14 Best Customer Engagement Platforms Reviewed

What Is A Customer Engagement Platform?

A Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) is a tool that helps you foster and maintain meaningful relationships with your customers across multiple touchpoints—whether it’s through emails, SMS, mobile apps, or live chat. 

Basically, the goal is to keep your customers engaged, informed, and ultimately satisfied with their interactions with your brand. 

CEPs make it easier for you to communicate seamlessly with your customers, gather insights from their interactions, and personalize the experience, which results in more conversions and better retention rates in the long run.

14 Best Customer Engagement Platforms

1- UserGuiding - Targeted and Practical Customer Engagement Solutions

UserGuiding is a platform that simplifies customer onboarding and enhances engagement through practical, step-by-step interactions. 

It's designed for you to create tailored experiences without overwhelming your customers. 

Whether you're a SaaS company introducing new features or a complex platform helping users navigate your interface, UserGuiding is here to ensure that your users get the most out of your service by guiding them exactly where they need to go.

UserGuiding’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

UserGuiding's key use cases for customer engagement are primarily centered around product adoption and enhancing the user experience. 

Here’s a breakdown👇🏻

1- Product Adoption and Onboarding

You can  simplify the onboarding process with UserGuiding thanks to the brilliant interactive walkthroughs, which makes it easier for users to understand and adopt your product. 

Through customizable in-app guides, checklists, and tooltips, you can guide new users  step-by-step, reducing drop-offs and ensuring that they reach value quickly.

2- User Retention through In-App Messaging

With its targeted in-app messaging, you can engage users at the right moment. 

Whether it’s to announce new features, provide tips, or share updates, this feature keeps users actively engaged, informed, and returning to your platform.

3- Feedback Collection and Continuous Improvement

By integrating surveys and collecting feedback within the app, you can gain direct insights into your users’ experiences. 

This allows you to address pain points in real time and continuously refine your product to better meet user needs.

4- Feature Adoption with Targeted Guides

Next are our segmentation tools. They allow you to deliver specific onboarding content to the right user groups. 

This way, you ensure that users who could benefit the most from certain features are introduced to them at the right time.

5- Personalized Learning Paths

Last but not least, you can create tailored learning experiences based on user behavior and roles. 

Personalized paths encourage deeper engagement by offering relevant, context-aware guidance that makes users feel understood and supported. 

Pricing

UserGuiding’s pricing plans are based on the number of active users you have. When billed yearly:

• Basic Plan: Starting from $69/month.
• Professional Plan: Starting from $199/month.
• Corporate Plan: Custom quote.

2- Pendo - Improved Customer Engagement on Mobile Apps

Pendo is a powerhouse when it comes to engaging mobile-first users. 

Known for its strong in-app guidance and analytics, Pendo allows you to engage with customers directly on their mobile devices. Yup, you heard it right.

If your business depends heavily on app interactions, Pendo helps you create a seamless experience that keeps users coming back through timely messages and relevant guidance.

Here’s what’s more to it👇🏻

Pendo’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

Pendo’s key use cases for customer engagement revolve around understanding user behavior and improving the overall user experience. 

In-app guides are an important aspect, offering support to new users as they navigate your product. 

These guides help with onboarding, ensuring users become familiar with the most important features right from the start. 

Alongside this, Pendo's survey functionality allows you to gather feedback directly from users, giving you a better grasp of their satisfaction levels and helping you respond to their concerns.

The platform also offers in-app messaging, a simple but effective way to communicate updates, new features, or useful tips directly to users while they’re using the product. 

Pricing

• Free Plan: Pendo offers a free tier that includes core analytics and basic user feedback features. This is mainly for startups or smaller teams.
• Growth Plan: Pricing for this plan starts at approximately $2,000 per year. It's intended for growing teams and offers more advanced analytics, feedback, and guidance features.
• Portfolio Plan: This plan is geared towards larger enterprises and includes advanced features like product insights, more extensive support, and integrations. Pricing is customizable and typically higher.

3- Adobe Experience Cloud: A Holistic View of The Customer Journey

Adobe Experience Cloud provides you with a comprehensive view of the entire customer journey. 

Unlike other platforms that focus on isolated touchpoints, Adobe ties everything together, ensuring that every interaction a customer has with your brand is cohesive and tailored. 

It leverages AI-powered tools to help you precisely engage your customers, from the very first touch to repeat conversions.

Adobe’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

My favorite part about the Adobe Experience Cloud is the analytics that gives you the best understanding of user behavior across multiple channels.

Whether you’re tracking customer journeys, mapping out conversion paths, or diving into audience demographics, it offers everything you need to stay ahead in a competitive market.

