Podio

Score8.6 out of 10

135 Reviews and Ratings

What is Podio?

Podio is a cloud-based platform for organizing team communication, business processes, and reporting in project management workspaces; also it may be used as a light CRM platform. It enables workflow automation and integrations. It includes a free version and paid packages with additional features.

Categories & Use Cases

Support for Waterfall Methodology
Waterfall methodology is a tradition development method that is linear and sequential.
Category average: 7.9
Email integration
Email integration allows work requests to be made directly from email.
Category average: 8.3
Mobile Access
Mobile access is the ability to access the software from a smartphone or tablet.
Category average: 8

Document Management
Document management provides for centralized management of all project documents.
Category average: 7.9
Budget and Expense Management
Budget and expense management provides the capability to track all expenses by employee or department and link them back to department. It also enables hourly rates to be set.
Category average: 8.6
Quotes/estimates
Ability to create, manage and send project fee proposals to customers
Category average: 8.6

Heather Neisen View profile

Director of Account Services in Customer Service at Enliven, LLC (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

Keeping track of hundreds of our client contacts and key information and meeting notes.
Customizable apps that work with Globiflow to remind us of key deadlines.
Customizable templates within apps that remind us to log the right information.

Cons

The interface is not pretty. It could use some design upgrades.
Globiflow is complicated to use and takes a lot of time to set up correctly. The training forums are complicated too.
Every so often the entire site goes down - comes back without info lost, but downtime is hard during a business day.

Return on Investment

Helps streamline notes and communication amongst the team.
Keeps track of everything in one place.
Can access on the go via mobile.

Alternatives Considered

Trello and Google Drive

Other Software Used

Google Drive, Dropbox, Slack

Gill Riskoff View profile

Finance Director in Finance and Accounting at Spotify (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

I can easily collaborate with each other and could insert URLs and videos for throwing better effect on the presentations, in this way I am in the position of better guiding my customers.
It allows me to do commenting so that being a team we can give suggestions to one another thus, enhancing the work efficiency.
It is an affordable platform which provide better services in less cost.

Cons

Project sharing is a bit difficult. [Citrix Podio] must introduce some new and advanced features for sharing projects.
It is also difficult to remove someone from ongoing project.

Return on Investment

It organizes our projects and let us make our clients happy and satisfied.
One of the most interesting and useful things is its tracking system that keeps on tracking every single task and notify me with all activities.

Alternatives Considered

Asana

Other Software Used

LastPass for Business, Dropbox Business, QuickBooks Online, UiPath Enterprise RPA Platform

Bella Castilla View profile

Senior Account Executive in Finance and Accounting at Twilio Inc. (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

The quality build tool that helped me a lot in the recent two projects, that they had a lot of data in bulk which Citrix [Podio] managed very well and did notify me on every single step so that I did not miss any main deadline.
Another stand-out feature that I like the most which is its notification and alerts system. The software notifies me of the task progress, tells me about the due date, and alerts me when the task gets overdue.
This helps me a lot in sharing the real-time progress on the projects to the customers to engage them confidently with the work productivity.

Cons

The main drawback that I faced while starting on the platform that it is not easy to customize according to the needs. There are some rules and restriction on the platform which do not allows having the platform in your own customizable style.
Secondly, customer support is drastically unprofessional. Recently I got stuck in some features which I wanted to explore. For which I texted their support and they were really unprofessional, did not even listen to the query full, and never respond again which is the biggest drawback.

Return on Investment

Its mobile app is providing easy and user-friendly services with advanced features. The mobile app has all the basic tools needed for project handling and management.
It is highly functional to manage tasks, get real-time updates on work and have a better workflow as all the functions are automated on the platform.
Its customer support needs improvement.

Alternatives Considered

Clarizen One

Other Software Used

Drift, Freshchat, Automation Anywhere, Google Analytics

Olivia Sheppard View profile

Attorney in Legal at Olivia Sheppard Attorney at Law, PLLC (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

Maintains client contact information.
It's customizable, so I can add apps that I will use and do without things I don't need.
It's good for keeping track of tasks.

Cons

Each app needs to integrate better with the apps within the platform

Alternatives Considered

Clio

Other Software Used

monday.com, Dubsado, Adobe Acrobat DC

Verified User

Executive in Corporate (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Podio extensively. We also use the Workflow Automations to help where Podio has shortfalls. Podio is the backbone of our sales, support, product development and management. Podio allowed us to build the workspace we needed which is fairly unique. The flexibility to customize your apps to hold sales, prospects, projects, support, etc was incredible. We share data from Podio with our custom SaaS application and vice versa. It feels like we have leveraged every possible feature Podio has to offer.

Pros

Customizable apps to fit your specific needs
Free to explore and use basic features until you grow into more
Clean interface

Cons

Crippling feature development leaves you wondering if Podio is close to end-of-life
Severe lack of communication. You HAVE to figure out your own solutions no matter what you pay for the software.
Inability to get even basic reports across multiple applications.
Data is siloed in each app. It has relationships but you cannot generate queries based on related apps.
Downtime. Podio has gone done far too many times for days without any compensation to lost time.
Very slow page builds. Data seems to be coming from slow datasources and takes a long time to complete rendering.

Most Important Features

There used to be many. Unfortunately, they have all aged very badly.

Return on Investment

Initially it was an incredible boost to productivity.
Over the past 4 years we have known that the lack of development and support would force us to leave and get a more robust platform that has a roadmap.