RespondWay or Podium?
Podium sells a messaging platform that happens to handle reviews. If you do not need the messaging, you are buying a phone system to answer your email.
- RespondWay
- $0 free, then $10
- Month to month
- Podium
- $399 to $599 per location, per month
- Annual contract
Podium’s centre of gravity is two-way text messaging with customers: webchat that converts to SMS, payments by text, and a shared team inbox. Reviews are one module inside that. It is a strong product for businesses that live in text messages.
Where Podium is better
- Two-way SMS inbox and webchat, which we do not offer
- Payments by text message
- Text-based review requests, which convert better than email
- A large, verified customer base and established support organisation
Where RespondWay is better
- Roughly one twenty-fifth of the price at the entry tier
- No contract, no onboarding fee, no sales call
- Live the day you sign up rather than after implementation
- Replies in 73 languages, in the language the reviewer used
What each of us asks for on day one
Before Podium can do anything for you, it needs management access to your Google Business Profile. That is the same permission that can change your opening hours, your photographs and your description, and you grant it before you have seen the product answer a single review.
RespondWay starts from forwarded notification emails, so there is nothing to grant and nothing to approve. The trade is real and worth saying plainly: publishing stays a paste. Our own Google API approval is still pending, and when it lands, connecting becomes a choice you make after the product has proved itself rather than before.
When not to choose us
If texting customers is central to how you sell, Podium does something we do not do at all. Buy Podium.
Free to try, and you will know inside a week.
Ten replies a month at no cost, no card, and nothing to cancel if it is not for you.
Start free