🏆The real power of Adobe Experience Cloud lies somewhere different, though.

Its ability to deliver real-time, adaptive experiences using machine learning is something else.

Adobe’s AI can determine the optimal times to send messages to individual users, boosting open rates and conversions. It can also trigger real-time notifications through various channels. 

This responsiveness helps you maintain deeper connections with your audience, keeping them engaged and invested in your brand.

Pricing

Typically, Adobe provides custom pricing that’s influenced by factors like the number of users, the volume of data processed, and the extent of the features utilized. 

For accurate pricing, you should contact Adobe directly to get a personalized quote based on your specific business needs.

4- HubSpot: All-in-one marketing, sales, and service platform

HubSpot is a complete solution that integrates marketing, sales, and customer service efforts under one roof. 

Its customer engagement strength lies in its ability to automate personalized workflows, meaning you can deliver messages to your audience at just the right time, whether through email, live chat, or social media. 

HubSpot ensures that all of your customer-facing activities are in sync so your communications feel seamless.

HubSpot’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

HubSpot enhances customer engagement by focusing on delivering personalized, inbound experiences. 

With its robust CRM and marketing tools, HubSpot helps you track user behavior and interactions, successfully leading you to create tailored content that speaks to individual customer needs. 

By automating marketing efforts, such as email campaigns and lead nurturing, HubSpot makes sure that your messaging reaches the right people at the right time, maintaining continuous engagement in the mean time.

Pricing

• Free Tools: HubSpot offers free versions of many of their tools, including CRM, email marketing, forms, and more. These are great for startups or small teams looking to get started with basic features.

• Starter Plans: Prices start around $20 to $50 per month, depending on the hub. These plans are for small businesses needing more functionality than the free tools but without the complexity of larger packages.
• Professional Plans: Prices range from $400 to $1,200 per month for access to more advanced features, such as automation, reporting, and more integrations. This tier is typically aimed at growing businesses that need more power to scale.

What’s More

There’s a HubSpot integration in yours truly, UserGuiding. And it can work like magic. ✨

When the HubSpot integration is enabled, UserGuiding can serve as a source to send event information directly to your HubSpot contact's timeline. 

Additionally, it can act as a destination for receiving user attributes from HubSpot.

How To Enable HubSpot Integration

Under the Settings section, you can enable this integration using the Activate button within the Integrations Tab.

First, you need to give authorization from HubSpot to be able to activate any of the integrations.

• Click on Connect to HubSpot button, and you will be redirected to the HubSpot page to complete the verification.

UserGuiding as Source

When enabled, UserGuiding material interaction events will be streamed into Hubspot.

• In the opening menu, you can toggle on and activate the integration.

When UserGuiding is set up as a Source, it sends real-time event notifications to HubSpot. 

You can view this live event data by checking the contact's timeline in HubSpot.

5- Salesforce: Known for CRM, offers a robust CEP suite

Salesforce is globally recognized for its CRM capabilities, but it also offers an exceptional customer engagement platform that enables you to build relationships at scale. 

Salesforce uses AI and automation to help you predict your customers' needs and deliver timely, personalized communications that build trust and loyalty.

Salesforce’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

Salesforce helps you create highly personalized experiences through its Marketing Cloud and Customer 360 platform. 

✍🏼For example, you can tailor communication across channels (email, social media, web) based on user behavior, ensuring that your customers receive content that resonates with them at the right time.

And that’s not all. 

Salesforce’s Einstein AI provides product or content recommendations based on past interactions, increasing relevance for the customer and boosting engagement. 

For instance, a retail company can automatically recommend products based on a customer's browsing history and preferences, enhancing the shopping experience.

Now, my favorite part is Salesforce’s automation features that let you identify potential issues before they escalate. 

If a customer is having trouble completing a purchase, the system can trigger a support intervention, such as a chatbot or live agent offering assistance, which keeps the customer engaged rather than frustrated.

Pricing

• Essentials: $25 per user/month, for small businesses needing a basic CRM.
• Professional: $75 per user/month, for teams needing full CRM functionality.
• Enterprise: $150 per user/month, with advanced customization options for larger teams.
• Unlimited: $300 per user/month, offering the most comprehensive suite of features and support.

6- Intercom: Offers live chat, messaging, and automation features

Intercom focuses on improving customer communication with real-time messaging and automation tools. 

This platform enables businesses to connect directly with their customers through live chat and in-app messaging, offering instant support and personalized responses that drive deeper engagement. 

By utilizing these conversational tools, you can provide immediate value to users, keeping them connected and satisfied.

