Planhat vs Gainsight

What's the Right Choice for You?

Choose the right Customer Success solution for your team.

what to look for in a cs tool

Things to consider when choosing a Customer Success Platform

Customer data and health monitoring

A good CSP should be able to handle complex customer and data hierarchies so you can have full visibility over your customer base. It should also have robust analytics that help you monitor customer health so you can anticipate needs and be proactive.

Communication and collaboration tools

Assess whether the Customer Success Platform streamlines communication and collaboration with your customers. Make sure the capabilities fit your customer engagement model (tech touch, hybrid or high-touch).

Productivity tools

Every CSP needs effective account planning, strategising and automation capabilities so that you can do more with less.

Onboarding, Support and Services

Good support can make or break an experience using software. Make sure your vendor is able to provide you with the training and support you need to make the most of the software.

Pricing

Select the right pricing for your company size, stage and customer engagement model.

Planhat vs Gainsight: The TL;DR

Planhat

Gainsight

Planhat is a modern CSP that helps CS teams improve their workflows and understand their customers.

However, some limitations of the platform include:
❌ Limited automation capabilities
❌ Inability to track account plan KPIs
❌ Difficult to customize

Gainsight CS is a highly complex Customer Success Platform.
‍
While the system is comprehensive and offers numerous capabilities, it has some limitations:
❌ High platform complexity necessitates a dedicated administrator and lengthy implementation periods
❌ The UI/UX is clunky
❌ Limited to two-layer account hierarchies (contacts and accounts), which do not support complex customer relationships

Velaris: The Best Alternative for Planhat and Gainsight

Velaris is an intuitive, highly customisable and flexible Customer Success Platform built for teams with even the most complex operational requirements. With Velaris, you get all the standard capabilities of a CSP along with:
‍
✔ Visibility over your accounts (we handle even the most complex customer hierarchies through custom and nested objects)
✔ A seamless native email tool and template builder
✔ A powerful drag-and-drop automation builder
✔ Easy account planning features with automatic KPI-tracking
✔ Unlimited integrations
✔ A 4-week implementation on average
✔ Our team does all the integration and set-up work for you

“It is like night and day; we now have complete visibility on our install base and are in touch with all of our customers using the automation.”

Marcos de la Cueva

"You guys have the best service I've ever had in any system or tool, normally when I ask for something to the other vendors, they take weeks to get back and say they will look into it, you guys get back in hours and actually get it done!"

Stefan Kalum Mikkelsen

"I’d been searching for ages for a comprehensive and customisable client success and operations platform when I came across Velaris, and it has been a lifesaver!"

Taran Hercules

Planhat vs Gainsight vs Velaris: The Full Breakdown

Here’s a closer look at the differences between Planhat, Gainsight and Velaris:

1. Customer Data and Health Monitoring

Planhat

Gainsight

Custify

Gainsight

Velaris

Gainsight

Velaris

Visibility of accounts

❓

Accounts and contacts only

❓

Accounts and contacts only

✔️

3 predefined layers (contacts, accounts and organisations) + custom layers

Health scoring

✔️

Customizable health scores at account level and customizable across segments. Can simulate updates

✔️

Customizable health scores at all account levels and segments

✔️

Customizable health scores at Organisation, Account and Contact levels as well as by Lifecycle Stages and other customer segments

Usage analytics

✔️

No need to rely on third-party usage software

AI-based Sentiment
Analysis

❌

✔️

AI-powered automatic sentiment analysis

Surveys

❓

NPS only

✔️

NPS and CSAT

✔️

NPS, CES* and CSAT

* coming soon

Reporting

✔️

Custom dashboards with export to canvases

✔️

Custom dashboards

✔️

Custom dashboards with CSV export

Segmentation

✔️

Unlimited segments

✔️

Unlimited segments

✔️

Unlimited segments

Churn management

✔️

Automatic churn warning

✔️

Automatic churn warning

✔️

Automatic churn warning

Expansion/Upsells
pipeline

✔️

”Opportunity Pipeline” feature

❓

Requires Salesforce integration

✔️

Track opportunities on a pipeline dashboard

Storyboarding tool

✔️

❌

Custom Objects

❌

✔️

Highly customisable setup including ability to create custom objects

✔️

Highly customizable setup including ability to create custom objects

Integrations

❓

Limited integrations

35 direct integrations

✔️

Integrate with any tool in your tech stack

Having [Velaris as] one source of truth is game-changing. The fact that it integrates easily into most of the tools we use such as HubSpot, Intercom makes updating customer information easy and information sharing across the business didn't need the process to be reworked. It all just works. It saves us time, effort and makes us way more efficient and productive.

