Yapster vs its competitors
Yapster competitor products - when and why you should look at them
We pride ourselves on straight talking and being genuinely helpful, so we’ve pulled together this short comparative analysis of the main platforms which appear if you Google ‘unified communications’ ‘productivity’ ‘communication’ ‘enterprise social network’ or ‘employee engagement’ platforms and apps.
YAPSTER - for leaders of distributed teams in retail, hospitality & leisure businesses
First things first, here’s a quick reminder of Yapster’s mission and unique value proposition: we’re obsessed with making every frontline employee in our chosen industries feel like they have direct access to the Big Boss’s office.
We do this by encouraging and equipping industry leaders to practice what we call Social Leadership. Social Leaders use the Yapster app to digitally broadcast information, publicly react to colleague-generated content and exchange direct messages with teams and individuals across their businesses. We provide Social Leader Dashboards, containing advanced usage and engagement analytics and we’ve invested heavily in developing Social Leader influence scoring algorithms. The result is a comprehensive management app.
By transcending geographic and hierarchical boundaries, Social Leaders can align and inspire an entire organisation with previously unimagined scale and efficiency. Alignment and inspiration are the key to improving employee experience and hitting business plans - which is why Yapster customers consistently attribute huge return on investment (ROI) to their practice of Social Leadership on Yapster.
Everything we do is centred on Social Leadership and, as far as we know, we’re the world’s only dedicated Social Leadership platform. This is important because every quarter (we release updates every 12 weeks, like clockwork) our workplace communication platform becomes more differentiated from those listed below, so we want to help you ‘get on the right bus’ at the outset of your journey.
YAMMER - consider if you have Microsoft O365 licence coverage for all staff
Yammer is an enterprise social networking platform which comes bundled with Microsoft 365 (typically also including Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, Excel etc). Whilst Yammer itself has limited capability in critical areas such as ease of use and real-time mobile messaging, if you have the budget to cover Microsoft licensing fees for all staff, Microsoft 365 is worth considering (as neighbouring Microsoft products such as Teams can be used to supplement Yammer). Full product information can be found at https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/yammer/yammer-overview.
Beyond our core Social Leadership offer, Yapster competes with Yammer/Microsoft 365 on ease of use, value for money, Social Leader analytics and a wider range of relevant industry integrations.
FACEBOOK WORKPLACE - consider if you’re looking for a purely ‘social’ platform or have technical capability to build your own business integrations
Facebook Workplace is a sector-agnostic, business version of Facebook’s consumer platform. It is used, for example, by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to maintain a digital community of its 64,000 employees around the world and Royal Bank of Scotland is another large customer.
Because Facebook Workplace is sector agnostic it can be used in any sector, typically with the help of an implementation consultant (whose charges will be additional to the core Facebook licence fee) to integrate the user data feed and any other essential platforms.
Yapster competes with Facebook Workplace on ease of use (we have a single app, whereas Facebook has two in Workplace + Workplace Messenger), Social Leader analytics and a wider range of relevant industry integrations. Customers often find Yapster to be better value for money also, because Yapster’s industry integrations are typically available ‘out of the box’ without the assistance of an implementation consultant.
BEEKEEPER, SPEAKAP, STAFFBASE or BLINK - consider if you need a frontline messaging system outside of the retail, hospitality or leisure industries
Like Yapster, these platforms are mobile-first communication apps which specialise in ‘frontline’ employees. Yapster’s key points of differentiation from these platforms are our unique Social Leader analytics (as opposed to general usage and engagement metrics) and our wider range of relevant industry integrations for Retail, Hospitality and Leisure organisations.
If your organisation is outside of Yapster’s core customer segments, it may be worth running a side by side pilot of Yapster (Yapster is free to get started for up to 200 users) with one of these products so that you can feel confident you’ve found the right product and commercial fit for your needs. We are always happy to participate in open platform reviews prior to purchase.
FOURTH ENGAGE - consider if you are an existing customer of Fourth or HotSchedules
Yapster is a proud integration partner of Fourth and has many customers in common, where Fourth HR data drives the Yapster staff directory. Fourth Engage, Fourth’s employee app, typically comes bundled free of charge with Fourth’s core licence fees so is generally worth reviewing before committing to the expense of an additional system. Fourth Engage does not contain Yapster’s ‘whatsapp style’ direct and group messaging, but it does have a newsfeed-style interface.
In light of the fact that Yapster is free to set up and use for 200 users, we generally recommend that customers in common run a side by side comparison of Fourth Engage and Yapster to quickly and easily determine which platform will best meet their leadership needs and guarantee effective workplace communication. Many customers elect to use both systems on an integrated basis.
SLACK - consider if you are a technology company, requiring integrations to Salesforce and Google Drive
Slack, a mobile communication platform beloved by the US technology industry, recently became part of the Salesforce family of products following acquisition.
Slack’s pricing model (starting at $6 per user per month) and product design, which doesn’t include an all-company newsfeed or easy group addressing, generally doesn’t make sense for customers in Yapster’s specialist sectors (retail, hospitality and leisure). Also, whilst Slack has a huge number of integrations available ‘out of the box’ like Yapster, few are relevant to Yapster industries.
Slack is, however, an excellent choice of product if you employee base is primarily constituted of engineering, office or sales staff - particularly if those colleagues spend a lot of time using Salesforce and Google Drive for their day to day work (both of which integrate well with Slack).
