Vonigo vs. Hub by Thryv: Which Is Better for Your Franchise?

Your small business has succeeded beyond your wildest dreams. You have a steady pipeline of customers, loyal repeat clients and more jobs than hours in a week. You’ve even branched out into additional locations, which, early on, were relatively easy to manage.

Now? Your locations are in the double digits. You got all you could from the small business software tools you accumulated. But these days you’re bumping up against a tech ceiling.

The different technologies don’t talk to each other. Processes are too manual. Details are lost. Balls are dropped. And you don’t feel like you’re getting value for your money.

Before you can take on the growth you envision for your franchise, it’s time to find software that can up your game.

What is Vonigo?

Vancouver, B.C.-based Vonigo was founded in 2011 by John Carter and Roman Azbel. Each had prior experience working in the service industry. The firm describes itself as a business management and online booking platform helping service companies and organizations increase sales and streamline operations.

In February 2022, software and payments company Fullsteam acquired Vonigo. Fullsteam, located in Auburn, Ala., is in growth-by-acquisition mode, claiming to bring streamlined payments infrastructure to its acquisitions’ customers. Carter and Azbel retained their Vonigo leadership positions.

Fullsteam is a holding company for dozens of products for:

• Membership associations
• Automotive, business-to-business, commercial and home service providers
• Healthcare practices
• Recreation experience providers
• Self-storage and specialty point-of-sale companies

But Vonigo’s focus is on the home services sector, which they also call mobile businesses (businesses that travel to locations to provide services). It claims to optimize each step in the field service delivery process to help small businesses and franchises handle customer requests, invoicing, payments and scheduling the next visit.

Vonigo pricing and features

Back Office. All Vonigo products (Starter, Professional, Premium) help users create service levels and pricing tiers. And while the tool offers tax management across the board, only Professional and Premium users can identify and apply tax rates for each service and product in a given location.

Financial, service, sales and customer health report templates are standard out of the box. But only Professional and Premium users can activate the real-time inventory tool. That feature adds items to work orders and invoices and creates purchase orders for approval and re-ordering.

Appointments and Scheduling. Online booking helps customers book their own appointments on a business’s pre-existing website. After that, Vonigo users can manage staff assignments with drag and drop functionality. In addition, the tool can automate the dispatching process, delivering automated route sheets and work order details to field teams.

But only Professional and Premium users can view appointments in Google Maps with driving directions and client details. And if a franchise wants Vonigo’s route optimization feature, it’ll have to pay extra.

Job Management. Vonigo says it can provide each team member a 360-degree view of each work order and its up-to-the-minute delivery status. And it says employees can manage, assign, track and complete inbound client requests to keep balls from dropping.

Additionally, users can send email notifications to sales, operations, delivery staff members as well as customers.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Vonigo says it catalogs a complete business history of every interaction with every customer. And it says users can manage client relationships from the first contact through to scheduling service, work orders, invoicing, payment and follow up.

Their Premium-only library feature allows users to make key documents, images and videos available to team members. And only at that level can users create any sort of marketing campaign or offer any sort of coupons to loyal customers.

Quoting, Invoicing and Payments. Vonigo says it simplifies and speeds up the quotation process with its mobile quotation tool, providing up-to-the-minute pricing and inventory. Users can create branded invoices directly from work orders based only on services customers received, which eliminates manual data entry or invoice creation. Plus, the tool can capture client signatures on quotes, work orders, contracts, and invoices.

For an additional setup cost and recurring $8-$9 monthly charge, Vonigo offers an online payments feature. Payments go directly into the business’s bank account.

Franchise-Specific Services. The Professional and Premium packages target multi-location or franchise businesses. Specifically designed for franchises, the platform ties the entire franchise’s back-office processes and protocols together. It also helps franchise owners optimize team schedules by location. It can route leads and assign service calls to the appropriate office and territory based on zip code.

At the Premium level, the tool has advanced capabilities designed to help franchisors manage territories and collect and report on franchise royalties. Interestingly, Premium customers also get a “call center” administrative dashboard that can address job and estimate booking, over-the-phone quoting, call-backs, history, routing and reporting.

Support. Vonigo’s customer support is fairly limited. Its phone-based service desk is only available five days a week, and only for 12 hours each day. Starter users don’t even have the option to contact support teams via email. If any Vonigo client needs to upgrade their service to the company’s Premium Support level (presumably for more-serious problems) it’ll cost them $125 an hour.

