You should read this article if...
If you're working at a local business or a marketing agency that caters to small-medium businesses, and you're on the lookout for a comparison between Brightlocal vs Yext in 2023.
We'll compare Yext vs Brightlocal vs ReviewGain. We'll look at the strengths of each tool and where each tool disappoints. I'll end this article with a quick pricing comparison and my suggestion about the best reputation management tool for a local business or marketing agency.
Here's a list of topics we'll cover:
Also, as you must have noticed by now, this blog is hosted on the ReviewGain website so of course, I think it's great. But this will not be a biased review, I'll present the pros and cons of each tool backed by facts and customer opinions.
Also, as you must have noticed by now, this blog is hosted on the ReviewGain website so of course, I think it's great. But this will not be a biased review, I'll present the pros and cons of each tool backed by facts and customer opinions.
- Brightlocal vs Yext vs ReviewGain Summary
- How will we judge each tool?
- Brightlocal vs Yext vs ReviewGain Customers
- Yext vs Brightlocal vs ReviewGain Strengths and Weaknesses
- Yext vs Brightlocal vs ReviewGain Free Trial and Pricing Plans
- Best reputation management tool for Small-Medium Businesses & Agencies
Yext vs Brightlocal vs ReviewGain Summary
Here are the summary points. But if you have time, I'd strongly suggest reading the full analysis of each tool here.
👉 Overview: All three tools help you with Local SEO and review management helping you get a better reputation.
👉 Customers: While Yext's customers are typically mid-market and enterprise companies, ReviewGain's customers are marketing agencies and local businesses. Brightlocal has a mix of small and mid-market companies as part of its customer base.
You can check out the full info about who uses Yext vs Brightlocal vs ReviewGain here.
You can check out the full info about who uses Yext vs Brightlocal vs ReviewGain here.
👉 Popular Features: People love ReviewGain for its review management and review marketing features. The most popular Brightlocal feature is its citation builder while Yext is famous for listing management at scale (this feature is only worth the price for companies having more than 10 locations). Check out the pros and cons of each tool here.
👉 Pricing: Yext is the most expensive out of the three, it starts at 1000$/year. Both Brightlocal and ReviewGain have easy monthly subscriptions starting at less than 50$/month. Check out the full pricing info here.
👉 Customer Support: ReviewGain offers the best customer support out of the three. Brightlocal is a close second, Yext's customer support is atrocious. Find more info about the quality of their customer support here.
When comparing Yext vs Brightlocal, you need to ask yourself this:
Do you want to pay for listing your business on all local directories or do you just want to focus on major business listings like Google/Yelp/FB?
Do you need a reporting tool or a tool that helps you get more reviews and sales?
Are you managing hundreds of listings and need to publish accurate data to all your listings frequently?
If you want to see the pros and cons of each tool, you can jump here.
How will we judge the 3 tools?
Before we jump into Brightlocal vs Yext vs ReviewGain comparison, let's see how we will compare each tool. We will ask these questions when we evaluate each tool:
Does it get you a 5-star rating? ⭐️
Brigthlocal, Yext, and ReviewGain provide reputation management features.
So it's important to see if each tool can help you get more reviews using review campaigns.
Getting 5-star reviews and a high rating is critical to get more business through your listings.
So it's important to see if each tool can help you get more reviews using review campaigns.
Getting 5-star reviews and a high rating is critical to get more business through your listings.
Will it monitor your online reputation?
A single bad review can cost you $3,000 annually, you can't afford to ignore your reviews.
The tool should monitor your reputation 24/7 and let you know as soon as you get a new review.
The tool should monitor your reputation 24/7 and let you know as soon as you get a new review.
Will it help protect your reputation? 🛡
What do you do once you get a new review? How do you protect your reputation?
It's important to respond to your reviews quickly, especially the bad ones. The tool should help you reply to your reviews on time.
It's important to respond to your reviews quickly, especially the bad ones. The tool should help you reply to your reviews on time.
Does it help you understand your customer's opinions? ❤️
Also just tracking your reviews isn't enough, the tool should also help you improve.
It should provide actionable steps based on what your customers like or don't like about your business.
It should provide actionable steps based on what your customers like or don't like about your business.
Will it make you more money? 💰
Once you get a good online reputation, how do you get more business using your reviews?
The tool should provide local reputation marketing features to help you attract more online visitors and convert them into paying customers.
The tool should provide local reputation marketing features to help you attract more online visitors and convert them into paying customers.
Do they see you as a person? 🤝
A tool by itself only gets half the job done. What happens if you get stuck?
The company should provide timely guidance and make sure you're hitting your goals.
The company should provide timely guidance and make sure you're hitting your goals.
What is their trial and cancellation process?
Don't you want to try the tool out before you give them your credit card?
The tool should have a no-strings-attached trial with an easy cancellation process.
