To enhance personalized communications and engagement, a Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) is crucial. These platforms empower B2C businesses with targeted campaign launches across push, emails, in-app, etc for improved customer engagement.

One of the best CEPs available in the market is WebEngage which is headquartered in Mumbai.

However, in recent years, the competition in this sector has intensified considerably, leading to the emergence of numerous alternatives to WebEngage.

WebEngage: A quick overview

WebEngage provides a streamlined and highly efficient method for enhancing user engagement and retention. It caters to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses as well as large consumer tech enterprises.

Key features of WebEngage

• Outside-app engagement (Push, SMS, Email, WhatsApp)
• Analytics & insights
• Audience segmentation
• Campaign and journey orchestration
• Basic in-app engagement (only allows modals, banners, and in-app surveys for communication inside the app)

Reasons some companies are looking to make a switch

• Push notifications, emails, or SMS don’t improve in-app adoption, activation rates, etc
• Brands want more options to communicate with users inside the app
• Stitching in-app comms and outside-app comms proves to be very difficult
• Popups appear at the wrong time (delays of 5-10s after event-fire)
• In-app communication lacks context - not specific to any feature

Now that we’ve had a short glimpse of WebEngage, listed below are some top alternatives and competitors of WebEngage.

Plotline

Choose if: You are a mobile-first consumer tech company. By far, Plotline provides the best omni-channel capabilities especially if in-app is a crucial focus for you.

1. Strength/uniqueness: Best in-app engagement modules - stories, videos, spotlights, tooltips, etc to drive feature adoption, retention, and LTV for your app.
2. Features: Aids in omnichannel engagement (In-app, push, SMS, email, Whatsapp). Helps stitch outside and inside-app comms together for a unified customer journey.
3. Main geography of operations: US, South East Asia, MENA
4. Pricing: The Starter plan starts at $499. You can book a call for a free trial.

CleverTap

Choose if: Inside-app is not a priority, you largely want to solve for outside-app communication.

1. Strength/uniqueness: The stand-out feature of CleverTap is its push delivery rate compared to WebEngage.
2. Features: CleverTap is very similar to WebEngage in terms of functionality - providing both engagement and analytics capabilities.
3. Main geography of operations: India and APAC regions
4. Pricing: It offers MAU-based pricing and provides a 30-day free trial period up to 100K MAUs

MoEngage

Choose if: Inside-app is not a priority, you largely want to solve for outside-app comms.

1. Strength/uniqueness: The stand-out feature of MoEngage is integrated with WhatsApp, given it is a relevant channel of communication in APAC.
2. Features: MoEngage is very similar to WebEngage in terms of functionality - providing both engagement and analytics capabilities.
3. Main geography of operations: India and APAC regions
4. Pricing: MoEngage offers MAU-based pricing. It provides a Starter package that is free with a restriction of up to 10,000 MAUs. Apart from this, MoEngage alone has a $1000 entry-level set-up fee.

Braze

Choose if: Price isn’t a concern for you. Braze is the priciest of all available solutions. In terms of features, it’s on par with Webengage, MoEngage, etc.

1. Strength/uniqueness: Its shape-based filters (rectangle, pentagon, custom-shaped) for location-based targeting. It also provides a Canvas Flow feature for building multi-channel automated campaigns, albeit exclusive to annual plan users.
2. Features: Allows for engagement across push, mobile, SMS, and in-app messages.
3. Main geography of operations: Braze has most of its customers in the US.
4. Pricing: Braze's pricing is tied to data consumption, which can be advantageous for businesses that have predictable data usage patterns. In general, Braze will be much more expensive than WebEngage owing to its enterprise capabilities.

Customer.io

Choose if: You are a tech-savvy marketer or a developer in a SaaS startup or an SMB (these companies make up more than 80% of its customer base).

1. Strength/uniqueness: Customer.io is very easy to get started with, which is why it attracts a lot of startups and SMBs. It offers a flexible data model that allows easy ingestion and updates of data without concerns about losing valuable information during integration.
2. Features: You can seamlessly integrate email, SMS, push notifications, basic in-app messaging, and webhooks within a single workflow.
3. Main geography of operations: Most of its customers are from the US and UK.
4. Pricing: The availability of a free trial and flexible subscription options, including monthly, annual, and multi-year plans, make it more accessible and transparent for users.

How to choose the right WebEngage alternative?

• Choose Plotline if in-app engagement is crucial for you in addition to the regular push, email, and SMS capabilities. If you’re looking to deploy Stories, Videos, etc in your app without developer effort, Plotline is the best choice.
• CleverTap and MoEngage are great alternatives to WebEngage if you’re looking for the same functionalities WebEngage provides. If you only want to switch basis prices, these alternatives can give you a more cost-effective solution.
• Braze is a good alternative to WebEngage if you're a mid-market or enterprise-size mobile-first company and price isn’t a concern for you. It is by far the most expensive tool in the market.
• Customer.io has a self-serve motion which is easier to get started with and suits most SaaS SMBs and startups.

Final thoughts

By thoroughly researching and comparing the above options, you can make a well-informed choice that aligns with your customer engagement strategy in 2024 and beyond.

If you're interested in learning more about how you can engage your users outside as well as inside your app to help you drive activation, retention, and monetization metrics, start your free trial with Plotline.