Based on factors like features, price, and ease of use and installation, we’ve reviewed, ranked, and compared the best keylogger software for Windows in 2024.

A keylogger records everything you type on a computer keyboard. They can be used legitimately to monitor loved ones, check employee productivity, or get feedback for software development. But what if you want a solution that does more than log keys on a computer? What is the best keylogger solution for more advanced needs?

From Hoverwatch to Spyera, we give you the run-down on the top options available, so you can check browsing history, track computer activity, and more. Even better, they’re compatible with Windows 8, 10, and 11 devices.

Note that spyware tools can impact people’s privacy and should not be used to cross ethical or legal boundaries.

What to Look for in a Windows Keylogger?

Recording and storing keystroke activity are the basic features of any Windows keylogger. If you want a quality keystroke logger, here are some other features you should look for:

Such features are particularly useful for businesses where time management is an issue. Employees can spend up to 52 minutes of their workday on social media, according to a study from the National Library of Medicine – and this doesn’t account for other non-work-related websites they may waste time on.

These tools also come in handy for parents who want to keep their children safe from malicious people online. All they need to have is one master device – the one they use to view activity on target devices.

This type of software also has a long history. A Texas State University study says the first use of a keylogger was with a typewriter in the 1970s. Years later, it was used as malware to steal information from others.

Shortlist: The Best Keylogging Software for Windows in 2024

Whether you want to protect your family or check in on your employees and boost productivity, there are plenty of keylogging options to choose from. Before we dive into the details of our test results, here’s a shortlist of the best keylogger tools:

1. Hoverwatch: Overall, the best keylogger for Windows in 2024 due to its free keylogger tool. Plus, you get all the extra features like screenshots, app invisibility, webcam shots, browsing history, and location – all for $8.33.
2. Spyera: A premium keylogger on this list with remote software control capabilities for uninstalling, deactivation, and sending updates, which can be done via the app or SMS commands.
3. TheOneSpy: Track mouse clicks and productivity, even when offline.
4. ClevGuard: The best keylogger for offices, as it tracks all computer file activity, records all printed documents, and lists all USB devices previously connected.
5. Qustodio: The best game blocker for kids. Its extended reporting capabilities lets you track texts and calls on your children’s phones.
6. FamiSafe: Perfect for parents who want to monitor their children’s online activities. It includes sexual content blockers.
7. FlexiSPY: A keylogger with a device control function; also built particularly for reading Microsoft Outlook and Outlook365 emails.

Top 7 Best Keylogging Software for Windows PCs Reviewed

To help you find the best keylogger for you, we tested the best keylogger solutions out there. Here is an in-depth review of each one, including their pros, cons, and pricing:

1. Hoverwatch – Overall, the Best Keylogger for Windows in 2024

Hoverwatch easily made it to the top spot because its Windows keylogger is a free feature and works seamlessly.

Setting up this freemium feature was relatively easy, too. All it took was a sign-up and installation. We didn’t need to click on any button to activate the keylogger.

Better yet, the user panel showed us screenshots of what was typed and on which app the event occurred.

Before we talk about any of the other perks, it’s worth noting that you get all these features for only $99.95 for an entire year ($8.33 monthly), making Hoverwatch an affordable app jampacked with all the essential tracking features you need.

Hoverwatch also specializes as a Facebook parental control tool, recording activity and messages on the platform.

This can be a powerful way for parents to know who their children are talking to. You can also see screenshots of Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram activity. Just note that it has a dedicated album for Messenger screenshots only.

Pricing

The only differences between Hoverwatch’s paid plans are the number of devices you get to track and the availability of the Mobile Viewer, which lets you store all tracked data on your mobile phone.

Note also that the price increases as you shorten your subscription period. For example, the Personal plan is $29.95 if paid every month, compared to $99.95/month if you pay annually.

2. Spyera – A Premium Keylogger with Remote Software Control

Spyera is the best keylogger for you if you’re after a more feature-rich tool that you can access remotely.

With its remote capabilities, you can adjust the settings and deactivate, uninstall, update, take photos and videos, and restart the software. You can do all of this discreetly. Even better, you can control all the software’s settings via SMS commands, enhancing remote access.

Just take note that you’ll only get to remotely access the Spyera software; not the device.

We really liked that our dashboard showed a comprehensive view of all the devices tracked – even the non-Windows ones. These include the following:

These will come in handy for surveillance; however, the software still has designated pages for these tracked events, and you can view them for a more detailed look.

Another of Spyera’s benefits is its ability to take app screenshots without the target user typing anything. The software does the same thing for the device without any app running.

Meanwhile, you can see the names of cellular and Wi-Fi networks your target device has connected to. This is useful for parents who want to know which devices are connected to public networks, as this can compromise the privacy of their children’s devices.

Pricing

It’s common for keylogger software solutions to have only one general plan for each device. This is the same for Spyera, which only offers a monthly ($49/month) or yearly plan with its Windows version.

However, Spyera offers a bundled version that lets you track mobiles, tablets, and PCs. This bundle is priced at $39.99/month, paid annually. Aside from credit card and direct debit payments, paying by Bitcoin is also an option.

3. TheOneSpy – A Keylogger That Tracks Mouse Clicks and Productivity

TheOneSpy believes keyloggers benefit from logging mouse clicks. While it’s useful to know what someone is typing on their device, it’s a bonus to also see what they click on. This feature stands out as one of the highlights of this software.

TheOneSpy’s Spy360 feature lets you track productivity in real time. In our tests, it displayed the entire screen of the monitored computer, capturing even the surrounding sounds through the microphone and what’s in front of its webcam. Spy360 shows everything simultaneously.

We were glad to see that most devices on this list have location-tracking capabilities. However, most providers can only provide this service if the monitored and master devices are online. With TheOneSpy, parents and businesses can still see where the device was, even when offline.

All the monitored user needs to do is connect to the internet, and the master device will receive information on where the target device was while offline.

TheOneSpy’s feature for blocking apps and websites makes it useful for businesses. Combine it with Spy360, and you can make sure you can monitor your team’s productivity. This also serves as a powerful tool for parents monitoring their children.

You can use all these features with its app usage tracker, email access, customized criteria for alerts, and stealth mode. It also serves as a screen recorder app, specially designed for Google Chrome activity.

Pricing

There’s only one plan for TheOneSpy: Premium. It can go as high as $40 when billed monthly, $20 for quarterly payments, and $9.20 when billed annually. A benefit to having no other tiers is that you get access to all the software’s features.

The only downside we see is that the mobile plans are more expensive than those for Windows. This is the same with Spyera, but it’s most likely due to the commonly higher dev costs for smartphone apps.

4. ClevGuard – The Most Excellent Keylogger for Offices

ClevGuard offers its keylogging feature with other perks via Monivisor, a computer monitoring software for Windows. While the other tools on this list have a few features useful for businesses, Monivisor changes the game by offering more.

The first things we noticed are the print, file, and USB trackers from the software. These are unique for a solution almost $7 cheaper than Spyera. So, we put it to the test.

We put a .DOCX file on an external hard drive and plugged it into the computer. We did this to see if the print tracker worked when using a file stored on a USB device. It did indeed track the external device and the print. The software even recorded the file transfer.

As we deleted the file we printed, a dashboard notification lit up, showing that the file had been deleted. It displayed the source of the file, its name, and its contents, proving how much information Monivisor can obtain.

Aside from its keylogger feature, the tool also has the following functions that you can combine for a safer and more productive work environment:

Our testing also showed messages obtained via major social networking sites, such as Messenger, Twitter, Skype, and Instagram. Upon checking its contents, we saw profile pictures, chat media files exchanged, and even shared contacts.

Add the incoming and outgoing call history to the table, and you can better surveil and take care of business.

As for the emails, we found that the software even records and shows you what’s in the attachments.

Pricing

You get three options for the Windows-compatible plans from Monivisor. The parental control and phone monitoring features come as standalone services. The phone tracking software comes at a lower price.

However, the number of features you get to use is huge, and they’re available with all three payment plans: monthly, every three months, and annual.

5. Qustodio – Best App and Game Blocker for Kids

Qustodio is your best bet for preventing selected apps and games from being installed on your children’s devices – you can do this by selecting which ones to block. Pair that with full visibility of every content, message, and activity that goes through their PCs, and you have a great parental control app.

As you track activity and block apps manually, Qustodio does some monitoring on its own as well. You receive reports and alerts whenever potential problems arise – these include violations of your pre-set criteria.

During our testing, even searching for terms like ‘hardcore streetfight’ or ‘war action scenes’ was enough to alert the master device. Here, we put ourselves in the shoes of a user with a monitored device.

While that notification came straightaway, we still had to click the video on the tracked device. Doing so enabled the Smart Web filter, which prevented us from viewing the videos.

Browsing history transparency is helpful for a parent to see what types of content their children looking at. As we tried chatting, commenting, and liking posts on social media, Qustodio had screenshots of such activities within a few seconds.

Some other powerful functions include setting time limits on the amount of time they spend online, which you can adjust according to your preferences. You can even pause your children’s internet connection with one simple tap.

One downside we noticed, however, is that it didn’t work on the first device we used, which had Windows 9.

Pricing

Qustodio is the only platform on this list to offer a free version. This is in comparison Hoverwatch, which offers only a keylogger at no cost. that has more than a keylogger. You won’t have to pay upon signing up and still get access to a few features, including the keylogger software and web filtering for a single device.

With the basic plan, you can block apps and games, monitor locations, and set daily time limits on up to five devices. Meanwhile, the Complete plan offers app and gaming limitations and custom alerts. Do note that while Complete lets you add an unlimited number of devices, it’s not applicable for school or business use, as per Qustodio’s guidelines.

What sets this platform apart from other providers is the phone support, which comes as an add-on for the Basic plan at $12.99/year. This is included with Complete.

6. FamiSafe – The Perfect Keylogger for Monitoring Children

FamiSafe is packed with features that combat phone addiction, making it an optimal tool for parents concerned about how much time their children are spending online.

Aside from letting you see what your kids say and see on their Windows devices, FamiSafe sends you immediate alerts about suspicious images like sexual content.

Meanwhile, its keylogger feature is pretty straightforward to use and sends screenshots of messages, search queries, and all forms of social media activity.

What differentiates this app is its ability to block potentially inappropriate content automatically. Wondershare, the company that runs FamiSafe, uses its AI to power the content safety features of the software to prevent children from seeing content they shouldn’t.

It has additional features that complement a keylogger, including web filters, browser history, live location tracking, and activity reports.

We can also tell it’s a media-focused keylogger software because of the features designed to filter and record content viewed on TikTok and YouTube.

However, the installation can be a little bit confusing. After installing the Windows app, we only saw a page that prompted us to enter a code and pair the app with the master device. Instead, we had to access the management interface via a web app, which we gained access to upon signing up.

Pricing

The Free plan lets you track only one device and gives you the basic reporting capabilities of the software. You can have all the features by subscribing to any of the paid plans.

Meanwhile, FamiSafe is also available for schools, for which they offer monthly, quarterly, and annual plans for up to 200 students. These plans start at $19.99/month, billed yearly for 11–20 users.

7. FlexiSPY – A Keylogger with Remote Device Control

FlexiSPY is more expensive than the other tools on the shortlist, but it still made it on our list. Why? While Spyera lets you deactivate, uninstall, and adjust its keylogger software on a target device, FlexiSPY’s web app allows you to do the same and gain full access to another Windows PC.

This feature comes in handy for businesses. Imagine a scenario where your IT support has to check a device issue for one of your work-from-home team members. With FlexiSPY within their arsenal, they can remotely troubleshoot and solve problems – all while still using the same tool for monitoring. That’s one good example of how to manage a remote team.

This software’s keylogger boasts detection designed for messaging platforms like Skype, Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp, Line, and Hangouts. If your teams use these, FlexiSPY can help you find out how much time people spend chatting about stuff that isn’t about work.

As for its additional monitoring features, it’s quite similar to Spyera’s offerings. These include USB detection, printer tracking, file activity, browser history, and hidden mode.

One factor that differentiates FlexiSPY is its ability to read messages and emails on Microsoft Outlook and Outlook365, giving you the edge of seeing emails as text instead of screenshots alone.

Pricing

Although similar to Spyera, FlexiSPY didn’t score as highly because it’s the most expensive tool on this list. Furthermore, it’s also the only tool to charge an installation fee.

The remote access feature and Outlook compatibility compensate for its starting price.

The pricing structure is also the same as most of the tools on this list, giving you only the option of paying monthly ($79), quarterly ($119), or annually ($179).

Best Keylogger Software for Windows Compared

Reading through all these features and in-depth reviews can be quite exhausting. To help you compare the tools, we’ve summarized the main features of each keylogger solution.

In essence, all these tools rank as great keyloggers for parents and businesses. Their basic monitoring capabilities are straightforward, giving you everything you expect from a keylogger, including the other tracking perks.

Want more in-depth reviews of other keylogger software tools? To learn more, visit our article about the best keylogger apps.

How We Ranked the Best Windows Keyloggers

Before selecting our top picks, we thoroughly evaluated all the tools. That’s because we understand how important reliable assessments are for parents and businesses, or anyone who needs a keylogger – looking for tools to help in their everyday lives.

This rings true, especially for sensitive software used for surveillance and monitoring. Here are the factors we considered during the selection process of the best Windows keylogger tools.

Monitoring Features

Testing the keylogger feature of each software was relatively easy since they all have the same basic function of logging keystrokes. The key here is to test all the additional features to see which one is the most effective for your particular needs.

For this reason, the first thing we checked for was how the tools support its users when it comes to surveillance and monitoring.

Compliance with Standards and Laws

To ensure safety, we only reviewed products that adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is also considered the toughest privacy and security law in the world.

This should be a priority for any software review, as non-compliance would only mean that you may have limited protection should you lose some data or experience problems with your software.

Ease of Use and Installation

User experience is always a factor when choobest keyloggersing between apps. We ran it by several team members, including ones with less experience with PCs, to gauge how easy they are to install and use.

In addition, we checked the app for how fast it can display recorded data, as well as whether the information it displays is hard to understand.

Evaluation of Third-Party Reviews

After checking the tools for performance and usability, we always check real user reviews online. We do so to see whether their views reflect our findings.

These reviews are a great source of information about the features and experiences of others who have used the apps.

Is Free Keylogging Software Safe?

The free keylogging software tools on our list, Hoverwatch and Qustodio, are safe. These solutions come with a few basic monitoring features.

But this may not apply to businesses that need more extensive functionality and reporting. This is why they should opt for paid keyloggers. A keylogger can be a vital part of an entire tracking system, making paid ones a better investment.

Best Windows Keyloggers – Takeaways

In this technologically advanced era, Windows keyloggers can be beneficial tools for parents, employers, or anyone seeking to track computer activities, offering peace of mind through secure monitoring. Our top pick, Hoverwatch, combines affordability with robust features to provide the best overall value.

Remember, each keylogger solution we highlighted has unique strengths, suitable to various needs. So, take those first steps today. Explore Hoverwatch or any of our other top selections to find the perfect fit for you.

FAQs

The post Best Keylogger Software For Windows PC — Top 7 Compared In 2024 appeared first on The Tech Report.

What do you consider to be the lifeblood of your business? Many would say cash flow, and they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. But customer data can be just as essential to keeping your ship afloat. Customer relationship management or CRM compliance systems allow you to leverage said data as well as keep it secure.

Security and compliance breaches concerns are much higher than they once were. A recent ransomware attack on Caesars, a well-known hotel and casino company, is just one among many examples. The attack, carried out by a group called BlackCat/ALPH, compromised 41,397 records of customer information.

Take this as a reminder that no business is immune to cyber threats. In order to be successful, companies must constantly stay updated and vigilant against potential attacks; a CRM is one viable method of keeping your data secure.

CRMs are complicated systems, which is why we were compelled to create this guide. Come along with us as we cover the best data encryption strategies, access control practices, and useful tips for navigating compliance requirements. It’s time to turn your CRM into a secure space, gain customer confidence, and scale your business.

What Is CRM Compliance and Security?

Put simply, CRM systems allow businesses to store customer data and track interactions with customers. They typically involve multiple stakeholders and can include:

Your company needs to keep these types of sensitive data secure to comply with local and global regulations and laws.

Aside from HIPPA and GDPR mentioned above, local state laws – such as CPPA or the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 – impose data access and disclosure requirements. Noncompliance can result in significant financial penalties for businesses, which is why it’s so important to prioritize compliance and security measures in CRM systems.

So, what makes this process so complex, you may wonder? There are a few threats to ward off when protecting customer data in CRM systems, like data breaches or unauthorized access. To safeguard your customers’ information stored in a CRM, you need to put data loss prevention measures in place – and external threats are only one part of the problem.

Internal threats can be a serious worry, too, particularly in the case of employees who misuse their access privileges. They can neglect responsible security practices and lack awareness or enthusiasm about securing sensitive information.

A great example takes us back to Dallas, 2021, where an employee of the Dallas Police Department deleted 8.7 million files from the city’s computer system. As you can imagine, the department lost a lot of critical data and faced total chaos in the department’s daily operations.

Whether intentional or unintentional, this incident highlights the danger of internal threats. Companies must have proper security measures in place regardless of how tight-knit or trustworthy their team may appear.

Regulatory Guidelines for Customer Data

Due to the sensitivity of the information stored within customer relationship management systems, businesses need to stay up-to-date on regulatory guidelines surrounding compliance issues for local and global business operations.

Regulations vary widely, especially across different European countries. Understanding how GDPR pertains specifically to each country’s respective governmental framework is necessary for true compliance. Key elements here include:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has regulations under HIPAA for healthcare organizations that store patient information. These rules apply to CRM systems and related platforms. There are other country-specific laws, too: Canada’s PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) and Japan’s APPI (Act on the Protection of Personal Information).

Provisions within these acts require companies to stay compliant with data privacy rules, processes for collecting customer information safely, and storage and access restrictions. To protect sensitive customer data stored within a CRM system, you need to both meet regulatory requirements and reinforce employee training around personal safety protocols.

This includes two-factor authentication methods and encryption to avoid potential vulnerabilities inside their organization when dealing with customer information.

CRM Customer Data Security: Best Practices

Believe it or not, 74% of companies have experienced a data breach of some kind. That’s the vast majority. To avoid being part of the statistic, it’s essential that you ensure compliance and customer data security in your CRM system. There are certain best practices you should follow to remain as secure as possible.

Let’s take a closer look at encryption methods, the role of access controls and authentication methods, and the importance of regular security audits and vulnerability assessments.

Encryption Methods for Data at Rest and in Transit

Think of encryption as the first line of defense for keeping data secure. All customer data must be kept encrypted while at rest on servers and in transit across different networks and devices.

At a minimum, businesses should use Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256-bit Cipher Block Chaining technology to protect customer data. This type of encryption requires two passwords:

AES ensures that only authorized personnel can access sensitive customer information – protecting you against manipulation or theft of customer records.

Access Controls and Authentication Methods

Access controls are another essential tool for safeguarding your customers’ confidential information from unauthorized access or modification. An example here is role-based access permissions, where users are granted limited ‘views’ depending on their assigned organizational roles.

Moreover, requiring authentication methods beyond username and password combinations can make accessing CRM systems more difficult for cybercriminals or other malicious actors.

Another popular (yet simple) method for protecting against cybercriminals is doubling down on your authentication layers. Instead of just relying on username and password combos, think about systems like multi-factor authentication. MFA sends a shortcode to the user’s phone, email, or a particular app to authenticate their identity.

Security Audits and Vulnerability Assessments

It’s easy to forget regular or recurring security protocols like audits – but neglecting these security checks is a big mistake. A security audit safeguards against malicious activities by identifying vulnerable data, assessing how well current policies and procedures are being adhered to, and confirming it has been appropriately segregated (encrypted).

A vulnerability assessment pinpoints potential weak points in your system, such as inadequate access controls or outdated software versions, for internally and externally facing systems.

Make a point of conducting regular security audits and vulnerability assessments on all customer data stored in your CRM system. Consider using external experts with specialized Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions and knowledge who can review your measures for accuracy and compliance with industry standards.

Regularly Update and Patch Software

Updates aren’t directly related to data security and compliance – but even so, businesses should ensure that all applications and software are regularly updated and patched to mitigate potential vulnerabilities.

Conduct an audit or vulnerability assessment to identify system weaknesses and apply patches promptly. Up-to-date systems can neutralize threats and protect customer information from unauthorized access.

Monitor User Activity and System Logs

Keep an eye on what users are doing and regularly check your CRM system for any suspicious activities to prevent fraud. System logs play a crucial role in detecting threats and spotting any irregularities that may have occurred.

Managing logs ensures that they are stored and archived for the required duration according to industry regulations and GDPR. If there’s a data breach or a suspected intrusion, analyzing the logs is essential for a thorough investigative response.

Train Employees

Keep your team in the loop by organizing informative training sessions on security procedures. Make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to following guidelines and regulations for safeguarding customer data.

Bear in mind – even if someone leaves the company, they can still access information in the CRM system with their credentials. To steer clear of any issues, make sure all users grasp the importance of responsible data handling and stick to cybersecurity best practices.

How to Ensure Compliance for Your CRM Systems

For any business to truly thrive, it needs to play by the rules laid out by industry regulations. It’s vital to stay in the know and keep up with the specific requirements of your industry – especially when it comes to customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Compliance is non-negotiable when it comes to safeguarding sensitive customer data.

Navigating through compliance challenges tied to regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, and Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) can be overwhelming.

But by taking specific measures, you can ensure that your CRM system checks all the boxes to meet these requirements.

Protecting Your Patient’s PHI with HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA, was designed by the federal government to secure all patients’ private information. It regulates all PHI (Protected Health Information) usage, storage, and disclosure.

In the healthcare industry, where every hospital relies on a CRM, complying with HIPAA is crucial. To meet these regulations, there are key practices to follow when handling PHI:

Making sure that your system has a role-based access system prevents breaches of PHIs.

For example, the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) – a top healthcare provider – faced consequences when they failed to encrypt mobile devices containing electronically protected health information (ePHI). In 2018, they had to pay $3 million in fines to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for this violation.

Preventing Unwanted Calls and Texts with TCPA

TCPA doesn’t cover PHI but concentrates on curbing unwanted telemarketing. To adhere to TCPA, the crucial step is to secure a customer’s consent before reaching out, whether through written confirmation or recorded oral approval. Your CRM should also boast features for managing Do Not Call lists, monitoring opt-ins and opt-outs, and maintaining meticulous documentation of consent.

A stark reminder of TCPA repercussions is Wells Fargo’s settlement due to unauthorized robocalls. The linchpin here is consent – neglecting it may lead to substantial fines and legal repercussions for your business.

It’s pivotal to establish a system ensuring only opted-in customers are contacted, respecting their preferences to sidestep potential penalties and legal actions.

Protecting Against Spam with CAN-SPAM Regulations

Adhering to the CAN-SPAM Act is a top priority when dealing with commercial email messages. To stay on the right side of this law, make sure all emails sent from your CRM meet specific requirements:

Above all, the content of your email cannot be misleading or deceptive in any way. The easiest way is to use CRMs with built-in templates that have been vetted for CAN-SPAM compliance. There are also double opt-in options and automatic unsubscribe features that can help maintain compliance and reduce marketing costs.

Facilitating Credit Reporting via FCRA

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) regulates the use of customer credit information in employment, insurance, or tenant screening. Businesses using CRMs need to establish precise and current credit reporting policies. This will involve getting written consent from consumers before checking their credit reports and issuing adverse action notices if the information impacts a decision.

Make sure your CRM is equipped to automate these tasks, securely store credit information, and maintain an audit trail. Implement access controls to monitor who accesses credit reports and for what purpose. This way, you ensure a smooth and compliant credit reporting system.

Training Employees for CRM Data Security

A great CRM system (or any system, for that matter) is only as efficient as the people who use it. It may have all the features and capabilities, but without proper training and security measures in place, the valuable data within it can be at risk.

Investing in training for employees may not have immediately obvious benefits, but it’s an essential step in securing CRM data in the long run.

Here are some guidelines for training employees on CRM data security:

1. Start With The Basics

Kick off your training by familiarizing your team with the basics of CRM data security. Keep it simple and clear; help them understand the importance of confidentiality, following company policies, and staying vigilant against potential cyber threats.

Getting a grasp on compliance and regulations, such as GDPR or HiPPA guidelines, is an integral stepping stone to keeping CRM data secure.

2. Emphasize On Password Protection

Passwords are the frontline defense for safeguarding CRM data. While it might seem obvious, it’s essential to educate employees on creating strong, non-guessable passwords. Stress the importance of not sharing passwords and the necessity of changing them regularly to enhance security.

3. Train On Data Classification

A key goal is to make sure that only authorized personnel can access sensitive information, as this will minimize the risk of a security breach. Educate your team on how to properly classify data based on its sensitivity level and restrict access accordingly.

4. Keep It Up To Date

Technology and cyber threats are continuously evolving, so provide regular training updates for employees regarding new security measures or best practices. Keep them informed so that everyone is able to adapt quickly if any changes need to be made.

5. Conduct Mock Scenarios

Mix up your training routine by incorporating mock scenarios. Let employees practice handling potential security breaches in a controlled environment. A hands-on simulation will prepare them for real-life situations, boosting their confidence in dealing with unexpected events.

Choose the Best CRM for Compliance

Some CRMs have been designed and developed with compliance in mind, not just as a storage space for customer data. They function from the ground up as a system protecting you and your clients from breach.

There are thousands of software options on the market; some tools are made for a specific industry, and some are more general. Shopping and comparing around should be your first step before buying anything for your company.

Consider Your Specific Compliance Requirements

As mentioned, some tools were designed to support specific industries. Start your search with a clear outline of what’s needed. What are your specific requirements in order to be effective?

If you operate in the financial or healthcare industry, for instance, your data security standards are going to be far higher than in other industries.

Look for Built-In Compliance Features

Newer CRM programs are typically equipped with built-in features you don’t need to pay extra for. Think workflow automation, automatic recordkeeping, and data categorization. Always look for programs that offer these features out of the box and won’t ask you to pay additional charges.

Prioritize Privacy and Security

Protecting your client from data breaches should be your topmost concern. Seek a provider that has top-notch encryption in place, performs regular system backups, and has secure cloud storage.

Evaluate User-Friendliness

While compliance features are your priority, they shouldn’t come at the expense of usability. A user-friendly tool with an intuitive interface will make it easier for employees at all levels of your organization to use effectively. Look for demos or free trials so you can test their platform before committing fully.

Selecting the best CRM for compliance requires patient research and careful consideration of available options. Here are the top CRM software solutions for various organizations.

CRM Compliance and Data Security Takeaways

Compliance is complex. To save your company in the face of potential hazards, you need to have the right systems in place. A good CRM makes your life infinitely easier by safeguarding your customer’s data.

When choosing a provider, you must prioritize security, features, and usability. Find one that complies with your industry standards and policies. This includes collection, storage, and usage within its ecosystem.

Regularly educating your employees on protocols can help prevent issues in the future. Communicate clearly with your team. Perform spot checks and conduct consistent training on handling sensitive information.

Finally, make ethical responsibility a core value within your business. Whether you’re a small and scaling organization or a large enterprise — it’s easier to navigate the intricacies of these regulations with good Customer Relationship Management software.

FAQs

References

1. X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2022 (IBM)
2. Failure to Encrypt Mobile Devices Leads to $3 Million HIPAA Settlement (HHS..gov)
3. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Fines Wells Fargo $100 Million for Widespread Illegal Practice of Secretly Opening Unauthorized Accounts (CFPB)
4. The HIPAA Privacy Rule (US Dept of Health and Human Services)
5. Advanced Encryption Standard AES (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
6. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) | (Cornell Law)

The post How to Ensure Data Security and Compliance in CRM Systems appeared first on The Tech Report.

You did it. You started a small business, and your staff can handle customers’ concerns via call. However, landline and mobile post-paid plans often come with unpredictable costs, hence your search for VoIP provider options. This AXvoice review will make your decision easier.

It’s more than just a cost problem. Perhaps you’ve missed a few important client calls because your lines are all busy, or some customers hung up because of radio silence.

AXvoice is your salvation with a starting price of just $14.99. But is it on par with other VoIP services? To answer that question, we tested the software to help inform you about its performance, features, and overall business impact.

AXvoice Pros and Cons

We figured it’s best to start this AXvoice review by providing the good and the bad – insights from our testing and real user reviews online. With this, you’ll have a clear first glance at what you’re getting into.

What Is AXvoice – Company and Service Overview

VoIP technology enables voice communication and process management over the Internet. According to research published by the World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society (WSEAS), it helps companies save on operational costs. And there’s proof to this claim – most VoIP platforms offer fixed rates with their plans, meaning stakeholders don’t have to predict the costs regularly.

AXvoice does more than just save money by offering more than 30 features – all complementary to its monthly plans. You can enjoy these useful features while also accessing an online private branch exchange (PBX), a telephone network designed for communications within an enterprise.

Here’s a brief background about the New York-based company based on its Crunchbase profile. Founded in 2005, AXvoice has a strong growth pattern in monthly website visits, proving its rise as a well-known VoIP provider.

How Does AXvoice Work?

Since it’s a VoIP, the process of using AXvoice is quite simple. The AX device serves as the connection between your choice of communication device and the Internet, allowing you to make calls with a simple setup.

