How much does birdeye really cost?

Birdeye is one of those all-in-one software suites for which understanding pricing is almost as much of a challenge as getting an account. 

This post aims at helping you understand their pricing grid a little better, so you can decide whether you should wait for someone to call you back, or look elsewhere.

How much does each Birdeye plan really cost?

They really don’t make it easy to get to the actual pricing information, but if you play around with their form enough times, you’ll eventually get to a page that looks something like this

I got this page with an estimated number of 4 - 9 locations. 

While it’s safe to assume prices / location decrease with volume, I’ve heard that $349 / month is the entry price, even with a single location.

So the Standard plan goes for $349 / month, or $299 / month billed annually, while the Professional plan goes for $449 / month, billed annually.

If locations don’t really make sense to you, I’ve had consistent echoes from some of their past clients that a “brand” usually qualifies as a “location”. 

So in the software space for example, where locations don’t mean much, you can count on approx. $3600 / year for single brand review management.

How do you know what Birdeye plan you need?

Well, they stamped everything with “AI” a few months ago, but really the only difference between Standard & Professional is the chatbot feature, which is basically adding a chat bubble on your website, for visitors to ask questions and things like that.

If you’re evaluating Birdeye for review management, the Standard plan is more than enough. 

And if you’re considering Birdeye as an all-in-one sort of marketing platform, you’ll need the Premium plan.

How does Birdeye’s prices stack up to the competition?

Realistically, the only other solution with a similar feature scope to that of Birdeye is Podium, and they both have very similar pricing grids.

But here’s the thing. 

If you’re not considering the Premium plan, and just need something to help manage your customer reviews, put review collection on autopilot, use AI to reply automatically or semi-automatically, dig into sentiment analysis over certain topics, etc. there are tons of other solutions. 

Most of them are a lot more recent, fresh, and easier to use, which makes self-service a possibility. 

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with wanting a human to walk you through each step, and software like Birdeye will probably stay relevant in very large organizations for the foreseeable future.

But if you’re looking for an easy, straightforward, and affordable solution to manage your customer reviews, you should definitely consider Birdeye alternatives like Reviewflowz.

How hard is it to get out of a Birdeye subscription?

In general, people seem to be happy about Birdeye. 

They accumulated over 3000 reviews on G2 and, in general, people seem to like the software and the experience. 

However, if you dig into the review content a little bit, you’ll notice that most of the features mentioned – especially in the “Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)” category on G2 – are extremely basic features, like replying to reviews, or sending email campaigns.

And when you start looking elsewhere, you find this Trustpilot listing with a pretty horrific average rating of 3.8 and reddit threads like this – 1, 2, and 3.

Now it’s not all bad of course – but there clearly is a pattern of locking clients into multi-year contracts at prices that aren’t anywhere near the market standards.

Of course those reddit threads are also filled with spammy comments promoting cheap alternatives – that may or may not still exist – but the fact of the matter is that there definitely are a lot of customers who feel locked into a subscription they either don’t need anymore, or don’t want to pay that much for anymore. 

As much as it may sound like an easy solution at first, make sure you know what you’re committing to. In writing – don’t trust anything a sales rep might say on the phone.