Marsello: Omnichannel Loyalty

Revised 5 star review to 1 star. I do not know what has happened with Marsello and am honestly dismayed by our recent experience with them. We have been a customer for 3 years and have had a good relationship with them, have been beta testers, and have even been a success story for their marketing department. Yesterday I needed to do some manual account maintenance and discovered that we were locked out of the admin interface because we had exceeded 10,000 customers. In addition, the customer facing rewards interface was no longer working on our web site. We were apparently on some grandfathered plan at $59/month and they randomly decided to do away with that and wanted us to switch to their new "pro" plan based on number of customers. Sure, no problem UNTIL they said our pricing would go from $59 to $559 PER MONTH. An 800% price increase and the hobbling of our installed (and paid for) software is absolutely inexcusable. At this point we were essentially being held hostage until we paid. After getting the same "I know this is a bit of a shock" circular run-around from the support chat person, I asked them to have someone contact me ASAP. Well, I have not heard back from anyone at Marsello and we have customers emailing, calling and messaging about their rewards account. So, today we made the decision to simply dump them and switch to a different rewards application. On the plus side, Marsello made it easy for me to export our customer data along with point balances and I was able to import that into a different reward app that I had up and running in a few hours. Marsello has seemingly gotten too big for their britches. When we first signed up, it was just a loyalty program and did a good job at it. Then, over time, they made it into a customer relationship management software and email and SMS marketing software. Some of their automations are good, such as abandoned cart emails, but for the most part we continued to use it only for loyalty purposes since we have other applications that handle those aspects of our business. Bottom-line: growing eCommerce businesses, watch out for the bait and switch. Despite their response here indicating that there was a resolution, there was not one.

I have used Marsello for a number of years more or less from the beginning to give my customers loyalty points. I have found this morning I have been locked out of my account WITHOUT WARNING and now need to upgrade to a paid plan which is coming in at a cost of $279 a MONTH. No way am I paying that, my small business cannot afford this. I cannot even access my account to view my customers and how many points they have. So basically being held HOSTAGE, very poor customer service. AVOID!!! IN RESPONSE TO YOUR REPLY
I was told by your representative that the plan I was on is no longer available, you are saying its because I have exceeded 1000 customers. I had more than 1000 customers when I installed your app so which of you is telling the truth?
I have no issues with you revising your pricing plans but to go from free to $279 per month is extortionate. Even if I could afford those costs I would still have deleted the app purely because you have shown that you do not care one jot about the businesses that use your app. If you had given me notice I could have notified my customers who in turn could have redeemed their points, instead you just stopped the app from working and locked me out of the admin panel, leaving me to then have to explain to my customers what went wrong. You didn't even notify me that you had taken this action, I found out from one of customers. Thankfully for me I have a great relationship with my customers who are all very supportive and agree to me cutting ties with a company that acts in such a way. They are more concerned about me and my business and how you left me in the lurch than any reward points.
In my view 1 star is too high for you I would rather have left a zero rating. AVOID AVOID AVOID!!!

We used Marsello with our ecommerce website for a couple of years and have been happy with the service and the platform. A couple of months ago, they introduced a new pricing scheme and put our account on hold so we couldn't access any of our data until we upgraded our plan. Unfortunately, there was no way for us to upgrade our plan other than contact customer service using their chat. A week went by with one message a day being answered and in the end we weren't able to upgrade our plan ($29 per month) because we had been loyal customers for a long time and our plan had been grandfathered and was being discontinued. Their customer service advised us that they would have to convert our plan to the free version and we would have to sign up again to the pro version which started at $49. A quote was provided based on the number of customers we had which was higher than previously but still realistic considering the company's growth and new added features. Once we were able to upgrade to the pro membership level, our new monthly fee was $299. We were told that we were being charged for 4 sites plus the customer base we had when in fact we've always only had one site. The bottom line is, our account was frozen and forced to upgrade from $29 to $299 a month. We are a small business tried to work with and support another small business, but it's become clear that Marsello has found a way to increase their pricing without taking into consideration the scalability of their longtime customers. Our interaction with their customer service has been nothing but frustrating and we decided to leave the platform and sign up with one of the other several great options available through the app store. It takes a great amount of time and effort to create and nurture a fidelity program. Before choosing one for your business, make sure it's one that will allow you to scale in a fair and realistic way and you are not forced into a plan that is 10x more expensive than what you signed up for—which is what Marsello has done to us.

very costly app with no customer support, they will always say they will contact you when they have time

E-mails don't go out when they are scheduled, which is horrible on a day like Thanksgiving! Interface is nice but e-mails not going out are unacceptable. Really wanted to like this app but that's a complete deal breaker.

okay app, too expensive when you have multiple POS locations and bigger contact list. the estimator indicates somewhere around $250 per month, we've end up being charged for $429. We had to pause the app last month and you know what, the bill just kept coming even though you are not using anything.

I have cancelled this app but I still need to pay the monthly fee? can you pls tell me why???? This shouldn't be happened. pls don't charge me for anything as I don't use your app anymore. I put it on inactive by 30 July and wasn't available on my website since that time. This is illegal!!!

Do not use Marsello. They will rip you off. They import duplicate customers with no contact information, forcing to pay hundreds a year for customers who are unable to receive any messaging. Customer service is a joke. Much more expensive than similar apps. SKIP IT!

These guys keep chopping and changing their plans and prices. Only a couple of months ago when they revamped their offerings their basic plan included all features even the premium features (loyalty tiers etc). Pricing was based on number of members/customers from memory and then you paid as your database grew. They have now gone and copied Smile.io since they recently updated their offerings and pricing structure which, in my opinion, is a far more robust and professional looking loyalty program. For these reasons I am staying with Smile.

I am a US customer and am speaking from that point of view. I know this platform is not based out of the US and may differ for other countries.
Customer services takes 2-7 days for a response when you have an issue. I'm currently being charged for test message credits that aren't delivering and have been waiting 6 days for them to give me any time of follow up.
We've had issues since we started using this platform, but in the beginning they were a little more responsive to offer support. I strong recommend AGAINST using this platform.