To start using its service, choose one of the AXvoice plans that best suits your needs – we’ll talk more about these plans later. After that, ensure that you have the following:

During our tests, our IT team could even set up AXvoice using a spare, unlocked VoIP device – meaning it’s past its contract with the previous provider. You can do the same to avoid the hassle of setting up a new device.

While the Federal Communications Commission says that some VoIP providers only let you call those who use the same service, the good news is that with an AXvoice number and subscription, you can call landlines and mobile phones from any provider.

Top AXvoice Features – What Works and What Doesn’t?

After navigating the core functions of the platform, we can say in this AXvoice review that its benefits make it a good VoIP software solution for small to mid-sized companies.

We’ve also tested additional aspects proving how this platform can be considered one of the best VoIP solutions for small businesses.
For a comprehensive review, we’ve divided the software’s features into two main categories: incoming and outgoing.

Incoming Call Functions

This is where the primary customer service functions of AXvoice come in. These features foster better call management with up to three main contact numbers.

Call Routing Capabilities

In essence, call routing directs incoming calls to the most suitable destination within your team or automates such processes to ensure smooth and efficient customer service. It’s a vital function, as it minimizes wasted time and ensures your customers get a direct line to the help they need without ending up with a busy line.

The Find Me/Follow Me feature by AXvoice is perfect if you get several calls or need to keep track of critical business calls outside office hours.

Here’s how it works: incoming calls ring on your chosen devices in the precise sequence you set. If the first number is busy, it moves on to the second – and then the third if necessary. It’s a great way to provide prompt responses to customer calls.

Simultaneous Ring

As another feature to enhance the call routing function of AXvoice, this resolves your fear of missing important calls. The setup process for us was quite easy – our incoming test calls rang simultaneously on three preset phone numbers.

Whether you’re at home or on the go, you can answer your office calls with this tool. Pick up from any device, be it your home phone or cell. The takeaway? With Simultaneous Ring, you’ll be available for every call.

Call Waiting with Caller ID

Based on our AXvoice review and testing, this feature completes the range of AXvoice’s incoming call features.

With AXvoice’s Call Waiting feature, solve the problem of managing multiple calls. While we occupied our three main lines with calls, our testing team heard beeps on each device when a new call came in with a caller ID display. The quiet beep is enough to let you know there’s someone else trying to reach you.

This means a lot for your business. You can see every contact currently connected and smoothly switch between these ongoing calls without hanging up on or forgetting about anyone.

However, something to note, is that this will only be optimal for handling up to six calls at the same time. What if your business talks to more people? Or if you run a bigger, enterprise-level company that may have more complicated concerns?

Let’s break it down. The standards for the average handling time vary per industry, with the longest being four minutes and 13 seconds. With a limit of six calls at once, you can only manage about 25 minutes of chat simultaneously.

Using only one subscription might only work well for small and mid-sized businesses catering to simpler inquiries and concerns. To handle such needs, you’ll have to add an additional plan.

Enhanced Voicemail

With an enhanced voicemail feature, you instantly get an email notification as soon as you receive a voicemail. So, despite the call volume concerns, we found in our testing that AXvoice is still powerful enough for startups even if they reach the limit of six ongoing calls.

We thought it would’ve been much easier if we had the option of manually adding an interactive voice response (IVR), which top virtual phone service providers like Nextiva and MightCall offer. This self-help solution lets customers access information by responding to voice prompts.

If you want to use AXvoice but feel that you might need an IVR, contact their billing department.

If you don’t want to, the best thing you can do is inform your customers of what information they can leave via voicemail. In doing so, reassure them that providing such info would speed up the resolution.

Outbound Call Functions

The same thing goes for outbound calls with AXvoice: you get more control over them. And it’s not just with some basic outbound functions.

VoIP Codecs

If you’re used to high-speed downloads or streaming, you’re no stranger to sluggish Internet speeds. The same applies to VoIP calls, when some may experience poor-quality lines due to one call eating up the bandwidth.

What AXvoice does well is balancing your speech transmission with the available Internet bandwidth and hardware. It uses two different methods – known as codecs – to make sure your voice calls sound clear.

Picture this: There’s a power outage, and all you have left to rely on is your mobile data. This is when codecs shine, aligning with your throughput and bandwidth to ensure you don’t miss out on important conversations.

Simply put, low-bandwidth codecs ensure your calls are still clear, even when your internet isn’t at its best. Here are some that we found to be useful:

These codecs help AXvoice stay compatible with a wide range of devices and network setups, making it a good choice if you have some legacy phone systems.

Caller ID Control

Don’t want your AXvoice number to appear on the receiver’s screen? No worries. The Caller ID Blocking feature lets you keep your number private. Log in to your AXvoice account and enable this feature without dealing with tricky shortcodes.

It doesn’t end there. We all know that having several contact numbers can be pretty useful but problematic in particular situations. One example is when an important vendor won’t answer just because they don’t recognize your number.

To help you with that, AXvoice offers multiple alternate caller IDs on your VoIP phone. You can customize your outgoing caller ID as you wish.

International Call Blocking

Don’t get us wrong; this isn’t for thwarting communication with contacts abroad. Instead, this feature lets you control unnecessary or accidental international calls.

It’s cliché to say, but yes, we all still make mistakes every day. But some of these mistakes can burn funds for companies. One example is mistakenly calling a multinational client via their overseas number instead of the local one.

These outbound and inbound capabilities of Internet-based calls usually end the battle between VoIP vs landline. And there’s more this type of software can bring to the table.

Honorable Mentions: Miscellaneous Features

During our AXvoice review, we noticed that some outgoing and incoming call features serve more than just the function of customer support. They’re very helpful for improved safety, compatibility, privacy, and fail-safe calls.

Failover

This is similar to call forwarding but is only for emergencies like blackouts or IP-only phone problems – and it was easy for us to set this up. All it took was a click of a button and pasting the number we specified. As one of our staff turned the router off during a test call, it automatically redirected to the specified number.

Music on Hold and Distinctive Rings

Imagine the simplicity and convenience of a ringtone telling you which line is ringing – this is a must-have for companies with designated lines for varied support types. Thanks to AXvoice’s Distinctive Ring feature, confusion is a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, Music on Hold adds a boost of professionalism. Rather than leaving your customers in awkward silence while on hold, you can fill this gap with some catchy tunes.

Softphone and BYOD Compatibility

We already mentioned the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) feature, which lets you use an unlocked device to complete your VoIP setup. Better than that, you can download softphone software on handheld devices or a computer and use it with AXvoice.

You just need to choose AXvoice as the provider, enter your AXvoice login details, and enable the SIP service.

After that, you can take and make company calls wherever you go. Just note here that for mobile, we only tested their recommended apps: Bria and Acrobits, which are both available on iOS and Android.

How Good Is AXvoice’s User-Interface?

Since AXvoice is accessible via a web platform, navigation is as simple as browsing a website. Before signing up, we reviewed its features by clicking on each button – and it was very similar to the actual VoIP interface itself.

After navigating all the software and testing the features, we can say that it’s relatively easy for those without customer support experience. All you’d ever need would be the basic knowledge of operating telephones and mobile phones for incoming and outgoing calls.

A little bit of training or orientation is helpful if you want your team to be quick in terms of tweaking your VoIP settings. Other than that, everything’s a breeze.

As for the system requirements, there’s no information available on AXvoice’s website. However, we’ve tested accessing the softphone apps and VoIP web platform via Google Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari, using three devices:

If you’re planning to use a PC or laptop, ensure that you have a headset with a microphone; those with noise-canceling features work best.

The only downside, however, comes with how complex the setup can be for softphone solutions for computers. Although we’re able to easily navigate through Bria and Acrobits, we needed to review AXvoice’s guides to know exactly what to click.

AXvoice Pricing – How Much Value Do You Get?

With its business plans starting at $14.99/month for a total of three lines, it’s affordable enough to belong to our list of the cheapest VoIP services. For almost $5 for each user, it’s still way cheaper than Voiply’s $7.16/month per user.

Aside from the call minutes, there aren’t many differences between the two business plans. You get to enjoy all of AXvoice’s features with both options.

However, with Home Office, you have the option of not opting for a dedicated physical device. You can use their own hosted PBX system instead and scale according to your needs.

Take note, however, that the Small Business Plan’s price in the image above is on an annual basis. For the monthly rate, it’s $39.99/month.

Information on Additional Fees

Here are a few add-ons that you can enjoy with AXvoice and additional fees that may apply to your billing:

It’s worth noting that the only mandatory recurring fee would be for E911, while the taxes and shipping fees are one-time payments. The device comes free with your subscription, together with zero-cost calls to other AXvoice numbers.

You might be wondering whether it’s hard to cancel an AXvoice subscription – it’s not. Should you decide that AXvoice does not meet your needs, you can easily end your service by contacting them before the next billing cycle. AXvoice also provides a security net with a 14-day money-back guarantee.

AXvoice Integrations and Scalability

Upon navigating the web platform, we saw no integration capabilities for AXvoice. The only tools we found as integrations were the following softphone solutions:

It would’ve been better if AXvoice could integrate with top CRM software solutions like Monday, Salesforce, or ClickUp. Doing so enhances communication, customer management, and streamlines workflows. It’s a missed opportunity that DialPad, Ooma, and 8×8 have capitalized on with their CRM integration capabilities.

In terms of scalability, AXvoice offers some flexibility as it lets you add more lines to your system as your business grows by adding plans. Each plan adds three main lines at an affordable price.

However, we’d like to see AXvoice offer the option of adding one additional line instead, which would help companies that may want to scale slowly as their business grows.

AXvoice Comparison With Other VoIP Services

The digital landscape is ripe with a variety of VoIP options – that’s why choosing a VoIP provider becomes difficult. To simplify your search, we’ve prepared a comparative overview. This table matches AXvoice against some of the leading providers in the market, considering crucial factors like features, pricing, and best use.

In essence, AXvoice is a strong contender in the business VoIP category, given that it’s scalable, straightforward, and easy to set up and use. Feel free to check out our best VoIP services page to see a more in-depth review of the other solutions listed in the table.

AXvoice vs Grasshopper – Side-by-Side Comparison

While these providers both offer seamless setups and usage, the two both hold distinct advantages.

AXvoice excels in offering a cheap VoIP solution with distinctive ringtones for multiple lines, emergency failover options, and enhanced voicemail that sends recorded messages to your email. However, its integration options remain quite limited.

On the other hand, Grasshopper offers a robust suite of features. Aside from providing VoIP/Wi-Fi calling and voicemail transcription, it further improves call handling with custom greetings, call transfers, and a business texting feature.

With virtual fax capabilities, dedicated mobile and desktop apps, and the Ruby Receptionist, it manages to outshine AXvoice in terms of service diversity despite lacking features like distinctive ringtones.

What Do Other AXvoice Reviews Say?

Despite our experience testing the platform, we just couldn’t help but ask: is AXvoice good enough for others? By looking at Trustpilot, a review site, we found some user reviews fitting our experience. Here are some of them:

We experienced the same thing when setting different codecs during our test calls. Even with low-bandwidth ones, we were able to understand each other clearly. However, calls between AXvoice numbers were the clearest ones.

Meanwhile, this rings true for their fees up until 2024, with the device, BYOD activation, and AXvoice in-network calls all still coming for free. Adding up to that is their transparent billing information, which would help you avoid any unpredictable charges.

Despite high quality and affordable rates, some customers might not like the idea that support is only via email and live chat. We would like to see AXvoice offer in-call support.

Unfortunately, there’s no product page for AXvoice on G2 nor clear reviews on Reddit – which could strengthen its online reputation.
Overall, its Trustpilot reviews affirm the affordability of the tool and the company’s transparency when it comes to pricing.

AXvoice Alternatives – What Else Is There?

If AXvoice doesn’t seem to be the perfect fit for your business, fear not. There are other VoIP solutions available today, which we’ve reviewed and tested. Each comes with a unique mix of features, pricing, and functionality. Check out our other pages to find a perfect fit for your needs:

Why You Can Trust Our Review of AXvoice

In our AXvoice review, we didn’t rely on information from other review websites and the AXvoice website itself. As always, we’re happy to test the product ourselves to give you a balanced insight into its features.

By testing its functions for call routing, failover safety nets, international call blocking, and call waiting with caller ID, we can tell you what works, what doesn’t, and how to overcome such challenges.

Yes, we rely upon our own hands-on experience, but we also consider the feedback of other AXvoice users collated from reputable review sites like Trustpilot. Adding to this is our experience testing other leading VoIP platforms, including Ooma and Vonage.

We’re well-versed in what to look for in a top-notch service. This leaves us in a prime position to provide a comprehensive and honest review.

How to Use AXvoice Step-By-Step

For those worried about complex setups, don’t worry – setting up and using AXvoice is easy as long as you understand the basic call functions of telephones and mobile phones. Here’s a step-by-step guide to make setting up even more seamless:

1. Sign Up for an Axvoice Account

Start by visiting the AXvoice website and selecting the plan best suited to your business needs. You’ll then have the option of keeping your existing number or obtaining a new one from AXvoice.

Next, you can select the required hardware, choosing from several devices. Here, you’ll have the option to use your own; just ensure your current setup is unlocked already. Then, provide the necessary billing and shipping information.

2. Set Up Your Preferred Devices

After completing the signup and payment process, you’ll have to wait for AXvoice to ship your device. If you, however, opted for a hosted service or a BYOD setup, you won’t have to wait long to set up.

As for your device, whether BYOD or AXvoice-provided, you’ll need a spare Ethernet port on your router and one separate cable, which you’ll use to connect your physical device to the router.

Then, you’ll just connect your touchtone telephone to the VoIP system and wait for a green light before checking whether there’s a dial tone. Should you opt for a softphone setup, you’ll just need the credentials from AXvoice and use them to log in to your app of choice.

For PC or laptop setups, take note of your IP address, AXvoice’s domain, and proxy information. Make sure to check the installation instructions of the softphone app you plan to use on your computer.

3. Tweak the Settings According to Your Needs

With everything set up, you can start making the service your own by customizing your settings based on your business needs. Start with the necessary configurations, like setting up your primary and alternate Caller ID or managing your call routing settings.

But don’t stop there; finesse everything. You can start by personalizing your ringtones for each line, setting up a blacklist, and choosing what happens to a failed call to defining your voicemail preferences. Simply put, align every feature with your customer service strategy.

Remember, all these settings are accessible via AXvoice’s web interface.

Is AXvoice Good for Your Business?

The answer is a solid “yes,” especially if affordability is a primary concern. Its competitive pricing gives small and mid-sized businesses access to top-tier features like call management, enhanced voicemail, and failover safety.

However, some pitfalls may not suit larger businesses. Its limitations on maximum concurrent calls and lack of CRM integration may not cater well to more complicated customer service processes.

Yet, with its emphasis on call quality and affordability, AXvoice is the VoIP solution suited for your small to mid-sized business needs. With their 14-day money-back guarantee, it’s worth giving AXvoice a shot.

FAQs

References

• Strategic management using VoIP technology: A case study In a call center company (ResearchGate)
• AXvoice (Crunchbase)
• Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) (Federal Communications Commission)
• What Is Average Handle Time? (+ Tips To Improve It) (Hubspot)

The post AXvoice Review — Is It a Good Business VoIP in 2024? appeared first on The Tech Report.

Using a slow computer makes one thing certain – frustration. One of the common culprits is your antivirus software, which may consume too much RAM. That’s enough to keep you up all night, causing you to search for the best lightweight antivirus – those that consume small amounts of memory – available.

But don’t throw your computer out the window just yet. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, and it doesn’t involve heavy-duty antivirus software weighing down your beloved machine.

Picture this instead: a lightweight yet robust antivirus solution. An expert in sidelining digital threats but kind enough to let your PC run fast. Yes, it’s possible, and it’s high time you reclaimed your computer’s speed and capability, with the choices we’re about to show you.

We’ve reviewed and tested six efficient antivirus solutions, helping you pick a potent yet light antivirus software.

Why Look for a Lightweight Antivirus at All?

Random access memory (RAM) is like the workspace of a device. The more space you have, the more apps you can run simultaneously without experiencing any lag. That’s why some devices experience slowdowns when software consumes too much RAM.

The good news is that the global cloud computing industry is taking the world by storm, enabling servers to handle a computer’s memory and processing. Its promise for security software? We might be able to see the smallest footprint antivirus solutions ever, with them processing scans using the cloud’s RAM instead of your device’s.

However, even without cloud-based capabilities, some of the platforms we tested proved that the best lightweight antivirus solutions can still be enough for people who just want an antivirus that works well without lag.

Top 6 Lightweight Antivirus Software

Here are the results of our research and testing of the lightest antivirus solutions. Note that we used a system running on an Intel Core i5 with DDR3 16 GB RAM on Windows, which meets the minimum device standards for students.

1. ESET NOD32 – The Best Lightweight Antivirus Solution
2. Panda Security – Excellent Zero-Budget Protection
3. Kaspersky– Top Choice for Payments and Cryptocurrency Transactions
4. Trend Micro – Cheapest Paid Light Antivirus
5. Surfshark – Protects an Unlimited Number of Devices
6. TotalAV – The Best Antivirus for Real-Time Threat Protection

1. ESET NOD32 – The Best Lightweight Antivirus Solution

ESET NOD32 easily shined during our testing, as it was the software with the lowest memory usage of 110 MB during a full-system virus scan. Although you’ll see that its idling usage is similar to Panda Security’s, it still uses 40 MB less while scanning. This factor makes NOD32 an optimal example of a lightweight antivirus free from lag-causing features.

Before installing it, we were surprised to learn that NOD32 is compatible with a well-updated version of Windows 7 SP. It gets better from there. The platform only needs at least 0.3 GB of RAM as per its system requirements. This, however, lowered when we checked its memory usage when idling and scanning.

Curious about how NOD32 manages to consume only 110 MB? It’s because of its cloud-powered scanning capabilities. As mentioned earlier, this helps antivirus software solutions secure your device without irritating you with slowdowns.

The drawback, however, with cloud computing is that if you don’t have an active internet connection, it’ll take more local resources.

Those looking for freemium features will be delighted to know that – while integrated into NOD32 – the ESET SysInspector, can be used as a standalone diagnostic tool free of charge. It’s able to check your device for the following issues:

Meanwhile, NOD32 also comes with the essential features of an antivirus solution, including a ransomware shield, antispyware, software scanners, and security reports. Adding these up means NOD32 belongs among the top mobile antivirus solutions.

Pricing

NOD32’s pricing is the third-highest on our list, and since it’s a standalone antivirus service from ESET, you’ll only get access to other additional features by opting for higher-priced protection plans.

With NOD32, you can add more devices, charged at $5 annually per device, meaning costs can ramp up for a family. The Premium plan lets you access a password manager and smart home protection. With Ultimate, you can enjoy unlimited VPN and dark web scans for any leaked personal info.

Best of all, you can try all ESET products risk-free with a 30-day free trial.

Get ESET Today

2. Panda Security – Excellent Zero-Budget Protection

Panda Security is the only provider on our list to provide its antivirus software for free. Yes, you read that right. But free doesn’t mean it’s short on premium features.

Starting Price (Annually)	RAM Usage (Idle)	RAM Usage (Scans)
Free	50 MB	150 MB

Although NOD32 wins with its low memory usage, Panda Security tops it for dark web scans, which come as a freemium feature. Additionally, there’s the free daily 150 MB VPN service (really not much).

These free tools – including internal and external storage scans – are all included with the basic antivirus software for Windows.

Just note that the free antivirus and tools aren’t available for Mac yet. This, along with the absence of online payment options, anti-ransomware, and Wi-Fi protection in the free plan, might make you want to consider the paid plans.

Remember Windows XP? Panda Security is the right tool if you’re still using it for some reason. Aside from being compatible with XP, it also works on Windows Vista and Windows 2000 Professional SP4. Now, that’s what we call an antivirus solution for legacy operating systems.

Note that these outdated systems harbor numerous unpatched vulnerabilities, making them a hacker’s dream. For peace of mind and online safety, consider upgrading to at least Windows 10, which is much safer and lined with modern security features.

Even better, there’s also an Android version of this free antivirus, with privacy audits, battery life optimization, and location tracking.
Several add-ons are also available, similar to what Kaspersky and ESET offer: a password manager, VPN, and parental protection service.

Pricing

Generally, Panda Security’s pricing leans to the cheaper side. With just $26.24, you can access secure online shopping and Wi-Fi protection. Meanwhile, child protection is an added feature of the Advanced plan.

If you want to take advantage of all the add-ons, opt for the Premium plan, which includes an update manager and 24/7 premium support.

Try Panda Security Now

3. Kaspersky – Top Choice for Payments and Cryptocurrency Transactions

Kaspersky is recognized as one of the best antivirus solutions for Windows and Mac. Because its website declares a minimum system requirement of 2 GB RAM, we were surprised by its low memory usage when running scans.

Starting Price (Annually)	RAM Usage (Idle)	RAM Usage (Scans)
$25.99	110 MB	157 MB

During testing, we loved that with our permission, Kaspersky could delete excessive and unnecessary system event logs, update logs, cookies, Recycle Bin items, and temp files, all of which compromise a device’s optimal performance.

There’s a bonus here if you want to dominate battles online, as Kaspersky is one of the top antivirus options for PC gaming. This is because of the tool’s Do Not Disturb function, which automatically turns on as you launch your games. You can also activate this function for movies and work apps.

Additionally, Kaspersky is a great option to safeguard online payments and cryptocurrency transactions. This is possible with the following capabilities:

• Crypto Scam Shield, which watches out for shady transactions to guard your Bitcoins.
• Identity Protection Wallet, which stores and protects sensitive documents and credentials, keeping them out of hackers’ reach.
• Data Leak Detector, which Kaspersky sifts through the deep web to see if your info has leaked anywhere online.
• Anti-Stalkerware, which protects you from hidden spyware by sniffing it out and alerting you immediately.
• Secret Vault, a local, unreadable storage spot on your hard drive, keeps your password safe.
• Anti-Cryptojacking is used to protect your digital coins from sneaky miners attempting illegal access.
• Remote Access Alert, which spots any remote system access and immediately warns you, keeping your system safe.

To further assist you, Kaspersky sends you news on recent crypto scams, such as malware and phishing. That’s what we call payment safety without breaking the RAM.

Pricing

For one device, Kaspersky is the second cheapest paid antivirus on this list. As for the plans, you have the option of using only one device, which can be cheaper.

If you need a VPN, you can purchase it as an add-on with Standard for $29.99. However, if you have 2–5 devices and still need a VPN, it’s better to opt for the Plus plan, which turns out to be way lower with more allowable devices.

Meanwhile, the Premium plan unlocks all Kaspersky's features, including parental protection and the password manager.

4. Trend Micro – Cheapest Light Antivirus

Trend Micro is the best budget antivirus. Its starting annual price of $19.95 is still relatively lower than Avast’s $31.19 and Nord’s $60.

While Trend Micro has the highest idle RAM usage it’s not a problem if you have at least 8 GB RAM. We proved this by testing the antivirus on a spare laptop. It only consumed 112 MB in the background and 348–360 MB when running virus scans. We could still edit videos and stream movies without any lag.

It was also comforting that this software only required a minimum of 2 GB RAM, Windows 7 SP1, and a 1 GHz processor. This means users with older machines or budget devices can use Trend Micro's robust antivirus protection without sacrificing performance or flow of operations.

TrendMicro is compatible with Windows 11, too.

Trend Micro might be budget-friendly, but it's big on offerings. Even its basic plan provides top-rated spyware detection, antivirus, and protection for payments and emails. But here's the kicker – it has the advantage of advanced AI learning.

This allows the software to rapidly adapt and combat new online threats, a silver bullet for any antivirus solution on the market.

Pricing

Trend Micro’s basic plan is one of the cheapest in the market. However, we think it would’ve been way better if we could add devices to the Antivirus+Security plan.

Meanwhile, upgrading to Internet Security gives you access to two more devices, parental protection, social media privacy, and system optimization.

Unfortunately, you’ll only get to access Trend Micro on mobile devices by subscribing to the Maximum Security plan, which also has password management.

The Premium Security Suite plan comes with a premium offering: up to $1 million worth of identity fraud insurance. This plan is where you’ll also use Trend Micro’s VPN service.

5. Surfshark – Protects an Unlimited Number of Devices

Surfshark is the second most expensive solution on our list (TotalAV’s starting price is $119.40) and the one with the highest RAM usage when scanning. It still made it onto our list due to its low memory usage when running in the background. On top of that, even its basic plan lets you protect an unlimited number of devices.

As long as they’re compatible, you can access the VPN service and anonymous search functions on any device you want.

There’s no minimum requirement for RAM storage on Surfshark’s website, which can be confusing. Still, we were surprised by its average idle memory usage of 70 MB, which is relatively close to NOD32’s.

However, its scan usage is close to Avira and Avast's, almost consuming 0.5 GB. While a device with 8 GB could handle this, a lower memory will surely encounter some form of sluggishness with Surfshark’s scan.

Since this platform is mainly a VPN service provider, its basic plan doesn’t include antivirus and anti-spyware features. It only has ad and cookie pop-up blocking capabilities with the VPN.

One of its standout features as an antivirus solution is blocking all webcam access for your devices unless you permit them.

Moreover, Surfshark lets you schedule your scans and set exclusions for files and folders you don’t want to be scanned, preventing false alarms from the antivirus detection.

Pricing

Surfshark Starter is the basic plan, priced at $47.88 a year. You can only access the anti-malware and spyware capabilities via Surfshark One and Surfshark One+.

Upgrading to Surfshark One gives you alerts and reports. The only additional feature you get with Surfshark One+ is the ability to remove your data from company sites and people search tools.

6. TotalAV – The Best Antivirus for Real-Time Threat Protection

TotalAV, while considered a lightweight antivirus solution, is generally considered the top antivirus solution for protecting your devices in real-time. However, it’s not the most lightweight, so it lands the last spot on this list.

While being at the top spot of the best antivirus software, it can safeguard operating systems starting from Windows 7 SP1 and above, all while requiring only 2 GB of RAM.

Generally, high-end tools usually consume more memory, but in our findings, TotalAV consumes only 70 MB of RAM when running in the background. On top of that, you can free up some of your RAM with the tool’s capability to find and delete duplicate files, unused apps, and junk temp files.

Although the price is also quite high compared to others on our list, the starting plan already lets you add up to three devices – including iOS and Android – all of which can receive zero-hour malware elimination capabilities.

We also tested its ad-blocking and anti-phishing capabilities by clicking on random websites from randomized Google searches. TotalAV didn’t even let us open any potentially malicious pages. Meanwhile, sites commonly teeming with ads showed fewer, if any, ads at all.

Pricing

As one top-quality product itself, TotalAV is one of the most expensive antivirus solutions, next to Avira’s $263.40/year.

The Antivirus Pro plan includes everything you need from an antivirus solution. However, if you need a VPN, opt for the Internet Security plan, priced at $145 yearly. You can add up to six devices and use Total Password with Total Security plan, which is $179 yearly.

The Best Lightweight Antivirus Solutions Compared

To help you fast-track your search for the top antivirus, we've bundled all the important info into a single, comprehensive table. This comparison might just lead you to the best lightweight antivirus solution that fits your needs perfectly.

We found ESET NOD32’s RAM usage to be the lowest, but with 16 GB of memory at our disposal, we can confidently say that every tool on this list is lightweight. We didn’t experience any lagging with any of the tools as we carried out sample tasks we usually do at the office.

What to Look for in a Lightweight Antivirus

It's quite normal for a computer to use about up to 30% of its memory even when idle. Surprise, right? So, what should you seek in a lightweight antivirus?

Keep these in mind as you hunt for your perfect lightweight antivirus. Remember: the goal is a solution that packs a punch without slowing you down.

What Is the Most Resource-Intensive Antivirus?

During our testing of the best lightweight antivirus solutions, we found some that consume high amounts of memory, even in the background. Two of the most notable are the following:

While this may be a big problem for devices with lower memory, the higher consumption means that such antivirus solutions can do their jobs efficiently for computers with higher specifications.

Our Other Antivirus Guides

Explore beyond. We've got other guides waiting for you, filled with extensive info about antivirus apps and solutions. Dive in and uncover a world of cyber safety knowledge.

Are Lightweight Antiviruses Worth It?

In the end, it depends on the specifications of your device. If you have limited memory, yes, lightweight antiviruses are worth it. Without slowing down your day-to-day tasks on your computer, these solutions also protect you from identity and security threats.

That's why these solutions are a sound investment. Our thorough testing hails ESET NOD32 as the best lightweight antivirus solution in 2024.

So, rest easy. You're not merely casting your line into the digital sea, hoping to reel in something valuable – you're guaranteed an excellent catch with ESET NOD32.

FAQs

References

• Digital divide (Britannica)
• Cloud computing - statistics & facts (Statista)
• Laptop Requirements (University of Denver)
• How Much RAM Usage is Normal [When Idle & Maxed Out] (LinkedIn)

The post Best Lightweight Antivirus – Good Protection for Low-End PCs and Light RAM Usage appeared first on The Tech Report.

In our Kaspersky review, we shed light on both antiviruses and antivirus solutions, so you have clear and unbiased insights that can help you make an informed decision.

