UserVoice or GetSatisfaction?

These two services seem quite similar and from reading around on the internet I can't find a definitive reason why one is better than the other or a comparison of their strengths/weaknesses.

Has anyone here used either of these services? If so, what made you choose the service you did?

I disagree, they are not cheap... but quick to setup and for the first few months paying 89$/month (for uservoice but there is a 50% discount for startups) and not wasting time looking for other ways is a net plus I think...

Your core business is not to do a feedback widget so you pay to not be distracted by other things when you could work on making your product better...

Now, I only used Uservoice (don't remember why I chose it over Get Satisfaction...) and have had a very good experience with it (especially using the single sign on feature is very convenient for users).

One thing you might also want to use when you launch your website is http://www.clicktale.com/ they make movies of your user using the website... I found it very useful to understand what part of the website were confusing and so on...

We use UserVoice.

I don't understand why people are saying "UserVoice is too expensive" -- we're using the free version and it works great.

I like it better because:

1. It's simpler so you're more likely to get answers. Just say what you want, no deciding between feature, bug, message, question, etc..
2. It allowed anonymous users. You don't want to impose the friction of generating another account or giving a tool you don't know access to your Facebook or whatever.
3. It's free.

The advantage of GetSatisfaction is that it's more "forum-like." A grip about UserVoice is it's more like just a suggestion with very weak support for a discussion around that feature.

The key behaviour difference between them is that uservoice allows anonymous comments and getsatisfaction doesn't. At a practical level this means that you'll get more comments on uservoice than on getsatisfaction - for me this is more important than being able to track down every single poster.

BTW, both have free plans which are fine when you're getting started. It's not that big a deal to change later.

You can get started with either UserVoice or GetSatisfaction for free.

We're using UserVoice, because we found it works really well for a forum where your users can post feature requests and bugs/problems with your app. Right now, we are on the UserVoice free plan, but we will probably upgrate soon to a paid plan.

The one really big feature that's missing from the free plan is the single sign-on feature. This enables a user that is logged into your webapp to remain logged in after they click on the Feedback tab and go to the UserVoice support forum. The problem I am seeing is that users click on the Feedback tab, go to UserVoice, and post feature requests as Anonymous. This is problematic because there is no way for you to tell which user posted the feature request, and there is no way for that user to see your reply (unless they go back to the UV forum to check, which they probably will not do). If you know who posted the feature request, you'll also have the option to contact that person via email and have a back-and-forth conversation about his/her feature request.

If you're running a consumer site, you might not care to reply directly to specific users. We're running a b2b site, and we definitely want to reply directly to specific users posting feature requests.

UserVoice offers the single sign-on feature in their $89/month plan. GetSatisfaction offers that feature only on their $279/month plan. Obviously, the choice is clear.

We didn't evaluation GetSatisfaction as it required more from our users to put in feedback.

The challenge we found with UserVoice is that users can get confused with the top navigation band. Clicking on our logo on the uservoice page did not take users to the company homepage. We would need to get the high-end version of their product to customize this part and that is definitely an expensive proposition.

At the moment, we are debating using http://www.pligg.com/ or just a forum software on our site.

Appreciate the nice comments about Assistly. Of course, these products all have their strong points -- at Assistly we just initiated a new pricing model, though, which gives every account their first Full-Time Agent absolutely FREE. Additional Flex (part-time) Agents are only $1 per hour of time used, which we hope will encourage companies to put all their employees in touch with the customer.

We've also added a gamification element to the product. We give you free Bonus Hours to use Assistly for free--just for using the product. We're not (entirely) altruistic here -- we think that the more your company uses our product, the more successful you will be, and the more Assistly you will need! Do you hear that Lion King music about the circle of life?

Assistly is trying to shake things up a bit -- but we're never going to change our commitment to deliver Customer Wow to our own customers. If anyone posting here has any question or needs information about Assistly, just write to us, or call us, or see us on Facebook, or Twitter . . . we'll get right back in touch!

At our company, we were asking ourselves the same question, but ended up going with Assistly.

We love them. Feature-wise, we have our knowledgebase, Twitter, and Facebook comments all coming up inside the helpdesk along with email cases. It's nice having everything consolidated. They have really powerful macros which allow us to answer several help tickets at once. Their customer service is brilliantly fast and effective. If we ever have questions, they're answered the same day. They also have a live chat feature so that we can have real-time instant messages with our customers. It's costing us around $100/month, though we have several representatives with admin access. It would cost less with less people.

The interface is incredibly simple. They've transformed our customer service. Highly recommended.

Both of them are way too expensive. To me that means there is room for a new entrant in the market.

But, if you "must" go with one of them, just line of the pros and cons of each, weigh them, and make your decision. It's not going to be the same answer for everybody. Some people want anyone to be able to comment/feedback, others only authenticated users. Lots of other differences.

I agree with Denis - UserVoice allows users to post comments and suggestions without having to login. Although i prefer the GetSatisfaction solution overall, this single point is enough to determine my decision. Why put a barrier in front of someone who wants to give you feedback?

Uservoice.

GS is too expensive and requires your users to sign up. They won't bother.

Uservoice is good except for the voting method. The fact it punishes the most vocal users is silly. Uservoice does let anonymous users vote and create ideas though.

Basically GS is the high end premium solution for well funded startups: integrate it with your log in system and build it bespoke into your setup (songkick did this, works quite well) uservoice is the clunky cheap software. We use it.

We use GetSatisfaction for our website. The base-level plan is free, and includes widgets to get feedback from your website. The next step up is their recently announced $19/month plan. We're still using the free version at the moment, and it works fine for now.

Remember that unless you're in the business of making web forum software, tools like this probably don't fall into your core competency. It's much better to buy off the shelf (at a reasonable price) than to build and host your own.