Gist Review

In this Gist review we will look at four key factors to the buyer's decision making process. This includes “Ease of use, Features, Pricing and Support”. So if you just want the quick overview of how Gist performs here it is for you.

This CRM ranks highly across all four key metrics with a combination of ease of use and expanding feature set and numerous third party integrations and web hook support being just a few reasons to pay attention to this growing company.

To further understand how we came to these numbers read the full review below.

Introducing Gist

In this Gist review we will be looking at how this app is targeting the functionality and features of some of the biggest marketing automation and support tools available online — but without the same large price tag.

They’ve come a long way since rebranding (Gist was formerly known as ConvertFox). This review will see how the app has changed and if the claims hold up. You’ll also find out more about their full, 21-day free trial.

And if you are looking to get the best deal on Gist, we will let you know what to expect in the way of Gist coupon codes.

What is Gist?

Gist aims to put all of the tools marketers and business owners need to grow and support their business in a single interface. 

Some of the tools they offer include:

• Live Chat
• Email Marketing
• Marketing Automation (including a visual workflow builder)
• Help Desk Capabilities
• Chat Bots
• Opt-in Forms
• Knowledge Base Creator
• Meeting Scheduler Tool

Most of these tools are regularly used in just about every business with an online presence. And many businesses use a different piece of software for each and every one of them. That’s the problem Gist hopes to solve.

This is why they regularly update existing features and even develop new ones. (For instance, the visual workflow builder was recently introduced in the last few months as well as a “Live View” feature that allows you to see who’s on your site and even message them directly if they are on your CRM.)

Gist was originally launched in mid 2017 as “ConvertFox”. Since then, the app has undergone such massive changes, the team knew it was time for a rebrand.

And in late 2018, Gist was born.

Key Features of Gist

• Meeting Scheduler: Connect your Google calendar to Gist and create meeting links to book appointments.

• Chat Bots: A linear chat bot creator to be on your site and ready to answer questions, collect lead data and even book meetings 24/7.

• Opt-in Forms: A basic, yet workable form creator to collect contact data.

• Knowledge Base Creator: Compile a searchable database of articles to explain your products or for internal use.

A few more highlights

• Having your most important marketing tools in a single place
• Native integration between tools and third party apps and WordPress plugins
• Visually build marketing workflows
• Create custom events, properties and tags to deeply segment your list
• Detailed reporting to see the effectiveness of your emails and support team
• Comprehensive training materials
• Prompt, friendly and helpful 24/7 support
• Works on any website or application

Gist Founder

Gist’s development is handled by a team of development professionals headed up by Founder and CEO, Raghavender Rao Jitta (more commonly known as Jitta). Jitta has founded and co-founded several companies and is passionate about fast development and helping others in their businesses.

Heading up the operations, growth and marketing side of the company is Justin McGill (The Co-Founder and COO of Gist).

Since taking this role, Gist’s support is now 24/7 and the amount of product education content has significantly increased. There are a couple of dozen team members overall working on the development, support and marketing for Gist.

There is a lot going on with Gist. It’s a web-based tool which integrates to WordPress sites (via a plugin) and other sites and apps (via Javascript code snippet). Gist’s strength comes through bringing many of the tools marketers already use into the same dashboard. Instead of integrating a half dozen tools — they all work natively together.

Once you install the script (or plugin), the live chat (or messenger as they call it) will show up on your site. You can edit the messenger appearance, or even choose to turn it off if you’d like.

The conversations all go into a single dashboard. Chats can be from site visitors, customers or even routed from a dedicated email. For instance, you can set up a support@ email address for those emails to be directly sent to your conversations dashboard. 

Setting up teams (like “sales team” “support team”) and incoming messages can be routed specifically to the appropriate teams (or even individual team members).

Email marketing is also available. The editor is pretty standard and there are three different email types; broadcasts, drip campaigns and behavioral emails. Creating these emails are all the same editor but they serve different functions:

• Broadcasts are meant for announcements
• Drip campaigns are meant to send a sequence of emails over time
• Behavioral emails are set up based on events and actions of your contacts

There are also a number of marketing automation features available, most notably is the new visual workflow builder. It’s here that Gist’s marketing power starts to show. 

Workflows are to trigger certain events based on behaviors and properties of your contacts. One example would be to automatically tag a lead when a contact visits your pricing page more than once. Or, you could send an email to your list and trigger an automation for those who click the link inside. 

Gist Workflows is setup visually to allow users to see how contacts will move through their funnels.

Gist forms part of an integral process we use at Bootstrapps to curate what we call the Wait List. This list is where our audience pledges support for their favorite apps to offer a lifetime deal and we use Gist in combination with Fluent Forms and Zapier to manage this whole process. 

When someone joins the wait list they are tagged in Gist with the app they are interested in and Gist automatically sends them a sequence of emails telling them what to expect and to spread the word to get more people on the list.

The logic behind all of this is that the more people who pledge their support for a deal the more likely the app maker will take notice and offer a custom deal.

Without Gist we would not have a system to reliably manage and keep on top of this process, so it has been a real life saver there for us. To see it in action for yourself you can join the wait list for Gist here and see the process.

Gist Pricing

Now that you know how good Gist is, the natural question is price and how it stacks up to the alternative CRM apps.

In terms of pricing its really simple and the only choice you have is whether you want to pay monthly or save by paying a year upfront.

There is no shortage of CRM systems that offer marketing automation such as:

• HubSpot
• ActiveCampaign
• GetResponse

However with Gist you are getting a lot of the big brand features you would expect from the likes of a Hubspot for way cheaper and because of the Zapier integration you can get Gist to do practically anything you want with a little bit of elbow grease.

And if you are using WordPress Gist supports web hooks again opening up numerous possibilities for smart marketing based features across your WordPress website.

This for many startups will prove well worth the investment in time to save on larger monthly fees you can expect from Gist's competitors.

Gist Pros and Cons

Are there up-sells?

No upsells here. There are 3 paid plans with Gist; Growth, Support and All-in-One. The Support plan is per user while the Growth plan is based on the number of contacts. And All-in-One is a combination of the number of users for the Support plan and the number of contacts for the Growth plan.

Some of the features may not be available based on the plan you choose, but the All-in-One includes everything (both now and in the future).

Conclusion

Do we recommend Gist?

The highest recommendation we can give is that we use Gist for our own transaction emails on this website. We find the editor easy to use and gives us a good overview of what our audience is interested in and where we can make improvements on our service.

The only reason we don't use it for all emails such as broadcast campaigns is that we got onboard the lifetime deal for FluentCRM which has an unlimited email sending policy which Gist and most email marketing platforms don't have.

Get started with Gist today as part of their free trial offer.

Is there a Gist coupon code?

Occasionally vendors share coupons, these will appear below (or blank if none).