Those who encountered viruses are familiar with the threat of browsing the internet one minute and having their files taken over the next. While some people may be knowledgeable about this issue, others are still searching for an analysis of antivirus solutions.

The worst-case scenario? Having your identity stolen. That’s why it’s wise to be cautious when protecting yourself against online criminals.

But no need to worry – we’re here to provide you with nearly everything you need to know about one of the best products available, including feedback from Kaspersky reddit users.

Kaspersky Pros and Cons

After testing the software, we believe it is important to highlight both the positives and negatives in this Kaspersky review. Here are some insights from our testing team, as well as feedback from other online users:

After rigorous testing and considering the notes above, we feel confident that Kaspersky is among the best antivirus solutions for Windows and Mac alike.

Note that these insights are just the tip of the iceberg. Equally crucial to knowing the pros and cons is understanding how the entire system works.

Ready to know more? Let’s dive into our in-depth Kaspersky review.

What Is Kaspersky Antivirus?

While its main product is an antivirus solution, note that it is only a part of the cybersecurity suite offered by Kaspersky. The software suite originated from the standalone version and now has a two-way firewall and online payment security with the basic plan.

Protecting yourself from spyware is made simple with a tool like Kaspersky. Aside from that, there are other things the software can do to help secure your devices:

In terms of additional features, you can subscribe to them as add-ons for a wider range of functionality. Its versatility is perhaps why Kaspersky ranks among the top password managers.

Is Kaspersky Safe, and Can You Trust It?

Kaspersky has cemented its name in the cybersecurity field since it was founded as a private international company in 1997. Now, with its holding company in the United Kingdom, it secured a global reach with more than 400 million subscribers and 240,000 enterprise-level clients spread across over 200 countries.

From its humble beginnings offering antivirus software alone, Kaspersky has proven its grit time and again. Initially developed for Windows, Kaspersky Labs garnered recognition as early as 2000 by the UK tech magazine Virus Bulletin.

An interesting fact we’d like to note in our Kaspersky internet security review is its history with Pegasus malware, the spyware that hacked phones and turned them into 24-hour surveillance devices back in 2021.

Aside from blocking Pegasus on Android, it can even detect older versions of it, like the Trojan-Spy.AndroidOS.Pegasus.a. iOS users can rest easy, too, as the Kaspersky Security Cloud comes with anti-phishing tech that categorizes domains.

If any domain your device is trying to access is associated with Pegasus, the connection is immediately blocked by the software.

Looking for a Kaspersky rating or award? There’s an abundance of positive ratings; the company has won several awards and undergone tests, including:

Still, Kaspersky has been subjected to controversies as recently as 2023. No concrete evidence was supplied for the matter, however. Kaspersky continues to be an effective cybersecurity software suite.

Kaspersky’s Features – How Good Is It?

In our Kaspersky antivirus review, we found that it offers great value for the price.

We also discovered some unique features that are only available in this suite. These functions have proven to be highly effective for Kaspersky, making it one of the best antivirus solutions for servers and Chromebooks.

Web Browsing Protection

Vital to any antivirus software is its ability to let you browse with confidence, which is what we’ve found in trying Kaspersky.

Regular browsing should be relatively easy. You search for anything you need to know about and click on suitable links.

Do note, however, that even the most seasoned internet users are still prone to click on links that cause harm to their computer – or worse, their identity.

When we tested clicking on just any link we saw on our Google search, this was a common sight. Here, instead of landing on a malicious page, Kaspersky shows you this message box, including the URL and the reason why you can’t proceed.

Annoying ads, whether in the form of banners or pop-ups, can easily disrupt your browsing experience. In testing the software, we visited certain sites that inundate users with ads.

With the anti-banner feature turned on, we saw significantly fewer banner ads, with the caveat that the ones from Google may still show up. This means it can even block potentially harmful ad scripts as well.

Another additional protection when using your browser is the Webcam and Mic Protection, which alerts you whenever any other software tries to access these input devices. It also lets you choose which ones to allow.

Add-On: Kaspersky VPN

A virtual private network is a crucial tool for improving online security and privacy, as it creates a secure and encrypted connection to the internet. Doing so helps safeguard your data from potential cyber threats.

It even provides a certain level of privacy by masking your real IP address, making it less straightforward for third parties to track your internet activities.

Kaspersky offers such a service, eliminating the need to switch between apps for enhanced online privacy.

Even better, it’s one of the top providers with the fastest speeds, as rated in the AV-TEST Awards in 2022.

Its VPN service has the following features:

The VPN feature is only an add-on for the cheapest Kaspersky plan. We would have appreciated the VPN capabilities being an available feature for all plans.

Antivirus, Anti-malware, and Anti-ransomware

When testing various downloads, we found that Kaspersky is not just an antivirus solution. It steps up to deliver anti-malware and anti-ransomware functions, too.

Malware is any type of software designed to disrupt, control, or even damage a computer system. Simply put, a virus is a type of malware. How common is it? Well, there were over 5.5 billion cyberattacks in 2022.

Whenever a person uses malware to lock you out and ask you for money, that’s ransomware.

However, our team and individual users are not alone in attesting to Kaspesrky’s effectiveness.

In December 2020, the Director-General of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), Dr. Sanjay Bahl, lauded their government’s partnership with Kaspersky, saying it will “…help towards creating a robust, safe, secure and resilient digital economy in a vibrant digital India.”

Anti-Malware Capabilities

So, how does Kaspersky do it? Its antivirus system continuously scans your devices in real-time. Upon detection, it analyzes other files in your computer to check whether the threat has duplicated itself.

The best thing about this process is that it removes malware and always notifies you whenever there’s a threat or a potential one. But there’s more to it with the following additional anti-malware features:

On top of these features, we were impressed by the availability of a backup plan, the Kaspersky Rescue Disk. It’s an emergency recovery solution that you can paste on a flash drive and run on an infected computer to help you recover your OS and data.

Optimizing Your Computer Space, Performance, and More

In the making of our Kaspersky review, we discovered that it can free up your computer space and optimize its performance.

Because of the app management feature, you don’t need to suffer from unresponsive programs or apps, which can usually cause your computer to respond slowly. Kaspersky keeps a good watch on these programs and puts a brake on anything that tries to freeze your computer.

The unique feature of Kaspersky known as ‘Application Control’ takes a significant role here. It keenly observes attempts made by users to launch applications and meticulously regulates the startup of programs based on predefined app control rules.

Moreover, if it detects that any app has an update, it quickly reminds you to get that update to ensure your apps run smoothly and maximize security. Better yet, you get suggestions to delete some apps that you rarely use.

This feature already streamlines your device performance. But what about the temporary data your OS stores for too long?

Kaspersy Clean-up

Fortunately, in our Kaspersky review and testing, we saw what the tool can delete for you (pending your approval):

If you’re a gamer, perhaps you want to know more about the best antivirus software for gaming PCs. Kaspersky’s constant alerts may sound like a nuisance during gameplay, but this feature does not need to be invasive.

With the manual and automatic Do Not Disturb function coming with all paid plans, you won’t have to see the pop-ups whenever you’re playing games, streaming movies, or working.

Once your hard drive is compromised, you can lose data. Kaspersky has a solution for this: the Hard Drive Health Monitor. This feature functions with self-reporting technology and shares with you whether the hard drive is suffering from any problem.

To help you with a potentially damaged hard drive, Kaspersky offers the Kaspersky Security Cloud, which lets you copy data from the hard drive and paste it onto other devices.

Secured Online Payments and Cryptocurrencies

Perhaps you are reading this Kaspersky review because you want the best value for your money. If you’re prone to attacks that intend to steal fiat money or crypto from you, it will be far more expensive in the long run.

It’s comforting to note that Kaspersky has shifted to protect its users’ online assets, too. Here are the ways this software ensures your cryptocurrency money is protected well.

The platform even sends you updates on recent crypto scams, phishing, and malicious crypto mining apps. This helps you know the things you must avoid – all without having to search the web for any news on such attacks.

With Safe Money, Kaspersky’s online banking security system, you are protected from malicious payment system attacks, including man-in-the-middle (MITM) ones.

With a system like this, Kaspersky users enjoy doing transactions online, including browser transactions which are sometimes prone to hacking.

Diving deeper into how Safe Money works, it’s interesting to note that Kaspersky has integrated robust Host-based Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) and SelfDefense technologies.

With such strong guards, your online browsing becomes much more secure than ever. It also hinders the loading of malicious extensions or add-ons to your browser.

Some Honorable Mentions

There are some unique features offered by Kaspersky worth noting:

• Smart Home Monitor: This tool lets you manage your home Wi-Fi. That includes the devices that connect to your network and any threats that may come through your router.
• Password Safety Check: With Kaspersky, you can know which passwords are compromised or may seem easy to crack.
• Kaspersky Safe Kids: Track your children’s online activities and their whereabouts through GPS tracking.

Note that Kaspersky Safe Kids is a paid add-on, similar to its Password Manager.

Kaspersky Pricing — Is It a Good Value Purchase?

In terms of Kaspersky’s pricing, we found it to be quite cheaper than the leading antivirus solutions out there.

Divided into months, the starting plan would only be $3.20 in its introductory price, which is way more affordable than TotalAV and Nord. Even with its price after a year, it’s still relatively cheaper than the best solutions available.

Now, let’s explore each plan and what they have to offer.

Standard Plan

According to Kaspersky, this is the new version of their initial antivirus product, but it’s more than just that. This plan’s primary functions are anti-malware, antivirus, and anti-ransomware, backed with the following features:

Note that the prices displayed above are just introductory prices.

Other Details

Price after one year of subscription: $69.99 yearly
Add-ons: Password Manager, VPN, Kaspersky Safe Kids

Plus Plan

This plan includes everything in Standard, with the addition of the Hard Drive Health Monitor and the VPN service. While it would’ve been better if the VPN was available with Standard, the almost $15 difference still makes Plus a good option if you think you might need a VPN.

Meanwhile, the data leak checking, password management, and password checker are also part of the Plus Plan. This makes the additional $15 worthwhile, as the Password Manager is also just an add-on for Standard.

Other Details

Price after one year of subscription: $99.99 yearly
Add-ons: Kaspersky Safe Kids

Premium Plan

Again, this includes everything in the previous plans, and the difference lies with the better, hands-on support that you can access 24/7. With this plan, experts from Kaspersky can help you via remote access, in which they can conduct PC health checks and remove malware for you.

On top of that, all add-ons become features with this plan, including Kaspersky Safe Kids. This is also where you access other the Identity Protection Wallet, Smart Home Monitor, and Remote Access Detection functions.

Other Details

Price after one year of subscription: $149.99 yearly
Add-ons: None

While these are all amazing benefits of using Kaspersky, we believe it would be made considerably better if there was a free version. Thankfully, the software comes with a 30-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, in which Kaspersky promises to give you a refund.

But one question still remains about pricing: is it hard to cancel a Kaspersky subscription? Turns out it’s relatively easy. You can log in to the website, click on “Manage Subscriptions,” click on the cancel button, and then follow the rest of the instructions.

Note here that your all-year subscription will still be valid. Only the next billing cycle will be canceled. Meanwhile, you can uninstall the software if you deem it necessary.

Kaspersky Interface – Is It User-Friendly?

We can confidently say that yes, Kaspersky’s interface is generally user-friendly even for those without experience with antivirus software.

A major problem with antivirus software these days is that it can be as intrusive as the actual malware it’s built to prevent.

Rest assured that Kaspersky does not create difficulties for its users, offering a unique approach that puts you firmly in the driver’s seat.

You can say goodbye to annoying notifications since you get to customize them based on your preference within your Kaspersky plan.

A great feature is that you get to suspend all updates and alerts with a mere single click, ensuring you have the best and most undisturbed gaming or working experience.

Desktop Version

This is the first version we tested, and we’re happy to say that, with a DDR3 16GB RAM Windows computer, Kaspersky didn’t slow down any operations. One of our testers played a game with Kaspersky in the background and found no issues.

Aside from not disturbing gaming with pop-up notifications, Kaspersky didn’t affect the game’s overall performance, either. This was still the case when our teammate clicked “Scan” and went back to playing.

Mobile Version

Although it’s sad to say that iOS users might get limited features, it’s still more than enough to protect their devices from common threats. With the iOS version, we’re able to access the Password Manager, parental controls, and VPN.

However, with the Android version, you get access to an additional call blocker feature, app locks, browsing protection, and anti-phishing from SMS attacks. The benefit here is that upon installing just random apps, we were eventually notified of some dangerous ones.

We also got to see the anti-theft protection capability of Kaspersky mobile, which lets users lock and locate devices should they be lost or stolen.

Kaspersky Compared With Other Antivirus Software

To help you further in your Kaspersky review, we’ve curated this table that includes the standout features and starting price of Kaspersky together with other providers. Feel free to compare and make a choice in the end should you want to.

With most of these outstanding features and best-for functionalities, we can say that Kaspersky is still quite flexible having almost every feature other software solutions have. However, its system still remains the best for online payments and crypto safety.

Want to check how it compares to the best of the best? We have another post with reviews of the top-ranking antivirus solutions.

What Do Kaspersky Reviews Say?

You are likely to see many positive reviews of Kaspersky, all of which align with what we found in our testing. However, you’ll see some users in mobile app stores demanding for Kaspersky mobile to be available in their areas, too.

Here are some of the ones that we believe you might find interesting:

On Reddit

Scanning through Reddit reviews will have you a mix of positive comments about Kaspersky and the allegations surrounding the product being a backdoor for political interest.

But we can relate to this one, as we’ve also seen how Kaspersky showed us some potential threats and unused files it offered to get rid of. To clarify, the Password Manager and VPN remain as add-ons unless you upgrade to the Plus Plan and beyond.

On G2

Over on G2, people talk about the political clouds surrounding Kaspersky. There are separate reviews for different product types, like the Password Manager, Kaspersky for Business, and the antivirus. Here’s one general review for Kaspersky:

Although we also noticed other comments talking about false-positive detections, we didn’t experience any.

One thing you can do is ensure that your antivirus software is up to date. Regular updates can iron out bugs, enhance detection accuracy, and keep false alarms to a minimum. You can also whitelist the files, folders, or software that you trust and want to use frequently.

Whitelisting is instructing the antivirus that these files are friendly and there’s no need to interfere when you’re accessing them. Overall, we can proudly say that our testing results are in sync with what other users have to say about Kaspersky.

Kaspersky Alternatives – What’s Better?

Maybe you’re looking for something more affordable, or perhaps a software that focuses on a specific feature you’re interested in. The good news is we’ve looked into a variety of other choices and laid them out for you in our comprehensive antivirus software guides:

Why You Can Trust Our Review of Kaspersky

In evaluating Kaspersky, our approach is grounded in its application. We’ve experimented with its key features such as:

But we don’t just rely on our experiences. We gather insights from real Kaspersky users from reliable sites like Reddit and G2. Their firsthand encounters add a vital layer to our review.

Moreover, our evaluation doesn’t exist in a vacuum – we’ve put other leading antivirus software like Total AV, Nord Threat Protection, Trend Micro, ESET, and more to the test.

Our broad exposure ensures we know the markers of excellence and can compare effectively.

How to Install and Use Kaspersky Step-By-Step

Kaspersky is relatively easy to both install and use. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide:

Step 1: Head to The Kaspersky Site and Sign Up

In our experience, the first step was to navigate our way to the official Kaspersky site, in which we signed up for a new account.

This made things much easier for the next steps.

Step 2: Choose Your Desired Kaspersky Antivirus Plan

Kaspersky offers a range of different plans tailored to various needs and budgets. Study them carefully or see our “Kaspersky Pricing – Is It a Good Value Purchase?” section in this blog, and then pick the one that suits you best.

As mentioned earlier, signing up first makes things easier. It does so as you can seamlessly move from the plan selection to checkout.

Step 3: Purchase, Download, and Install

Purchase your selected plan. Upon completion of your payment, you’ll get a prompt to download your newly bought software. It’s just as easy as it sounds.

Once you’ve downloaded the software, just open the installer and follow the on-screen instructions. This process should involve agreeing to the terms and conditions and choosing an installation method.

Step 4: Update Your Settings and Run Your First Scan

Once you’ve successfully downloaded and installed Kaspersky, the software will prompt you to tweak your settings according to your liking. In our testing process, we adjusted our notification preferences and scheduled our scans.

Afterward, kickstart your device’s security by running your first full scan with Kaspersky. This helps you ensure that there aren’t any lurking threats in your system right from the start.

Is Kaspersky Worth It?

Based on our comprehensive analysis and hands-on experience with Kaspersky, we confidently affirm that it brings much to the table.

While it may have had certain controversies and lack a free version, all evidence point to it being a reliable antivirus software with robust features like real-time malware detection, VPN, and web browsing protection.

So, why not see it for yourself? Try Kaspersky today and experience firsthand the digital shield it offers.

FAQs

References

• What is Pegasus spyware and how does it hack phones? (The Guardian)
• EXCLUSIVE U.S. warned firms about Russia’s Kaspersky software day after invasion – sources (Reuters)
• AV-TEST Award 2022: Tested and Award-Winning Security (AV-TEST)
• Malware – Statistics & Facts (Statista)

The post Full Kaspersky Review — Does It Stop All Viruses 2024? appeared first on The Tech Report.

Even the worst concerns are no match for your agents’ de-escalation skills – they understand the service and the needs of almost your entire clientele. Unfortunately, you cannot hire an infinite number of agents.

There’s still a chance that they will resolve some requests late. One thing that will resolve that and other workflow problems? Customer service ticketing software.

It’s a given that you want to make every software purchase count. You can do so by knowing how to do it right.

And with ticketing as a service, we can definitely say you can never go wrong with providers that offer automation, easy assignment to agents, and triage chatbots.

There’s still more to giving your agents the assistance they truly deserve. Here, we’ll discuss how help desk ticketing systems work and what considerations you should make when choosing one for your team.

By the end, you’ll know the pros and cons you have to weigh – all based on our testing of ticketing services. That means you can become a ticketing system expert in no time.

Ticketing System Definition & What It Is

It streamlines the organization of concerns, which makes a ticketing system one of the must-haves for any help desk software, CRM, and even VoIP solution. Based on our testing of some ticketing tools, we found that they can also:

The best part? You’ll have issues resolved in a timely manner. In turn, this makes your agents calm, proud, and/or engaged – all of the things that make the provision of good customer service therapeutic.

Do All Businesses Need a Help Desk Ticketing System?

The answer here is no. Some exceptions include companies with a small customer base and those that require in-person support.
But, there’s a “but.” While not all businesses would automatically need ticketing as a service, there are too many benefits that we can’t just ignore. Let’s check the case of companies that require face-to-face support.

Say that there are only five members in the support team,handling one customer each at 9 AM. Another set of five or more customers come to the office, while two agents receive messages on social media and a few emails.

The physical office can definitely hold the line, but what about all the general inquiries you get online? They’ll probably stress out your agents. It’s just the start of the work day, meaning those can pile up until the afternoon. Don’t forget: The effects of work-related stress include:

With support ticketing, you can alleviate these. The focus is shifted to what your team aims to do: provide the best support out there. This is just one of the many benefits of having a support ticket for each concern.

How Does Ticketing as a Service Work?

As mentioned earlier, ticketing as a service may come as a standalone tool or as a feature of one. For example, it’s included in some of the top AI tools for customer support. Meanwhile, some CRM and VoIP tools have it in their arsenal as well.

That said, the support ticketing capabilities of this software are possible with some tech. Here are the key innovations behind these tools:

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a fancy way of saying you have a computer connected to the internet and you’re using it as a service. This includes storage, software functions, and networking – which translates to the basic processes of ticketing, from data entry to automation.

Cloud computing makes it fast for agents to access customer data online while still allowing businesses to upscale the service whenever they grow.

CRM Integration

Most of the highly-rated CRM tools for startups have ticketing systems built in. It’s easily a must-have.

CRM processes usually require agents to have real-time information on what’s happening with each customer transaction – the most vital factor in assisting them.

With ticketing systems as a feature of CRMs, all stakeholders will have a comprehensive view of the concern.

Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing

Machine learning is what enables the automation and – for some – the sentiment analysis feature for your tickets. Some even more powerful ones, like Freshdesk, employ artificial intelligence in helping agents compose emails and messages, comprehend concerns in tickets, and even build chatbots as front liners for basic concerns.

Aside from these three, there can be many other tech innovations behind ticketing tools. That leaves you curious about one thing: How can these tools actually benefit you?

Key Features and Functionalities of Ticketing as a Service

With a ticketing system’s wide range of features, you can manage customer concerns better on time and with confidence. This provides you with tons of benefits along the way.

Simplified Ticket Assistance and Management

As it’s the primary purpose of any ticketing service, it comes as a centralized platform to create, track, and manage support tickets.

One of the best things about this feature is that you can generate your tickets from all the support channels you use. That includes:

You can do that repeatedly without doing any manual intervention, ever! But, there’s more to ticketing customer service.

Automated Workflows for Streamlined Ops

This is probably the part we loved the most when testing ticketing systems for review. We see that you can set up different kinds of automation actions for different support problems, including the ones in the table below:

To set these automation actions up, all you have to do is find the automation tool of the app. There, you’ll be able to set the triggers so that whenever they happen, your desired action does so.

Even better, you won’t have to start from scratch when setting up. Some tools already have libraries of automation triggers for different industries.

SLA Management

Your customers need to have managed expectations when it comes to the duration and extent of their subscription or purchase. Service level agreements (SLA) are perfect for this.

But what if your agents have to look up each customer’s details just to pull up their SLAs? The management of such a document is already part of robust ticketing systems. It’s even optimal in providing excellent service.

For example, if a high-priority ticket is approaching its response time limit, the system can send a reminder to the assigned agent prompting them to prioritize and address the ticket promptly.

Or worse, if a ticket’s resolution time is about to be breached, the system can notify the manager or escalate the ticket to ensure it receives immediate attention.

Simply put, you can meet or exceed expectations when it comes to your service commitment – a certain set of metrics that can be considered legally binding contracts.

Self-service Features

Let’s start with knowledge bases that can serve both customers and teams. In fact, this is the first and most crucial step in scaling up a SaaS business. Having a few allows businesses to integrate their internal info to provide agents with quick and easy access to relevant information while handling customer tickets.

When faced with a customer inquiry, agents can search the knowledge base directly within the ticketing system, retrieving articles, FAQs, or solutions related to the customer’s issue.

This integration empowers agents with valuable information at their fingertips, enabling them to provide accurate and timely responses.

Meanwhile, ticketing systemslet you build knowledge bases for your customers. The trick here is to set up automation actions with your chatbot. For instance, let’s say that whenever the inquiry is “How do I make a purchase?”. The bot will send the FAQ section for sales.

How Good Is Freshdesk’s Ticketing As a Service?

In Freshdesk’s ticketing system, building knowledge bases is as simple as creating a Google doc. There, you can easily apply edits to be in sync with the contents of your website.

Even better, Freshdesk lets you turn FAQ pages into organic marketing efforts. It has an SEO function as well to help you input keywords naturally for better website ranking.

The next type of self-service option is user forums. This is where you can invite big stakeholders to make honest reviews of your product, serving as a great marketing tool, too.

Apart from letting users talk to each other, agents and other business stakeholders can discuss on forums. Wanna know a relief about this online space? You can create a forum subsection for issues, too. This adds up as another channel your customers can reach out to you.

Analytics and Reporting

One crucial aspect of ticket management is its ability to gather and analyze data through reporting. Here, you’ll have better accuracy with data-driven decisions.

Real-life uses for reporting and analytics include:

To quickly view and monitor these metrics, you can take advantage of modern ticketing systems that provide intuitive dashboards. These dashboards offer a visual representation of key performance indicators, allowing team leaders to easily grasp the overall ticketing performance at a glance.

By doing so, teams can identify bottlenecks, prioritize critical issues, and optimize their workflow for maximum efficiency.

Customer Service Ticketing Pros and Cons

Just like with any type of software, ticketing solutions have their fair share of the good and the bad. And while there are cons, we can assure you there are ways to alleviate them.

These disadvantages can significantly affect how your support team delivers its service. However, remember that, while ticketing solutions may have their drawbacks, they can be effectively managed if you know about them.

Hacks Companies Use to Prevent the Drawbacks of Ticketing Services

Yes, implementing new systems will always be a challenge. That doesn’t mean you have to suffer from them first before a smoother operation. Here are some tricks that you can use for better implementation:

• Ensure there’s proper training: Nothing beats how well your team understands the software. It’s the foundation of the adoption rates, which is vital in successful implementations.
• A gradual rollout works best: You can’t just require people to use this software right after they learn how to use it. Instead, you have to start with a pilot team or department that would test the product. This can even make them promoters and experts.
• A dedicated system admin: There has to be at least one expert, a manager whose only task is to oversee the ticketing operations.
• Build your own workflow automation actions: To tailor the ticketing system best to your needs, it’s only wise to build custom actions. This is where you can lessen the reliance on automated responses.

• Gather feedback: If you’re sure that the system has benefited the entire support operation, think again. Your customers and agents have to think of one thing or two regarding how tickets are handled. This way, you’ll be able to adjust promptly should there be any alarming issues.
• Provide continuous support: Aside from having a system admin as your internal support, you can regularly call for other stakeholders to build a knowledge base for the ticketing system. You can even use the software’s knowledge base capabilities.
  Optimize: Based on the feedback given by your agents, you can make adjustments. Customization is easily doable with CRMs and project managers that have ticketing features.
• Incentivize: This is totally optional, but who doesn’t love incentives? This way, you can gamify the processes and add goals.

Ultimately, the key to successfully overcoming the challenges of ticketing services lies in selecting the right software that aligns with your specific needs and adopting effective strategies to implement and optimize its usage within your organization.

How to Find the Best Help Desk Ticketing System (for You)

Let’s get down to business. Before making the best out of any software, you have to know how to choose one that’s optimal for your business.

Understand Your Business’ Ticketing Needs

Take note that you shouldn’t be alone in this process. Here, you’ll be asking several questions and checking some things with all the related departments.

We’ve prepared a step-by-step guide that you can follow.

1. Meet with All the Stakeholders

This includes representatives from different departments, such as customer service, IT, operations, and management. Schedule meetings with each department to understand their specific ticketing needs, challenges, and desired outcomes.

A collaborative approach like this ensures that the chosen ticketing system addresses the unique requirements of each department. You will be able to more easily determine which service is a more effective and comprehensive solution.

2. Make a Checklist of the Features You Need or Some Questions

When talking with the key stakeholders, you can build a list of questions or features based on the agreed needs and desired outcomes. Here are some you can try:

Encourage open and honest communication when raising and answering these questions with your stakeholders. This way, you’ll know how critical each need is and weigh these before making a final decision.

Checking Security and Compatibility with Your Current Systems

One essential aspect is GDPR compliance, which safeguards customer data and privacy. It is vital to confirm that any chosen software adheres to GDPR regulations to maintain data integrity and protect customer trust.

In terms of compatibility, look for ticketing systems that offer built-in integrations with your existing tools and systems, such as CRMs or knowledge bases.

The good news is that many ticketing systems now provide Zapier integration, allowing you to connect with many other applications and tools beyond the built-in integrations. This flexibility expands your options and streamlines workflows by automating data transfers between platforms, enhancing efficiency and productivity.

Ensure Proper Testing via a Free Trial or a Testing Team

Test your ticketing system properly before implementation to ensure it meets all your requirements. The first thing you should do is take advantage of free trials or demos offered by ticketing software providers.

Next, you can create a dedicated testing team or assign individuals to thoroughly evaluate the system’s functionality, usability, and compatibility.

During the testing phase, focus on key areas like ticket creation, assignment and escalation, reporting and analytics capabilities, automation features, user interface, and overall performance.

By conducting rigorous testing, you can gain firsthand experience with the system and make an informed decision based on its performance and suitability for your business needs.

Or, if you don’t have the time to spare, you can read our guides for VoIP, CRM, and ticketing software. We’ve done the heavy research and testing for you. All you need to do is compare some software solutions and choose one that’s right for you.

Enter Freshdesk: One of the Top Ticketing Software Providers

We get it: You might be in a hurry, waiting for a direct recommendation. One of the software tools we’ve tested is Freshdesk. With it, you get the following:

Ready to streamline your customer support? Try Freshdesk today and experience the benefits of its AI-powered assistance.

Our Other Customer Support Software Guides

Looking for more software guides? We’ve got you covered! Explore our comprehensive collection of guides on various software categories, including VoIP, CRM, and ticketing solutions.

Discover the best software options tailored to your business needs and make informed decisions:

Ticketing as a Service Done Right

This type of software is full of promise. But you have to do your part of implementing it effectively for it to be considered a success.

By streamlining the management of tickets, businesses can enhance collaboration, improve response times, and make data-driven decisions. Just note that selecting the right one requires careful consideration with all the teams that will be involved.

Make sure to include all stakeholders and departments in the decision-making process. They will be the ones using the tool every day.

Now that you know how ticketing as a service works, it’s time to explore your options – or feel free to check out Freshdesk, our top tool for ticketing.

FAQs

References

• Providing Excellent Customer Service Is Therapeutic: Insights from an Implicit Association Neuromarketing Study (National Library of Medicine)
• Effects of Work-Related Stress (University of Cambridge)
• Service Level Agreement (Thomson Reuters Practical Law)
• What is GDPR, the EU’s new data protection law? (GDPR.EU)

The post Ticketing As A Service — What It Is & How To Do It Right appeared first on The Tech Report.

