You should read this article if...
If you're eyeing Synup for your reviews and listings needs, and you're looking for an honest & simple Synup review. You probably already know this, but Synup is a tool that handles listings and reputation for SMBs, enterprises, and marketing agencies.
Here's why you should stick around for this review:
π₯ Miss this blog, and you'll miss the 3 game-changing aspects that make Synup stand out.
π₯ Curious about the drawbacks? I'll reveal 5 serious flaws with Synup so you can make an informed choice.
π₯ We'll crunch the numbers and break down the cost of Synup because budgets matter.
π₯ Online reputation is crucial, right? Let's dig into Synup's review management capabilities.
π₯ Brace yourself for the lowdown on the Synup listings management review β the good, the bad, and the rest.
π― Wondering if it's worth it for your business or agency? I'll answer that burning question.
Now, before you dismiss this as another run-of-the-mill review, hear me out. This blog is different. Think of it as our personal chat, where I'll share honest opinions you won't find elsewhere.
I've scoured countless Synup reviews and even put Synup to the test myself, so you'll get nothing but the truth.
So grab your favorite brew, settle in, and get ready for a no-holds-barred Synup review!
Before I forget, here are some quick links to everything covered in the blog:
- Synup Review Summary
- Synup Review - Where does it Shine?
- Synup Review - Where does it fall short?
- Synup Cost Review
- Synup Review for Marketing Agencies
- Synup Review Management - The Complete Lowdown
- Synup Review - Listings Management
- Is Synup Worth It for Small-Medium Businesses or Marketing Agencies?
Synup Review Summary
If you're short on time, here's a 2-minute summary of this Synup Review blog:
3 Things Synup Gets Right
- User-Friendly Dashboards: With Synup's easy-to-use dashboards, you'll find all your clients' profiles in one place, keeping you organized and providing better services.
- Directory Synchronization: Synup excels at syncing directories with Google, ensuring your business info stays updated across platforms. This boosts your SEO and saves time from manual updates.
- Custom Integrations: For enterprises with unique needs, Synup goes the extra mile, offering tailored solutions for custom integrations.
- More on the bright side of Synup below.
5 Serious Flaws with Synup
Here are Synup's worst 5 features, based on honest user reviews:
- Poor Customer Support: Users complain about Synup's support team being unresponsive, slow, and not transparent.
- Improper Billing: Users get charged for deactivated locations and struggle to get refunds or proper invoices. Not cool, Synup!
- Unreliable Review Generation Tool: The review tool is broken, and support ignores inquiries about the tool. Missed opportunities for boosting online rep!
- Cancellation Hassles: Synup's one-year agreements and complicated cancellation process make users feel trapped and unsupported.
- Ownership of Citations: sers can't own their citations, and Synup submits to low-quality directories. Not good for SEO and online presence.
- More on the dark side of Synup below.
Is Synup Worth the Cost?
Let's talk about Synup's pricing:
- Synup doesn't make its pricing public. But don't worry, I did some detective work and found out a few things from reliable sources!
- For small-medium businesses, they charge per location, starting at $30/month/location for the first 25 locations. The more locations you add, the lower the cost scales down.
- For marketing agencies, they prefer bulk deals - starting at $300/month for 10 clients. As you bring in more clients, you score more discounts. But here's the catch - they'll only give you custom quotes. Sneaky, right?
- Oh, and they do offer a 14-day free trial, but here's the catch (again): they want your credit card, phone number, and business email just to sign up.
- So, there you have it - the not-so-obvious Synup pricing. They really make you dig deep to find the numbers, a little fishy if you ask me!
- Btw, I recently wrote this Synup pricing for 2023 blog. Went all detective mode to break down those Synup costs. Thought you might wanna check it out!
And that wraps up our quick tour of Synup. But if you've got a few minutes to spare, let's dive into the nitty-gritty of this platform - the good, the bad, and everything in between.
Synup Review - Where does it Shine?
Let's talk about Synup's features that users like:
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User-Friendly Dashboards - With Synup, managing multiple clients becomes a breeze. Here's what makes it so great:
- All your(or your clients') profiles are neatly organized in one place, keeping you on top of everything effortlessly.
- You can easily monitor and update business information across various platforms, boosting your clients' online presence.
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Directory Synchronization - Busy marketers, this one's for you! Synup's directory synchronization feature saves time and improves SEO:
- Your business information syncs seamlessly with Google and other directories, ensuring accuracy everywhere.