Intercom’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

1- Live Chat and Messaging

Engaging your customers is easier than ever with Intercom’s live chat, which allows you to answer questions, solve problems, and nurture relationships directly on your website or app.

2- Targeted Messaging

You can deliver personalized, in-app messages and emails based on customer behavior, driving deeper engagement by reaching users at the right moment.

3- Customer Support

Intercom’s bots and automation helps you provide instant support, guide customers to relevant resources, or escalate issues to live agents, ensuring seamless engagement.

4- Product Tours

You can easily onboard and engage new users with interactive product tours, guiding them through key features and improving adoption.

Pricing

• Basic Plan: Starts around $199 per month, covering core onboarding tools.
• Pro Plan: Costs about $499 per month for more advanced onboarding capabilities and customization.

What’s More

There’s an Intercom integration in UserGuiding that you can use to step up your game. 

With the Intercom integration, you can track user engagement with your guides, including whether they completed them or not. 

Additionally, it lets you see which users responded to your Promoter Survey, along with their score and feedback. 

You can also filter and segment users based on their survey responses to automate your Intercom emails and messages effectively.

In any scenario, you can identify users who have given an NPS score above or below a specific threshold, allowing you to gain valuable insights into their opinions on your product or service. 

Based on these insights, you can take appropriate action through targeted communication using Intercom messages and emails.

7- Drift: Conversational marketing and sales platform

Drift stands out for its conversational marketing focus, providing you with tools to engage customers through real-time conversations that lead to conversions. 

Whether through chatbots or live interactions, Drift allows you to connect with your audience right when they’re most engaged, which makes it easier to capture leads and nurture them through personalized conversations.

Drift’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

1- Conversational Marketing

You can engage visitors in real-time through live chat and AI-powered bots to qualify leads, answer questions, and drive conversions directly from your website.

2- Conversational Sales

Later on, you can streamline the sales process by instantly connecting potential customers with your sales team, scheduling meetings, and providing personalized experiences based on user behavior.

3- Customer Support

Drift allows you to provide fast, efficient customer support with chatbots and live chat, ensuring that customers get help when they need it, leading to higher satisfaction and engagement.

4- Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Last but not least, you can personalize interactions for high-value accounts by using targeted messaging and custom chat experiences, increasing the effectiveness of your ABM strategies.

Pricing

Drift Essentials:

• Starting at $400 per month: Includes basic chat features, email integrations, and a limited number of users. Suitable for small teams or businesses just starting with conversational marketing.

Drift Professional:

• Starting around $1,500 per month: Offers more advanced features such as targeted messaging, more integrations, and enhanced reporting. Ideal for growing teams needing additional functionality.

Drift Enterprise:

• Custom pricing: For larger organizations requiring extensive customization, advanced analytics, and dedicated support. Pricing is tailored based on specific business needs and scale.

8- Zendesk: Strong in customer support and engagement

Zendesk is a customer service powerhouse that doubles as a robust customer engagement platform. 

Its suite of tools is designed to help you maintain strong customer relationships by delivering timely and helpful support through multiple channels, including email, chat, and social media. 

Zendesk’s ease of integration with other platforms ensures you can engage with customers wherever they are.

Zendesk’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

1- Omnichannel Support

Zendesk enables you to engage customers across multiple channels—email, chat, phone, social media, and more—which ensures consistent and seamless support experiences regardless of how customers choose to reach out.

2- Self-Service

With Zendesk’s Help Center and community forums, your teams can empower customers to find answers on their own, enhancing engagement by providing accessible, on-demand support.

3- AI-Powered Automation

Zendesk uses AI and automation to route tickets, suggest help articles, and even handle simple queries through chatbots, which lead to faster response times and more efficient customer engagement.

4- Customer Feedback and Insights

You can also gather and analyze customer feedback through surveys and analytics tools, understand customer needs better and continuously improve the engagement experience.

Pricing

• Team: $19 per user/month (billed annually)
  Focuses on essential sales pipeline management, ideal for small teams getting started with CRM.
• Growth: $49 per user/month (billed annually)
  Offers additional features like email integration and task automation, perfect for scaling teams.
• Professional: $99 per user/month (billed annually)
  Provides advanced tools such as multiple pipelines, detailed reporting, and customizable dashboards for more complex sales operations.
• Enterprise: $150 per user/month (billed annually)
  Designed for large organizations needing enhanced forecasting, advanced permissions, and extensive customization options.

9- Freshworks: CRM, IT service management, and customer engagement tools

Freshworks offers a comprehensive suite of products that covers everything from customer relationship management to IT service management. 