Your search for a solution to a never-ending list of customer issues is probably what brought you to our Freshdesk review page. Your customer support team can handle any type of concern, of course – but it can be hard to manage all of those requests on time, all the time. They just keep piling up.

So, what is Freshdesk really like? Given that it’s a help desk system, many people wonder whether its ticketing capabilities are enough for their needs. Don’t worry. We’ve done the groundwork for you by researching and testing the tool. In doing so, we’ve seen how it stands up in the real world and against competitors.

Freshdesk Pros and Cons

We know the power of authentic user reviews online in weighing the good and the bad. To that end, we enlisted our own team to test the Freshdesk CRM tool and its ticketing system. The people we picked as testers have also worked in customer support. Here’s what real people have to say about the tool:

Reviewing feedback on G2 and Trustpilot, we’ve also seen people testifying about how easy it was to use Freshdesk and how happy they were with the support they received starting from onboarding.

Interested to know more about how our testing went? Read on for the full story.

What Is Freshdesk?

Since Freshdesk uses tickets to communicate, it’s essentially a ticketing management software. This particular tool does the job better than most competitors in a lot of ways.

How Does Freshdesk Work?

With the Freshdesk software, team members can collaborate on tickets, convert calls into tickets, use live chats, and manage your company’s social media pages.

Think these are convenient? Freddy, Freshwork’s bot, knows how to understand customer experiences. Thus, you can avoid repetitive tasks, as the AI is able to:

It’s common knowledge that receiving top-of-the-line support is a must. Not only that, but providing excellent customer service is therapeutic for your team, too.

That’s where Freshdesk shines: it sorts all concerns into neat tickets so nothing gets lost in the chaos. Your team can easily track who needs what and answer quickly, making sure every customer feels heard and valued.

When Should You Use Freshdesk Ticketing Management?

You ended up in this Freshdesk review because you’re likely running a very busy business. By “busy,” we mean you’re either getting a good number of sales inquiries, too many customers with concerns, or both.

This is where you begin wondering whether a solution like the Freshdesk’s ticketing system could really make a difference.

Imagine your team dealing with dozens, maybe hundreds, of customer emails and calls every day – overwhelming, right? That’s the first among the following major signs you need to better manage your tickets:

If you’re a customer-facing business, odds are these points hit home. If even one of these scenarios rings true for you and your team, it might be time to consider Freshdesk customer service software.

Freshdesk Pricing – How Much Does It Cost?

Probably one of the best things we loved in our Freshdesk review is the availability of a free plan. As a result, more users were able to test the product and give feedback.

Note that, for you to use the app to its full potential, it’s best to choose a paid option according to your familiarity with how to use it.

That generosity is quite rare, given that Ooma, one of the best VoIP services providers, is the only other platform that starts at $0. It’s cheaper than RingCentral’s $19.99 and Nextiva’s $18.95 – the respective starting plans for their call features.

However, our Freshdesk review participants found that Freshwork’s VoIP feature is an add-on to its CRM suite. This means you can’t access it via the ticketing management system.

Nonetheless, it’s still optimal to learn about Freshdesk’s offerings.

Free

Dive into Freshdesk’s free plan and discover the core features you’d expect from a ticketing system without spending a dime. It seamlessly brings together email and social channels, ensuring no customer query slips through the cracks.

The Ticket Dispatch function sorts concerns efficiently, while the plan gives you a knowledge base that empowers users with self-service options. Other features include trend reports and analytics.

Growth

This plan lets you have automation and tailor your ticketing experience. The package allows for a custom email server and personalized views of tickets. You can even create unique ticket fields and statuses that fit your workflow.

With a custom SSL, your customer interactions stay secure. The cherry on top? An advanced helpdesk report that tracks every minute agents spend resolving tickets, offering insights into productivity.

Pro

Optimal for businesses are outsourcing customer support, allowing up to 5,000 collaborators to join forces. There are features for managing complex operations like multiple SLA policies and varied business hours.

Round-robin routing ensures tickets get evenly distributed among agents. If you need more control, this tier offers custom roles to fine-tune access permissions, and the ability to craft bespoke reports and dashboards tailored to your needs.

You can even build a community forum where customers help each other, enriching your support ecosystem.

Enterprise

The highest price comes with the best benefits, which include Sandbox. It’s a platform to try new Freshdesk features without affecting your agents and customers. Meanwhile, non-stakeholders can also contribute to your knowledge base, subject to approval.

You can handle unlimited products while managing agent shifts across different time zones – a global feature set for round-the-clock support.

Enterprise’s skill-based routing ensures customers always reach the most qualified agent for their needs, boosting satisfaction and efficiency.

While all these plans present clear benefits based on your needs, one question still remains: Is it hard to cancel? The answer depends since you can cancel anytime before your term ends. Note that you can opt for either annual or monthly payment terms.

Freshdesk Features — What Do You Get?

No Freshdesk review is worth your attention if it doesn’t offer a rundown of its core features, which we easily loved. Get a view as well of what small downsides you might encounter and how to alleviate each.

Ticketing System

Omnichannel marketing and retailing are tried and tested, and you can apply the same principle when it comes to customer support. With Freshdesk, you can turn any type of customer concern or inquiry into a ticket.

Our Freshdesk review team reported the following types of major channels available as ticket sources:

The main view of your tickets include source they came from. Switch anytime to the table view, in which you can add/edit columns, such as the deadline for the resolution, the skill needed, and even how long a customer has waited.

Whoever the stakeholder is can assign agents to these tickets and edit their categories. Meanwhile, agents can also filter their searches to see tickets according to priority, product, company, contact, and status.

But this ticketing system is powered by other features from Freshdesk.

Scenario Automations and Rules

This is, by far, our favorite, with our team reporting it would be a perfect feature for businesses with many repetitive tasks. We let them put it to the test.

We tried creating an automation process for inviting stakeholders and influencers to collaborate in writing forum topics. Let’s say that in exchange for it, we’ll give them a discount.

After setting the triggers for Twitter follower count and Enterprise account holders, we saw that the tool could perform many types of actions, like:

In our testing, we chose to add CCs, notes, and watchers, then proceeded to assign the ticket to a group and an agent. They would be the ones to prepare the invitation materials.

This also required us to create a thread for the billing department, as they will be the ones in charge of applying the discounts once the conditions of the deal.

We found out that it is possible to invite companies at risk of being dissatisfied with the service. This allows them to speak their mind about your product or service, helping you foster even more transparency and open communication with your customers.

You’ll also see basic automation templates ready for you to try or edit. However, it would’ve been better if automation actions were available for the other channels, like Facebook and calls. This would boost engagement, one of the key areas to automate in a business.

But not to worry; these actions can still be assigned as agent tasks for the specific tickets that need it.

Knowledge Base and Forums

That’s the main purpose of self-help options. With Freshdesk, you can post a knowledge base and forums where your team and customers can talk.

We’re happy to see our team’s attempt to create a knowledge base – one of the must-haves in robust help desk systems – but probably the best thing we’ve observed is Freshdesk’s editor interface.

Ever wanted to easily build a big library of self-help info, but were scared of the coding skills required? Freshdesk lets you say goodbye to those blocks of unfamiliar characters.

Speaking on behalf of marketing teams, we think that the SEO optimization is an excellent addition to the knowledge base builder, given that this is a no-code page builder.

Perhaps your users need a little more interaction online with your agents. While you can achieve this with Freshdesk, you can elevate forums even more with categories like feature requests, announcements, tips, and reports. Similar to the knowledge base, the editor function is a must-try.

You can add more forums aside from the mentioned categories, and your agents can even resolve customer problems via the same platform.

Freddy AI

Our Freshdesk review isn’t complete without mentioning the robotic features. Let’s begin with its chatbot builder.

As you can see, the new flows can go on as long as you need. While a sample dialog might seem tedious to create, the time savings are well worth the setup.

You won’t have to rely on long dialogs to help your bot respond to inquiries – even the ones typed by customers themselves. Freshdesk has NLP features that let the bot take answers and info directly from your FAQs.

In our tests, we found that once you add new info or a whole new FAQ section, this can be fed into Freddy’s NLP. This means whatever you add to your knowledge base is also applied to the bot’s responses.

The chatbot can assist your agents, too. With the co-pilot functions, agents can receive help from Freddy with ticket comprehension, email creation, generating articles for your knowledge base, and even triage for customer concerns before live chat is enabled

Businesses are able to build an agent-assist bot, too, for those instances where your agents need to troubleshoot or ask questions.

Dashboard and Analytics

Aside from offering templates for automation, Freshdesk has also curated some for analytics, built within the app to capture different types of data. These include reports for the following:

The visual tools in Freshdesk paint a clear picture of performance distribution, letting you see who’s excelling and where there’s room for improvement.

And if you’re looking for the big picture, the dashboard offers a bird’s-eye view of resolved versus outstanding tickets across your organization, keeping everyone aligned on progress and priorities.

We tested the feature that allows you to compare daily trends, and you can plan agent activities much better when you can see peak days and hours through the dashboard.

Once you can identify such periods of time for higher requests, you can let your agents focus on other priorities whenever request volumes are low.

This means you can also know when they might feel overworked, helping you promptly prepare by employing third-party agents or having more people work during peak times.

Is Freshdesk Easy to Use – A Closer Look at the Interface

According to our testers, people with little experience in customer service will find it relatively easy to use Freshdesk. Most of its components are self-explanatory, with most of them having guides and descriptions.

However, they still noted that it might pose a little learning curve for those who haven’t experienced working as a support.

Freshdesk on Desktop

Since Freshdesk is entirely cloud-based, the tool has no desktop app. You can access it via your favorite browser, whether it’s Firefox, Chrome, Edge, or Safari.

The webpage interface is easy to navigate, but it took our team quite a little time to locate where the other features can be accessed. Just note that you have to click on the gear sign, which will show “Admin” as you hover over it.

All of the automation actions, Freddy AI, the forums, and basically every single additional feature can be accessed with the web version of Freshdesk.

Mobile

The interface is slightly different on mobile. You can basically manage tickets and respond to customers while you’re on the go, but you need to add the necessary widget functions first.

Widget functions compensate for the difference in screen real-estate, as they let you access different types of dashboards and analytics. Don’t forget you have to first set these up on the desktop version in order to view them on mobile.

What Integrations Does Freshdesk Support?

You might begin wondering what services you link to Freshdesk and if they’re available on basic plans. The good news is that yes, Freshdesk supports 1,000+ integrations and they are accessible on the free plan.

Although it’s one to boast its number of integrations, however, Freshdesk isn’t the only one to offer Zapier. This means it’s quite a standard feature to let apps maximize communication with other apps.

But here’s the catch: you can easily do more with Freshdesk since it offers direct integrations with Google apps, Mailchimp, Zoho CRM, Office 365, Harvest, Zoom, Stripe, and GitLab.

Whether for phone, chat, file sharing, content management, social media, or e-commerce, you won’t have to rely on Zapier, as Freshdesk can integrate with most of the apps you already use.

How Does Freshdesk Compare Against Other Leading VoIP Services?

The best way to find out how to choose a VoIP provider is to compare the top options on the market. Here’s a quick table for you to do just that:

While Freshdesk is probably the best tool for ticketing management, we think it would be even better if it had the call features of Freshcaller. That’s an approach other CRM tools have taken to make their offers more feature-filled.

If you’re keen to know more about how Freshdesk compares to other products, make sure to visit our article on the best VoIP services in the market.

Freshdesk vs Zendesk – Which One Is Better?

However, unlike Freshdesk, Zendesk has a built-in call feature. Note that while Zendesk – one of the top AI tools for customer support – offers email templates, Freshdesk uses Freddy to assist agents in creating responses to emails, drafting forum articles, and even understanding tickets.

What Do Other Freshdesk Reviews Say?

Beyond testing it ourselves, we found the reviews on sites like G2 and Trustpilot fitting our experience. Let’s see what other people have to say about this tool.

On Trustpilot

Although we didn’t need to contact Freshdesk support, we can agree with what users on Trustpilot say about it, with one claiming that on-boarding even included free training sessions.

It’s relatively easy as upon signing up, there’d also be plenty of guides around the page.

This is one we can attest to. Although our testing team mentioned that people with zero customer support experience may find it difficult to navigate Freshdesk, having our hands on the tool seemed a little less difficult.

Just note that you can always visit Freshdesk’s knowledge base or contact their support if you have any clarifications.

On G2

Freshdesk allows you to gamify the experience for your employees via a point system. This lets you have better user adoption rates, which is essential to your business’ success in using the app.

Again, you’ll have to watch over users who are unfamiliar with customer support/ticketing apps so that they can better adjust to changes should you add Freshdesk as a new tool to your systems.

Our Reviews of Freshdesk Alternatives

Whether you’re serious about subscribing to a Freshdesk plan or just curious about other tools out there, we’ve got you covered. It’s smart to look around and compare features to find the perfect fit for your team. Here are some reviews you can check out:

Why You Can Trust Our Review of Freshdesk

It’s easy to lose trust in blogs where writers just read other reviews or just visit the website to check some features that readers may love or need. That’s why we assigned a small team with the project of testing Freshdesk (which included some of our writers, too) to test the app themselves.

In doing so, we tested the features most relevant to customer support, including the tool’s AI capabilities, ticketing system, and self-help options.

Adding to that is scouring the Internet for what other users have to say about Freshdesk and what lacks. The said search includes websites like Trustpilot, G2, and Reddit.

If you’re wondering how we are able to compare them with other solutions, know that we’ve tested other leading customer support tools – all of which we’ve reviewed as well.

How to Use Freshdesk — A Step-By-Step Guide

The signup process for the free version and free trial was super simple. Here’s how:

1. Choose a Primary Email That Would Serve as the Primary Support Address

Hop onto the Freshdesk website and sign up using a primary email address. Once in, give life to your account by picking an email that will be your main line for support queries and adding company details and branding elements.

2. Add Support Agents to Your Tool

Next up, you’ll invite your team to join the platform. This is where collaboration kicks in.

You can add each support agent’s details and define their roles within the system. It helps keep things organized and ensures everyone knows what they’re responsible for.

3. Organize Your Support Channels

Now, it’s time to set up how you’ll receive customer queries — through email, chat, social media, or calls. Freshdesk lets you integrate these channels so that every message lands right into your ticketing system.

4. Upload Your Contacts

Once your team’s on board, it’s time to bring in your customers. You can upload a list of contacts, so you have all the info you need right at your fingertips.

This step is super important because it means when someone reaches out for help, you’ll know who they are and can provide top-notch service right away.

5. Create, Integrate, Automate, Customize

Set up your integrations first so that you get to process all requests as tickets. Then, you can assign people to create content for the forums and FAQs, with another team handling automation triggers and customization.

Should You Use Freshdesk? Review Takeaways

While we noted the absence of a call feature on Freshdesk, we highly recommend it to those looking to step up their ticketing management game. What makes this better is that you’ll have the opportunity to build communities and make customer support easier for your agents.

We understand that you might still be in the consideration phase, but the good news is that tools like Freshdesk offer free trials for you to have a feel of them before spending anything.

Try Freshdesk today and see for yourself how you can take those tickets down without difficulty.

FAQs

References

• A Complete Guide to Ticket Management System (LinkedIn)
• Providing Excellent Customer Service Is Therapeutic: Insights from an Implicit Association Neuromarketing Study (National Library of Medicine)
• Workplace burnout: causes, effects, and solutions (Western Governors University)
• A Study of 46,000 Shoppers Shows That Omnichannel Retailing Works (Harvard Business Review)

The post Freshdesk Review — How Good Is Its Ticketing Management In 2024? appeared first on The Tech Report.

From the first trades made centuries ago to today’s digitally-driven commerce, the essence of customer relationship management (CRM) remains hasn’t changed one bit.

Early traders unknowingly practiced the basics of CRM – they knew the significance of good customer relationships, customer records, and repeat business. Despite its age-old roots, knowing how to choose a CRM tool is no easy task. You have to balance team needs with organization needs, and then somehow end up within budget.

Fast-forward to now, startups grapple with poor CRM solutions that barely improve their productivity. And it’s not a case of scarcity, loads of good CRM tools are available, but the abundance of options makes it challenging to find the right fit, so it’s crucial to know how compare all CRM solutions.

Let’s find out how to choose a CRM tool for your needs, effectively utilize it, and what you can do to better compare your options.

What is a CRM?

Simply put, CRM refines operations by correlating diverse data points for a comprehensive business view.

So, what is a CRM software solution, then?

It’s a platform or software that helps businesses execute the strategies related to customer relationship management. As the approach is data-driven, this type of tool lets you manage all sorts of customer information from a single dashboard.

By capturing every interaction with customers, a CRM tool helps different departments work toward achieving a company’s goals.

Some of the most successful companies use CRM tools to optimize their operations, and concentrate their peoples’ skills where they can have the most impact.

For example, Salesforce’s Customer 360, one of the top CRM software providers, helps businesses like American Express, Unilever, and Adidas manage their large customer bases by automating sales processes, improving customer service, and deriving actionable customer insights.

Are CRM Tools Really Necessary?

Part of knowing how to choose a CRM involves questioning its necessity in your business process. The answer? A sure yes. The CRM software market is projected to reach $79.40 trillion in 2023 alone, which is proof that companies are investing heavily in CRM and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future

It’s essential to view customer interactions from a data perspective. Manual data processing just doesn’t cut it in handling these intricacies: even the most experienced data scientists can get lost in the complexity and sheer amount of data.

A good CRM tool is critical to manage and process your customer information effectively. Falling short on efficient customer data processing can lead a company to miss out on significant advantages provided by CRM tools:

Advantages of CRM Tools

1. Enhanced Customer Interactions: Without CRM tools, efficiently managing customer interactions becomes a time-consuming task. CRM software automates at least part of this process, providing a consolidated view of each customer. This centralization is especially crucial as the customer base expands.
2. Robust Analytic Capabilities: A basic feature of analytical CRM, the right CRM solution enable meaningful insights from your customer data. These insights aid intelligent decision-making, better target marketing, and even help you foresee sales trends.
3. Improved Customer Service: Quicker, more effective resolutions to your customers’ issues. Poor service experiences could lead to revenue and reputation losses, further underscoring the need for automation.
4. Impact on Profitability: Through automation, better collaboration, and better data insight you get increased sales, improved customer retention, and overall business growth. CRM tools have are no longer a luxury, but a necessity in modern business as margins become smaller and mistakes increasingly more costly.

Beyond their individual benefits, CRM software is a central hub of collaboration across diverse departments such as sales, marketing, and customer service teams. This should grow your business operations, and it’s what probably made such software one of the best tools for small businesses.

How to Choose a CRM in 2024

Knowing how to choose a CRM system that aligns with your business demands will spare you a lot of headache. The wrong choice could lead to unanticipated high costs due to incompatibility, inefficiency, and potentially low adoption.

Thus, before jumping headfirst into a decision, it’s critical to compare CRM systems. In doing so, take note that you should select CRM software not just for its popularity.

As we conducted our research, we’ve seen a few ones appearing as top results, but we later found out that they just rank higher on Google’s search engine due to having better SEO, not a better product.

Taking the time to research and compare different platforms can save your business from costly mistakes.

Identify Your Business’ CRM Needs

Before doing a CRM comparison, you should understand your business’s specific needs. This applies to any significant enterprise-level purchase or subscription. Lack of clarity or poorly defined needs can easily lead to making the wrong choice, which means you’ll be wasting valuable time and resources.

We’ve prepared a comprehensive step-by-step guide to help you clearly identify your business’s CRM needs and streamline the selection process.

1. Meet with the Teams That Will Utilize the CRM

Starting from the ground up, the first step is to engage with the teams that will be using the CRM tool. These are usually your sales, marketing, and customer service teams. Their insights are imperative in understanding what specific features will benefit their everyday operations as they’re the people on the ground.

Meeting with the people who have to use your CRM is a great step towards getting buy-in from these key users, as they feel part of the selection process.

2. Determine the Types of CRM Software Solutions

There are generally four main types in the broad spectrum of CRM solution. Choosing the appropriate one depends on your business’s specific needs and the challenges you aim to address:

Another important consideration is the type of storage that best fits your business needs. There are two primary types.

Cloud-based CRM systems involve data storage in the cloud, making it accessible from anywhere with internet access. This offers high flexibility and scalability, allowing you to easily resize your CRM as your business expands.

Meanwhile, on-premise CRM systems are stored on your servers. This allows for greater control over your data, which can be more reassuring for businesses dealing with sensitive customer information.

However, on-premise storage requires a higher initial investment for setup and maintenance compared to cloud-based systems, and people will also need a secure way of accessing it when they’re not physically in office or working remotely.

3. Must-Have Checklist with CRM Features

The more you understand your teams’ on-the-ground realities, the better you can craft targeted inquiries for identifying your ideal CRM tool.

This checklist helps you achieve clarity and empowers your teams to participate and compare CRM options later. Below are potential questions to guide you, each specific to a crucial CRM function:

For instance, CRM for construction companies particularly offers a robust project management interface. Identifying industry-tailored features can steer your choice toward a CRM platform that best fits your needs.

In the process of building and answering a checklist for your must-haves, there may be more questions than you expect. However, rest assured that there’s a plethora of CRM tools out there offering many features.

That means you’ll be able to find one that features the things that you need. These tools are designed with versatility and functionality in mind, catering to businesses of all types and sizes.

4. Nice to Have CRM Features

Content creation, contact and document management, workflow automation, and reporting are part of the basic package with some CRMs, but not with others. Things like campaign management, sales forecasting, social media are also great to have, although you might need a more specialized to get the right mix of feature.

Matching your team’s requirements with the functionalities of CRM tools certainly gives you a clear vision of what each tool can offer.

However, the evaluation shouldn’t stop there. A deeper understanding of how a CRM platform works, along with further considerations like budget, integrations, and user-friendliness, is equally crucial.

Evaluate Compatibility and Integration Opportunities

The quality and features of a CRM tool won’t be any good if it isn’t compatible with your current systems and devices. Ensuring seamless compatibility across the board is key to an efficient and frictionless transition.

Begin by checking if the CRM aligns with your operating systems and with the devices that your team uses.

The software must be able to connect with the tools you’ve currently employed. However, don’t fret if they don’t – instead, look for integration capabilities in your chosen CRM tool.

In today’s mobile-first world, a CRM tool must cater to on-the-go operations. An excellent example of mobile integration is Zoho CRM’s mobile app. It empowers employees to manage customers anywhere by adding and modifying customer information in real time, even offline.

In Zoho, offline changes sync automatically across devices once connected to a network. With such a convenience, mobile CRM plays a critical role in modern business operations.

Check the Privacy Policy the Tool Has in Place

Global privacy laws get stricter one year to another, which makes it crucial to ensure your chosen CRM tool is compliant with necessary regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

In the era of data breaches and leaks, how a tool manages, stores, and secures user data is critical to avoid legal ramifications and keep trust with your customers intact.

Check the CRM’s privacy policy to understand how it protects user data. Systems compliant with such regulations often have features for data encryption, user access controls, and audit logs.

These tools also most likely have provisions in place for data subject rights, such as data access, rectification, and erasure requests.

Simply put, a comprehensive privacy policy demonstrates a CRM tool’s commitment to data safety and compliance. It will also save your organization from potential legal and reputational risks tied to data breaches and non-compliance.

Budget Planning for CRM Investment

When investing in a CRM tool, be on the lookout for potential hidden costs such as those for setup, training, or additional features. These could make a seemingly affordable solution more expensive than anticipated.

A good thing we always observe is that there are several payment structures you can commit to. Annual plans often come cheaper, but monthly options may offer more flexibility, especially for smaller businesses.

We also suggest that you keep an eye out for discounts. Many CRM providers offer attractive deals, particularly for new customers or those willing to commit to longer terms.

Look for a Demo or Test Drive a Free Trial

Among the many options, Zoho CRM offers one of the longest trials, extending up to 15 days. This generous period can prove to be more than sufficient to assess the tool’s functionalities, ease of integration, and overall performance in a practical setting.

We also found out that Zoho CRM is one of the few options offering a free plan. This is a significant advantage for startups or small businesses working on strict budgets.

Evaluate Customer Support

Part of a CRM tool is its support services, which should provide channels that are convenient for you. It’s essential for such tools to have robust support systems in place, as even the most tech-savvy teams could run into technical problems.

You can check if they offer around-the-clock support, multiple channels for assistance, and a responsive team – all of which can make your company’s CRM integration hassle-free.

Compare CRM Software

After equipping yourself with precise information about your unique business needs and the specifics of various CRM tools, it’s time to see the options and find the best CRM software tailored to your brand.

However, a mere Google search for “how to choose a CRM” might populate your screen with a myriad of sponsored ads rather than valuable suggestions.

To expedite your research and facilitate the process of comparing CRM solutions, we’ve prepared a handy table featuring some of the best CRM tools we’ve previously discussed in some of our blogs:

This curated list is the result of thorough testing and rigorous research done by our team, providing you with a reliable starting point in your quest to find the perfect CRM solution. Each CRM tool included caters to businesses of varying scales, specialties, and more.

To learn more about these tools and the ones that didn’t make the cut, do visit our article on the best CRM software for e-commerce.

How to Use CRM Software Effectively

Now that you know how to choose a CRM, implementation comes next – this requires you to know how to utilize one effectively.

With this in mind, we’ve compiled a few tips to help you get the maximum value from your chosen CRM software.

Implement a Seamless On-boarding

These sessions are invaluable in aligning everyone within the organization and fostering a thorough understanding of the tool’s functionalities.

Proper on-boarding ensures consistency in using the software, ultimately improving data accuracy and optimizing customer experiences.

Adoption rates of a new tool also considerably impact its eventual success within your organization. Unless your team members realize the significance of the CRM software and actively use it, it won’t deliver its full potential to streamline your operations, which means you’re not getting your money’s worth

One strategy to boost adoption rates is to gamify the experience. Incentivizing usage through rewards or friendly competition can induce enthusiasm among team members.

Additionally, positioning your top sales agents or marketers as CRM advocates can be effective. When peers see these top performers leveraging the tool effectively, they’re more likely to follow suit.

Data Migration

Your existing customer data might reside in spreadsheets or another CRM, but don’t worry. We’ve discovered that all the listed tools above offer data exporting abilities, often in a CSV file format.

To ensure a smooth data transfer, it’s crucial to match the columns of your exported file to the corresponding fields in your new CRM. This alignment aids in seamless data migration.

Investing additional time into post-transfer data mapping is really useful. After importing a single record into your chosen CRM, you can verify the availability of its accompanying data sourced from integrated legacy solutions.

Note: Never underestimate the power of a backup. Before initiating data migration, ensure all your files are safely duplicated. This safeguard measure offers a valuable safety net in case of data loss or corruption.

See Which Tools You Can Integrate

The real power of a CRM tool is showcased when you integrate it with other tools in your business arsenal. This not only streamlines data management but also allows you to customize workflows – one of the many ways you can automate your business operations.

For instance, connecting your email platform with the CRM can facilitate the automatic logging of all customer interactions directly into the CRM, keeping you updated.

Implement Your Business Process via The Settings

Understanding your business process is also vital to effectively customize your CRM tool. For example, if your sales process involves stages such as lead generation, initial contact, follow-up, negotiation, and closure, you need to configure these stages within your CRM settings. This tailoring reflects your unique business model within the tool, streamlining operations and promoting process uniformity across the team.

This stage also allows tracking of customizable fields, which enable you to record detailed data specific to your business. Examples could include tracking fields including:

Such customization puts you firmly in control of managing what data you collect and how you use it, granting a tailored CRM experience.

Dashboards and Reports

Reports and dashboards are crucial aspects of any CRM’s ability to provide you with insights. They present a clear, consolidated view of actionable data in real time.

Leveraging these reports, businesses can spot trends, identify bottlenecks, track performances, and make data-driven decisions. The dashboard provides an immediate snapshot of overall business health to ensure key insights are always within reach.

Our Other CRM Guides

Apart from this comprehensive guide on choosing the best CRM, we offer other insightful articles to enhance your understanding of CRM applications. We aim to aid you in making informed decisions suited to your unique business requirements.

Here’s some more valuable content to steer your CRM journey further:

Takeaways From Our How to Choose CRM

Understanding how to choose a CRM is the initial stride toward bolstering customer relationships, but it’s only part of the picture. The real magic happens when you and your team successfully harness the CRM tool’s potential.

Remember, your team needs to understand the CRM software’s importance and adapt effectively for it to streamline your business processes and enhance productivity.

To help your employees grasp its importance, make sure they’re guided and trained well; then move on to articulating how it impacts their daily tasks, enhances customer relations, and boosts overall productivity. Once they see its direct benefits, the motivation for adoption naturally follows.

Let’s not forget that comparing CRM vendors is critical toward the goal of implementing one. It allows you to assess firsthand what different vendors offer and how their features align with your business needs, ensuring a well-informed selection. Find vendors that can promote your business’s strengths and address its pain points, as this ensures significant growth for your business through improved customer relationships.

Looking to leverage a CRM tool for a business you’re about to open? Compare your options now with ease by diving into our detailed guide about the top CRM tools for startups, and move your startup to the next level with the right CRM.

