Gist

Gist is an all-in-one customer engagement platform that puts email marketing and marketing automation in the same app as live chat, a support inbox, a knowledge base, bots and a sales CRM. Its homepage calls it "a CRM platform that connects with customers through personalised conversations to build trust and grow revenue", says more than 15,000 businesses use it, and offers sign-up "Free for 2 users. No credit card required." The pitch is consolidation: one tool to learn, one place to check for notifications, and "No more constant switching between email marketing, social and other chat apps."

What Gist sends and who it is for

On the email side, the homepage sums up Gist Email Marketing as a way to "Build email newsletters. Create campaigns. Send great emails to stay in front of your audience." Gist Marketing Automation adds lifecycle sequences across channels, and the automation section says you can "Send text and email follow-ups to potential clients as soon as they fill out a form on your website or social media", so SMS sits next to email for follow-up. Outbound Messages cover targeted in-app messages for a product with logged-in users.

The customer reviews on the page come mostly from owners and marketers at small businesses, and the company describes the handoff it aims for as "a smoother handoff between Marketing, Sales & Services." That makes the natural customer a small company, a SaaS product or a service business where the same few people do marketing, sales and support.

Building and sending campaigns

Gist Email Marketing lets you "Send beautiful emails with just a few clicks using expertly-crafted email templates ready for you to use", "Personalise content and create a dynamic series of campaigns based on behaviour", and "Experience premium email deliverability support so your emails land in your customers' inbox." The templates are the starting point, and the behavioral series is where the email tool and the automation builder meet.

Targeting leans on tags. One reviewer on the page writes that she can "tag users based on their actions and send out an email blast or even a drip campaign to only people with a specific tag", and another likes being able to "target specific people on my email list", sending only to particular tags. Customer Data, listed in the product menu, promises to use that data "to personalize every interaction", and Event Tracking can "Autotrack clicks, form submissions, page views, and more", which gives automations something to trigger on.

Marketing automation

The company calls Gist Marketing Automation "the only visual campaign builder that lets you send cohesive messages across tons of channels", inside the app and out; the product menu describes it as a way to "Orchestrate multi-channel lifecycle campaigns with ease." In practice, the page lists three things it is for: customizing sales and marketing processes "to create predictable, repeatable growth with advanced nurture sequences, personalization response triggers, and much more", automating repetitive tasks like lead capture and follow-up, and sending the text and email follow-ups that fire when a form is filled in. For a team that captures leads through forms and bots, those follow-ups run without anyone watching the inbox.

Forms and popups

Gist Forms are the list-building layer. The page describes popup forms "optimized for the highest conversion rates to generate leads, drive sales, survey visitors and more." You build mobile-responsive forms in a visual builder, personalize each form or popup with contact fields collected earlier through forms or bots, and show different forms to visitors depending on the page they are on, their interests and their site history. The menu adds that forms help "Grow your lists, drive sales, upsell, cross-sell & more." A separate Surveys product captures customer insights and acts on them automatically.

Chat, bots and support

Gist Messenger adds live chat to a product, app or website. You can match it to your brand, chat now or later, and keep chat history saved so customers can return "whenever they'd like, on any device." Custom Bots are built "in minutes" to triage conversations or acquire leads, engage high-intent visitors and move qualified leads into a conversation, with "advanced targeting and enrichment" deciding which visitors a bot approaches. A Support Bot uses AI to answer questions that get asked repeatedly.

For support teams there is a shared Inbox, and a Knowledge Base described as a way to "Create multilingual help content for a global audience." Its editor adds images, videos, call-to-action buttons and interactive guides to articles, and tracks how customers rate the content. Product Tours create interactive guides for onboarding new sign-ups, and iOS and Android apps let a team answer customers from a phone.

CRM and meetings

Gist CRM gives "a unified view of your sales pipeline with a drag and drop workflow, simple customization, and actionable revenue insights." Teams create deals, assign tasks and follow sales through the pipeline, and can add a meeting scheduler link to emails and the website. Gist Meetings lets prospects book a time that works for both sides and "Syncs with Google Calendar and Office 365 Calendar." Because the CRM and the email tool share one contact record, a lead captured by a form can be emailed, chatted with and moved through the pipeline without an export.

Price, reviews and support

The homepage's pricing message is "One platform, one price." It argues that you "shouldn't need to pay for separate platforms for live chat, knowledge base, chatbots, email marketing, automation and more" and that "Gist replaces 8+ tools for the price of one." The free entry point is the plan that is free for 2 users with no credit card. The homepage links a Pricing page but does not print paid plan prices itself.

Gist shows a rating of 4.8/5 "Based on 800+ customer reviews on Capterra, G2crowd, TrustRadius, Product Hunt". Short quotes from reviewers call it "extremely user friendly" and the "perfect solution for small teams", and one owner says it has "a very good balance of features vs simplicity."

Support is a selling point. The page promises a "friendly (real human), customer-obsessed support team via live chat or email", available 24/7, with a 5 min average response time on live chat and a 97% satisfaction rate. The site also has an Integrations page linked from the main menu.

Who it suits

Gist suits a small team that would otherwise pay for a newsletter tool, a chat widget, a help desk and a CRM separately. A SaaS company gets in-app messages, product tours and behavior-based email in one place; a service business gets forms, instant text and email follow-ups and a meeting scheduler; a two-person team can start on the free plan.

A sender who only wants a newsletter tool gets a lot of software it will not use, and a company that already runs a separate help desk and CRM would be buying overlap. The homepage is also light on email specifics such as sending limits, so a high-volume sender should look at the pricing page before choosing Gist as its main email platform.