Its tools for customer engagement let you manage relationships more effectively by unifying communications across multiple channels, including email, chat, and phone. 

The platform’s intuitive automation tools also help streamline and personalize interactions, keeping customers engaged throughout their lifecycle.

Freshworks’ Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

1- AI-Powered Automation

With Freshworks' Freddy AI, you can automate routine tasks, such as ticket routing, FAQs, and even predictive analytics, enabling faster response times and more personalized customer interactions.

2- Customer Journey Management

Freshworks CRM helps you track and manage customer journeys, from lead generation to post-purchase engagement, making sure that each customer receives the right message at the right time.

3-Self-Service Solutions

Freshworks provides robust self-service options, such as knowledge bases and chatbots, allowing customers to find answers and resolve issues on their own.

Pricing

• Free: $0 per user/month
  Get started with basic email campaigns and essential marketing automation tools.

• Growth: $19 per user/month (billed annually)
  Step up to more advanced automation with features like email sequencing and lead scoring.

• Pro: $149 per user/month (billed annually)
  Access advanced segmentation, run multichannel campaigns, and gain deeper insights with comprehensive analytics.

• Enterprise: Custom pricing
  Designed for large enterprises, offering extensive customization and advanced features to meet complex marketing needs.

10- Twilio: Cloud communication platform for SMS, voice, and messaging

Twilio specializes in cloud-based communication, offering businesses the ability to engage customers through SMS, voice, and messaging. 

It’s ideal for companies looking to provide timely updates, alerts, or personalized offers to their customers through their preferred communication channels. 

Twilio’s flexibility ensures you can deliver tailored messages at the right time, boosting engagement.

Twilio’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

1- Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

For secure customer interactions, Twilio enables two-factor authentication through SMS, voice, or app-based notifications. This way, the user accounts remain protected while maintaining a frictionless experience.

2- Marketing Campaigns

The tool supports personalized marketing campaigns through targeted SMS and email campaigns, giving you space to reach customers with relevant offers and information, leading to higher engagement rates.

3- Real-Time Notifications

Twilio can also be used to send real-time notifications and alerts, such as appointment reminders, order confirmations, or delivery updates, keeping customers informed and engaged with timely communication.

Pricing

Messaging (SMS)

• SMS in the U.S.: Starting at $0.0075 per message sent or received.
• Toll-Free Numbers: $0.0075 per message.
• Short Codes: $0.0075 per message, but monthly fees for short codes start at $1,000.

Voice

• Inbound Calls (U.S.): Starting at $0.013 per minute.
• Outbound Calls (U.S.): Starting at $0.022 per minute.
• Toll-Free Calls: Pricing varies, starting around $0.022 per minute for outbound calls.

Email (SendGrid by Twilio)

• Free Tier: Up to 100 emails per day.
• Essentials: Starting at $19.95/month for up to 50,000 emails.
• Pro: Starting at $89.95/month for up to 100,000 emails, with additional features like dedicated IP addresses and email validation.

11- Vonage: Cloud communication with a focus on unified communications

Vonage is a leading cloud communication platform that focuses on unified communications for your team and business. 

It allows you to interact with your customers through voice, messaging, and video across various devices and platforms. 

Whether it’s for customer support or marketing campaigns, Vonage helps you deliver a seamless, integrated experience that keeps customers engaged.

Vonage’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

1- Voice and Video Communications

Vonage's APIs enable your teams to embed voice and video capabilities into their applications, facilitating personalized customer interactions, virtual meetings, and real-time collaboration.

2- Messaging Campaigns

Vonage supports SMS and messaging campaigns, which means you can send targeted promotions, notifications, and updates to customers.

3- Authentication and Security

Vonage offers solutions for two-factor authentication (2FA) and verification processes, helping secure customer accounts and transactions while maintaining a smooth user experience.

Pricing

Vonage Business Communications:

• Mobile & Desktop App: $19.99 per user/month (billed annually)
  Covers basic calling and messaging features, including mobile and desktop applications.
• Premium: $29.99 per user/month (billed annually)
  Includes advanced features such as call recording, analytics, and integrations.
• Advanced: $39.99 per user/month (billed annually)
  Offers comprehensive features like advanced analytics, API access, and enhanced support.

12- Google Analytics: Free and powerful analytics tool

Google Analytics may not be a traditional customer engagement platform, but its insights are invaluable for understanding how customers interact with your website and campaigns. 

By analyzing user behavior, Google Analytics helps businesses optimize their customer engagement strategies, ensuring they’re targeting the right audience with the right messages.