- No need to manually update multiple locations; Synup handles it, giving you back precious hours, boosting your search rankings and online visibility.
- Custom Integrations - For enterprises with unique needs, Synup does custom integrations.
Here's a small business owner talking about Synup:
βThe Synup platform provides a good user experience. Synup enables us to manage our online Store Business Listings and answer Reviews from Google and Yelp via one platform.β
Synup Review - 5 Serious Flaws
Alright, now it's time to talk about the 5 glaring problems with Synup:
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Poor Customer Support:
- People have been complaining left and right about how frustrating it is to deal with Synup's support.
- They take forever to respond, and sometimes, they don't even bother replying at all!
- And when they do reply, it's as if they're playing a game of dodgeball, just trying to buy time and avoid addressing the actual issues.
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Improper Billing:
- Several users have had the unfortunate experience of getting charged for locations they've already deactivated.
- And getting refunds or proper itemized invoices is really difficult with Synup. It's like they're trying to make their billing process as confusing and frustrating as possible.
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Sub-Par Citations:
- Here's another bummer β the whole issue of Synup owning your citations. Once you cancel your subscription, all your listings are reverted to pre-Synup state.
- Users have complained about being listed in low-quality and irrelevant directories, which does zilch for SEO and online presence.
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No Review Generation campaigns:
- You know that review generation tool Synup boasts about? Well, let's just say it's not living up to the hype. Multiple users have reported that the review requests never went through.
- For the ones that go through, their review request emails often end up in spam.
- Businesses are missing out on golden opportunities to boost their online reputation, all because of this dysfunctional review tool.
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Cancellation Hassles:
- Cancelling a subscription with Synup can be a major headache! They lock users into one-year agreements, and when the time comes to say goodbye, they trip you up with cancellation fees.
- Multiple steps, countless emails, and loads of back-and-forth, just to cut ties with them.
Customers just can't stand Synup's customer service. Here's what an ex-Synup customer said in their Synup review:
βSo far everything has been a nightmare with Synup. You can never get ahold of the right people. Any service change requires at least 36 hours of waiting while the appropriate people are contacted. They do not return your calls!β
Here's another Synup review by a small marketing agency owner:
β Majority of websites they check have lower traffic or DA making it almost a waste of time to update DOES NOT AUTOMATE THE UPDATE PROCESS!! This was what we thought Synup did.β
This Synup review by Cole sums up the cancellation issues with Synup:
βThe biggest issue is their cancellation process. I was pitched that this was month to month and to cancel anytime. This is a lie. There is nowhere to cancel in the account. You have to send a request for it to be cancelled. I waited and got a response that they are not cancelling but want to talk to me about why I want to cancel. I HATE THIS TYPE OF BUSINESS PRACTICE. It is pathetic and desperate. I was pitched on a cancel anytime service. Its pathetic that they make me go through multiple steps to cancel.β
Btw, if you're looking for a reputation management tool with awesome customer support and a complete review management + generation + marketing suite that works like a charm, plus affordable monthly plans, you should totally check out ReviewGain!
Synup Review for Marketing Agencies
You can either (re)sell Synup to SMBs or to other agencies, let's see what each of these entail:
Synup Partner Review - Resell to SMBs
- You can become a Reseller Partner and sell Synup to small-medium business clients.
- You can personalize the platform with your brand's touch using their white-label feature.
- The pricing for this partnership is completely opaque but my sources tell me it starts at about $300/month for 10 clients.
Synup Partner Review - Sell to Agencies or Enterprises
- You can partner with them to sell Synup to other agencies or enterprises.
- They offer training material so you can sell and you get a commission on each sale. Basically this is their affiliate program.
- And no points for guessing, their commission rate is completely private.
But beware partnering with Synup comes with its own issues. Their support team is not reliable enough, and that means you won't be able to solve your client issues on time.
But beware partnering with Synup comes with its own issues. Their support team is not reliable enough, and that means you won't be able to solve your client issues on time.
βIts been 3 months since I've partnered with this company, but till now, I'm not able to use it properly because each of its functionalities has numerous bugs. The support team is not giving any deadlines for solving the problems even after repeated follow ups for a month.β
If you're on the hunt for a 100% whitelabel tool that's a perfect fit for small-medium agencies (serving less than 50 clients), then check out the ReviewGain whitelabel platform. It's got everything you need and won't break the bank! Affordable per client plans kick off at just $49/month with FREE whitelabel setup.