Stephanie Hanakova

Staysafe

2. Productivity capabilities

Planhat

Gainsight

Velaris

Planhat

Gainsight

Velaris

Planhat

Gainsight

Velaris

Planhat

Gainsight

Planhat

Velaris

Gainsight

Velaris

Tasks

✔️

Triggered playbooks
for key processes

✔️

"Projects" feature

✔️

"Playbooks" feature

Success Plans with
automated KPI tracking

❓

Internal KPIs only

❓

No automated tracking of KPIs

✔️

"Success Plans" feature with both internal and customer KPI tracking

Action Items (AI)

❌

✔️

Actions items are generated automatically from customer communications

Automation

❓

Limited automation and complex automation builder

❓

Limited automation and complex automation builder

✔️

Robust automation capabilities with an intuitive drag-and-drop automations builder

Text Snippets and
Metric Formulas

✔️

❌

Document Drive

✔️

Notion-like document editor and document storage workspace

❌

Centralized inbox

✔️

❌

A comprehensive, effective, and flexible platform that gives us the tools to work closely and efficiently with our customers. The platform has increased team productivity due to its automation abilities and task management.

Lauren C.

Circular

3. Customer collaboration/engagement tools

Planhat

Gainsight

Velaris

Planhat

Gainsight

Velaris

Planhat

Gainsight

Velaris

Gainsight

Velaris

Collaborative customer
workspace

✔️

Customer Portal - no widget

❌

✔️

Connect by Velaris with a widget

Native email tool

✔️

Template builder

❌

✔️

Build email templates with beautiful designs

Automated bulk email
campaigns with
analytics

✔️

Automated email campaigns with robust analytics

Built-in AI writing assistant

❌

✔️

In-app communications

❌

❓

Through customer portal widget

Support Ticket Management

❌

✔️

Native ticketing system with live chat widget

One of the best things in Velaris is that we can create different workflows and automate everything to control the communication in every step of our pipelines.

Alejandro Miranda

Viterbit

4. Support and services

Planhat

Gainsight

Gainsight

Gainsight

Velaris

Gainsight

Velaris

Time to go live

12-16 weeks

4-8 months

4.1 weeks

CS Ops consultation

❓

Difficult to access consultancy services

Available and chargeable

✔️

Free consultation services on how to set up and optimize CS Ops

Support

❌

Difficult to access support

✔️

Included in subscription

Training

✔️

Included in subscription

Included

✔️

Included in subscription

Implementation
services

✔️

Available and chargeable

✔️

Available and chargeable

Velaris is an amazing product but their people/team is their best asset. The implementation was really easy and smooth. They have integrated with our Hubspot, intercom and our product easily. During and after implementation, they went above and beyond to help us not just with Velaris but improving our internal CS processes and helping us to be a better CS team

Burhan Kaynak

Staysafe

5. Pricing

Planhat

Gainsight

Velaris

Gainsight

Velaris

Variable costs (no of emails,
automations, customers,
contacts)

Yes - automations, emails, no of customers

Yes

Onboarding fee (training
and change management
services)

Yes

Model

Dependent on size of customer base and revenue.

Feature packages/modules

Custom pricing

Annual base rate + per-user rate

Free trial

❌

Start-up discount

❌

See why Velaris is the best choice for you

Request a demo

WHY us?

Reasons CS teams choose Velaris over Planhat and Custify

REASON 1: we move fast

Done-for-you set-up, in record time

You can leave the implementation to us. We set you up in weeks - not months - so you can hit the ground running without having to bother your tech team.

REASON 2: DRAG-AND-DROP AUTOMATION

Automating CS has never been this easy

Build flexible, advanced automations with drag-and-drop building blocks. Easy visualisation, no coding, no extra tech.

REASON 3: success plans

The only CSP that automatically tracks KPIs for your account plans

With Success Plans, you can create custom account plans for each customer with key tasks, milestones and automatically updated KPIs.

REASON 4: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI-powered task management and analytics

Velaris AI will give you quick insight on how your customers feel, help you understand customer pain points across channels, and automatically generate to-dos from customer communications.

REASON 5: CUSTOMER PORTAL WIDGET

A shared workspace to collaborate with customers - without signing into yet another system

With our Connect widget, you’ll never have to chase action items on long email or Slack threads again. Overlay action items such as onboarding tasks on your product interface, and get things done faster.

REASON 1: WE MOVE FAST

Done-for-you set-up, in record time

You can leave the implementation to us. We set you up in weeks - not months - so you can hit the ground running without having to bother your tech team.

REASON 2: DRAG-AND-DROP AUTOMATION

Automating CS has never been this easy

Build flexible, advanced automations with drag-and-drop building blocks. Easy visualisation, no coding, no extra tech.

REASON 3: SUCCESS PLANS

The only CSP that automatically tracks KPIs for your account plans

With Success Plans, you can create custom account plans for each customer with key tasks, milestones and automatically updated KPIs.

REASON 4: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI-powered task management and analytics

Velaris AI will give you quick insight on how your customers feel, help you understand customer pain points across channels, and automatically generate to-dos from customer communications.

REASON 5: CUSTOMER PORTAL WIDGET