The tool should have a no-strings-attached trial with an easy cancellation process.
Is it worth your money?
Pricing is super important. It's simple, you want to make more money than you're putting into the tool. The tool should be worth the price you pay for it.
Next, let's see who are the customers of Yext vs Brightlocal vs ReviewGain. This will help you understand if you're the intended customer for each tool.
If you want to jump into the strengths and weaknesses of each tool, you can click here.
Who are Brightlocal vs Yext vs ReviewGain Customers?
Every tool claims to be the best tool for your business, but the best way to figure out if a tool would work for you is to look at its current customers.
Brightlocal Customers
Brightlocal's current customers are mostly small-medium businesses.
Customers like Brightlocal's citation building and reporting features. Brightlocal helps list businesses on all major listings easily.
Although they do have some problems with their citation management features, it's the most popular among small businesses, especially among local marketing agencies. See this review by a small business marketing consultant:
“We use this program to build citations for our clients while tracking important local SEO metrics.”
Yext Customers
Yext is mostly used by mid-market companies and large enterprises.
Yext's listing management features allow enterprises to manage hundreds of locations from a single dashboard. They also like Yext Search, which helps their customers search through their database.
Many small businesses find Yext to be a poor fit for them, because of its irrelevant features and expensive pricing. That's why most choose to look at Yext alternatives.
I recently wrote about the top 7 of these Yext alternatives.
See this Yext review by a small business owner:
I recently wrote about the top 7 of these Yext alternatives.
See this Yext review by a small business owner:
“For the price, I just don't see the value, the vast majority of the search engines and directories they list are useless, especially for small businesses.”
ReviewGain Customers
ReviewGain is designed for local businesses.
ReviewGain's white-label platform is used by marketing consultants helping these businesses.
Brightlocal vs Yext vs ReviewGain
ReviewGain's white-label platform is used by marketing consultants helping these businesses.
ReviewGain's review management and review marketing features are popular among customers, which boosts their online visibility and gets them more sales.
ReviewGain's reputation management regularly gets you more 5-star reviews, while its review marketing features make sure you make money by showcasing your reviews everywhere and attracting more customers.
Small businesses also like ReviewGain for its affordable pricing and features that are built keeping them in mind. They want to pay for exactly what they need. Here's a review by a mattress shop owner using ReviewGain:
“Hugh, Kudos I want to take a moment to say thank you, you have helped me get more reviews and great success with my reviews!”
Another big chunk of ReviewGain customers are small to medium marketing agencies that work with local businesses.
With ReviewGain, you get a 100% whitelabel platform that starts at just $49 per month. You'll have your own domain, logo, and pricing! Oh, and we'll even handle all the whitelabel setup for FREE!
Now, check out what Ahmed, a marketing agency owner, had to say about ReviewGain:
“Hugh is the best. He helped me with my Reviewgain account and didn't spare any effort to make my life easier while using the tool. He is a perfect example for startup cofounder who does his best for his start-up's clients.”
If you're new to offering review management
Need a 5-step rep management pitch guide?
Brightlocal vs Yext vs ReviewGain
Strengths and Weaknesses
Let's see where each tool shines and where they disappoint.
Where Brightlocal Shines
✅ Building citations: Brightlocal helps you build citations by listing your website on lots of local directories. It also lets you manage all your listings in one place, but there are a few problems with its citation builders, which you can see here.
✅ Local Search Rank Checker: Brightlocal provides insight into your Local Search ranking and tells you what you need to do to improve your rank. Check out this review by a small business owner in the travel space:
“Brightlocal shows me where my business is ranking in local search from locations slightly further afield, and shows me what I need to work on.”
✅ Affordable: Brightlocal's lowest plan costs 29$/month, making it a great option for small businesses. But beware: they have a credit system. Find full info about Brightlocal pricing here.
Where Brightlocal disappoints
❌ Lacking review management features: You can only run 1 review campaign per month. Also, they don't continuously monitor your business profile or help you protect your reputation in real time. Other tools like ReviewGain monitor your profile 24/7 and send out review alerts.
❌ Inaccurate and expensive citations: Brightlocal can sometimes produce inaccurate citations, and sometimes it counts citations that have been lost. To use its Citation building (called Citation Burst) features, you need to pay extra.
❌ No review marketing features: Brightlocal doesn't help you promote your 5-star reviews on socials to attract more customers. They offer limited review widgets (just 6 in their 49$/mo plan) while ReviewGain offers unlimited review widgets in all plans.
❌ Credits system: They have a credit system for generating reports and you can only request a certain number of reports per month. For example, on their 29$/month plan, you can only generate 3 review reports and 3 citation tracker reports per month. See this review by a marketing consultant:
“CREDITS SYSTEM is awful and gives me so much anxiety when running reports!”
