Birdeye vs. Podium vs. Chatmeter: Which Tool To Choose
Managing your company’s online reviews, listings, and reputation can be a full-time job, which is why there are so many tools on the market to help with this essential (yet time-consuming) task. But when you’re comparing different tools, it can be hard to determine which is the best option for your business.
Three popular options are Birdeye, Chatmeter, and Podium. To help you compare these three popular choices, we’ve compared some of the top functionality of these listings management tools. Read on to see how they each measure up.
Listings Management Functionality
Listings management gives you an easy way to add your business to local directories and business listing sites. A listings management tool helps ensure your company information remains up-to-date and accurate across all these sites.
Birdeye
Birdeye offers some listings management functionality. However, it doesn’t integrate with a couple of leading directories, including Yelp and Apple Maps. These missing integrations are a pain point for customers looking to manage their business listings across all major directories and channels:
Chatmeter
Chatmeter offers extensive listings management functionality. It integrates with every major directory, including Apple Maps, Google, Yelp, and Bing.
This means you can use it to manage your business listings across all these platforms — even if you have multiple business locations to manage. Additionally, it automatically flags errors or inconsistencies in your listings to help you keep them accurate and up to date.
Podium
Podium is a tool primarily focused on review management rather than listings management. Therefore, managing business listings on online directories isn’t part of its core functionality.
Analytics
Analytics functionality gives you access to data and reports to help you understand how your company’s reputation, listings, and reviews perform over time.
Birdeye
Birdeye offers robust analytics functionality. It gives customers insights that help them assess how they measure up against their competitors in terms of online reputation, customer sentiment, and review performance. The analytics functionality is well-regarded by its customers and is often praised in reviews.
Chatmeter
Chatmeter also offers comprehensive analytics functionality to help companies monitor changes to their online reputation and customer sentiment.
In Chatmeter, the analytics functionality combines with natural language processing, machine learning, and generative AI, which makes it easier to interpret that analytics data. Businesses can ask questions about the reviews coming in to understand the nuances, trends, or outliers in their analytics.
Podium
Podium offers basic reports and analytics data for reviews, inbox messages, and surveys. You can also get summary reports via email, which is helpful for keeping stakeholders in the loop, even if they don’t use the tool every day (or at all). However, some customers feel that Podium’s analytics functionality is quite limited, and they’d like access to more in-depth performance data.
Social Media Management Functionality
Some reviews or listings management tools include social media management functionality. This allows companies to post and respond to social media messages, analyze social performance, and manage their online reviews within the same tool.
Birdeye
Birdeye offers customers social media management functionality in its top two pricing tiers. These customers can manage social media reviews and accounts within one centralized tool.
However, some users feel its social media management functionality is limited compared to other providers, so before picking this tool, you should make sure you know how you want to use it for social media management — and if it’ll meet those needs.
Chatmeter
Social media listening and publishing functionality is included in all of Chatmeter’s pricing plans. Customers say it makes it easier for them to manage the social media accounts for their business, as they can view and respond to messages, comments, and reviews all in the same tool.
This is especially helpful for businesses that have social media pages for different business locations — you can very quickly end up with lots of pages to keep track of.
Podium
Social media management functionality in Podium is more limited than in the other two tools. Users can manage and respond to reviews on Facebook and respond to Facebook messages via a shared, central inbox. But they can’t schedule or create posts for social media pages, and integrations with other social media platforms are more limited as it’s not a core part of Podium’s functionality.
Reputation Management
Strengthening your company’s online reputation is the main goal of all these tools, so reputation management capabilities are a core feature to look at across each product.
Birdeye
Birdeye makes it easy for companies to collect and monitor customer reviews across multiple online directories and then respond to them within a single, central tool. This makes it a popular choice as a reputation management solution, and customers often mention its review management capabilities as a significant benefit of the tool.
Chatmeter
Chatmeter has advanced reputation management features to help users collect, monitor, respond to, and understand customer reviews and feedback.
The platform also includes AI-powered intelligence tools to help customers spot trends, changes, and common themes in reviews and to help when reviewing search insights. This functionality makes it a popular choice for reputation management, with customers mentioning this functionality frequently in their reviews of the product.
Podium
Review management is one part of the Podium platform, which has a broader focus on lead conversion. Podium makes it easy to collect customer reviews from different local directories and review sites. Customers say that using Podium helps them collect more reviews and makes it easier for them to track and respond to reviews.
Quality of Ongoing Support
The quality of service and support you receive can make or break your experience with a tech vendor. Obviously, you hope you won’t need much support, but if problems arise, you want to be confident it will be easy to reach someone who can help.
Birdeye
Birdeye has an online help center where customers can search for answers to common product-related queries. However, when they need more tailored or in-depth support, several customers reported having difficulties contacting Birdeye’s support team. They feel the support team was unresponsive or that they had to wait a long time to resolve their issues.
Chatmeter
Chatmeter has an award-winning support team that is fully based in the U.S. This means it’s easy to contact support when you need it, as you’re not being routed to a help center halfway around the world.
Additionally, customers get a dedicated point of contact for any support or customer service issues. Like Birdeye, Chatmeter also has an online help center where customers can find answers to frequently asked questions or more straightforward support queries.
Podium
Podium has an online knowledge base to help customers solve common product challenges. However, if they have more complex issues or need tailored support, the support provision at Podium seems to be very mixed.
Customer reviews mention having long wait times to get replies to support messages, and multiple customers report having lots of changeover in the support team, meaning they lost their main point of contact unexpectedly.
Ready To Give Chatmeter a Try?
At first glance, it might have felt difficult to compare these three solutions, but after digging into their functionality and capabilities a bit more, it’s easy to see some big differences. While the best tool will depend on your company’s specific needs, Chatmeter is a great option for multi-location businesses looking to grow their customer base through online reviews and local listings.
We’re a proven tool trusted by major brands like Volvo, Shell, and Taco Bell. Customers love our white-glove service, all-in-one product offering, and integrations with more of the top directories compared to Birdeye and Podium.
To get a sense of what we offer, try our interactive demo. Or you can book a live demo with our expert team to learn exactly how our tool differs from these alternatives — and how it can benefit your business.