Google Analytics’ Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

1- User Behavior Analysis

You can track how users interact with your website or app, including their navigation paths, page views, and time spent on different sections. 

This helps identify popular content and areas for improvement.

2- Audience Segmentation

One great thing about Google Analytics is that it lets you segment your audience based on demographics, interests, or behavior to tailor marketing strategies and engagement efforts to specific groups, enhancing the relevance of your communications.

3- Conversion Tracking

Try monitoring and analyzing user actions that lead to conversions, such as form submissions, purchases, or downloads. 

This insight helps optimize marketing campaigns and improve conversion rates.

4- Real-Time Data Monitoring

You can access real-time data to understand user interactions as they happen. 

This can be used to quickly respond to trends, issues, or opportunities for engagement.

5- Campaign Performance Measurement

You can later evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by tracking traffic sources, user engagement, and conversion rates. 

This helps in assessing ROI and refining future campaigns.

6- User Flow Visualization

You can visualize user journeys through flow reports to see how users move between pages or screens. 

This helps identify drop-off points and areas where engagement can be improved.

Pricing

Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

This one is for free and it provides comprehensive tracking and reporting features for websites and apps, suitable for most small to medium-sized businesses.

Google Analytics 360

• Starting at $150,000 per year
  Offers advanced features, including higher data limits, enhanced reporting capabilities, dedicated support, and integration with other Google Marketing Platform tools. 

Pricing may vary based on specific enterprise needs and scale.

13- Optimizely: A/B testing and personalization platform

Optimizely focuses on improving customer engagement through experimentation and personalization. 

Its A/B testing features create space to experiment with different messages, offers, and experiences to see what resonates best with their customers, driving higher engagement and conversion rates.

Optimizely’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

1- A/B Testing

You can easily conduct A/B tests to compare different versions of web pages, emails, or app screens to determine which version performs better. 

This helps optimize user experiences and improve engagement by implementing the most effective variations.

2- Personalization

Then, create personalized experiences for users based on their behavior, demographics, or preferences. 

This can include personalized content, recommendations, and offers, which drive higher engagement and satisfaction.

3- Multivariate Testing

The tool also lets you test multiple elements simultaneously to understand how different combinations impact user behavior. 

This allows for more nuanced insights into which elements contribute to better engagement.

Pricing

Optimizely Full Stack (Feature Experimentation)

• Starter: Pricing varies based on the number of users and features required, generally suited for smaller teams.
• Professional: Typically starts around $50,000 per year, including advanced feature flagging and experimentation tools.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, with a focus on large-scale feature experimentation, high-level integrations, and enterprise-level support.

14- Iterable: Personalization platform for email and SMS

Iterable is a robust platform that helps you create personalized email and SMS campaigns, tailored to the individual preferences and behaviors of their customers. 

By combining data from multiple sources, Iterable allows you to send targeted communications that keep your customers engaged and coming back for more.

Iterable’s Key Use Cases for Customer Engagement 

1- Lifecycle Marketing

Use Iterable to automate marketing strategies based on customer lifecycle stages, such as welcome series for new users, re-engagement campaigns for inactive users, and win-back strategies for churned customers.

2- Behavioral Trigger Campaigns

Then, you can set up automated campaigns triggered by specific user actions or behaviors, such as cart abandonment, browsing history, or purchase milestones. 

This helps in sending timely and relevant messages that drive engagement.

3- A/B Testing and Optimization

Test different versions of messages and campaigns to determine what resonates best with your audience. 

Use insights from these tests to optimize content and improve overall engagement strategies.

4- Segmentation and Targeting

Create detailed audience segments based on demographics, behavior, and engagement history. 

Target these segments with customized messages and offers to increase relevance and effectiveness.

Pricing

• Starter:
  Pricing is typically customized for small to medium-sized businesses, depending on the features and volume of contacts or messages.
• Growth:
  Generally starts around $5,000 per month, offering advanced features like enhanced automation and analytics. Pricing varies based on the number of users and scale of operations.
• Enterprise:
  Custom pricing is designed for large organizations needing extensive customization and high-volume capabilities. Costs are based on specific requirements and usage levels.

Wrapping Up

To wrap up, customer engagement in 2024 demands more than just a passive approach—it requires the right tools that actively shape how your brand interacts with its audience. 

The platforms we've delved into are more than just software; they're strategic assets that help you build loyalty, foster meaningful connections, and elevate every customer touchpoint. 

As you decide on the best fit, think about what truly speaks to your customers and aligns with your brand's ambitions. 

Ultimately, it's about creating experiences that resonate and stand the test of time.