FAQs

References

• Evolution of customer relationship management to data mining-based customer relationship management (Quality and Quantity 57)
• Analytical CRM (Management Study Guide)
• Customer Relationship Management Software – Worldwide (Statista)
• What is GDPR, the EU’s new data protection law? (GDPR.eu)

The post How To Choose A CRM In 2024 – Complete Guide & CRM Comparisons appeared first on The Tech Report.

Before the advent of AI customer service tools, providing effective customer support was an uphill battle for most businesses. Cost constraints and the sheer volume of customer inquiries often impede efforts to maintain swift, individualized support services.

That was a time when the concept of AI tools for customer support was merely a futuristic fantasy, leaving businesses to grapple with the challenges of traditional customer service methods, like manually writing interaction notes and pulling them out of a cabinet when needed.

Now, imagine a landscape transformed by AI customer service tools, offering 24/7 assistance and actionable insights on customer satisfaction without breaking the bank. This article explores the nitty-gritty of these tools. It will reveal how they can revolutionize support, the pros and cons behind their use, and even how to conquer potential obstacles along the way.

Can You Use AI to Improve Customer Service?

AI support technology is revolutionizing customer service through a myriad of applications, including the following:

Real-world examples prove success in the use of AI, too. For instance, multinational bank ING uses Lionel, a customer service chatbot that relies on natural language processing – with ease of access for customers via Facebook Messenger.

Meanwhile, international KFC outlets are harnessing AI for customer service and engagement, yielding substantial results. KFC China, for instance, uses facial recognition to suggest items based on a patron’s estimated age and mood. Its Ecuador branch used AI analysis of SMS messaging engagement to drive revenue up by 15%.

Pros and Cons of Using AI for Customer Support

As we delve into the world of AI for customer service, it’s crucial to acknowledge that these tools carry both advantages and disadvantages. Don’t worry too much about the cons, however, as we’ll explore ways to navigate and mitigate potential challenges later on.

Will AI Customer Service Radically Transform Your Customer Service?

Businesses considering customer service AI software commonly inquire about its capacity for transformation. The answer is a resounding yes. These tools do catalyze transformative changes both for your teams and customers.

AI tools accomplish this feat by allowing you to automate repetitive tasks, and to manage high volumes of customer interactions. As a result, support teams can focus on more complex and critical customer service issues.

Simultaneously, your customers benefit from quicker, more accurate service and personalized experiences, creating an efficient, streamlined support system.

Take the instance of AI tools like chatbots and generative AI, which, as of February 2023, reached an astounding popularity score of 100 index points on Google searches.

Does AI Make Human Jobs Obsolete?

Despite AI’s versatility, it serves as a complement rather than a replacement for human interaction. Shoppers yearn for authenticity beyond the scripted responses of a chatbot or IVR system. This gives importance to making them feel engaged and cared for.

Knowing this, businesses must cleverly strike a balance between AI efficiency and human empathy to offer an unparalleled customer experience. Human intervention becomes vital in two key scenarios:

Top AI Tools for Customer Service Guaranteed to Improve Your Support

We’ve done the research for you, taking into account different features and their efficiency and verifying reviews from reputed platforms. The result is a collection of 7 tools primed to revolutionize your customer support.

1. Zendesk — Excellent Ticketing System

Zendesk can manage a staggering 175,000 tickets monthly, on average. It effortlessly secures its spot among our top AI tools for customer support – but it’s more than just basic ticket handling.

At its core, Zendesk provides a comprehensive ticketing system, which is the cornerstone of any remarkable customer experience. With a singular platform for all customer-related concerns, the software gives a holistic view of each customer, which enables tailored assistance.

Once tickets are created, customers receive a notification indicating receipt of their request, assuring them that help is on its way.

Another feature of Zendesk that merits discussion is Sunshine Conversations. This tool harmonizes all system data, connecting it to the top CRM tools in the market, order management databases, and inventories. It not only boosts agent productivity but also empowers customers to take action independently.

AI enhances the service provided by your agents allowing them to expand, summarize, and modulate their message’s tone quickly. This helps them address customers’ concerns consistently and promptly.

Further leveraging the capabilities of its API, Sunshine Conversations lets businesses create unique interactions from ground zero – such interactions are considered one of the things that give businesses a stronger online presence.

Pricing

Zendesk’s pricing varies based on tiers. Each tier is on an agent-per-month basis, billed annually. With Suite Growth, you’ll get to access business hours settings and the self-service portal.

Note that the Sunshine Conversation feature is exclusive to the Suite Professional and Enterprise tiers, which include integrated community forums and advanced AI add-ons.

2. Ada — Ease of Automation with Drag-and-drop Capabilities

Ada is a frontrunner in the AI customer service realm, and it changes the game with its unique, no-code automation. It is an innovative AI tool providing intuitive automation capabilities to non-technical customer service teams.

The no-code chatbot builder gives your customer experience team the reins to not only create but also continuously improve and refine automated processes. It covers everything from handling frequently asked questions to managing more complex workflows and software integrations.

Ada goes a step further with its Content Assist feature. This tool leverages AI, enabling teams to automatically produce more pertinent and engaging content at the click of a button. The outcome is similar to Zendesk’s, where team members spend less time writing and more time resolving customer queries.

Opt for the Scripted plan and reap the benefits of Ada’s own natural language understanding. In addition to the features we discussed, you’ll be able to track valuable customer actions, as well as conversions during and after conversations with Ada.

Meanwhile, the Generative plan can connect Ada to your existing knowledge base and use generative AI to answer questions rooted in your current content, all without requiring any training. Just note that it doesn’t offer the no-code building capability.

Pricing

The platform’s official website displays no information on its priced plans. However, upon requesting a demo, a sample of Ada’s own chat system pops up, prompting you to provide information for you to receive info on the plans.

Upon giving your work email and other info, such as your job position, average monthly tickets in your company, and team members, you’ll then receive a custom quote via email.

3. Kustomer — Top Tool for Multiple Communication Channels

These bots are all across myriad domains like chat, social media, and messaging applications, where they handle repetitive service requests with finesse.

What sets Kustomer’s omnichannel feature apart lies in its comprehensiveness: it reaches beyond standard communication platforms. A unified customer view is at your disposal, showing everything you connect to Kustomer, which ultimately bolsters your grasp over your customer interactions.

This consolidation eliminates the time-consuming task of tab-switching and duplication of tickets. It contributes to an uptick in agent productivity.

Complementing this feature is Kustomer’s innovative Knowledge Deflection tool. This endowment deflects habitual queries by intuitively presenting pertinent content from the Knowledge Base whenever customers initiate a conversation. This clever strategy results in efficient service and satisfied customers, all without overwhelming your support team.

Adding up to everything is the power of self-learning AI models, which Kustomer uses to provide Agent Suggestions. These pragmatic recommendations provide agents with optimal responses based on previous conversation data.

Agent Suggestions streamline the customer support process and provides your staff with increased confidence and accuracy in their responses.

Kustomer is a CRM-focused technology. Through its sophisticated approach, it enables the automation of routine agent interactions which gives the tool total flexibility, one of the core customer service skills businesses need.

The platform merges real-time customer data into chatbot workflows, facilitating personalized problem resolutions on a comprehensive scale. This connection enhances your support team’s ability to deliver personalized experiences to your customers.

Pricing

Kustomer’s Enterprise plan offers features such as multilingual support, satisfaction measurement and reporting, language detection, and sentiment analysis.

If you’re looking for extended API rate limits and real-time access to dashboards, users, and agents, then the Ultimate plan would be your ideal choice.

4. Freshchat — The Best Budget AI Customer Service Tool

Freshchat from Freshworks certainly created a buzz in the realm of budget-friendly AI tools.

At the heart of Freshchat lies Freddy, the affable support bot builder. Just note that while you can build chatbot functions with Freshchat, you’ll have to buy chatbot sessions as add-ons. Each conversation with a customer within 24 hours is counted as one session.

Other offerings under the free plan include email, mobile, WordPress and Shopify integrations, along with a conversation switch for accessing chat history and contact enhancement for editing contact details via your inbox.

But one of the most notable free features is Threads, which aids in workspace decluttering. With Threads, conversations and operations become much easier to look at.

All these free functionalities can accommodate up to 10 agents, making Freshchat a perfect tool for small to medium businesses. It doesn’t entirely suit the needs of enterprise-level businesses, so if you have a large company you should take a closer look at your requirements and/or try it out before committing.

While Freshchat takes care of chatbot capabilities, Freshworks also provides Freshdesk — an entirely different platform for ticketing. Freshdesk plays a crucial role in rendering access to the knowledge base and offering a comprehensive ticket trend report, all aimed at enhancing customer service.

The advantage of Freshdesk, similar to Freshchat, is the availability of a free plan. And switching between these useful features is easy due to both of them being placed in one app.

Pricing

The verdict on pricing is noteworthy. Freshchat’s paid plans start you off with an allocation of 500 free sessions. Following this, companies are billed $0.1 per session, billed in 1,000-session add-ons.

Higher-tier plans, such as Growth and Pro, offer more extensive customization and automation features, including in-depth AI help desk software reports and average handling time (AHT) views. The Enterprise plan offers unlimited product room and an expanded knowledge base, catering to substantial business needs.

5. Balto — In-call Guidance for Support Teams

Balto is very unique innovative AI tool that navigates a unique path as a real-time guidance provider for customer service agents engaged in phone calls. This means that it improves client experiences and boosts employee satisfaction at the same time.

It’s like a virtual guide offering on-the-spot solutions to overcome uncertain or challenging scenarios.

What sets Balto apart is its dynamic listening feature. Unlike traditional speech analytics that only listens passively, Balto actively engages in calls, attentively processing every spoken word to gauge customer sentiment and conversation dynamics.

The AI not only deciphers customer needs and behavior but also assists agents in improving call control, engagement, compliance, and negotiation tactics. This enriches the customer experience by delivering tailored, in-time assistance, and it promotes agent empowerment and learning.

With Balto, agents are guided toward a better understanding of customer dynamics and equipped with the necessary skills to navigate future conversations with increased confidence and efficiency.

Such a proactive learning approach fosters higher employee satisfaction and overall performance in your customer support team.

Furthermore, Balto introduces an invaluable facet of real-time coaching shown in chats. This feature permits instant managerial intervention in situations where calls are spiraling negatively. Rapid response during a critical conversation can change the tide, rectify misunderstandings, and prevent customer dissatisfaction.

Pricing

There’s no pricing information available on the website. However, we’ve found this answer in Balto’s FAQ page:

Bear in mind that the AI tools for customer support coaching, guidance, and QA are separate products, each billed separately.

6. Intercom — A Chatbot Powered by GPT-4

Intercom’s AI solutions took a significant leap forward with the inception of their new chatbot service, Fin. With the advent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an opportunity presented itself, and Intercom quickly capitalized on it. This led to exciting transformations in customer service.

Intercom’s platform does more than just help you answer queries. It helps comprehend customer context, gauges sentiment, and responds in a conversationally consistent tone.

Similar to the GPT-4, one standout feature of Fin is its ability to self-improve. By leveraging the power of machine learning, Fin consistently refines its understanding of linguistic nuances, dialog progression, and context interpretation.

These meaningful interactions can readily be compared to human conversations with GPT-4’s technology.

What sets Fin apart is its customization feature. Fin can be tailored to embody your business’s unique voice and tone. It fuels bots with a blend of efficiency and personality, creating interactions that resonate and connect with customers.

Best of all? Deploying Fin is a breeze. One can activate it in minutes; simply point it to your content and turn it on. The ease of use continues with no mandated training, configuration, or new bot paths required.

Like Ada, Intercom’s Fin also allows the automation of repetitive workflows at scale. It’s armed with a visual automation builder providing no-code building blocks like bots, triggers, conditions, rules, and more, allowing for the construction of powerful automation actions for both customers and teammates.

Pricing

Intercom’s Starter plan gets you all the fundamental tools, including Fin AI, shared inbox, help centers, basic chatbots, and reporting. To access an unbranded Messenger and the Multilingual Help Center feature, however, you’ll need the Pro plan.

Meanwhile, service level agreements (SLA) privileges are available with Premium, which includes workload management based on incoming conversation volume – this is one of the ways to reduce the burden of too many tasks.

7. Jasper Business — Best for Brand Voice

While Jasper.ai is known as a copywriting tool, its capabilities extend to providing robust AI-driven customer service. It shines with its one-of-a-kind feature: memory that’s capable of learning about your products, services, and audiences, thereby ensuring factual responses rooted in your brand material.

What’s remarkable about Jasper is that it successfully incorporates your brand voice into all forms of customer interaction. Whether it’s answering recurring questions or providing personalized product recommendations, Jasper adapts identity seamlessly.

While AI technology offers personalized responses based on customers’ interaction history and purchase records, Jasper also extends its utility beyond customer service to domains such as marketing and SEO.

It can easily turn a content brief into diverse marketing assets – technically a whole campaign – to optimize your content for SEO potential, making it one of the top tools for writing better copy.

The cherry on the cake is Jasper’s AI engine; it integrates readily with APIs and ensures the resilient functioning of the platform. Note, however, that you might need a bit of technical knowledge to set up these integrations.

Pricing

On the bright side, Jasper offers a free trial to test drive its features. For unlimited access to all features, including the API, the Business plan is ideal.

And while API integration might seem daunting initially, the Business plan provides team onboarding and continuous tech support to smooth out the process.

Comparison of the Best AI Tools for Customer Support

Don’t fret over lengthy reviews. We’ve assembled a handy list for a swift comparison of the top AI customer service tools, outlining their pricing and ideal operations for your convenience:

Challenges of Using Customer Service AI (And What You Can Do to Overcome Them)

As promised, let’s delve into some potential challenges you may encounter while deploying AI tools for customer support and discuss practical solutions to overcome them.

Complex Customer Requests

Such requests may require a nuanced understanding of language or context, which AI chatbots may struggle with. For instance, a customer may have a multi-tiered problem or an irregular issue that isn’t in the bot’s coding.

Solution

A practical solution is investing in AI tools that have learning capabilities and can self-improve over time. Continual refinement of their knowledge database can lead to them handling complex and varied customer requests more effectively.

Additionally, ensuring the presence of a robust escalation process where complex requests are quickly transferred to human agents can mitigate this challenge.

Security and Privacy Concerns

Worrying about data privacy and security makes sense considering the extensive amount of data that AI processes. These concerns stem from the apprehension that consumer data might be exposed to potential misuse.

Solution

Each tool we’ve reviewed complies with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standards and adheres to the California Consumer Protection Act. These regulations ensure the protection of users’ private information and safeguard against any unauthorized data access or misuse.

In other words, while these AI tools enhance your customer service, they never compromise on data safety.

API Implementation Challenges

Teams might find the process of API implementation somewhat daunting, as it often involves steep learning curves and intricate technical knowledge even for in-house developer teams.

Solution

Consider selecting products that provide remarkable tech support to guide you through this challenge. Alternatively, you can opt for tools that feature no-code options for developing customer support chatbots, immensely simplifying the process while reducing the demand for technical expertise.

Our Other Artificial Intelligence Guides

Aside from reviewing AI customer service tools, we’ve compiled this series of AI guides that could prove immensely useful in making informed decisions about your prospective tool subscriptions:

Should You Be Using AI Tools for Customer Support?

You already know it: AI aids in customer service in more ways than one. From chatbots handling repetitive queries to predictive analytics personalizing customer experiences, AI in customer support has become a game-changer.

AI tools can increase the efficiency, cost-effectiveness, accuracy, and scalability of your customer service operations.

Keep in mind that, although AI might lack the human touch in interactions and can stumble over complex requests, it doesn’t outweigh the myriad of benefits you get from using it, which customer service teams will surely love.

FAQs

References

• Customer experiences in the age of artificial intelligence (ScienceDirect)
• KFC China is using facial recognition tech to serve customers – but are they buying it? (The Guardian)
• Big Data and Artificial Intelligence: How They Work Together (Maryville University)
• Interest in generative AI on Google searches from February 2022 to February 2023 worldwide, by week (Statista)
• What is GDPR, the EU’s new data protection law? (GDPR.EU)

The post Top AI Tools For Customer Support — How to Deliver Round-The-Clock Customer Support On A Budget appeared first on The Tech Report.

In this in-depth ClickUp review, we take an all-encompassing look at our favorite productivity, project management, and CRM tool. It’s more than a robust platform for management, as it emerged as one of the strongest contenders in our testing process. We’ve taken the time to delve deep into its features and intricacies, ensuring nothing is overlooked to provide you with all the answers you’re seeking.

Our goal is to enable you to make an informed decision, whether you’re a seasoned ClickUp software user or a total newbie wondering what it has to offer. With a promise of comprehensive coverage and remarks on usability, features, and pricing, our ClickUp app review will fully prepare you to choose the best productivity tool in 2024.

What is ClickUp?

A standout aspect of ClickUp automation is that it lets you customize your dashboards and tasks without the need for coding or add-ons, serving as an appealing advantage for teams that use the agile project management (APM) approach.

APM is a flexible, iterative method often used in software development. It promotes adaptability and swift progress rather than sticking to a linear path – and that makes ClickUp a suitable tool for projects that have changing requirements.

Commendably, ClickUp offers 15+ real-time views, each presenting a unique perspective on tasks, teamwork, and workload distribution, enhancing the platform’s overall usability.

How Does ClickUp Work?

Diving into this platform may seem tricky initially, but as we found during our hands-on ClickUp.com review, it’s surprisingly straightforward. The software has a notable hierarchy and a well-structured system for managing tasks.

Firstly, Workspaces form the foundation and include all your work processes. Under Workspaces are… Spaces that act like unique containers for different types of work, each with its workflow settings.

Inside these Spaces, you’ll find folders and lists in the sidebar to further categorize tasks. Tasks are then within specific folders and lists.

Information doesn’t get shared across different Workspaces. So, if you need to see all your stuff in one spot, your best bet is to make one Workspace that holds everything.

Understanding the layout means you can utilize the platform for better productivity, collaboration, and risk management – all primary reasons why project management software is crucial for any business.

What Is ClickUp Used For?

In your search for ClickUp reviews online, you’ll easily notice it’s both a PM and CRM tool. However, our review of ClickUp has proven it’s more than just that. The platform can be used in different use cases, including:

During our comprehensive ClickUp project management review, we found that, with over 1,000 integrations, the platform can extend usability beyond the listed use cases, enhancing its efficiency.

Is ClickUp Good? ClickUp’s Pros and Cons

To address this question, let’s dive into an unbiased analysis of ClickUp’s pros and cons to give you a clear view of what you can expect.

With our testing, along with insights from other users – even reviews of ClickUp Reddit has to offer – we found the platform shines in its clutter-free UI, making it easy to love. Just note that customizing workflows may be a learning curve for some people.

How Much Does ClickUp Cost?

There’s a total of 4 ClickUp plans to choose from, including a freemium one. That’s why starting with a ClickUp free version review may be best.

Free Forever

Best for freelancers, this plan already includes 100MB storage, unlimited tasks, unlimited members, and numerous features like two-factor authentication, real-time chats, and 24/7 support. Together, these dub ClickUp one of the best free project management software tools.

Unlimited

For teams seeking a step up from the basic offering, the Unlimited Plan is a nice upgrade. Here, you get unlimited storage, integrations, dashboards, and permitted guest permissions.

It adds value with features such as unlimited Gantt charts, native time tracking, and resource management. Further sweetening the deal is the compatibility with ClickUp AI, which can help writing teams generate content.

Business

If your business needs more scalability and advanced features, the Business Plan is an obvious choice.

It not only extends the offering of Google SSO and unlimited teams but also kicks it up a notch with advanced automation, granulated time estimates (for individual estimated turnaround times), workload management, and the ability to export custom reports.

Enterprise

Besides offering white labeling and unlimited custom roles, Enteprise ensures compliance with the toughest law on privacy and security in the world, GDPR.

This plan also features dedicated live onboarding training and a customer success manager to further smoothen your user experience.

While ClickUp’s Unlimited plan is cheaper than Monday’s $8 and Wrike’s $9.80, it’s still not the cheapest starting plan among the top workflow management tools out there. But it’s a win for companies looking for unlimited storage and even unlimited integrations for only $7/user per month.

Refunds, Cancellations, and Downgrading

In case you’re not happy with ClickUp, note that it offers a 30-day satisfaction guarantee with paid plans, promising a refund unless there’s a prorated credit reflected in your account during the billing cycle.

Downgrading is also made simple. If you decide to downgrade your Workspace at any point in your billing cycle, don’t worry – all your data will remain safe.

While you won’t enjoy the full privileges of using paid features for editing or adding data, you can still access everything if you decide to upgrade again. Your plan immediately switches to the new tier once you downgrade.

ClickUp Features Overview

With our hands-on experience in this ClickUp review, we have explored features such as automation, University, dashboards, CRM, and integration support, allowing us to provide you with an insightful review that highlights the strengths and potential downsides of ClickUp’s essential offerings.

So, let’s dive in and discover how it can revolutionize the way you work.

ClickUp Dashboards and Views

In our testing of ClickUp, we loved the ability to surface deeper insights and gain high-level overviews of our work. With over 50 widgets to choose from, including custom charts, calculations, tables, and external apps, the solution allowed us to build the perfect Dashboard custom-tailored to how we needed it.

We’ve found that one of the key benefits of Dashboards is their versatility. Whether you’re running development sprints, managing resources, or overseeing business operations, ClickUp’s Dashboards can accommodate your need for insights and real-time reports.

For development sprints, you can distribute your team’s workload through scrum points or assigned tasks, host discussions around build blockers, monitor progress, and assess team performance.

Moving on to ClickUp’s Views, we were thrilled by the flexibility offered in task management, project tracking, and workflow visualization. ClickUp provides over 15 fully customizable views, further enhancing the customization it already offers with Dashboards.

Among the advanced views offered, the Gantt view stands out, allowing us to visualize the amount of work completed over time in relation to the planned schedule.

The table view was another standout, as it enabled spreadsheets and databases for managing budgets, inventories, and even client information.

Some of the other available views we were able to switch to are as follows:

Automation

This is where this Click Up app review shines best: getting rid of repetitive tasks. With over 100 pre-built automation executions to choose from, you can streamline workflows, automate routine tasks, and ensure smooth project handoffs.

In our testing, we loved how easy it was to set up and customize automation actions based on our specific needs.

We created new tasks and implemented clear standard operating procedures (SOPs) effortlessly, which automatically assigned tasks, posted comments, and moved statuses.

This would not only save time but also ensure consistency in a team’s workflow. ClickUp automation goes beyond the confines of the platform by integrating with external apps. This allows you to bring everything into a single, shared workflow.

With more integrations being released every month, ClickUp makes it easy to automate your favorite tools for a seamless experience.

Note that, while the ClickUp free plan has generous limits of up to 100 automation runs and 50 active rules, businesses looking for more automation capabilities may find the Business plan more suitable since it comes with unlimited active automation rules and 10,000 automation runs.

ClickUp University

This simply enhances the webinar and resource functions of other PM tools like Monday, Zoho Projects, and Wrike. ClickUp does this well by turning resources into courses.

We were able to access such courses together with on-demand videos, activities, quizzes, and pro tips that enhanced our understanding of ClickUp. We even customized it to suit the type of role, which could either be for a member, admin, or guest.

The foundational learning paths cover the basics of ClickUp and include courses on various topics. With activities, knowledge checks, and quizzes, these courses ensure that you not only learn but also retain the knowledge effectively.

Topics covered range from ClickUp features like hierarchy, home page, navigation, and notifications.

ClickUp University is where you’ll learn about setting up workspaces, managing tasks, and maximizing productivity with ClickUp’s templates, dashboards, and automations.

The platform is committed to continually expanding its course offerings. In the coming months, they plan to launch advanced courses to further deepen your understanding of ClickUp’s advanced and additional features.

Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, ClickUp University is a valuable resource for honing your ClickUp skills and integrating them effectively into your workflow.

CRM

While searching for a detailed ClickUp CRM review from real users, we found people saying they’ve used automation and forms to streamline customer workflows.

Everything was proven true when we found the CRM features of ClickUp to be highly effective in managing client relationships. With ClickUp, we were able to easily view and track dummy customer interactions at a glance, providing valuable insights into the set customer base.

What we loved the most about its CRM is its ability to centralize customer outreach. By integrating emails with ClickUp, you can streamline communication, collaborate on deals, and send project updates to clients all within one convenient platform.

ClickUp made it easy to build an efficient customer database using the platform’s CRM templates. We created a customized system to store and analyze contacts, customers, and deals – and we were able to track and manage all relevant information in one space.

Furthermore, ClickUp offers seamless integration with popular CRM tools, allowing you to sync your favorite apps and further enhance workflows.

However, this is where we found one thing to be challenging: there were a few glitches and bugs specific to the Android version. These issues, which did not appear in the ClickUp desktop app, primarily manifested as delayed notifications and occasional sluggishness, especially when searching for specific tasks, folders, or spaces.

Integrations

Our team relies on project management software every day, so we understand the frustration when tools don’t communicate with each other. ClickUp boasts an impressive collection of over 1,000 native apps and tools that can be easily connected, making it the project management software with the most extensive range of integrations.

Popular native integrations include those for CRM solutions like HubSpot, Salesforce, and ZohoFlow, among others.

That said, it would have been even better to have native integrations with content management software or e-commerce builders. It can still be done, as ClickUp offers a powerful solution with its integration capabilities through Zapier.

If you’re switching from another project management tool like Asana, Trello, Jira, Monday, or Wrike, ClickUp allows you to effortlessly import all your data with just a few clicks.

This seamless transition feature ensures a smooth migration process, enabling you to consolidate all your previous project management information into ClickUp effortlessly.

ClickUp AI

This ClickUp software review is nothing without our testing of the platform’s AI function, which aims to be in line with current AI writing tools.

It offers a comprehensive tool that goes beyond just writing assistance. While many project management solutions have begun incorporating AI generators, ClickUp sets itself apart with its broad application of AI features throughout the interface.

ClickUp AI provides five pre-built prompts that significantly improve writing with a single click. This feature is not limited to a specific document or a separate page but seamlessly integrates within tasks, Docs, comments, Chat, and notes.

This level of AI integration sets ClickUp ahead of its competitors like Monday.com and Asana, whose AI assistants are limited in scope or are still in beta testing.

During our testing of the ClickUp free trial for its AI, we found that its function acted as a personal copyeditor, elevating our writing to be clear and engaging. Furthermore, it flawlessly formatted content with pre-structured headers, tables, and more, saving us valuable time.

ClickUp AI also excelled in summarizing lengthy content and in generating summaries of comment threads, meeting notes, and other extensive information. After reviewing the provided content, it efficiently extracts action items and insights.

This process can reduce a significant amount of time in the entire project management process, as all that’s left to do would be to fact-check.

What truly impressed us was the affordability of ClickUp AI, with a price of just $5/month per user.

This competitive pricing, combined with its wide-ranging AI capabilities, makes ClickUp an excellent choice for individuals and teams looking to enhance their writing, formatting, summarizing, and task management efficiency.

ClickUp’s Interface and Ease of Use

In this ClickUp review and testing, we found the desktop and web app versions of ClickUp to be the most straightforward platforms to navigate. Projects and tasks are loaded seamlessly, enhancing the user experience.

While the iOS version proved faster than its Android counterpart, we strongly recommend using ClickUp on a computer for a more efficient experience and a faster pace facilitating project and task management.

ClickUp’s mobile app is mostly efficient for quick checks and responses. It’s especially handy for checking notifications, tracking time spent on tasks, and maintaining effective communication through collaborative messaging. Note that only lists, boards, calendars, docs, and chat are the available views on mobile.

It’s even available on the Apple Watch – one of those watches that combine smart with stylish – allowing you to stay connected and see tasks on the go.

ClickUp also offers voice assistants, enabling you to utilize voice commands for creating reminders, tasks, and checking notifications. The platform further enhances communication with email add-ons, allowing you to create tasks directly from emails and attach emails to tasks.

Excitingly, ClickUp is also in the works of integrating with Meta apps, offering digital marketers and social media professionals the opportunity to bring your work into the Metaverse for enhanced collaboration, insights, and project management.

How Does ClickUp Compare to Other PM Tools?

Before commencing your ClickUp app download, we understand that you want to make sure it’s the right fit. The best way to know is to see a ClickUp review that compares it to other project management tools. In the table below, we have provided a detailed comparison to help you make an informed decision:

Although Monday is our top recommendation on our project management reviews, we also highly recommend ClickUp, especially for those who value integrations and highly customizable views.

Each tool has its strengths and weaknesses, and it’s important to choose the one that aligns with your specific needs. For a more in-depth review and comparison of these tools, we have a different page for the best project management software solutions.

Is ClickUp Safe?

ClickUp prioritizes the safety and security of user data through various compliance measures. It abides by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and even offers Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance for Enterprise plan users.

ClickUp can safely enter into a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) where they might need to process protected health information.

You also benefit from SOC 2 compliance, which ensures that organizational and technical controls are independently audited annually to maintain the highest level of security.

Overall, you can have peace of mind knowing that your data is handled securely and according to industry standards.

Is ClickUp Legit? A Look At Other ClickUp Reviews

In addition to our own experience with the app, the Click Up reviews we found on reputable sites like G2 and discussions on Reddit ClickUp topics further validate the legitimacy and effectiveness of the platform. Let’s take a closer look at what these reviews have to say.

Reddit Reviews

To gain insights from real users, we delved into various threads to explore examples of a ClickUp review Reddit has available. Here’s what users have to say about their experiences with the platform:

Impressed by ClickUp’s custom views and stability, this verified user champions its impact on small businesses. A satisfied commenter echoes, having swapped Trello for ClickUp.

After years on Trello, this user admitted that there can be sluggish load times on ClickUp. The person, who claimed to have tested 20+ apps, praised the desktop application’s ease, too.

G2 Reviews

Tons of insights can be seen as well on G2’s website, and in this one particular ClickUp review, the user’s comment adds up to the truth of how some users might need to adjust to learn the wide range of custom features.

The person who gave a 4.5-star rating is a marketer who uses the platform mainly for project collaboration.

Despite its versatility and essential features such as task management, time tracking, and automation, this G2 user awarded ClickUp only 3 stars. The somewhat steep learning curve for newcomers and limitations within the mobile app were key drawbacks, underscoring the need to optimize desktop usage for full software functionality.

Trustpilot Review

Take a look at this ClickUp review from a user on Trustpilot, where the platform received the lowest total rating of 3.3 stars:

While you’ll find bad Trustpilot reviews about the mobile app and the learning users have to do, you’ll also see that the customer support team responds to such users.

Overall, ClickUp has garnered positive reviews on reputable sites such as G2, where it earned a commendable rating of 4.7 stars. However, it’s important to note the mixed feedback received on Trustpilot, with a total rating of 3.3 stars.

Users have highlighted that the mobile app may have limitations in terms of functionality and learning curve. Nevertheless, the productivity boost you gain from ClickUp is worth the effort.

Why You Can Trust TechReport’s ClickUp App Review

We delved into the platform, utilizing all the components of its hierarchy, from Workspaces down to Tasks. This allowed us to test the wide range of templates and views ClickUp has to offer.

We checked all the type of views available, like Gantt, lists, and even mindmaps.

We also explored the automation functions, meticulously verifying if the triggers effectively executed the designated actions.

To test the integrations and how dependable they are when ClickUp is communicating with other apps, we also checked ClickApps and the App Center with several apps commonly used for PM, including Gmail, Slack, and HubSpot.

We also researched reputable sites like TrustPilot, Reddit, and G2 to both identify which downsides to test and ensure our review provides a comprehensive overview of the tool.

Furthermore, our team has significant experience testing and comparing leading project management tools, including Monday.com. That’s why we have a separate, in-depth Monday.com review.

Our first-hand experience and extensive testing allows us to make informed comparisons and provide meaningful insights for our ClickUp review, identifying the product’s strengths and weaknesses relative to other industry-leading tools.

While all of this is from our testing and other user reviews, ClickUp’s credibility speaks up for itself, enhanced by its recognition on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list for 2023 and inclusion in Forbes Cloud 100 for 2022.

A Quick Guide On How to Use ClickUp

Using ClickUp is a straightforward process that allows you to streamline your workflow and stay organized. Here is a step-by-step guide based on our experience:

1. Sign Up With Your Email and Customize Your Profile:

Visit the ClickUp website and sign up using your email address.

After registering your email via the web or desktop app, you can then customize your profile by adding a profile picture, setting your display name, and configuring the color theme.

2. Add Integrations: Calendars and Cloud Storage

Once your profile is set up, connect calendar apps, such as Google Calendar, to sync important events and deadlines.

You can also integrate a time tracking tool, like Harvest or Toggl, to accurately monitor and record your work hours. Link your preferred cloud storage service as well to easily attach files and collaborate with team members.

3. Customize Your Workspace and Select a Team Size

Create a workspace – this is where you’ll organize your spaces, folders, and tasks.

Just make sure you specify the size of your team to ensure efficient communication and collaboration within ClickUp. You can change this anytime via the tool’s settings.

4. Send Out Team Invites

After creating your workspace, you can then use ClickUp’s invitation feature to invite team members to join.

Tip: Provide clear instructions on how to accept the invitation and create their own ClickUp accounts. You can then encourage team members to customize their profiles and familiarize themselves with the platform using ClickUp University.

5. Import Tasks

Test the integrations by importing tasks from different sources, such as Asana, Trello, or Excel spreadsheets. This is where you’ll be able to verify that all imported tasks and any associated data are accurately transferred to ClickUp.

While this quick guide covers the basics of getting started with ClickUp, it does not yet delve into the extensive capabilities and customization options that custom automation can provide. By following these steps, you can set a solid foundation for effective project management and collaboration within ClickUp.

Our Other Project Management Guides

Looking for more information on project management software? Check out our other guides and articles below to learn more:

ClickUp Review Takeaway – Should You Use It?

ClickUp offers a robust project management solution with a vast array of features, seamless integrations, and customization. It excels in providing a centralized workspace, advanced task management capabilities, and an intuitive user interface.

However, there may be occasional glitches in the Android version of the mobile app, and the learning curve for mastering custom automation can be a hurdle for certain teams.

Despite these drawbacks, ClickUp remains a top choice for teams looking for a powerful and versatile project management tool. Try ClickUp today and experience its potential for yourself.

ClickUp App Review FAQs

References

• 6 Reasons Why Project Management Tools Are Important for Your Business (LinkedIn)
• Agile Project Management: A Communicational Workflow Proposal (ScienceDirect)
• What is GDPR, the EU’s new data protection law? (GDPR.EU)
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

The post A Full ClickUp Review — Everything You Need To Know For 2024 appeared first on The Tech Report.

Improving your web content can be daunting, but it’s an essential bridge between your value proposition and your audience. Your quest for a top-notch AI content generator, including the feedback surrounding it, may have led you to this Anyword review.

Is Anyword a powerhouse that can supercharge your content creation while standing its ground among renowned rivals? Under the right circumstances, yes.

Our Anyword AI review will answer any questions you might have about the product. Having tested the tool ourselves, we’re ready to offer firsthand insights into what it brings to the table. Stick around, and let’s unravel Anyword together.

What Is Anyword?

With a robust data science team and experience working with global brands like The New York Times and Ted Baker, it possesses the proficiency to revolutionize marketing copywriting.

Reflecting on a 2022 survey, 41% of marketers pinpoint brand awareness as their primary goal in content marketing, with trust-building, sales growth, and lead generation trailing closely at 38%.

An AI writing generator like Anyword.ai is instrumental in streamlining these aspects.

This targeted approach to content marketing provides a robust solution for realizing these objectives efficiently and effectively. Even better, it includes built-in plagiarism checker, and an AI that you can train on your brand voice.

What Is Anyword.ai Used For?

Aside from Anyword’s multi-platform advantage for marketers, it’s got several other outstanding use cases we’ve found during testing:

Simply put, Anyword is best suited for marketers, SEO specialists, and content creators across various platforms.

Its standout features support everything from crafting engaging social media content and effective product descriptions to data-driven content and targeted emails.

According to social media statistics, 4.48 billion people actively use social media. Imagine how your company can reach that amount of people while they’re scrolling on your phone.

The Key Anyword Pros and Cons

This isn’t what you’d find from typical Anyword reviews, as we strive to keep things balanced and transparent for you, especially when it comes to the disadvantages. Here’s what we’ve identified as the pros and cons after thoroughly testing Anyword:

Testing Anyword and scanning through dozens user reviews, we’ve seen firsthand how Anyword exhibits strong capabilities in short-form and long-form content, refined product descriptions, and targeted email marketing.

Anyword AI Pricing Breakdown — Is Anyword Free?

The Anyword pricing structure offers four tiers to accommodate various user needs, from solo startups to large-scale enterprises. All tiers offer an array of features, such as:

• All the writing templates
• Unlimited words
• The data-driven editor and blog wizard features
• Grammarly integration
• 30+ languages

Here are all of your options:

The critical difference across the plans lies in the user and workspace allocation, plagiarism runs, and the number of times you can use the 1-click performance boost.

Starter

The Starter plan accommodates a single user and provides 25 plagiarism checks and 5 performance boosts per month.

What we love is it already has the ability to train the AI on your brand voice. Along with this, you’ll acquire up to 10 saved prompts and the ability to deploy 3 distinct tones of voice.

The plan further enhances brand consistency by allowing 25 brand rules and 10 custom formulas. Unfortunately, the Starter Plan doesn’t let you add team members or expand user access – a slight drawback to consider.

Data-Driven

The Data-Driven plan introduces unlimited 1-click boost performance, an enticing upgrade for users. It supports up to 3 users with the convenience of 5 workspaces. Although it maintains the same quotas for plagiarism checks, saved prompts, tone of voice, brand rules, and formulas, its enhancements make it a tempting prospect.

With this plan, you can add up to 10 seats, each costing you $49/month.

Business

The Business plan gives you another 3 users and 10 workspaces while providing unlimited plagiarism runs and performance boosts.

It introduces automated website messaging and the capability to compare your AI-generated content to your existing copy. It also offers additional integrations, deeper copy analytics, and a whopping 125 brand rules to curate. You can also add up to 20 users, with a price-per-user similar to Data-Driven.

Wondering how Anyword ranks in terms of costs? It has the same starting price as Jasper.ai, which is among the most premium-priced tools in the market.

However, in our review of the best AI copywriting tools, you’ll see that it’s still cheaper than ClosersCopy.

In case you want to look for something else, you also have the option to cancel your monthly or annual subscription at any moment. Just note that no refunds are issued for subscriptions that have been canceled.

In contrast, other popular platforms like Jasper and Copy.ai offer moneyback guarantees that allow you to get a refund within 7–10 days of cancellation.

Reviewing of Anyword.ai’s Features

As part of our Anyword review, we tested all the features we can get our hands on with the free trial version. We put each feature through its paces to determine just how much it can elevate your writing.

From plagiarism checkers to SEO optimization and so much more, we’ve dug deep into the working mechanics, benefits, and, yes, even the downsides.

Blogging Essentials

In our review of the blogging tools at Anyword.com, we were rather impressed at the intuitive ease of crafting blogs. Simply by selecting the blog post option, we were provided with an interactive interface to set the desired audience.

Doing so improves your conversion rates and even awareness, as it’s one of the many proven ways to build a strong online presence.

Whether we supplied our instructions, pasted a reference website link, or inputted sample text, setting the audience was a breeze.

What caught our eye next was the seamless incorporation of primary and secondary keywords – a fundamental aspect of SEO optimization.

Upon completing the set parameters, Anyword gave us a range of title ideas, each complete with a potential SEO ranking score – which is vital to the way you take your conversion rates to the next level.

This feature undoubtedly simplifies the process of formulating engaging, search engine-friendly titles.

Additionally, this platform displayed promptness in generating an outline for our blog, which we could use or customize further. Adding more headings, rephrasing them, or writing our own was a straightforward process as well.

One way to write good meta descriptions is to make them compelling, which we could also do easily with Anyword.ai’s meta description tool.

A prompt to introduce the content topic was succeeded by the option to either use the “Default” mode, rewrite existing copy, or create customized, brand-specific content via the Power Mode.

There’s just one thing to note: the plagiarism checker is only available on the blog post generator, which means if you have to double-check other content types, e.g., email copy, you’ll have to go to the blog post page.

Free Social Post Generator

Our tests confirmed what many copywriters have been realizing: AI social post tools like Anyword can lend a valuable helping hand.

We started with Instagram and found a clever AI-driven caption generator. This can craft likable captions for images, whether they’re product features, the latest recipes, or personal snaps.

Facebook posts with Anyword can also help you generate engaging content that can truly captivate the attention of busy feeds. That’s just the beginning, too.

Turning our attention to X/Twitter, we found the AI tweet/post generator to be a game-changer. With just a few prompts, it crafted engaging X/Twitter posts with emojis and hashtags included, even in the avalanche of tweets that flood one’s feed.

You’ll be able to set tones, audiences, and advertising platforms from which Anyword will pull data when generating tweets – whether it be HubSpot, Google Ads, Meta Ads, or LinkedIn.

Beyond Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, our testing experience unveiled that Anyword had much more in its treasure trove.

Whether it’s spicing up your professional presence with cogent LinkedIn posts or pinning down your ideas with Pinterest Pin titles and descriptions, the Anyword copywriting AI functionality didn’t disappoint.

Making videos? Anyword’s got you covered there too. With a knack for crafting YouTube titles and descriptions, we found it could beautifully encapsulate the essence of our video content.

Brand Voice Features

The Messaging Bank allows Anyword’s AI to draw from a repository of information exclusive to your company or product.

While testing, we found this feature functions easily in lending a copy an authentic brand feel. By simply adding a company’s bio or mission statement, the generator could align the content it created with the brand voice.

Another stand-out feature we loved was the saved tones of voice. This enables users to describe their brand tone or let Anyword understand it from an existing published text. The result? A phraseology that’s consistent and emphatically ‘you.’

However insightful the brand voice features of Anyword may be, it’s got limited variety in tones of voice. Compared to competitors like Writesonic and Rytr, which offer 5 and over 20 tones respectively in their lowest-tier plans, Anyword’s offerings appear somewhat lean.

While it delivers commendably on capturing the essence of a brand, the lack of a more diverse tone spectrum can be a slight letdown for users who crave diversity and more nuanced personalization in their content.

With the Brand Rules feature, we could guide the tool even more precisely. It allowed us to flag terms that should be replaced or avoided, ensuring a word-perfect brand representation.

The system either replaced disallowed terms with approved brand words or totally eliminated them from the generated copy.

Complementing these features is the prompt-saving function, which saves prompts and keeps creation aligned with your brand voice and intent, streamlining the process. We used this to guide the platform in producing content, saving us a ton of time during the testing phase.

Overall, we found that Anyword’s brand voice features lend an impressive level of customization and control.

They provide precise guidelines for maintaining a cohesive, recognizable brand voice across all your copy, making this tool a real asset for marketers and writers alike.

Anyword’s Copywriting Frameworks

From time to time, even the most professional writers still need some sort of scaffolding for their content – and Anyword doesn’t disappoint.

It has four types of frameworks to help you generate compelling content that resonates with your audiences:

In addition to these structured frameworks, Anyword also offers a tool for crafting engaging questions. This feature proved effective in creating content that helped our test article have productive discussions, which can potentially prompt responses from the audience.

Integrations

We’ve come to appreciate Anyword’s seamless integrations with popular marketing tools. It connects with some of the most popular CRM tools, including HubSpot, plus other nifty options like Google Ads, Meta Ads, and LinkedIn Ads – all enhancing the data-collection process.

User data aids in generating useful targeted content, meaning you can train custom models based on successful talking points from previous campaigns. This is done to optimize the performance of emails and ad copy.

The benefits even extend to your Facebook pages and website automation, utilizing predictive performance scores.

With these integrations, Anyword has the capability of learning from your successful content, generating high-performing personalized copy, and enhancing real-time improvements.

The synergy between Anyword and your chosen marketing tools dramatically expedites and refines your content creation process.

Despite the evident advantages of its integrations, the tool could be more user-friendly if it offered plug-and-play options for its integrations. Alternatively, the inclusion of a Zapier integration could offer greater flexibility, further improving user experience.

Landing Page Creation

One of the most common landing page statistics that marketers know is that the more, the better. Now, who says you can’t hit your landing page conversion goals with Anyword?

With Anyword’s landing page creation tools, hitting your conversion benchmarks is significantly more attainable with features like this:

• Craft the perfect landing page headline to effectively convert site visitors into customers. With Anyword, you can create content that’s engaging and grabs visitors’ attention.
• Redesign your current headlines to maximize their impact by making the lines more compelling, persuasive, and potent.
• Landing page sub-headers serve as small but compelling insights into your product or service, encouraging visitors to continue reading and exploring further.
• Irresistible landing page Calls To Action (CTAs) are the final push that convinces your readers to make the purchase or sign up.
• Landing page features compile your product’s key features into an engaging list that’s easy for your audience to consume.
• Create SEO-boosting Meta Descriptions with concise webpage summaries, stimulating interest to increase click-through rates (CTRs) from search results.

Product Listings

Whether you’re creating an enticing paragraph for Amazon or Walmart listings, or even general listings, Anyword caters to all.

Not stopping there, the tool also assists in crafting comprehensive product reviews, requiring only key points from you, and doing the rest.

One of the highlighted features we found quite remarkable was the Perfect Product Headline Generator. Instead of spending endless hours crafting the ideal headline, Anyword’s AI jumps in, delivering perfect headlines for you.

Across the board, these tools simplify and refine the process of creating attention-grabbing product listings and reviews.

A Look at Anyword’s Interface

Next up in our testing of Anyword.ai, we’ll move our focus to the user experience aspect, particularly the ease of navigating its interface.

Our review of the Anyword interface also focused on aesthetics and performance across different devices.

On a computer or laptop, navigating through Anyword’s tools and features is an effortless task.  Everything loads swiftly, ensuring smooth and efficient operation.

However, the lack of an Anyword app on Android and iOS restricts full functionality on mobile devices. Even if you try to access the website and input your Anyword login details, you’ll only see this:

Although it’s rare for these AI writers to have mobile apps, like Simplified, most of them are able to function on mobile browsers. It would be better for Anyword to at least function on mobile in-browser for those who want to access the tool on the go.

Diving deeper into its characteristics, the interface is intuitively designed to facilitate seamless navigation. On the main page, all templates are conveniently displayed, offering an overview of the platform’s capabilities.

Meanwhile, the left side of the page neatly segregates various options – Editor, Blog Wizard, Copy Intelligence, Brand Voice, and Integrations – providing easy access to all essential tools.

We really like that each template comes with a clear description. This aids in understanding the tool’s specific functionality, equipping users to make informed choices.

What we loved the most when using Anyword was that, in the Brand Voice category, all the items have either a video or picture to let you see what the page looks like or how to use the tool in general.

It would indeed be an appreciated upgrade if similar visual aids were available across all the tool categories, such as the dropdowns for integrations, analytics, talking points, custom models, website automation, and the editor.

Overall, robust yet user-friendly, Anyword’s interface encapsulates the perfect balance of intuitive design with intricate features.

Anyword’s Customer Support Review

This resounding approval of their customer service is further underlined by the ratings Anyword has amassed on renowned sites like G2 and Capterra.

G2 awards Anyword a notable 9.0 rating for the quality of support, an impressive score reflecting high levels of customer satisfaction.

On Capterra, customer service enjoys a rating of 4.7 stars out of 5, a commendable score that surpasses even established platforms such as Monday.com. What amazed us is that customer support was listed as the first two pros for Anyword’s review page.

Anyword vs. Jasper and Other Leading AI Writing Generators

We’ve drawn a head-to-head comparison of Anyword vs Copy.ai, Jasper, and other leading AI writing generators. This should provide a balanced perspective to help determine the best fit for your unique needs and preferences:

It’s worth noting that for those looking for the best free copywriting generator, Anyword isn’t necessarily the option for everyone. Aside from offering only a limited free trial, we’ve found that you’ll only get to try the tool with a 2,000-word count.

But just like any tool, each of these Anyword competitors has its unique strengths. Specifically, Anyword arguably stands out for digital marketers keen on customizing their voice.

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of how these Anyword alternatives compare, check out our article on the best AI writing tools in 2024 for more in-depth reviews and comparisons.

Summarizing What Other Anyword Reviews Say

The consistency struck a chord as many 5-star review responses on the two websites echoed the merits we encountered during our personal interaction with Anyword, further cementing our positive impression of the tool.

Anyword.ai Trustpilot

89% of Anyword’s reviews on Trustpilot garnered 5 stars, with the most recent ones praising the tool for its ease of use and how realistic its content was.

Being number 2 out of 5 of the best companies for TrustPilot’s blogger category, Anyword also belongs to the top 200 software companies from the same website.

Here’s one user review as well that garnered Anyword 5 stars:

Overall, Anyword has a total of 4.8 stars on TrustPilot.

Anyword. ai on G2

G2 reviews shed a similar light on Anyword. Scoring high in ‘Ease of Use’ and ‘Ease of Setup’, each with 9.3, and a commendable 9.0 in ‘Quality of Support,’ the platform’s user-friendliness and exceptional support are well echoed.

Of the 1,188 reviews, 1,054 gave Anyword.ai a full 5-star rating, attesting to its persistent performance, with ‘Ease of Setup’ being a major highlight.

Primarily originating from marketing and advertising firms, these reviews contribute to Anyword’s overall 4.8-star rating on G2, solidifying it as a favored AI writing tool.

This user even singled out how Anyword has been remarkably beneficial to his email requirements.

Anyword on Reddit

Browsing through Reddit posts, we found fewer user insights on Anyword compared to the likes of Jasper and Copy.ai. That being said, here’s what a Reddit user had to share about their experience with Anyword:

We’ve also come across numerous other review platforms that are filled with positive testimonials about Anyword’s service and efficiency.

Our Other AI Software Guides

We also offer a slew of other software guides to bolster your decision-making process for all your AI requirements:

• Artificial Intelligence Adoption Statistics
• The Best AI Copywriting Tools to Write Better Copy
• The Best AI Writing Tools for Marketing Copy, Essays, and Blogs
• An In-Depth Copy AI Review
• A Full Jasper.ai Review for 2024

Why You Can Trust Our Anyword AI Review

Our Anyword review emerged from hands-on testing of the platform for a dummy blog project aimed at dog training services. From blog writing and social media posts to ad copy, we put Anyword’s digital marketing capabilities through the wringer.

We toggled between various writing tools within the data-driven editor to examine the brand voice application and saw impressive results. Moreover, we cross-verified our findings with insights from other Anyword users from respected sites like Trustpilot.

With experience testing other leading AI tools like Rytr and Jasper, our capacity to compare and evaluate is enhanced.

As a final validation, we also ran the content through multiple plagiarism detectors, following Anyword’s own plagiarism checker. The results mirrored Anyword’s findings, confirming that the generated content was indeed original.

A Quick Guide to Using Anyword

In creating digital marketing copies on Anyword, the process is usually simple. Follow these 5 steps to create content with this AI writer:

1. Sign Up For a Free Trial or a Paid Plan

Signing up for either a free trial or one of the paid plans on Anyword’s website is a simple process. Simply provide your email address and a password to get started.

You’ll then be directed to choose a plan that suits your needs. The website offers a transparent overview of each plan’s offerings, making it easy for you to decide.

2. Select a Template That You Would Like to Work On

After logging in, you’re instantly introduced to over 100 distinct templates. Each one is designed for a specific copywriting application, reducing the time and energy invested in formulating structures.

Take a moment to navigate through these options and select one that aligns well with your project requirements.

3. Set Your Parameters

Now, dive deeper into detailing the parameters of your content. Here, you’re empowered to define the theme, specify your target audience category, set the tone of the copy, include essential keywords, and choose the language for your copy.

This level of customization ensures that your copy is tailored to your brand vision and audience’s expectations. Generally, an engaging tone and broad audience seemed to work better without any awkward phrasing.

4. Adjust the Blog Title and Outline Options

With Anyword, the level of control doesn’t stop at parameters. You have full reign over molding the blog title and outline according to your liking.

Anyword provides the option of generating a host of alternatives for your blog title and content outline.

Based on your preferences, select the most fitting option and hit ‘Generate.’ Alternatively, for those who prefer to exercise full creative control, you can craft your own title and layout using the easy-to-navigate interface.

5. Use the Data-Driven Editor to Improve Your Content Even More

After generating the initial draft, you can make use of the data-driven editor to whip your content into its final shape.

It’s in this stage where you’re able to fine-tune your copy to meet your desired outcome. The editor offers various options, from making the language more engaging to ensuring SEO optimization.

With the data-driven editor, you get to refine your content until it matches your personal or branding standards.

Is Anyword Worth Using in 2024?

While the lack of a mobile app and a free plan would be considered drawbacks, you’ll easily get to see the software closer with a free trial, helping you make a decision.

Its data-driven editor, vast template library, brand voice profiling, and user-friendly interface make it undeniably a robust asset for any copywriter, new or experienced.

So, is Anyword worth using in 2024? Our experience, along with the chorus of satisfied users, resoundingly says yes. Why not seize the opportunity and give Anyword a try for yourself?

Start with the free trial and experience firsthand the proficiency of AI-driven copywriting. You’ll quickly get a sense of whether Anyword could be the secret weapon your writing arsenal needs.

Anyword App Review FAQs

References

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide (Google)
• Effective Email Communication (The Writing Center)
• What Is a Meta Description? (And How To Write a Good One) (Indeed)
• AIDA Model (Sales) – Explained (The Business Professor)

The post A Full Anyword Review: Is It Worth Using in 2024? appeared first on The Tech Report.

Have you ever felt the all-too-familiar sting of writer’s block? The pain of a blank page staring you down is something all writers share. However, the advancement of generative AI has nearly turned this into a thing of the past. Better yet, you can use this tech at no cost using the best free AI writing tools out there.

For those just dipping their toes into the pool of AI writing tools, content creation doesn’t have to come with a hefty price tag. To help you find the cream of the crop on the market right now, we put the best free AI content generator tools to the test, and we’re ready to share what we’ve found out. Let’s dive in.

The 10 Best Free AI Tools Ranked for 2024

Here’s a quick snapshot of the free AI programs we’ve meticulously reviewed and the reasons they’ve secured a spot on our list:

1. Copy.ai – Easily the best free AI content generator with unlimited projects and a prompt improvement feature to enhance your content.
2. Rytr – Offers maximum tone versatility with over 20 options with its free plan, and it also includes a plagiarism checker.
3. Writesonic – Do more for less, as this tool has the highest monthly limit of 10,000 words and over 100 AI templates for free.
4. Simplified – The best option for e-commerce with its 1-click Shopify exports, and it also lets you upload to WordPress and connect to your Google Drive.
5. ParagraphAI – Convert more leads or respond faster to email inquiries with this AI text generator, which can write mail subjects and content for free.
6. Smart Copy – Best for securing grammatically correct content, as it comes with a free Grammarly extension; it also has the best budget paid plan.
7. NeuralText – With specific generators for introductions, paragraphs, outlines, titles, etc., this free AI text generator is great for creating blog content.
8. Scalenut – This tool offers content grading with its free version and competitive and social media research, allowing you to outmatch competitors.
9. Jasper AI – Citations are a breeze with this tool’s plagiarism checker, plus you get access to GPT-4, making it the best premium tool with a 7-day free trial.
10. CopySpace – With its 7-day free trial, it gives you access to GPT-4 and is easily the best option for bypassing AI detectors.

What Can I Do With a Free Content Generator?

While the best free AI content tools may pose certain limitations, their freemium features can be incredibly beneficial for startups and enterprises with small word count needs. Even better, such perks provide a way to test these free AI tools.

Using an AI writing generator opens a plethora of possibilities, including:

• Write up to two quality blog posts a month: Even with the best free AI apps, the allotted word count is usually just enough.
• Employ browser extensions for writing with ease: No need to constantly switch tabs when you can create content within your web browser.
• Plagiarism checks: With 55% of US college leaders believing cases of plagiarism have increased over the last ten years, AI writing solutions can prevent such instances by detecting plagiarized content and paraphrasing it.
• Craft various digital marketing content types: Free artificial intelligence tools let you access many templates, including meta descriptions, ad copies, post captions, SEO titles, and emails.
• Access the latest-generation AI tech: A study has found that GPT-3 can solve certain logic problems just as well as college students. On the other hand, GPT-4 is a remarkable tool, capable of generating human-like responses for a wide range of copy types.

The capabilities of free AI software go beyond writing, too – these impressively versatile solutions extend even to creating custom templates and workflows. This significantly broadens what one can achieve with AI, creating a truly dynamic and customizable experience for the user.

The Pros and Cons of Free AI Software

Before we delve deep into the nitty-gritty, let’s have a bit of fun. Can you believe the paragraph you’re reading was crafted entirely by a free AI app that we tested? Yes, you read that right – no human touch, just the magic of AI at work.

Let’s tackle the two sides of the AI coin, discussing the pros and cons of using AI for your writing needs:

These pros and cons are just the tip of the iceberg. Dive deeper into the following sections to pinpoint the best free AI generator for your specific needs and explore the full extent of the wonders of AI-enabled writing.

Comparison of the Best Free AI Apps

Understanding the range and depth of the best free AI writing tools can be overwhelming. That’s why we’ve compiled the following table to provide a clear and concise comparison:

The Top 10 Best Free AI Programs Reviewed

Here’s where we share everything we’ve learned from hands-on testing of each product. Our goal? Finding and giving you all the nitty-gritty details about the best AI writer free options so that you can make an informed decision on the best one for your needs.

1. Copy.ai – Overall, the Best Free AI Content Generator for 2024

Copy.ai leads the pack as our top pick for the best free AI content generator of 2024 due to a defining free feature: Its ability to enhance prompts, which improves subsequent responses as the process unfolds.

With a single click, you can transform prompts into high-quality copy – a process that we found feels effortless and delivers consistent results. Simply key in your desired prompt, click ‘Improve,’ add the necessary context for better dialogue refinement, and submit.

It’s as easy as that. For an in-depth overview of this AI writer, we recommend reading our full Copy AI review, or keep reading for a concise summary.

As the prompts we entered during testing evolved, we noticed that the inputs turned into clear and precise commands. This transparent, straightforward procedure saves you time and frustration, providing a wealth of improved AI-generated content.

Imagine having a resource that provides thousands of top-tier acronyms for your business event or product with a free acronym generator. Or perhaps you’re hosting a webinar and having trouble crafting the perfect title – the Webinar Title Generator is there to help.

It’s not just the breadth but also the organized clustering of free AI templates under business, careers, HR, marketing, personal, real estate, and sales categories that sets Copy.ai apart.

You’re not restricted to professional copy creation, either. Even personal and emotionally driven notes – be it a family mission statement or conveying condolences – can be crafted using these templates without paying.

Notably, those new to generative AI who plan to use it for personal work may find Copy.ai most valuable. Its free plan includes up to 2,000 words per month – ideal for moderate usage without compromising quality and variety.

Pricing

Copy.ai’s Free plan granted us access to the chat feature and unlimited projects. However, with its paid plans, users can enjoy unlimited voice options, additional user access (5), and automated workflows for content.

You even get access to the platform’s API, broadening your content creation capabilities.

2. Rytr – AI Writing Generator Famous For Its Free 20+ Voices

Rytr stands out in the crowd with its voice versatility. After testing this AI writing generator, we discovered the charm of over 20 distinct tone options, allowing you to infuse your content with the right emotion – things like convincing, awestruck, or even inspirational.

At no cost, you can effortlessly select a desired tone from a drop-down list adjacent to the language screen. But remember, your character count needs attention, as the 10k-character offering of the free plan equates to around 1,000 to 2,000 words.

This is enough for at least one blog post per month, combined with other text-based tasks. Beyond this, what distinguishes Rytr from other AI writing tools is its inclusion of a plagiarism checker, which is vital for writers — in its free plan.

This built-in feature, powered by Copyscape, helps ensure that the content you generate is authentic and unique. All we needed to do was select any text ranging from 100 to 1,600 characters, click the three dots, and the plagiarism checker was ready to scan.

Another notable enhancement is the free Readability Meter. If you’re uncertain how your text will resonate with your readers, this tool comes in handy. For us, it revealed the average reading time and difficulty or ease level of the text we highlighted.

We simply hovered over the character count, and the readability insights popped up – indicating whether the content was easy, moderately easy, or challenging to read.

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, Rytr provides increasing benefits with its higher-paid plans. Subscribers can gain access to custom use cases plus enjoy an unlimited word allowance and a dedicated account manager’s guidance with the highest plan subscription.

It’s worth noting the generous availability of all the tones and the plagiarism checker across all plans – a rarity for a freemium tool like this. Rytr indeed offers value, even with its free offerings.

3. Writesonic – Free Tool That Has The Most Monthly Word Count

Writesonic is an AI tool that caught our attention for its generous monthly word allowance. With a limit of 10,000 words per month, you can generate a number of varying copy types.

Craft newsletters, email copy, ad captions, and several full-length blog posts, all within that limit without spending anything. Plus, we also discovered an exciting feature during our test run with Writesonic.

Backed by the power of GPT-4 – a tool set to revolutionize content moderation – this AI-driven writer can be trained on your specific documents and brand guidelines.

The result encapsulates effortless, SEO-optimized content creation – a real game-changer for improving site visits. You can add keywords for AI training, and the built-in SEO integrations with Semrush and Surfer SEO ensure that the content generated is SEO-friendly, even without additional keyword provision.

Its free AI article writer’s prowess extends to updating outdated content with fresh information, making things SEO-friendly by rephrasing articles with prevailing keywords, and giving older content a much-needed revamp in bulk.

This particularly suits businesses with a wealth of content needing regular updates. Moreover, the tool’s Sentence Expander, which is also free, solves the common problem of lengthening sentences or adding phrases to make your writing more detailed and professional – eliminating the worry of making errors.

Pricing

It’s important to note that features like GPT-4 and GPT-4 32K, API access, and bulk processing are exclusive to paid plans. Nevertheless, the free plan doesn’t disappoint. Here are all of your options:

It generously provides access to over 100 AI templates, the Zapier integration feature, and even Photosonic – an innovative AI Image Generator – to make content creation more convenient and dynamic. With Writesonic, you truly get more without having to spend extra.

4. Simplified – Best Free AI Content Creator for WordPress and Shopify Users

Simplified emerges as an outstanding choice for WordPress and Shopify users seeking a free AI content creation tool. In our exploration, we found that this platform wraps together several marketing essentials into a single package.

Ultimately allowing users to design, write marketing copy, create videos, collaborate, and publish directly to social platforms, including WordPress and Shopify, all from the same place – all for free.

Our love for Simplified increased as we discovered that its suite of tools for video editing, graphic design, and social media management also comes with Simplified’s free plan. How versatile is that? The in-house AI handles text-based tasks efficiently, too.

This convenience extends to creating and publishing content on all social media channels – one of the best budget marketing strategies out there. Notably, the platform’s free Blog Wizard function uses advanced GPT-4 32K capabilities for superior content generation.

A downside to note is Simplified’s lack of a free plagiarism checker, which is often included in other similar tools like Rytr or Writesonic. However, it’s hardly a dealbreaker considering the relatively low cost to upgrade to a $12/month package.

This unlocks access to collaboration features via team spaces, Grammarly integration, and even brand book creation. Plus, if your free 2,000-word allocation isn’t enough, you can purchase additional credits anytime.

Pricing

Simplified maintains a minimalistic approach with just two plan options – a key difference reflected in word count, integrations, and user collaboration options:

Yet, if you require more user access and a greater word limit, the AI Writer Pro plan is scalable, beginning with five user seats and a generous 100,000-word allowance at $32/month.

5. ParagraphAI – Excellent for Creating Content for Email

ParagraphAI is a godsend for those struggling with drafting emails. Whether you find it difficult to find the right words or structure your thoughts, this AI tool can streamline your process.

During our exploration of ParagraphAI, we learned that by merely providing the email subject, sender and recipient names, and outlined body content, this AI tool can generate a complete and coherent email without costing you anything.

This also comes in handy in email marketing, which is an effective way to promote your blogs, products, and/or services.

The tone (which is crucial in email communication) can be easily adjusted using sliders. These intuitive tools help craft well-elevated emails that meet the etiquette standards of both personal and professional environments.

A little tweaking here and there, and in no time, you’ll be crafting emails like a pro. The tool’s robust feature suite also includes a unique report-writing function for free. ParagraphAI understands that accurate, in-depth reports are vital to any business or project.

It equips users with everything they need to produce well-structured, concise, and articulate reports, saving valuable time and effort. ParagraphAI even goes the extra mile to support public speakers.

Its AI algorithms can quickly generate engaging and coherent speeches on any topic under defined parameters, making it a valuable ally for those who often find themselves in front of an audience.

Pricing

We noted a lack of information on ParagraphAI’s website regarding the free plan’s specifics. However, our testing showed that the free trial gives you 7 days of unlimited words without any dashboard and analytics, meaning such features are only available with the Student or Professional plan.

Once the trial period is up and you opt not to subscribe, the free plan still allows 5 uses per day, providing a good taste of this platform’s capabilities without any financial commitment.

6. Smart Copy – Better Readability and Correctness with Its Built-in Grammarly Integration 

Smart Copy raises the bar for readability and correctness with its free built-in Grammarly integration. During our hands-on test, we found the Grammarly integration incredibly seamless and beneficial.

It’s integrated right into Writer, Smart Copy’s long-form content tool, providing vital corrections on grammar, formatting, spelling, and sentence structure.

This, we believe, bolsters the support needed by writers, ensuring heightened coherence and accuracy in content. Using AI software free takes on a new dimension with this unique pairing, considering that Grammarly is one of the essential tools for improved brand strategy.

A minor downside we discovered was that Writer is only available for a 3-day free trial on the Free plan, which is comparatively shorter than usually provided. Nevertheless, if you find the tool beneficial and decide to upgrade, Smart Copy offers one of the most budget-friendly paid plans among similar platforms.

When exploring Smart Copy, we were impressed by its broad array of free templates, too. From crafting engaging thank-you notes, humorous 404 pages, and eye-catching email subject lines to brainstorming viral growth ideas, it’ll suit many of your writing needs.

It even recommends template usage based on your business profile, which given that it’s an AI text generator online free solution, is impressive. Beyond this, the platform shines well beyond its competitors by allowing you to save your favorite templates for future access.

Notably, this feature isn’t available on the free plan of rivals like Simplified. That said, we liked that they offer detailed guidelines on how to use each template, further enhancing user experience and productivity.

Pricing

As for the pricing, Smart Copy keeps a simple structure. If the free plan’s 40 credits per month (10 per week) are slightly short of your requirements, you can opt for the Essential plan.

This gives you access to the Writer feature, three project slots, and 200 credits per month. However, you can only enjoy unlimited projects and credits on the Unlimited plan.

7. NeuralText – Text Generators for Different Blog Parts

NeuralText stakes its claim as a comprehensive tool for generating various parts of a blog post. During our hands-on testing, we discovered that it does indeed offer an elegant blend of generators to streamline your blogging process.

These include a content ideas generator to ensure you never run out of engaging topics, a blog ideas generator, an introduction generator for crafting compelling opening paragraphs, and even a blog outline generator to help you structure your content effectively.

And yes, you won’t have to pay for these.

An AI text generator free with features like these, means you’ll be able to take your blog writing to the next level. In fact, another striking feature we uncovered is the free access to the hook generator, designed to craft attention-grabbing sentences that entice your readers.

But NeuralText doesn’t stop there; it proves a handy aide for creatives, too. Its generators for Instagram captions, TikTok ideas, and slogans are incredible tools that enhance your online presence and create catchy, memorable content.

As with any writing AI free service, there are some things you wouldn’t want to miss, but NeuralText offers more than just marketing solutions. They extend their provisions to career-oriented tools for creating email subject lines and LinkedIn headlines.

Pricing

NeuralText may be on the higher end of the spectrum compared to other platforms on this list, but its straightforward scalability justifies the cost. Higher-tier plans bring more optimized articles and keyword suggestions.

You also gain the ability to analyze top-performing online content to create well-curated, SEO-optimized material in minutes, thereby using SEO as a way to enhance your competitive edge as a business. Adding to this is the keyword cluster feature that uses SERP data to group similar keywords semantically.

8. Scalenut – For Competitive and Data-Driven Marketers

Scalenut provides an edge to competitive, data-driven marketers, simplifying what could otherwise be a challenging journey to staying ahead in the business landscape.

Our self-administered test with Scalenut allowed us to explore its robust set of free tools geared toward aiding marketers to achieve peak efficiency. Of particular note is the SEO Analyzer.

This optimizes your online presence by providing insightful analysis of your content’s SEO performance. You can also ensure your keywords garner adequate traction with the Keyword Rank Checker.

Its Topic Cluster tool facilitates the organization of your content into clusters, further boosting visibility and aiding SEO efforts. However, one limitation of Scalenut is the 2000-word cap on its free plan.

That said, the slight caveat is its separate provision of two SEO articles, keeping your AI word generator allocation intact for other digital marketing endeavors. Scalenut goes beyond offering just the traditional AI writing features, too.

Its free Social Listening tool tunes into discussions happening on platforms like Google, Quora, and Reddit, providing insights into what people are asking and talking about.

Add to this the ability to swiftly create data-guided, AI-powered SEO-optimized content briefs. These offer insights into top-performing competitors, page metrics, and customer queries, giving you an effective SEO-optimized content outline.

Pricing

Information for Scalenut’s free plan is noticeably lacking on their site. However, our testing experience revealed that in addition to content grading, competitive research, and social listening, the free plan also includes content brief creation.

As for the first paid plan, users gain an increase to a whopping 10 SEO articles, a massive 100,000 AI words allocation, and even access to traffic insights.

9. Jasper AI – The Best Assistant in Combatting Plagiarism

Jasper AI is a power-packed tool that significantly eases worries about content reproduction and plagiarism. Its robust plagiarism checker ensures that the generated content is entirely original, providing additional confidence in your writing.

Another feather in Jasper’s cap is its feature that writes about recent events and provides backlinks to each source. This attribute not only adds legitimacy to your content but also respects the original contributors’ work.

It’s noteworthy to mention, however, that Jasper does not offer a free plan but provides a 7-day free trial that includes access to features from its first two plans – Creator and Teams.

Despite being our top AI writing tool, Jasper ranks lower in this list due to its lack of a free plan. But it remains undeniably worthy of the spotlight. You get access to up to 150 knowledge assets, enhancing the AI’s awareness of your brand to produce content that resonates with your company’s identity.

Jasper further facilitates productive collaboration with user logins, allowing team members to work together on content. Intermediate features like document-sharing and user-specific permission settings provide significant control over workspace accessibility.

Upgrading to higher plans brings in a dedicated customer success manager – a rarity amongst AI platforms, exclusive to Jasper and Rytr – to formulate action plans, integrate AI into workflows, and provide proprietary training.

The platform’s core functionality extends to hosting a chatbot for assistance, too, over 50 ready templates for various applications, and the ability to create custom templates suited to your business needs. For a complete look at its capabilities — the good and the bad — check out our full Jasper AI review.

Pricing

On the pricing front, the higher the cost, the more user access, stored knowledge assets, and available brand voices:

It’s worth noting that custom templates are exclusive to the Creator plan, though.

10. CopySpace – Prevents AI Detectors From Tagging Your Content as AI-written

CopySpace claims to make your AI-crafted content resemble human-written work. Our hands-on testing uncovered the truth. Yes, with a bit of practice, your AI-authored content becomes virtually indistinguishable from human-penned material.

Well, at least as far as detectors are concerned. We put our content through a detector for GPT-4 and Bard, and the AI-written paragraph scored a 100% human rating.

Another eye-catching feature we discovered is the insight tool – akin to a personal copywriting coach. It reviews your content and provides clear insights into its readability. Any sentences that need a rewrite are highlighted.

Pair this with the translate feature, and you’re not just crafting local-friendly content – you’re reaching out to the world. It supports translation into over 100 languages, too – the most extensive language offering among the AI software solutions on this list.

While the absence of a free plan situates CopySpace lower on our list, the week-long trial offers ample time to experience its exceptional functionality. Furthermore, the inclusion of a 14-day money-back guarantee emphasizes its value, making it a commendable selection in our lineup of AI writing tools.

Pricing

All these features are part of a free trial, not a free plan. That said, every paid plan includes access to GPT-3 and GPT-4, the only difference being the number of words GPT-4 can generate monthly. The limit is 75k words for Unicorn Creator, 200k for the Conversion Squad, and a whopping 450k for Business Elite.

As the plan ascends, so does the number of breakthrough ads CopySpace can create, a crucial element for businesses aiming to enhance their digital visibility.

How We Ranked the Best Free Artificial Intelligence Tools

While looking for an AI writing generator free platform, we’ve considered the following factors that’ll affect the decision-making process of startups and enterprises preparing to try genAI:

• Accuracy: To ensure each AI tool’s freemium features provide accurate results, we issued various prompts, gauging how well the AI understood our command and produced relevant, targeted copy.
• Ease of use: In our search for the best free AI software, we didn’t forget that a user-friendly interface can always help writers avoid distracted writing. Thus, we favored tools that prioritize user experience.
• Features: We weren’t content with just being able to type in a box and get text. We looked for platforms that offered additional features such as language options, plagiarism checkers, and SEO integrations.
• Price to Scale: Although there are plans that cost more than $20, we ensured that they’re either rich in features and/or already include access for multiple users.
• Third-Party Reviews: We also considered the experiences of other users as reported in reviews and ratings on third-party platforms.

This thorough approach ensured a fair analysis revealing the platforms’ true potential, leading you straight to the best free AI software.

Also, note that while Jasper AI has made it to the top of our list of the best AI copywriting tools, its lack of a free version lands it lower on this list, but it nevertheless remains our favorite AI solution, with Copy.ai following closely — in this respect, Copy.AI takes the cake if you’re after a fully freemium solution.

Are Free AI Tools Worth Using?

Plus, we’ve found that the free features are always efficient and versatile enough to provide a gist of the AI tool’s capabilities. However, as your team grows and the need for content increases, upgrading to paid plans becomes worthwhile.

They offer unlimited words, more use cases, and enhanced features, leading to improved content quality and conversion rates.

Best Guides to AI Software Solutions

Our expert team has crafted comprehensive reviews of various AI software solutions to equip you with informed choices. Feel free to explore these guides for more tools to enhance operational efficiency:

• A Full Jasper AI Review
• An In-Depth Copy AI Review
• The Best AI Copywriting Tools to Write Better Copy
• The Best AI Writing Tools for Marketing Copy, Essays, and Blogs

Conclusion — What is the Best Free AI Content Generator on the Market?

Free doesn’t have to mean sacrificing quality or versatility. Getting your hands on the best free AI text generator solutions can revolutionize your content creation process.

As illustrated in our reviews, freemium tools like Copy AI bring countless benefits, including innovative features, ease of use, and superior content generation capabilities. Ready to step up your content game? Get started with Copy AI.

Remember, the paid plans set Copy AI free from word count and use case limitations, providing unlimited content possibilities.

Free AI Software FAQs

References

• College Presidents’ Perception of Plagiarism in College Students’ Papers (Statista)
• GPT-3 Can Reason About As Well As a College Student, Psychologists Report (ScienceDaily)
• The Case for Distracted Writing (Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences)
• What Schema Markup Has to do With SERP Rankings? (LinkedIn)

The post The Best Free AI Content Generator — Top 10 Compared for 2024 appeared first on The Tech Report.

Ever since Alan Turing – the father of artificial intelligence (AI) – improved the idea of natural language processing, the world has been on a whirlwind journey of technological advancements. Today, generative AI has revolutionized our communication, specifically in the realm of copywriting.

This in-depth review and comparison will unveil the prowess of the best AI copywriting software available today to help you find the one best suited to your needs and budget. Let’s get started.

The Market’s Top 10 Copywriter AI Tools Shortlisted

Without further ado, let’s have a quick look at the best copywriting AI tools. Following are the 10 industry frontrunners that are making waves in innovative AI copywriting:

1. Jasper AI – Overall, the best AI copywriting software with its GPT-4 integration, one-brief campaigns, and seamless integration with SurferSEO.
2. Copy.ai – A standout with its own database that records and enhances prompts, plus it provides unlimited brand voices and words across all its paid plans.
3. Rytr – Easily the best AI content generator for customer-focused businesses as the tool can craft personalized, thoughtful responses to customer feedback.
4. Writesonic – The definition of economical yet advanced, providing access to GPT-4 – the most advanced language model available – in its low-tier plan.
5. WordAI – A unique AI copywriting tool with a guarantee to pass AI content detection tests, ensuring generated content will appear as human-written text.
6. Scalenut – Shines for SEO with traffic insights and topic clusters; also rises among social media managers with unlimited tones and location-based insights.
7. Hypotenuse – Offers easy data importing, and the Content Detective feature lets it be an expert on any topic. To top it off, it does citations for you.
8. Simplified – The best free AI copywriting tool, offering a myriad of free tools like the Blog Wizard and 1-Click WordPress Export feature.
9. ClosersCopy – Write in various AI copy styles with 700+ frameworks, catering to various needs, from bullet points and conclusions to crafting Google Ads.
10. AI-Writer – Excels in providing verifiable citations for fact-checking, making it ideal for content creators aiming to achieve credibility.

Will AI Replace Copywriters?

Such shortcomings include:

• An AI copy writer still requires a human who’ll provide appropriate guidance and clear instructions to manage its output effectively
• It lacks an innate grasp of nuances and the emotional intelligence that a human writer possesses

In fact, in a Forrester report that predicted AI to put jobs at risk by 2030, it was noted that generative AI – rather than having a big impact on job loss – would reshape the workforce. With these facts existing, the partnership between AI and human writers becomes clear.

It signals that unity, not replacement, is the probable destiny of the relationship between AI and human writers. And it can only get better, as the benefits can even multiply faster, given the pace of AI’s growth.

Moore’s Law, named after Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore, predicts that the number of transistors on a microchip will double every two years. However, a 2019 Stanford University report offers an interesting revelation: the computational power of AI systems is advancing faster than the development of processor chips.

What Type of Content Can I Produce With An AI Copywriter?

Here’s the wide array of content types achievable with AI copywriting tools:

• Blog Posts: AI can generate cohesive blog posts across numerous topics and even integrate keywords meticulously for enhanced online visibility.
• Social Media Posts: Engaging, platform-specific content for the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is another field where AI copywriters shine.
• Product Descriptions: With 34% of shoppers in the US looking at online stores as their source of product information, eCommerce stakeholders leverage AI for crafting unique and compelling product descriptions to boost sales.
• Email Campaigns: Personalized email content, from catchy subject lines to persuasive body content, becomes a breeze with AI assistance.
• Ad Copy: Whether it be Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or organic advertising, AI copywriters can create gripping ad text effortlessly.
• SEO Content and Web Pages: AI tools go the extra mile by including descriptions, title tags, and even calls-to-action (CTAs) — one of the most critical landing page benchmarks in marketing statistics.

This short poem was authored by a machine – a touch of proof that the copywriter AI era has dawned:

A word spins on the page, an idea blooms,

An AI moves in rhythm in algorithmic rooms.

But poems are merely the tip of the iceberg. In fact, besides all the above, AI copywriters even aid in better website optimization, one of the many ways businesses improve their conversion rates.

Overall, we really shouldn’t overlook the perks AI can bring to the table in enhancing the writing process. These tools offer relief for writers plagued with writer’s block, helping generate a flow of ideas and content. Plus, they provide scalable options and help generate content rapidly without compromising on quality.

The Best AI Copy Generators Compared

For your convenience, we’ve compiled a comprehensive comparison of the best AI copywriting software options into a concise table below. Get an at-a-glance overview of starting prices and key features of these top-tier tools for copywriting:

Reviews of the Top-Rated AI Tools for Copywriting

In this section, we bring you detailed reviews of the best AI tools to help you find your perfect match. Our review ranges from platforms offering an AI copywriting tool free of charge to tools that align impeccably with specific requirements.

1. Jasper AI – The Overall Best AI Copywriting Software in 2024

JasperAI clinches the top spot as the best AI copywriting software in our round-up for a myriad of reasons, and a notable one is its comprehensive one-brief campaign tool that creates detailed content landscapes.

With a few clicks, you can generate titles, meta descriptions, blog articles, and many more components vital to a successful online campaign. It’s like having an automated marketing team at your fingertips.

What’s more, we’ve discovered that Jasper AI seamlessly integrates with SurferSEO, marrying top-notch copywriting capabilities with robust SEO. This partnership allows for content optimization based on insights from over 500+ ranking factors – a feature that’s bound to elevate your SEO game to the next level.

You’re just a few clicks away from polished, relevant blog posts with Jasper AI’s blog creation capabilities. Whether you need to draft an informative piece or an engaging how-to guide, Jasper AI can handle a vast array of blog formats.

We simply fed it our desired topic and watched it generate a perfect narrative. The tool ensured that the voice, tone, and style we set remained consistent across the entire content array, thereby preserving our test brand’s unique identity – one of the many ways one can build a strong online presence.

Furthermore, when testing Jasper AI, we couldn’t overlook its advanced AI model GPT-4. All plans provided by Jasper harness this cutting-edge AI innovation, delivering high-quality and nuanced content generation at every use.

However, while the tool brings a plethora of benefits, it might not be ideal for businesses with multiple writers. To provide access to multiple users (up to 5), you’ll have to upgrade to the Teams plan.

That said, this may not be a big deal for teams where writers won’t be using the tool simultaneously, and for smaller startups operating on a tight budget, the first paid plan is among the best you’ll find.

Pricing

Jasper’s Teams plan can accommodate up to three users, and you can add up to two extra users at $49/user/month (if billed annually). That said, for businesses with more than five members in need of unlimited campaign benefits, the Business plan is ideal.

This tier even comes with a dedicated account success manager.

2. Copy.ai – Easily Improves Prompts and Content Over Time

Copy.ai unquestionably demonstrates why it’s among the best copywriting AI tools with its standout feature: Seamless improvement of prompts within the copywriting process through an innovative database.

We were able to track the changes with prompts as they took place, and over time, the improvement of AI-generated content quality became evident with our testing. This interactive, real-time evolution sparks a convincing argument for this platform.

An important highlight of our first-hand Copy.ai review is its API access and generous offering of unlimited brand voices and words across all its paid plans. This allows creatives the flexibility to experiment endlessly, amplifying brand identity and maintaining tonal consistency across varying content forms.

Whether you’re a social media manager flagging services across multiple platforms or a blogger weaving captivating narratives, unlimited words translate to boundless creativity.

Productivity goes a notch higher with its programmatic SEO, which allows you to create SEO-friendly content to attract a wider audience. For reference, programmatic content is an automated form of content creation that relies on data and algorithms to produce content that fits your goals.

Long-form compositions – white papers, blog posts, landing pages – are painlessly generated and ready to rank for keywords. Outline the article or webpage the way you envision, feed it into the software, and marvel as high-quality drafts unfurl before your eyes.

Pricing

Copy.ai’s pricing structure ensures availability for various needs. The free plan is a neat package for novices to explore the platform’s basic functionalities, offering 2,000 words, a single user seat, unlimited projects, and access to chat.

Even though this free plan might lack feature richness compared to Rytr and Simplified, it competes effectively in terms of offered word count.

For advanced features, the Pro plan is the route to follow, packing in a rich suite of robust copywriting tools. That said, larger organizations may find their pick in the Enterprise plan that boasts SSO and a private company Infobase.

3. Rytr – The Most Resourceful AI Tool for Crafting Customer Reviews

Rytr made it easy for us to love its capability to generate thoughtful responses to customer reviews. This feature is a godsend for businesses focused on building a positive online reputation.

It was also able to generate structured content using the AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solve) frameworks. These strategies are tried-and-true methods in traditional copywriting, and watching Rytr skillfully implement them was impressive.

Unraveling the AIDA marketing model first – this strategy is revered in the world of sales and marketing as it skillfully captures the reader’s attention, stirs up their interest with compelling details, creates a desire for the product or service, and nudges them towards taking action – be it a purchase or a subscription.

On the other hand, the PAS framework starts by identifying a specific problem faced by the readers, agitates it by stirring up emotions, and eventually presents a solution.

In test-driving Rytr’s grammar and readability features, we also saw that you don’t need to switch between features to enhance, reduce, or expand sentence structures.

Beyond all this, Rytr reveals further dynamism by offering functionality to craft business pitches. While formulating compelling pitches was a breeze, we also found that it showcased its unique strength in attention to intricate startup business details.

However, we did notice that Rytr’s first paid plan features a character limit for the monthly content it can produce. But with a pocket-friendly starting price of only $9, this hurdle is easily overlooked.

Pricing

The platform offers a Free plan that’s even more feature-rich than Copy.ai’s complimentary version, effectively carving out its own advantage. With affordable mid and top-tier plans available on top of this, Rytr provides flexibility for varying requirements.

4. Writesonic –  Most Economic AI Copywriting Software with GPT-4 Access

Writesonic has its low-tier plan at only $12.67 per month (capped at 33,333 words), which gives users access to GPT-4, the most advanced language model set to revolutionize content moderation.

GPT-4 brings machine learning to a new level, offering exemplary textual outputs that mimic human language incredibly. Hence, Writesonic emerges as the most economically friendly paid AI copywriter offering GPT-4.

A noteworthy feature of Writesonic is its capacity to generate benefit-driven copy. This characteristic is a boon for marketers because it’s one that’s sure to hit home with audiences.

However, keep in mind that if you’re using the Free or Unlimited plan, manually inputting your brand voice is necessary since these plans lack the tool’s understanding of your brand voice.

What we liked most about Writesonic was its expansive arsenal of task-specific templates. In fact, with over 100 options at your disposal, Writesonic easily offers the most templates at a lower price when compared to other AI copywriting tools.

From tailoring engaging social media content to drafting persuasive sales emails, it’s got every marketer’s needs catered for comprehensively. For Enterprise users, Writesonic offers another exciting feature: Botsonic, a chatbot maker.

This handy automated tool assists in drafting scripts for chatbots, providing a seamless experience for your customers.

Pricing

In terms of pricing, Writesonic’s structure might be a little puzzling at first glance. However, the Business plan offering GPT-4 access, API access, and brand voices at a lower fee than Unlimited is a steal, even if it comes with a word limit.

You can add up to 5 users with the Business plan, but scaling goes up to $132.67. Meanwhile, the higher-tier Enterprise plans can accommodate up to 8 users.

5. WordAI – Assured Pass of AI Content Detection Tests with Money-back Guarantee

WordAI undoubtedly piqued our interest with its guarantee to pass the AI content detection test. What’s more, this feature even comes with a money-back promise; thus, users can rest assured that their AI-generated content will appear as human-written text.

Even better, placing WordAI as the best AI copy generator for blogs in terms of budget isn’t an exaggeration. While its $9 starting price tag aligns with Rytr’s, WordAI outperforms by providing API access and bulk processing at this very reasonable price.

Moreover, it generously offers 50,000 words/month, a proposition that undoubtedly sweetens the deal. Another distinctive characteristic nestled within WordAI’s repertoire is its Spintax feature. During testing, this tool enabled us to work on programmatic content creation.

This is especially handy for creating variations of your text, thus widening its versatility. Moreover, WordAI doesn’t lag in enhancing user convenience with its white-label integration, which supports the seamless incorporation of WordAI’s capabilities into your existing systems.

We also observed that similar to AI-Writer, WordAI leans strongly towards blog and SEO content, lacking the brand voice feature and abundant templates offered by platforms like Rytr.

Pricing

Peering into WordAI’s pricing structure, we’ve confirmed that all plans offer guaranteed AI detector passes, one-click rewriting, and API access. Meanwhile, the Enterprise plan caters to businesses seeking white-label integration and multiple-user access.

6. Scalenut – Perfect for SEO Insights and Social Media Content Management

Scalenut truly shines when it comes to traffic insights, which play a vital role in fine-tuning SEO strategies. The platform offers tools that allow you to gauge and analyze traffic from various sources, such as social media trends.

This comprehensive overview can then be used to tweak strategies and remain one step ahead of inevitable search engine algorithm changes. Besides all this, Scalenut also sets itself apart with its search engine results page-based (SERP) topic clusters feature.

This tool harnesses real-time SERP data and social trends to generate automated outlines for your content. Moreover, it offers a unique perspective on monthly trends and country-specific insights.

This data can be leveraged to identify shifts in the SERPs, thereby helping refine SEO tactics, prioritize content, and stay ahead of competitors.

There’s no doubt that social media trends form crucial cogs in the marketing scale, and Scalenut doesn’t disappoint here. The platform offers an unlimited tone of voice, a social media post generator, and a unique social listening feature – a potent blend that caters to various social media needs.

You can craft unique and engaging content for different platforms and stay tuned to what people are asking on Google, Quora, and Reddit, all within one platform.

Another feature that makes Scalenut highly attractive is the free tools offered within its Free plan. Its integration of SEO-focused and content marketing tools, combined with the AI’s versatility, provides a lot of free options for managing inbound marketing. Just note that the free plan is limited to 2,000 words/month.

Pricing

Pricing in Scalenut is segregated into three packages, with the Growth plan providing unlimited words. Both the SERP analysis and traffic insights, along with 40+ AI templates, are available across all plans.

Customized user seats, templates, and AI models, complete with specialized onboarding, are provided exclusively in the Enterprise subscription.

7. Hypotenuse – Expertise in Content Data Migration from CSV 

Hypotenuse presents a unique feature enabling users to import data from any CSV easily, which makes the platform a boon for those migrating from legacy databases, as they can generate all types of content.

From product descriptions, social media posts, slogans, blog articles, you name it – all seamlessly. That said, one of Hypotenuse’s major assets is its robust integration with Shopify for e-commerce businesses, which is available across all its plans.

This compatibility allows content creators to generate product descriptions directly from their Shopify store, enhancing productivity and saving valuable time.

What sets Hypotenuse apart from the pack, as far as what we saw when testing, is its Content Detective feature that enables the AI to become an expert on any topic without hours of research needed.

This provides users with an upper hand by letting them effortlessly churn out informative and engaging content on a diverse range of topics, together with citations.

Even more fascinating, though, is Hypotenuse’s “HypoDoc” functionality.  Simply upload a PDF, and you can seamlessly ask the AI anything about the content, which is really ideal for digesting dense PDF resources for content research.

Pricing

The word count limitation shouldn’t leave you worried, as it can be scaled, but this will consequently vary the price. That said, it’s worth noting that HypoChat and HypoDoc are accessible across all plans.

However, unlimited document scans, API access, and brand voice recognition are exclusive to the Unlimited offering.

8. Simplified – The Best Free AI Copywriting Tool

Simplified, with an impressive array of offerings in its free tier, makes its mark as the top free AI copywriting tool we’ve tested. Impressively, the free plan throws in what you’d expect from a paid tool.

This includes the Blog Wizard, 1-Click WordPress Export, direct publishing of blogs to Shopify, sharing of documents as public pages, and even 20 languages. These, along with 90+ AI templates and Simplified’s chat feature, paint a comprehensive picture of their free tier.

What also caught our eye is the Grammarly integration in Simplified’s AI Docs. Grammarly – one of the tools you need for your branding strategy – allows users to examine their content for spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, ensuring a polished piece of content every time.

Simplified’s strength lies not only in its writing assistance but also in its robust collaboration tools. You can invite guests as editors for your documents and collaborate through comments. More so, unlimited folders for housing documents and content make organizing them a breeze.

The Blog Wizard tool in Simplified, with its advanced GPT-4 32K capabilities, makes a splash, too. This is a large-scale generative transformer pre-trained to offer high-quality, nuanced content output, and Simplified is the only tool on this list to offer this technology at no charge.

Pricing 

Simplified presents a clear, straightforward layout. The only paid plan, AI Writer Pro, unlocks features like brand books and a plagiarism checker. As one scales up this plan, the seats and word count availability increase – a provision that goes up to $649/month for 3 million words and 20 seats.

9. ClosersCopy – Feature-Rich AI Copywriting Tool with over 700 Writing Frameworks

ClosersCopy truly stands out with its extensive collection of over 700 frameworks. With such a wide array, this tool caters to various user needs. Content writers have access to bullet points, intros, conclusions, even SEO titles, and meta descriptions for their articles.

Marketers and professional copywriters will also appreciate the options to whip up convincing product reviews and descriptions and even craft Google Ads based on the AIDA framework.

Beyond this, we’ve also discovered that social media creators can create social media bios, hashtags, video descriptions, tools for video hooks, and channel descriptions.

The invaluable ‘explain’ tool within ClosersCopy helps to simplify complex concepts, too, making jargon-heavy technical articles easy to understand. However, when compared to Jasper, with its unlimited runs and SurferSEO integration, ClosersCopy offers 300 AI runs and 50 SEO audits per month for $49.99.

This undoubtedly makes it the priciest starting plan in this review. That said, impressively, ClosersCopy supports 126 languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, German, Italian, Dutch, and Japanese, to name a few.

What we also think will help businesses streamline the process for writers is the wide array of video courses ClosersCopy offers to help users navigate its services. These include tutorials on how to use the dashboard, editor, long-form content, frameworks, workflows, and insights.

Pricing

The Power plan includes 2 user seats and access to a vast array of frameworks. The difference in user access (3 for Superpower and 5 for Superpower Squad) between the plans is the primary variation.

The higher-tier plans differ by offering unlimited words, unlimited SEO audits, and access to future updates.

10. AI-Writer – Unrivalled in Providing Verifiable Citations for Trustworthiness and Credibility

AI-Writer gave us an irresistible deal: Lists of verifiable citations. It ensures the authenticity of the information by providing side-by-side fact-checking, a feature that even surpasses Jasper’s citation attributes.

With this tool, you aren’t only supplied with engaging content but are also able to easily verify the facts it includes, building credibility and trust with your audience. It further distinguishes itself with its SEO editor feature that comes with the convenience of publishing to WordPress straight from the dashboard.

This introduces a significant edge for bloggers’ and website managers’ productivity.

Possibly the most innovative element of AI-Writer is its Subtopic Discoverer, which streamlines the process of topic selection by analyzing what others are writing and what Google searches are hungry for, thereby suggesting the perfect subject matter for your next content piece.

This feature not only generates unique article ideas but also provides an unending stream of subtopics that you can edit. Here, the tool caters to both the broader aspects of your content and the finer points, meticulously detailing the 1st and 2nd level subtopics.

While AI-Writer brings a multitude of perks to content creators, we found that it’s most effective for blog content creation. As we did, businesses with a diverse digital footprint across varying marketing platforms might find its precision in other areas lacking.

Pricing

On the pricing front, AI-Writer keeps things straightforward. The costs mainly scale based on the number of articles and user access parameters. It’s one of the few platforms to publicly list the cost for the highest paid plan, but it’s the most expensive one on this list.

Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best Copywriting AI for You

Choosing the best AI copywriter can be a task in itself, given the immense range of offerings available on the market. To help you in this pursuit, we’ve identified the key aspects to consider when making this critical decision, aimed at aligning your choice with your unique demands:

Factual Accuracy of the Content 

While AI has made great strides in language generation, it’s worth noting that the content it creates tends to lean more towards creativity than accuracy. Discrepancies can impact your SEO negatively, especially considering expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness factors.

Consequently, you should select an AI writer with the demonstrated competence to produce factually accurate content consistently. As Google emphasizes the importance of quality content, accuracy cannot be overstated.

Speed and Copywriting Compatibility

This speed boost empowers writers, multiplying their productivity exponentially even with programmatic content.

In terms of compatibility, it’s important to ensure the AI’s compatibility with your copywriting constraints and context. Whether you’re planning to create data-driven evergreen content, blog posts, social media posts, or ad copy, the best AI copywriting software should handle your copy requirements.

Pricing and Free Versions

The trick is to find a plan that’s not only within your budget but also covers your required features, integrations, or templates. That said, it’s also worth considering a tool that offers a free trial or plan, allowing you to test the features before making a purchase commitment.

A test drive can go a long way in ensuring that the AI tool meets your demands and lives up to your expectations.

Reputation and Reviews

Finally, checking out the product reviews or ratings on trusted platforms can provide invaluable insights into the experiences of other users. But you don’t need to inspect these platforms independently; we’ve got you covered.

We’ve taken these user reviews into account when ranking and reviewing AI tools to provide you with the most reliable recommendations. In curating the best tools for our list, we’ve ensured thorough testing, including scrutinizing the free versions of leading tools such as Rytr and Copy.ai.

This enabled us to make confident comparisons and deliver comprehensive reviews.

Conclusion — What is the Best AI Copywriting Tool to Use in 2024?

As we inch deeper into the digital era, AI copywriting tools continue to evolve, becoming increasingly influential in streamlining content creation. Each tool is distinct in its features and capabilities, making the task of selecting the search for the top AI copywriting tools a tough decision.

Our in-depth reviews and comparison underscore Jasper AI as our top pick, as it consistently outperforms the competition in all these aspects.

From creating one-brief campaigns – which are composed of various materials for SEO and marketing – to integrating with SurferSEO for content optimization, Jasper AI bundles everything you need in a writing tool.

Now, it’s time for you to get started. Explore these new horizons of content creation and redefine your writing process with the best AI copywriting tool, Jasper AI, today. Take the leap and witness your productivity soar.

Copy AI FAQs

References

• 14 popular AI algorithms and their uses [InfoWorld]
• AIDA Model for Marketing: Definition, Use and Example [Indeed]
• How Google delivers reliable information in Search [Google]
• Sources of information about products in the U.S. as of June 2023 [Statista]
• The 2019 AI Index Report [Stanford University, Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence]

The post The Best AI Copywriting Tools to Write Better Copy: Top 10 Compared for 2024 appeared first on The Tech Report.

As a human resources (HR) or recruiting team expands its talent search, members often face several stumbling blocks. From collecting candidate information to organizing prospective hires by their experience and unique skill sets, recruiters can find themselves awash in a sea of data.

The good news is that an ultimate solution exists: the best applicant tracking system (ATS). ATS software solutions have high-end features designed to make the recruitment process swift, accurate, and efficient.

Managing the recruitment workload and the time it often consumes isn’t for the faint-hearted. That’s why we’ve done the legwork for you. We researched, compared, and examined diverse tools to find only the best applicant tracking systems.

The Top 10 Recruiting ATS Solutions Ranked

Selecting the top recruiting ATS software solutions hinges on factors like scalability and value-for-features, which can be complex. To guide you, we’ve ranked the top 10 tools and included why each earned its place on this shortlist:

1. TeamTailor – Overall, the best applicant tracking system due to its provision of dedicated success managers, and it lets you onboard an unlimited number of users to manage applicant tracking.
2. ClearCompany – Applicant tracking software with AI assistance for efficiently setting up email campaigns and building talent management plans that ensure the right team composition.
3. Monday.com – One of the most versatile ATS tools, as the platform offers onboarding templates and recruitment pipelines that are easy to use and customize.
4. BreezyHR – The best applicant tracking system for small business teams with a free plan offering custom company career websites, unlimited users, and unlimited candidate access to applicants added in the last 30 days.
5. Manatal – The king of integration capabilities with 360 applications – including Zapier, which helps you connect to over 3,000 tools – providing an even more comprehensive, all-in-one platform for all your recruitment needs.
6. Recruitee – The best applicant tracking system for staffing agencies that hire overseas candidates with its multiple-language functionality. It attracts even more applicants with its landing page campaigns.
7. Zoho Recruit – Offering a seamless referral system, this platform does both tracking and referral management with proficiency; it even presents a unique opportunity for users to earn wallet credits by referring other recruiters.
8. Workable – Excellent for communication with its built-in video interview integrations and text messaging; you can even launch automated, targeted marketing campaigns to broaden your talent search.
9. BambooHR – Popular option that works well for those who prioritize easier employee information management, as this recruiting ATS has a built-in, customizable employee database.
10. JazzHR – The most affordable ATS on this list that gives you access to a resume parser, customizable job applications, and unlimited users at just $49 per month.

What is An Applicant Tracking System?

Its primary function is to place all tedious and repetitive recruitment tasks into one platform, and such tasks commonly include scanning resumes and connecting seamlessly to job boards and HR software.

But what is ATS software’s edge over traditional methods? Manual recruitment tends to be a lengthy and time-consuming process. A simple candidate search can take anywhere from 32 to 68 days, depending on the job level, as stated by the Society for Human Resource Management.

There’s no denying time is a crucial ingredient in any business. So, adopting ATS recruiting software to manage the basics of recruiting isn’t just a game-changer – it’s a time-tested strategy for improved bottom lines.

The Key Benefits of Using ATS Systems in Recruitment

Not only does an ATS automate repetitive tasks, but it also enhances the efficiency, accuracy, and overall effectiveness of the entire process. Here are the key benefits of using ATS recruitment solutions:

• Lower Cost-Per-Hire: Save money by reducing the time and resources needed to sort through applications and hire the right person.
• Easier Job Posting: Distribute postings across multiple channels, including job boards, social media platforms, and even pay-per-click ads simultaneously, cutting down admin tasks.
• Single Platform Candidate Management: Keep all candidate information in one place for easy access and improved organization.
• Fostering Collaboration: You can enable teams to communicate efficiently with built-in features like commenting, chat, and scorecards, ensuring everyone’s on the same page during recruitment.
• Better Candidate Experience: As a top global trend for recruitment, a streamlined process fosters a better experience, improving brand reputation.
• Job Board Integrations: Connect with major job boards, like Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor, to amplify job reach and attract more potential applicants.

The Top 10 Recruiting ATS Tools Reviewed

As we move forward, let’s dive deeper into each of the top-ranking ATS tools we’ve identified. We’ll explore their unique features and advantages and how they can revamp your recruitment processes. Strap in and find the tool that best suits your hiring needs as we break down the market’s best options.

1. TeamTailor – Overall, the Best Applicant Tracking System to Use in 2024

TeamTailor easily clinches our top spot among job applicant tracking systems and for good reason. Before we delve into its many winning features, let’s spotlight two that make TeamTailor shine, 1) unlimited users and 2) unparalleled customer service.

This means you can have everyone you need on board, from your HR team to the hiring managers. And the best part? Whether via live chat or email, we found that TeamTailor’s support team is always ready to help solve any issues their users have.

Everything is topped with a dedicated customer success manager who ensures your recruitment process is smooth sailing.

You can also say goodbye to juggling different platforms for your recruitment process and video calls. TeamTailor seamlessly integrates a video call function to schedule and conduct meetings directly from the candidate’s profile, eliminating the need for external software.

With the bonus of easily accessible reminders and camera settings, it delivers a straightforward, user-friendly experience. We loved that if you need to multitask, you can simply move the video call to the sidebar and continue navigating through TeamTailor. It’s efficiency and convenience, all in one place.

Besides housing common ATS features like free job board posting, job reports, and a built-in career site, TeamTailor stands out with two key features. It works with Zapier, widening its reach to a plethora of other platforms.

Moreover, its Internal Jobs add-on helps you facilitate internal hiring with ease, fortifying team development and fostering talent within your organization.

Pricing

For TeamTailor’s recruitment software, you won’t find specific pricing details on its website. However, you’d be looking at anything from $200 to $230 as the starting price, which already includes an unlimited number of users, job openings, and active candidates.

The total cost will still depend on your company’s size and any required additional features (like internal hiring), so it’s best to inquire directly.

2. ClearCompany – A Popular AI-Assisted ATS for Talent Management Planning

ClearCompany stands out as a unified, cloud-based platform powered by AI, perfect for hiring teams seeking consistency and accuracy. This AI-assisted ATS makes tasks like managing job board posts and creating industry-tailored job descriptions a breeze.

In turn, these automated job descriptions can remove unconscious biases – one of the ways AI reshapes enterprise recruitment. It takes efficiency up a notch, too, sending bulk text messages and personalized emails through AI-generated templates.

Among its automation features, we liked how ClearCompany quickly coordinates interviews and allows candidates to select their own times, sending automatic email video interview links. Whether for email campaigns or sophisticated talent management plans, ClearCompany has got you covered with its AI.

Aside from its AI-assisted features, ClearCompany shines with its comprehensive reporting suite. It tracks candidate demographics, pipeline sources, and conversions at every stage of the recruitment funnel. But it doesn’t stop there. With ClearCompany, you get a diverse range of reports for:

• Applicant tracking
• Performance management
• Hiring forecasts
• People analytics

Whether it’s requisition volume, source of hires, or scorecard analysis – it’s got you covered. Plus, you can customize reports and connect ClearCompany data with popular business intelligence tools like Looker, Tableau, Metabase, and Power BI, making data-driven decisions a reality for your recruiting team.

Another noteworthy aspect of ClearCompany is its focus on proactively managing compliance and risk. It’s a one-stop shop where you can electronically manage compliance checks, including employment eligibility, background checks, and direct deposit information, without ever leaving the platform.

Although there’s no free trial, don’t let that deter you. ClearCompany offers a free demo that we found quite useful in seeing how ClearCompany works and how it can help recruiting teams. This allows you to get a hands-on feel of its functionality to make an informed decision before committing.

Pricing

ClearCompany follows the same pattern as TeamTailor: there’s no straightforward pricing information on its website. However, it does offer options to help you choose what suits you best. You can request a custom quote for total platform access, which includes an array of talent management solutions.

Alternatively, if you want to refine just part of your process, ClearCompany provides modular access to the ATS, onboarding, performance management, or employee engagement – simply talk to an expert to get a clear quote.

3. Monday.com –The Most Versatile ATS Tool

Monday.com sets itself apart as a versatile tool not only because of its task management functions but it’s easily one of the best ATS applicant tracking systems — and having both just simplifies your workflow.

Its true prowess lies in its adaptability as a work management tool, allowing you to customize workflows, pipelines, and views for specific tasks related to applicant tracking and tasks beyond.

We found that the recruitment pipeline is easy to use, all within a single centralized location, and we like how Monday.com offers checklists to help new employees know exactly who to meet and which onboarding sessions to attend, making their first few weeks on the job organized and welcoming.

In our in-depth Monday.com review, we covered how customization is a staple of this software. It allows you to choose from over 30 column types to design workflows just as you want.

Then, the onboarding templates help streamline job applications with customizable forms. The platform even allows you to automatically store all relevant contact information for new recruits in an employee directory.

A bonus is the analytics feature, which allows visualization of applicant referral sources, essential for attracting the most qualified candidates. While the average response time is 2 hours, Monday.com offers 24/7 customer support, ensuring assistance is always available.

Pricing 

Monday.com offers 4 cost-effective plans designed to cater to the unique needs of different businesses. The Basic Plan is for those starting their journey and offers a simple way to manage tasks and projects.

The Standard Plan takes it up a notch with timelines and Gantt views, making planning and tracking easier for recruitment projects.

The Pro Plan offers time tracking and other robust features for more complex organizations. Meanwhile, the Enterprise Plan is for advanced security and control, catering to enterprise-wide recruitment agencies.

4. BreezyHR – The Best Applicant Tracking System for Small Businesses

BreezyHR emerges as one of the best applicant tracking systems for recruiters, especially those within small business teams. That’s because its impressive free plan offers unlimited users, custom company career websites, and unlimited candidate access for applicants added in the last 30 days.

We love its actionable, all-in-one candidate view that compiles all the crucial details about a candidate (resumes, social accounts, team notes, and message history) into a comprehensive, easy-to-navigate package.

BreezyHR’s drag-and-drop capability stands out, too, allowing recruiters to perform numerous tasks with just a few clicks. Schedule interviews, discuss a candidate with the team, or send an email or text message.

Regarding offer letters, BreezyHR simplifies the process with custom templates, approval flows, and in-built eSignatures. This enables teams to get offers out faster, providing a competitive edge in today’s tight job market.

Moreover, BreezyHR puts considerable focus on enhancing a company’s branding. It offers a mobile-optimized careers site that’s easy to set up and customize. Whether you’re keeping track of job performance or hosting on your domain, BreezyHR makes it a breeze.

The only minor flaw we found with BreezyHR is the lack of integration options. That said, while BreezyHR offers only 35 total integrations, with HRIS integrations being exclusive to the Business plan, it does connect to 52 job boards, including those that specialize in diversity and inclusion.

Pricing 

BreezyHR presents pricing as straightforward as it gets, offering 3 options to accommodate the specific needs of every recruiter. The ‘Bootstrap’ plan is entirely free, making it the perfect choice for small teams on a tight budget.

The ‘Startup’ and ‘Business’ plans are worth considering if you need more power, as both have really helpful features, from team scorecards to advanced analytics, and BreezyHR also offers optional add-ons like text messaging. For tailor-made enterprise solutions, you can contact BreezyHR for a custom quote.

5. Manatal – The King of Integrations for Recruitment Agencies

Manatal is the undisputed leader of integration. With an impressive pool of over 360 applications, including the likes of BambooHR, HiBob, Oracle Taleo, and more, the platform enables you to effortlessly connect with your existing HR tech stack without any coding.

Moreover, using Manatal OpenAPI or Zapier, you can link Manatal to over 5,000 different types of tools, ensuring seamless cross-platform operations. It supports multiple languages, too, offering full compatibility with Right-to-Left (RTL) languages like Arabic or Hebrew.

The platform goes the extra mile, even supporting non-Roman characters for languages like Chinese, Thai, or Japanese.

Want to modify resumes in your applicant tracking software? We found that with Manatal, it’s a breeze. Personalize resumes by adding branding elements such as watermarks, logos, and custom headers and footers. You can even generate a new, fully anonymized resume from candidate information and your branding.

When it comes to email marketing, Manatal also hits it out of the park with its Mailchimp integration. It allows you to export candidate information directly to Mailchimp, enabling you to launch campaigns quickly and efficiently. We found this perfect for streamlining the recruitment process.

However, we think Manatal would be better if its starting plans offered access to dedicated account managers – a feature available for any starting price with TeamTailor.

Pricing 

In terms of pricing, Manatal boasts several features that are included across all its paid plans, including mass emailing, customer relationship management (CRM), customizable fields and views, and unlimited custom job pipelines.

For users who also desire to maximize the Open API and Zapier integrations, Manatal does cater to this need with its Custom Plan.

6. Recruitee – Best for Agencies That Hire Candidates Overseas

Recruitee stands out as a top choice for staffing agencies hiring overseas, thanks largely to its multiple-language functionality. Although other systems, like Manatal, have multiple languages, the appeal of Recruitee’s feature lies in its flexibility.

It allows users to switch languages per job and manually translate custom content in the page editor. Adding a language picker enhances the user experience, and with support for over 17 languages, including English, Dutch, French, and German, Recruitee ensures a fully localized job search experience.

Beyond this, with Recruitee allowing you to create tailored landing pages for specific campaigns, you can conveniently funnel candidates back to your career page. These landing pages can be customized and multiplied to capture the essence of your brand and, as landing page statistics show, even add more leads.

Recruitee also offers a rewarding Ambassador Program. It’s a win-win situation where you can earn 20% commission on plan payments for the first year for every new customer you refer. This could include companies you’re in partnership with or friends in the recruitment or HR sector.

If you’re looking to streamline your recruitment and HR admin, Recruitee also has the perfect solution for you. With a special bundled package of Recruitee and kiwiHR, you can centralize your HR and recruitment processes at a discounted price of $250.

We also really liked that the free trial is 18 days long. It gave us ample time to test the platform to review features that may sometimes be overlooked. All the core features you need, including email templates, candidate video chat, and smart campaigns, are available no matter which pricing plan you choose.

Pricing is a drawback, though, as their cheapest option, “Launch,” is still $224/month, the most expensive on our list. Still, with full live chat support, over 2,900 job boards, and API access, it’s a solid option for mid-to-large-sized companies looking to hire abroad.

Pricing 

Recruitee’s pricing plans all come with unlimited users, smart campaigns, a choice of over 2,900 job boards, and API access. However, if you’re keen on automated actions, triggers, and scheduled emails, it’s worth considering their Scale plan for added operational efficiency.

It’s worth noting, however, that the starting price of $224 monthly only allows you to manage 10 active job vacancies. If you need more, the price balloons even further (20 job slots will cost you at least $539/month). To avoid the sudden need for a plan upgrade, it’s best to talk with Recruitee about the custom Lead plan.

7. Zoho Recruit – A Popular Option for Tracking and Referral Management

Zoho Recruit distinguishes itself with its seamless referral system, turning every employee into a potential recruiter. It offers an employee referral portal which simplifies the referral process and keeps everyone in the loop. Employees can conveniently view jobs, refer people, and check referral status all in one place.

One of the most important statistics in onboarding shows that 20% of newly onboarded hires don’t refer their companies to other people. You can easily reduce that number with Zoho Recruit’s streamlined referral systems.

Another noteworthy feature is its resume management system, which helps recruiters process multiple documents faster. In our testing, we found that the resume parser standardizes details, maps them to the respective fields in your ATS, and automatically saves resume data to the Recruit Candidate database.

We found that the system effectively extracts and populates candidate, contact, and job records, providing structured data that’s easier to assess and compare. Beyond this, Zoho Recruit scores highly on portal customization for candidates, vendors, and clients.

These pave the way for a more personalized experience, providing platforms for applying to jobs, discussing hiring needs, and maintaining visibility in your recruitment efforts. The built-in SMS and calling feature within the client portal also enables swift and convenient correspondence.

To further fortify its selection process, Zoho Recruit offers pre-made and customizable assessments. These include pre-screening – similar to background check sites – for identity and employment verification and behavioral assessments to gauge how candidates work in a team or respond to work challenges.

Moreover, Zoho Recruit lets you craft custom assessments targeting precise skills and competencies, enhancing your shortlisting precision. However, although its free version already has candidate and email management, you’ll only get to access integrations through its paid plans.

Pricing 

To get the most out of Zoho Recruit’s features, including resume management, premium job boards, and employee referrals, you’ll want to consider their Standard plan. Meanwhile, AI-assisted features like the resume parser are only available with Enterprise.

8. Workable – Outstanding ATS for Communication Purposes

Workable distinguishes itself from other ATS solutions with its robust texting and video interviewing features. Video interviews are an excellent way for candidates to put their best foot forward, with practice rounds and on-demand recordings to accommodate different schedules.

Plus, Workable helps you do live interviews with ease with its built-in support for Google Hangouts and Zoom and further takes it up a notch with its SMS text feature, known for its stunning efficiency.

Now you can reach candidates quickly wherever they are. Pre-recorded text message templates also allow you to personalize on a scale never seen before to modernize your candidate experience.

To target a wider audience, Workable helps you launch ad campaigns on social media channels, including Twitter/X, which is one of the best proven and affordable marketing strategies for startups. And with its AI Recruiter, you’ll have a list of top candidates even before you publish a job description.

To help keep you streamlined, Workable also offers real-time, automatically updated organizational charts as part of its ATS and onboarding tools. However, one downside of Workable is its pricing.

At $149 for only two active jobs, it’s expensive compared to other options like BreezyHR, which offers unlimited positions for $157. This makes it better suited for larger companies that can afford the Standard or Premier plan that allows you to have an unlimited number of active job postings.

Pricing 

While Workable is considered pricier, it compensates with an array of features offered across all plans, like the mobile hiring app and candidate sourcing. On the other hand, video interviews, SMS, and assessments are only available as add-ons – unless you opt for the Premier plan, where these are included as core features.

9. BambooHR – A Leading Tool for Those Prioritizing Easier Employee Database Management

BambooHR is a top choice for those who prioritize sleek employee database management. This recruiting ATS provides a customizable database, replacing scattered spreadsheets and paper files with a single, centralized hub for all employee data.

With BambooHR, double-entry errors and multiple updates are concerns of the past. Your onboarding process will benefit massively from BambooHR, too, as it helps new hires by removing formalities to help you focus on meaningful introductions.

We say this because BambooHR aids with paperwork, collecting electronic signatures, and sending out welcoming emails and IT checklists. Its New Hire Packet Templates also let you tailor the onboarding experience to the individual, making it more personal and engaging.

This ATS also offers a range of standard reporting capabilities, including headcount and Employment Information Report (EEO-1) reports, approval processes, and workforce metrics. If you need more, the Advantage package lets you customize your templates and generate custom reports for any data in the system.

On top of that, BambooHR supports seamless team collaboration in the hiring process. Stakeholders and team members can be involved at any stage with the help of customized permissions. Automatic alerts, in-system messaging, and centralized candidate data accessible via desktop or mobile keep everyone on the same page.

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, BambooHR keeps it under wraps on its website. However, it’s known that two plans are available to suit your needs.

Additionally, BambooHR offers the convenience of add-on features such as benefits administration and payroll, allowing for a more customized experience tailored to meet your unique HR and recruiting requirements.