Synup Review Management - The Complete Lowdown
Online reviews are crucial for local business, let's see how Synup helps (or doesn't) with reviews:
Synup Review Management - The Bright Side
- Centralized Reviews Dashboard: You can view and reply to all reviews from all locations in one central dashboard.
- Good Review Sites Coverage: Synup monitors all the major review sites making sure you never miss an important review.
Synup Review Management - The Dark Side
- Glitchy Review Request: Users have reported that their review request feature is broken. Review requests routinely go missing, Imagine missing out on those hard-earned reviews because of a faulty feature.
- Review emails ending up in spam: Their email review request feature doesn't support SPF or DKIM. At ReviewGain, we got you covered! We do SPF and DKIM magic for your domain before shooting out review invites. This means your emails will land safely in your customers' inboxes every time and those reviews will keep rolling in.
- No Review Marketing Features: No native way to share those glowing reviews on your website and socials, and we all know how valuable positive reviews can be in attracting online leads.
- Wonky Integrations: Synup's integrations with review sites don't work as promised, especially their inetgration with Facebook - it's practically MIA!
That's it on review management features, we'll discuss just one more, Synup Listings.
Synup Review - Listings
The second core feature of Synup is that it helps you build listings and improve your SEO, let's look at the pros and cons:
What Synup Listings gets right
- Complete Business Listing Management: You get a one-stop-shop to manage all your listings across different platforms.
- Solves Multiple Problems: Synup Listings handles everything from publishing accurate data to your listings to SEO analytics and daily post management.
What Synup Listings gets wrong
- Billing Blunders: Some folks experienced billing mishaps where deactivated locations were still being charged. And guess what? Synup refused to provide proper accounting or an itemized invoice.
- Outdated Listings: Synup's creates listings on outdated directories that do little for your SEO. Their competitors seem to have fresher information, leaving Synup with a bit of catching up to do.
Is Synup the Right Choice for Small-Medium
Businesses and Marketing Agencies?
Short answer - NO! Let me tell you why.
Here's what we covered in this review:
- 3 Areas where Synup Shines - User-Friendly Dashboards, Directory Synchronization, and Custom Integrations for Enterprises.
- 5 Serious Flaws with Synup - Poor Customer Support, Shady Billing, Unreliable Review Generation Tool, Cancellation Hassles, and Citation Ownership Issues.
- Cost Review for SMBs - Synup's pricing is not public but we were still able find the basic pricing info. $30/month/location is way too expensive for most small-medium businesses if you have multiple locations.
- Cost Review for Agencies - If you're an agency and handle a smaller number of clients, like less than 50, then Synup isn't be the best fit for you since they only offer bulk contracts for agencies.
This honest review by an ex-Synup user sums it up perfectly:
βThey had zero interest in anything other than collecting payments and closing deals. There was no support and nobody cared that we were paying for something that didn't work. Was so excited to work with them and very much scarred from the actual experience. Go into everything with your eyes wide open."
Undoubtedly, Synup's biggest downfalls are their shady billing practices and sub-par review management tool. So, what's the alternative?
ReviewGain might just be what you need! We've got awesome plans tailored for local businesses and small-medium marketing agencies:
Starter Plan ($49/month) for small businesses:
- Gets you 20-30 genuine reviews monthly through 100 SMS review requests and 1000 email requests.
- You can easily manage and respond to reviews using our user-friendly dashboard.
- Monitor your review profiles and even get review alerts on your phone 24/7.
- You'll gain valuable customer insights with our sentiment analysis features.
- Oh, and our 24/7 email and chat support actually responds and is helpful, unlike some other platforms. (*cough* Synup *cough*)
Growth Plan ($79/month) for bigger businesses:
- If you need even more reviews, go for the Growth Plan. You'll get a minimum of 150 glowing reviews each month with 500 SMS review invites and unlimited email requests.
- And on top of that, you'll get to showcase your reviews on social media and your website automatically.
- It includes all the features of the Starter Plan, so it's a win-win!
- We offer a 100% whitelabel platform, allowing you to customize branding and pricing according to your needs.
- You can get started with 1 seat (client) at $49/month + $0 whitelabel setup fee.
- As you add more clients and unlock up to 50% discounts, saving you money while scaling your services.
- Our 24/7 email and tech support is super reliable - acting as your tech team!
That's a wrap! I hope this Synup review gave you some useful insights into the platform's strengths and weaknesses, as well as a compelling alternative. If you're intrigued by ReviewGain, head over to our website or jump into our 14-day trial for free. No need to worry about credit card details or phone numbers β just your email, and you're good to get started!