Where Yext shines
✅ Manage 100+ listings: Yext is a powerful tool for managing your business's listings across the web. But beware! There are some issues with Yext's listings management feature, which we discuss here.
✅ Yext Search: Yext Search helps you build a search box on your website that allows users to do searches and easily access all your information.
✅ Analytics: Yext reporting presents all your traffic, clicks, and conversions data in a single dashboard. This would be useful for big corporates and can help them get actionable insights.
Where Yext disappoints
❌ Horrible customer support: The support takes too long to respond. Customers often have to wait for months for their tickets to get resolved. Check out this review by a small-business marketing consultant:
“I've had to follow up on tickets multiple times after support lets it sit there for a month with zero response or follow-through. It's like support just waits and hopes I forget that I created a support ticket. Also, they never follow through.”
❌ Too expensive: You need to shell out 1000$/year to just start using their reputation management features. The lower plans let you add your listings to various directories. Most of these are obscure directories that are not worth paying Yext for. You can check out the full pricing info about Yext here.
❌ Duplicate listings: Yext doesn't suppress duplicate listings and can sometimes even duplicate listings for your business even on major sites like Google and Facebook.
❌ Cancellation problems: Yext has a rating of 2.8/5 on Trustpilot. Yext's fine print is confusing, as many customers complain of auto-renewals for the whole year and fraudulent charges. Refunds and cancellations are a hassle with Yext. Check out this review by a small business owner:
“I was a customer of Yext.com. When my year ended I was in no position to spend $500 for service that brought no ROI, I revisited their platform for another service and ended up with a damned subscription. Larger companies are always stepping on the necks of smaller companies. But it's brilliant to take money from and refuse them the dignity of giving it back to them.”
Btw, if you're curious about Yext, you can discover the ins and outs of Yext in my comprehensive Yext Review. I talked about the highlights (top 3) and the drawbacks (bottom 5) of Yext, it might be worth a look!
Where ReviewGain shines
✅ Review Generation: ReviewGain helps you send out automated review requests, through SMS and Email. The review requests are personalized to each customer and sent out at a particular time of the day to get you the most reviews.
✅ A not-so-silent protector: ReviewGain monitors your online reputation continuously and sends review alerts when you get a new review. Also, you can reply to all your reviews in less than 30 seconds with ReviewGain's auto-suggested human-like responses.
✅ Makes you money: You buy a tool to make money, period. ReviewGain markets your reviews on your social media and website. Also with new reviews continuously getting added to your Google business profile, you attract more customers through Local Search.
✅ Pay for what you need: The needs of a local business are very different from a big enterprise. ReviewGain is built for local businesses. Their monthly subscriptions and easy cancellation policy are huge bonuses. See full pricing info about ReviewGain here.
✅ Get an awesome whitelabel platform: ReviewGain's whitelabel platform is specifically designed for small-medium marketing agencies. It's fully customizable with your logo, domain, and pricing options. Best part? We provide a FREE setup to make your life easier. Plus, you'll have a partner dashboard and client login to effortlessly track your clients.
✅ Excellent customer support: You don't need to file any support tickets with ReviewGain. Just shoot an email or call to get all your issues resolved in an hour. Also, ReviewGain offers personalized onboarding to each customer.
Where ReviewGain disappoints
❌ No enterprise-level features: While ReviewGain does have sentiment analysis features that can help you understand your customers' opinions, it lacks features like NPS and traffic analytics, as well as enterprise search capabilities.
❌ Limited listing management features: ReviewGain is focused on getting you a better reputation and more customers using your reviews. You won't be able to manage 100s of listings through a single dashboard using this tool.
Hey listen, if you're looking into local SEO tools, you might also want to look my latest blog comparing Moz Local vs Yext vs ReviewGain.
Yext vs Brightlocal vs ReviewGain Pricing
Let's look at the pricing info about each tool. Also, it's always nice to try out a tool before you buy it. So I'll also talk about the trial process for each tool.
How much is BrightLocal?
Here's a quick breakdown of Brightlocal pricing:
The Single Business plan is 35$/month which gives you access to both local SEO tools and review management features.
But the plan is very limited, you can just get 3 review reports and limited review campaigns for the whole month. Also lets you run just 1 local SEO audit per month.
But the plan is very limited, you can just get 3 review reports and limited review campaigns for the whole month. Also lets you run just 1 local SEO audit per month.
The Multi Business plan is 60$/month which offers all the same features as the Single Business plan but with slightly relaxed limits. It will let you get more reviews on 3 locations.
Their SEO pro plan costs 90$/month and it's mostly meant for agencies managing up to 100 locations.
You need to pay extra to build your citations on all websites, called the Citation Burst feature. It will cost you 3$/site.
Does Brightlocal have a free trial?
Brightlocal offers a 14-day trial, and you just need your email to get started.
How much is Yext?
