Gladly Review: Features, Pricing, & Alternatives

Gladly is a communications-based customer support platform with a full-featured AI chatbot capable of complex interactions and triggered events.

Here’s a deep dive into pricing, features, and how Gladly stacks up against similar software.

SMB Guide’s Verdict for Gladly

We rate Gladly 8.3 out of 10. Its unique integration of communications across all platforms makes it a customer service standout, but the steep price might put it out of reach for smaller organizations.

Gladly is an integrated communications platform featuring an AI-powered live chat widget that integrates with other Glady tools for a comprehensive relationship overview.

At SMB Guide, we use a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria to ensure our reviews are detailed, unbiased, and deliver value to our readers.

Factor	Rating (out of 10)
Pricing & Plans	7.5
Real-Time Messaging & Canned Responses	8
Live Chat AI & Natural Language Processing (NLP)	9.5
Customizable Chat Widgets	7.5
Visitor Tracking and Analytics	9
User Interface and User Experience	9
Integrations and Compatibility	9
Customer Support	8.5
SMB Guide Rating	8.3

Pricing & Plans

With each higher tier (and higher price), additional features and services are included.

Here’s the info about prices, features, and add-ons at each level.

Hero

Gladly’s Hero plan starts at $180 per hero per month, paid annually with a 10-hero minimum.

Price

• $180 per month, per user, paid annually (minimum 10 heroes)

Features

• Multi-channel communication
• Unified customer view
• People Match®
• One conversation history across channels
• Centralized knowledge base
• Real-time and historical reporting
• Seamless integration with existing apps
• Gladly Sidekick Built In
  • Usage base, $0.60 per assisted conversation when you opt in. Minimum volume commitment required.
• Includes Hero AI
  • Not usage based, fully included in hero/month pricing.

Who it’s for: Gladly’s Hero package is a good starting place for small to medium businesses with a customer service staff of more than 10 agents.

Superhero

As your business grows, your need for organization and communication becomes a critical concern. Help Scout’s Plus plan helps you scale up to meet your growing needs.

Price

• $210 per month, per hero, paid annually (45 heroes minimum)

Features

Everything in Hero Package plus:

• Custom reporting
• 99.9% uptime
• Premium support
• Gladly Sidekick Built In
  • Usage base, $0.60 per assisted conversation when you opt-in. Minimum volume commitment required.
• Includes Hero AI
  • Not usage based, fully included in hero/month pricing.
• 5 distinct inboxes (support@yourdomain, contact@yourdomain, etc)
• 2 Docs knowledge bases w/ restricted access
• 25 free light users
• Advanced permissions
• Advanced tracking w/ custom fields
• Group users into teams
• AI summarize
• AI assist
• Custom reports w/ unlimited history
• Salesforce, Jira, HubSpot apps

Who it’s for: The Superhero plan is designed for big businesses for heavy usage.

Real-Time Messaging & Canned Responses

Gladly Sidekick is a customer-centric AI chatbot that relies on automated conversations called Threads. Threads are sophisticated canned responses designed to interact with customers and trigger a sequence of steps on the front and back ends.

Threads are made up of actions and sub-actions related to a Thread topic. Actions might include adding a topic, looking up an order, or transferring the conversation to a live agent.

Here’s an example of what a Thread looks like:

Live Chat AI & NLP

Gladly uses NLP to communicate with visitors in their own language and translate for your live agents. Gladly supports the following languages:

Sidekick can handle complex customer interactions, and also has the capability of routing to a live agent in the appropriate department when necessary.

Customizable Chat Widgets

Gladly Sidekick widgets do not offer much in the way of aesthetics. You have a few choices, such as button style, but for the most part, it’s just simple, straightforward, and functional.

Creating a chat widget campaign is simple and intuitive. Fields are well-defined and follow a logical pattern.

You can add layers of complexity to the chat by asking additional questions and then creating events triggered by the answers.

Visitor Tracking and Analytics

Gladly tracks all kinds of information across all communications channels, along with the number of conversations, busy times, and other information. 

Developers can create and share an almost unlimited number of reports for a comprehensive overview of the entire business.

