In our evaluation, we have assessed the three platforms across the top 5 factors that are most important to consider when scaling Customer Success:
Visibility, health and analytics capabilities: Does the platform allow you to get a full view of all your accounts and understand their health?
Automation and digital CS capabilities: How well does the platform allow you to automate user journeys, eliminate manual data and put internal workflows on autopilot?
Project management and collaboration capabilities: How well does the platform allow you to collaborate with customers when managing mutual projects such as onboardings and implementations
Support and services: How responsive and helpful is the vendor when providing services
Pricing: How cost-effective and scaleable is the pricing model?
ChurnZero and Totango are both solid Customer Success Platforms. For Customer Success teams looking for an alternative that can provide them with high customer data visibility along with an easy-to-use interface and white-glove services, Velaris is a great alternative.
Let’s break down the key points of difference between ChurnZero and Totango so you can make an informed decision.
1. Visibility, health and analytics
Both ChurnZero and Totango offer visibility and health management features that help CS teams organize, prioritize and proactively manage their customers. These features include:
→ Customer 360 view
→ Filters and segmentation tools
→ Customizable health scores
→ Reports on customer data and internal team performance
However, there are some advantages and disadvantages to each platform that buyers may want to consider:
ChurnZero
- Large portfolio of integrations: ChurnZero has over 65 possible integrations.
- Customer Briefs: ChurnZero’s AI-powered Customer Briefs can aggregate a customer's essential details, interactions, and activity into a concise summary.
- Limited account visibility: ChurnZero only has layers for accounts and contacts
- Lack of AI-based sentiment analysis: ChurnZero does not have AI features to flag sentiment in customer communications.
- Outdated interface: ChurnZero’s UI is complex and less intuitive than most other platforms in the market, making it difficult to navigate.
Totango
- Intuitive interface: Many users report that Totango is easy to use and understand when it comes to visibility and health.
- Lack of multi-layer account hierarchies: Totango’s customer views are limited to accounts and users. Companies whose customer relationships exist on more than two tiers may not be able to have full visibility.
- Issues with integrations: Totango is reported to have problems with syncing and data discrepancies for some customers.
- Low flexibility in usage reports: Usage reports in Totango are aggregated into 30, 60 and 90 day periods.
How does Velaris compare to both ChurnZero and Totango?
- Customer data consolidation, filters and segmentation, 360-degree profiles, and customizable health scores: find every piece of customer data you need on a sleek and intuitive interface.
- Full visibility across multiple account layers: Your customer data can be organized into contact, account AND organization level hierarchies in Velaris, right out of the box. Additional layers and relationships can also be created through custom objects. Track your customers progress across lifecycle stages and get a quick view of recent activities.
- Unlimited integrations: Velaris will connect to any of your tools. If a custom integration is required, the Velaris team will handle the technical implementation for you.
- Lack of self-service reports: During implementation, the Velaris team will set up reporting dashboards for you. However, if you need to customize these reports, you will need to reach out to the team, who will update and publish the new versions within a couple of hours.
2. Automation, productivity, and digital CS
ChurnZero and Totango both offer a suite of tools that help CS teams save time and scale their operations while retaining the human touch. These tools include:
✅ Automation builder
✅ Playbooks for key processes
✅ Product walkthroughs
Once again, there are some advantages and disadvantages to each platform that buyers may want to consider:
ChurnZero
- Customer journeys: ChurnZero has flexibility to design structured workflows for key touchpoints like onboarding, renewals, and engagement.
- Basic tasks feature: Churnzero does not have a board view of tasks, and users report that it is difficult to sort through multiple tasks.
- Limitations in automation builder: ChurnZero can only automate simple processes, and lacks flexibility.
Totango
- SuccessBLOCs: Totango's SuccessBLOCs are pre-built, customizable modules that include KPIs, automation, and best practices to streamline customer success initiatives.
- Lou: Lou by Totango is an in-app guidance tool that delivers personalized onboarding, feature announcements, and interactive walkthroughs directly within a business's product.
- Complex automation builder: Totango’s automation builder is complex and has a steep learning curve.
- Limited AI functionality: Totango’s AI functionality is limited to its content generator
- Lacks automatic email integration: Emails sent with Totango do not automatically sync with your email provider
How does Velaris compare to Totango and ChurnZero?
- The most intuitive automation builder: Build automations on a Zapier-like drag-and-drop canvas. Automate entire customer journey flows, data entry tasks, and advocacy programs.
- Comprehensive set of AI tools that take manual work off your plate: Summarize customer communications, monitor customer sentiment and analyze tickets. All on autopilot.