Here's a summary of Yext pricing plans:
The Essential Yext package is 449$/year which just lets you add your listing to about 10 sites. This plan may not be useful for smaller businesses, because you can easily add your listing to a few major sites manually in less than an hour. No need to pay recurring fees to Yext.
The Complete plan is 499$/year. This lets you add your listing to all major sites. It also supports a PowerListing feature which will let you publish accurate data to all your listings. This plan would be useful for businesses that have more than 10 locations and want their business listed on all local directories, even obscure ones.
The Premium plan costs 999$/year, which also lets you monitor your reviews but can't help you get more reviews. This also wouldn't be too useful for any small businesses.
Does Yext have a free trial?
It's not clear, to be honest, they do offer a trial for their enterprise features. They do offer a free business health scan but couldn't find anything about a full-access trial. So mostly NO!
If you want an in-depth breakdown of Yext pricing for 2023, you can check out recent Yext pricing blog.
How much is ReviewGain?
The Starter plan costs 49$/month.
This plan is designed for businesses having less than 10 locations that want to get more 5-star reviews and get more customers through Google.
It will also protect your online reputation by continuous monitoring, review alerts, and auto-suggested responses.
This plan is designed for businesses having less than 10 locations that want to get more 5-star reviews and get more customers through Google.
It will also protect your online reputation by continuous monitoring, review alerts, and auto-suggested responses.
The Ideal plan is 79$/month.
This plan is meant for medium-sized businesses that want to get more reviews across multiple (up to 20) locations.
This plan also gives you 300 SMS invites and unlimited Email invites per month.
This plan also offers local reputation marketing features which will get you more customers by marketing your reviews on social media and your website.
This plan is meant for medium-sized businesses that want to get more reviews across multiple (up to 20) locations.
This plan also gives you 300 SMS invites and unlimited Email invites per month.
This plan also offers local reputation marketing features which will get you more customers by marketing your reviews on social media and your website.
Here's a quick summary of ReviewGain's whitelabel plans:
Starter Whitelabel Plan: It's only $49/month and perfect if you're just starting out. You get 1 seat in this plan plus FREE whitelabel setup! With this plan, you can customize your review request page, partner dashboard, client login, and enjoy automated whitelabel reporting. Your client will also receive 300 SMS review requests and unlimited email requests.
Ideal Whitelabel Plan: At just $199/month, this plan is great if you have 5 clients. You'll get everything included in the Starter Whitelabel Plan, plus dedicated on-call support.
Pro Whitelabel Plan: If you have 10 clients, our Pro Plan is the way to go. For only $299/month, you'll enjoy all the features of the Starter Whitelabel Plan. And if you have more than 10 clients, don't worry! We offer custom quotes to suit your needs.
Does ReviewGain have a free trial?
ReviewGain has a 14-day completely free trial, no credit card needed. You just need to sign-up with your email and you get access to all the features in just 30 seconds. You can sign up for the trial here.
Brightlocal vs Yext vs ReviewGain: Which is best for Local Businesses & Agencies?
Time for the final verdict? Let's see which tool out of Brightlocal vs Yext vs ReviewGain is best for your businesses.
I believe there is no single answer for all businesses,
but I think ReviewGain is a powerful tool for your local business, here are 6 reasons why:
💥 Want more 5-star reviews? Getting new 5-star reviews is easy with ReviewGain's personalized SMS/Email automated review campaigns.
💥 Want to protect your reputation? Get notified when new reviews are posted and reply to them at the click of a button using auto-suggested responses.
💥 Want to reach the top of Local Search? Keep your Google Business profile fresh with detailed reviews that highlight your services, helping you rank on top of Google.
💥 Want more customers using your reviews? Showcase your testimonials on your website and social media to get more customers using ReviewGain's unlimited review widgets.
💥 Want someone along for the journey? Boost your reputation by getting customized tips and get a quick resolution to all your issues with 24/7 email/chat support.
💥 Want a cost-effective tool that's easy to use? ReviewGain costs just 49$/month and it's built for local businesses. No unnecessary features that make you feel overwhelmed and you don't pay for irrelevant features.
If you're running an agency, I'd again recommend giving ReviewGain a shot.
It lets you provide review management and marketing services to your clients and starts at just $49/month for 1 client. And the best part is that the setup is completely FREE!
How did you like my analysis of Yext vs Brightlocal vs ReviewGain? Did you find the answer you were looking for? If you like ReviewGain, click here to find out more about it, or, just click here to start the trial.
You just need your email, no credit card or phone number, get started in 30 seconds :)
About the Author
Hugh Kumar
Hi! I'm the co-founder of ReviewGain, I like helping small businesses get an awesome online reputation!
Before starting ReviewGain, I used to write a SaaS newsletter, that's where the writing bug bit me ✍️
When I'm not working, you can find me chatting with people on LinkedIn 😊
I'm a big foodie but I burn all the calories on treks!