User Interface and User Experience

Gladly Sidekick’s end-user interface is simple and clean – no frills. Its appeal is only in function. Users don’t just get answers, they get focused questions and direct actions.

Sidekick isn’t limited to documenting issues, it is set up to solve them at AI speed.

On the live agent end, Gladly really shines. Live agents see all the customer information throughout the history of the relationship.

Agents see what actions have been taken so far, previous conversations/interactions with the customer, orders, and notes.

The range of information presented gives agents a more comprehensive view of the issue and any ongoing issues that might require extra finesse.

Integrations and Compatibility

Gladly integrates with many popular apps to provide additional functionality. Here’s the complete list of Gladly integrations:

In addition to integrations, Gladly offers REST API support, so you can customize your customer service in any way that meets your needs.

Customer Support

Most customers give Gladly customer service high marks. Support options include their knowledge base, online support, email, phone, and 24/7 live chat.

Gladly — Unique Features

The most unique feature I found within Gladly’s Sidekick is the ability to pivot. A pivot is a related action that branches off from a conversation to spark other actions. 

For example, if a customer complains that his package has not arrived. 

• Sidekick checks the status of the package and finds that it was marked delivered several days before. 
• Sidekick records the package as missing and takes several actions:
  • Replies to the customer 
  • Asks follow-up questions
  • Reships the order

This ability to take complex actions without the need to involve a live agent is impressive.

What the Experts Say About Gladly

• TrustRadius rating: 8.7/10 (11 ratings)
• Capterra rating: 4.9/5 (123 ratings)
• G2 rating: 4.7/5 (863 ratings)

Gladly is a phenomenal company to partner with. Their software is a leader in this space and the team supporting it truly partners with their customers for success. From the sales process, to implementation and even post install support I have always felt like I was the most important customer to Gladly. My guess is all of their customers feel the same way I do!

Drew C., Director of Operations – Verified Capterra review

I find the tool to be extremely helpful in comparison to our previous one, and my experience so far has been satisfying and productive. I’ve been able to meet my quota and exceed our goal since we began using gladly. This is a highly recommended tool, especially if you are serving consumers through a different channels.

Floranch E., CSR – Verified Capterra review

Gladly Alternatives

Gladly is primarily an innovative integrated communications solution made for organizations with a minimum of ten live customer service agents.

It’s pricey compared to some options, but offers some powerful features to unify communications across every channel from phones to SMS.

If you’re not sure whether this is the right platform or combination of features for you, check out these alternatives.

Freshchat

Freshchat’s Pro and Enterprise plans have a similar feature to Gladly Sidekick’s AI functions called IntelliAssign, which assigns chats to agents based on their skills and workload.

Freshchat is also a communications-based app, but it does not offer the range of support offered by Gladly.

Freshchat offers a limited free version for up to 10 agents. Pricing tiers start at $19/month/per agent following a 21-day free trial and have service limits for plans with extra fees if you exceed them.

Start your free trial of Freshchat today

Help Scout

Help Scout is a communications platform with an integrated help desk, automated emails, and a basic chatbot with live chat and pop-ups.

Help Scout offers event-triggered automated email features. Help Scout’s Beacon chatbot is AI-assisted, but it does not offer the same level of complex interactions.

Help Scout starts at $20 per month, per user, paid annually following a free trial.

Start your free trial of Help Scout

ChatSpot

ChatSpot is integrated with HubSpot’s CRM and an impressive array of other tools. Paid packages offer an AI chatbot, live chat, comprehensive reporting, and more.

In terms of AI chat performance, ChatSpot offers very similar features and performance. ChatSpot pricing starts at free – forever for their basic CRM + chat widget, but the free versions are limited, and the chatbot is not AI-powered.

Paid accounts start at $20 per month and include the HubSpot CRM and other tools in HubSpot’s suite.

Start chatting with ChatSpot for free

Other options: Best Gladly Alternatives

Getting Started with Gladly

Ready for an all-inclusive, customer communication-centered solution that seamlessly handles all your channels? Gladly is easy to use, integrates with tons of popular apps, and offers API support.

FAQs