is challenging. It would be nice if they could have a different password for the app.

Likelihood to Recommend

Firstup is great for sharing information with our front line associates. We currently have no channel beyond in-person meetings to communicate company initiatives to our crew. While Firstup isn't a replacement for that, it's a supplement. It serves as a way to reach people who may have missed the meeting. It also serves as a reminder and/or a way to reengage with topics we've already discussed. It's also a great way for our CEOs to get video messages out directly to associates. (This is something we can do for managers via email, but we cannot currently do for associates.) It's less suited for training. For the company, participation is optional, so this will always be a supplement and never the primary source of information.

Verified User

Project Manager in Corporate (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Great for an integrated comms tool.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

September 5, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Firstup is used as part of our global Program to empower our employees to easily promote our companies brand messaging. It is our key tool used as part of our employee advocacy program and helps us elevate our social media posts.

Pros

Splitting audiences so that content can be targeted.
Ease of use in terms of getting content onto the platform.
Wide range of functions/options.

Cons

Limitations on layout preference.
More functionality needed to be used as a social tool rather than an internal communications tool.
Confusing "native buttons" for engaging with social content.

Likelihood to Recommend

Firstup would be best suited as part of an overall communications tool where social sharing is part of its goal but not the main one. Firstup would benefit from working on its social interactions to make them more prevalent for those looking to use it as a social amplification tool first.

Verified User

Manager in Social Media (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Great help in getting word out

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

August 31, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Promote new ideas and products. Very helpful in getting our word out to the masses. Highly suggest because it is a great and subtle way to get our new products in front of the individuals (on social media) that would be the decision makers or the influencers to the decision makers.

Pros

Choosing when we can post.
Auto posting feature.
Informative.
Ability to share industry news to valuable connections.
Ability to relay messages on multiple platforms.

Cons

How to get more clicks.
Suggest posts for others within our organization.
Add a feature which shows which posts are "waiting to be posted," to void posting article twice.

Likelihood to Recommend

We were launching new products and this was a great way to post articles and get the word out on our new products and or services. I have many connections on my LinkedIn and being able to share the most up to date industry news and events, is a very helpful tool. Maybe there is a way to connect it to events within our organization to share pictures that the group could share to LinkedIn, etc.

It is less appropriate for sharing opinion pieces and/or articles only concentrating on one aspect of a situation instead of multiple. It's great that we can share articles that are not just "organization specific" and more industry-wide.

Verified User

Advisor in Corporate (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

One year in and building a better partnership

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

August 31, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Firstup is being used by our whole organization. It is our primary means of communication with employees. We also use the quick links as an entry point to many essential systems to drive users through the communication platform. It helps us reach employees where they are, especially for our employees that do not have email access.

Pros

It looks professional and creates trust.
They worked with us to ensure a seamless authentication for SSO.
It simplifies the back end article creation process.
It reports well on our outreach metrics.
Their weekly customer success meetings keep us in the know.

Cons

In the past year, we've had a couple of multi-hour outages. They could do better at fault tolerance.
The steps required to update apps is quite cumbersome, especially for the Apple store.
I have problems with user management around rehires. There is no mechanism to unsuspend users automatically if they are in a new user upload.

Likelihood to Recommend

Firstup is good for when most of your users are on mobile. It is also a requirement that the links be accessible from outside your network. This was a challenge for us. We found the desktop app to be redundant to the web site. The only benefit was the alerts you would receive while it was open. If your employees are not comfortable with online communication, be prepared for extra work. I could also see it being less useful in a small company where you have fewer "stories" to tell.

Ben Peck

System Administrator in Information Technology at Cherokee Nation Businesses (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Loading Reviews List....

My Firstup Review

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

October 2, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

While it can get complicated, Firstup allows for very advanced targeting of content to team members by location, role, shift, and more.
Firstup quick links offer a great way for team members to access commonly searched for resources like COVID protocols, payroll calendars, important contacts, local events, and more.
Native video sharing and embedding of Youtube videos is a great way to easily introduce a blend of content mediums.

Cons

Customer service could be improved in some areas.
There have been some recent availability concerns regarding server errors, etc. that have caused some frustration.
In terms of functionality, the back-end of the platform is very complicated and difficult to train other team members on how to manage.
The differences in targeting between posts and broadcasts can be confusing and difficult to manage well.

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Professional in Human Resources (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience