Today’s purchasing decisions are based on product reviews. Ninety-one percent of adults aged 18 to 34 trust online reviews. As much as recommendations from relatives, friends, and acquaintances (Pitman, 2020). It’s no wonder that popular review platforms are experiencing a surge in popularity and growth. One of the most popular platforms out there today is G2. It has expert opinions and real user reviews on a wide range of products. Although G2 has many similar features, there are other review sites with unique features that match its functionality. In this article, we’ll list the best G2 Alternatives and give you an overview of what these platforms offer.
Review sites are important not only to consumers. They also help businesses showcase their products and get crucial end-user feedback. This new arrangement has been generally accepted by companies. For best results, many adopt reputation management software solutions. They provide users with a 360-degree view of all pertinent review sites and social media channels. They also aggregate important data, such as impressions and sentiments, while allowing companies to engage users proactively.
With these, companies can mitigate negative impacts, influence perception, and even respond to constructive criticisms to be more effective than traditional marketing (Podium, 2021). Whether searching for software or trying to list your product, review sites are great platforms to find what you are looking for or accomplish your marketing goals. Without further ado, here are some of the best review sites available today.
Overview of G2
G2, formerly G2 Crowd, is a top peer-to-peer business software and professional services review site today. The platform covers various software categories, from mobile development platforms to HR analytics. The website is known for encouraging unfiltered and unbiased user reviews—-giving reviewers incentives like gift cards and other perks. Since its inception in 2012, it has been one of the go-to listing platforms for software vendors. It has published more than 1.7 million user reviews of more than 100,000 software products since then.
Authenticity is placed at a premium as reviewers must submit personal and professional information, including where they work. The size of their company, and screenshots of them using the product they are reviewing. The platform aggregates these reviews and automatically plots them onto the G2 Grid. The G2 Grid has two dimensions: Satisfaction and Market Presence. It has four quadrants (counterclockwise from the top left): Contenders, Niche, High Performers, and Leaders. Moreover, it has both Live and Trending views. The Live picture shows a current snapshot of the software rankings. This can also be split according to target markets (i.e. company size). On the other hand, the Trending view shows the G2 Momentum Grid Scoring that highlights the software products gaining traction.
The G2 Grid is most useful for a quick look at software rankings. With it, users can look for the products that potentially best fit them based on real user reviews with similar parameters. These include user role, company size, and industry. G2 also operates a lucrative software listing service platform. It connects sellers to potential buyers and provides sellers with information on people and companies searching for their products. Also, they provide licensing options for software providers to use published G2 reports. Reviews on their categories and solutions.
1. FinancesOnline
FinancesOnline is one of the top G2 alternatives available today. It is an independent review platform that is highly recommended among software hunters and vendors. Like G2, it provides real user reviews with over 51,000 logged. Also, the website has more than 2.5 million visitors a month. Arguably the fastest-growing SaaS/B2B software and financial products review site today. Aside from authentic user reviews. FinancesOnline offers detailed product reviews from experts in particular software fields. These expert reviews are then filtered by its patented SmartScore System. Which evaluates how a specific product stands on the key features of the software category. These include customization capability, collaboration tools. Ease of use, its main functionalities, mobility, security, integrations, and more. There are also free interactive tools for comparing software products side-by-side.
Moreover, it also uses a ranking system called CrowdRank. This ranks software products according to market position and the average between the Expert and User scores. Also, based on the score, it categorizes products into three tiers. Rising Stars, Contenders, and Front Runners or Leaders. FinancesOnline provides readers with informative and educational articles. Such as software reports, comprehensive studies, guides. Market statistics. These can be easily found in its Research Center database.
Both detailed expert reviews and its Research Center are the main things. That set this platform apart from G2 and others. Thus, it quickly became a go-to resource for in-depth content for software hunters and B2B professionals. Hence, this not only makes it not a good G2 alternative but also a good supplementary information source for G2 users. By reading detailed FinancesOnline reports. Users will get a better contextual understanding of where, why, and how particular software products are used.
Its Research Center is subdivided into Statistics, Trends. Numbers. Providing users with up-to-date industry data and insights. That they can leverage for data-driven business decision-making. The articles and reports heavily incorporate visuals like charts. Infographics to promote an intuitive understanding of complex data.
FinancesOnline employs its Customer Satisfaction Algorithm based on traditional online shopping review methods. The proprietary algorithm aggregates real user reviews, comments. Opinions from popular social media sites to automatically produce a Customer Satisfaction Rating. Which is basically a percentage rating based on the ratio of positive and neutral sentiments to negative ones.
The company is also a trusted listing platform for software providers across different software categories. From business intelligence solutions to project management tools. And it is known to send a good amount of traffic to vendor. Sites with up to a 70% conversion rate.