- Automated email communications with Gmail and Outlook integration: Sync your email communications with your email service provider.
- Lack of in-app communications builder: Velaris only offers email communications at the moment.
3. Project management and collaboration capabilities
Both ChurnZero and Totango offer project management features like task management and playbooks.
Here are a few more things to consider:
ChurnZero
- Success Centers: ChurnZero provides a centralized hub for customers to access self-service resources, onboarding guides, and proactive support.
- Limited email communications functionality: ChurnZero does not have automated bulk email campaigns.
- Lack of template builder: ChurnZero does not have a template builder for communications or presentations.
Totango
- Template builder: Totango can be used to generate presentations that are automatically populated with selected KPIs and metrics for each account.
- Shareable account plans: Totango allows you to create Outcome Success Plans that can be shared with customers
- Lack of AI writing assistant: Totango does not have a built-in AI writing assistant to help with communications.
- Lack of automatic Success Plan KPI-tracking: Success Plans do not track outcomes automatically.
How does Velaris compare to ChurnZero and Totango?
- Task management, success plans and playbooks.
- Automatic KPI-tracking for Success Plans: Track the impact of your projects and account plans in real time with KPIs that are updated automatically.
- Frictionless customer portal: Velaris’ customer portal comes with a widget that can be embedded in your product’s interface. This eliminates the need for your customers to log in to a separate workspace, and can instead access their portal tasks and messages through an in-app window.
- Lack of document sharing capabilities: Velaris does not yet offer the ability to share files and documents through the customer portal, although this feature is in development.
4. Training, support and services
Each vendor carries a slightly different approach to support and services. Here’s a full breakdown of their offerings:
ChurnZero
- Included support and training: ChurnZero also has support and training included in the subscription.
- High quality support: ChurnZero’s customers generally seem to approve of the support they receive.
Totango
- Included support and training: Totango has support and training included in the subscription.
- Knowledge base: Totango provides an expansive library of self-service training resources from help center articles, live data assistance, templates.
- Totango Community: Join a community of Totango customers and get assistance/advice from peers.
- Long implementation: Totango typically takes 4-6 months to go live.
- Unresponsive support: Users report that Totango’s support quality has dropped, sometimes taking over a week to respond.
How does Velaris compare to ChurnZero and Totango?
- Effortless implementations: With an average go-live time of 4 weeks, Velaris’ implementation periods are at the top of the industry. You will have a dedicated team that will handle the heavy lifting on the technical side, even if custom integrations are required.
- Personalized onboarding + consultation: The Velaris team will consult with you to understand your specific needs and build out the early playbooks and automations for you, giving you a solid foundation to start on.
- Knowledge base: Access all help articles within a searchable knowledge base.
- Responsive feature development: Velaris is highly responsive to new feature requests and suggestions for feature improvements.
5. Pricing
ChurnZero
ChurnZero offers customized pricing tailored to the specific needs of each organization, taking into account factors such as the number of users, customer accounts, and desired features.
For precise pricing information, it's recommended to contact ChurnZero directly to receive a quote based on your organization's unique needs.
The median contract price according to Vendr is around $42,675.
Totango
Totango offers a range of pricing plans tailored to different needs. For example, the Enterprise Plan supports 10 practitioner seats, 2,000 customer accounts, and five teams, along with an Enterprise Customer Success Manager.
The Premier Plan expands on this with 20 practitioner seats, additional viewer seats, 10,000 customer accounts, unlimited teams, a development instance, and a dedicated account team.
The median contract price according to Vendr is around $63,487.
Velaris
Velaris offers a full suite of features for a flat base platform fee with 5 users. As their team grows, you can buy more user licenses for your CSMs, making Velaris a scalable option for fast-growing teams.
Final recommendations
To sum up, ChurnZero and Totango are both good options for Customer Success teams looking to scale their operations. Both platforms offer visibility, health, project management and automation capabilities.
ChurnZero stands out for its large base of integrations and excellent support, but lacks flexibility and advanced features in automation, task management and communication. It is also reported to have outdated UI and low ease of use.
Totango is a great choice for companies that need efficient collaboration capabilities. However, it has some drawbacks related to support, and their customer data organization can be inflexible for companies that require unique data structures.
In addition to ChurnZero and Totango, Velaris is also a strong contender in the Customer Success space. Velaris’ Customer Success Platform offers all the capabilities that a high-growth CS team requires. Their customers also benefit from highly responsive, attentive and personalized service that adapts the platform to their specific needs, drives ROI fast and makes implementation easy.
If you're looking for a flexible, scalable solution designed to help you manage Customer Success with ease, book a demo today and see how Velaris can support your team.