2. Software Advice
Founded in 2005, SoftwareAdvice is another free software review platform with a unique twist. Aside from publishing reviews and aggregating scores, it offers one-on-one help and personalized recommendations from real people. This serves to complement the information found on G2 through its advisory services. These can be useful during the later stages of making a purchase decision. It provides a warm, authentic personal touch. Software Advice covers a wide range of software categories like other software review sites. These include popular ones like HR software, medical software solutions, and POS systems. Like the others on this list, it also provides useful software and business articles. However, its main strength is its advisory services.
These take much of the self-service away from software hunting. It is easy to use too. All one has to do is fill out a form. Software Advice Advisors will contact the person via phone or email. From there, advisors will extract key information that factors in the purchasing decision process. These include the potential buyer’s goals, business needs, preferences, and budget. Then, within 15 minutes, a personalized list of software recommendations will be forwarded via email. It is that simple.
Software Advice also has a proprietary scoring methodology called the FrontRunners. Like the G2 Grid, it is a two-dimensional chart using Usability and Customer Satisfaction as variables. Also, like FinancesOnline, Software Advice aggregates user reviews, ratings, and other public data to pool impressions and sentiments. The process also incorporates data from technology vendors cross-checked with independent sources. In this way, scoring can remain fair and transparent.
Software Advice also offers listing services to vendors. This service provides a lead generation service. It matches a software buyer with a vendor’s sales team’s requirements. It can even sync leads with the vendor’s CRM.
3. Capterra
capterra has been helping businesses find the right solution for their software needs since 1999. The free software marketplace has over 800 software categories supported by over 50,000 products. It has published and validated more than 1.5 million user reviews. The platform is always free for users as software vendors pay it to connect them with potential buyers. Capterra encourages end-users to write their reviews through incentives such as gift cards. Thus, vendor listing is coursed through its affiliated.
Just like G2, Capterra uses a grid system for visualizing ranking. Its Grid has two dimensions: Rating Score and Popularity Score. The Rating Score is a normalized rating based on the number and recency of reviews. It goes from highly rated to highest rated. Hence, it only includes the top software products in the category. Also, the same goes with the Popularity Score dimension, where products listed are ranked from popular to most popular.
With this, products are divided into four quadrants (clockwise from the top left). Established Players, Top Performers, Emerging Favorites, and Noteworthy Products. With this system, software shoppers would only be exposed to the top products. Hence, for people who would like to create a quick shortlist, Capterra can be a great G2 alternative.
4. GetApp
GetApp is another free online platform for SaaS reviews. As with the others on this list, it offers interactive tools for users to compare particular software products side-by-side. This makes it one of the top comparative software platforms for shoppers, with over 1.5 million users. GetApp has published 1.2 million user reviews on more than 14,000 software profiles. The main software categories it features include the CRM software, help desk software, email marketing software, HR software, and project management software. Like the other top review sites, it also lists niche-type platforms like church management software and non-profit management solutions.
The platform also provides articles such as guides, reports, and other business resources. These range from articles concerning software products to those about particular industries. Although it offers such resources, they are not that in-depth. Still, they are useful enough for quick informative reads to introduce readers to simple yet important concepts.
5. GoodFirms
GoodFirms is a niche software review site for B2B tech companies. It showcases B2B software solutions and service providers, including those for web development. Mobile app development, blockchain technology, web design, and business intelligence. The main software categories reviewed include project management, CRM, and marketing automation tools.
Moreover, the website also features a growing body of informative resources. They range from blog posts to more in-depth tech articles. Also, it is known for its extensive ebooks and guides for entrepreneurs. These include materials from publishers such as Konstant, Segue Technologies, Engines, and OpenXcell. These resources cover various topics, including digital marketing and eCommerce, web development, and artificial intelligence.
Again, the platform strongly focuses on B2B tech companies. And, like other sites, it provides business and software listing services. Currently, more than 80,000 companies have signed up with GoodFirms, with over 30,000 software products registered. GoodFirms connects these businesses with software shoppers who now number a yearly average of 10 million on the site.
Should you stick to a singular platform?
So, these are the top G2 alternatives available on the internet today. But as explicitly mentioned. Software shoppers can always use multiple review sites to get as much information about a product and a company. The approach should help them cross-check reviews for balanced purchase decision-making for their organizations. Thus, it is best for software end-users to be platform agnostic.
Another good reason to do so is that different review sites have unique competencies. For instance, G2 is heavy on user-generated reviews. FinancesOnline, on the other hand, provides more in-depth analysis and resources that can help buyers make better-informed purchases. B2B tech businesses shouldn’t leave out GoodFirms as it specializes in their needs. Plus, it has a good service provider listing for them as well. But if shoppers want a personal touch, Software Advice can help. And as these are free for buyers, one can take advantage of them.
The same goes for vendors. As these sites have more in-depth articles, they will likely give buyers better context about a software product.
References:
- Pitman, J. (2021, June 8). Local consumer review survey: How customer reviews affect behaviour. BrightLocal.
- Podium. (2021). State of online reviews – Podium. Messaging Tools For Local Business. Podium.