Vonigo Pricing

• Starter: $98/user per month
• Professional: $119/user per month
• Premium: $139/user per month
• Mobile only: $29-$49/user per month

And notably, there is a sizable a la carte implementation and product menu to add further features to the above packages.

• Vonigo system implementation and training: $3,985
• User training sandbox: $149/month
• Static HTML lead gen form setup: $289
• Dynamic lead gen form: $1,175 setup and $18 monthly fee
• WebMerge/Formstack automated document template styling and implementation: $125/hour
• API development: $150/hour
• API access: $149/month
• Online booking engine: $1,875 setup and $89 monthly fee
• Approve and pay invoices online: $575 setup and $9 monthly fee
• Route optimization: $59 per vehicle monthly fee
• Multi-branding: $129/month
• Monthly texting packages based on number of texts and phone numbers

For every package and a la carte item billed annually basis instead of monthly, Vonigo provides some discounts.

**All prices are for North America and the EU. Vonigo only supplies Australian and New Zealand pricing by request.

Vonigo Reviews: What customers* say

“I think my relationship with Vonigo is almost over. We have over 800 stores and it’s pretty likely that many of them are experiencing the same issues. When I survey store managers and directors on our Intranet, many of them are using a different product now.” Retail director, GetApp review, October 25, 2021

Pros

Highly configurable. Visibility into workloads. Streamlines and automates workflow. Can manage and pull sales, profit, booking reports from franchisee units. Provides an easy booking/calendar integration system for customers to book slots. Allows for day-to-day or zoned pricing. Can create ad hoc website promo codes quickly. Pre-pandemic customer support was timely and helpful.

Cons

Easy fixes don’t exist. Not helpful for flat-rate pricing. User interface lacks sophistication. Tool appears have more glitches (sometimes the tool doesn’t work at all) after the pandemic.

“Whenever I need tech support now, first they try to tell me there isn’t an issue, then they tell me it’s not fixable, then when I really get firm with them, suddenly they are able to fix it. I sympathize with COVID labor shortages but if that’s what’s going on, I would rather hear, ‘Be patient, we are working on it …’ than ‘There’s nothing we can do to fix the problem we suddenly created!’”

*Review comments consolidated from G2 and Capterra review sites.

Vonigo customer service

As mentioned, Vonigo’s customer service has structured limits. Each product level has varying degrees of support. Starter clients only get email support 12 hours/5 days a week.

At the highest level, Premium clients get email support 16 hours/7 days a week and phone support 12 hours/5 days a week. But again, should you have a significant issue, you’ll get bumped into Premium Support at $125 an hour, with a one-hour minimum.

Before COVID, customer reviews cited customer-centric, responsive service. But since the pandemic, the company’s customer support staffing appears to have suffered losses.

What is Hub by Thryv

Hub by Thryv is a management console that can roll out Thryv software to every location in a franchise business. Its ready-to-use business applications help your franchisees view jobs, messages, appointments, payments, reviews and more — all in one place.

And as a franchise owner, it gives you confidence every location is running and growing on the same software.

Hub by Thryv leverages the best of Thryv, which helps businesses manage and organize client data, calendars, payments, marketing automation, social media and more in one spot. As a full, end-to-end customer experience platform, Thryv helps businesses:

• Get the Job by improving online presence so businesses are found online. It also helps you request and manage reviews, grow social media audiences, set appointments online, create and deliver estimates and enable customer form fills.
• Manage the Job by maintaining a real-time staff calendar, collecting and storing online documents and creating and delivering estimates and invoices. It also offers multiple contactless payment methods, including ThryvPay^®.
• Get Credit with marketing automation such as SMS text and email campaigns. Review requests are sent automatically. The platform also helps you send promotions and other messaging customized to the right audience at the right time.

Hub by Thryv pricing and features

As a turnkey franchise management tool, Hub by Thryv helps you scale your multi-location business. It serves as a centralized command center, enabling real-time transparency and visibility into each location’s activities.

With Thryv’s core CRM, scheduling, invoicing and payment processing tools helping you create standard protocols for franchisees to follow, you can ensure consistent brand experiences in every unit.

Multi-location Management. You won’t outgrow Hub by Thryv. It allows you to attract, onboard and manage more than 500 locations. You can keep tabs on your entire business — view your best- and worst-performing locations filtered by metrics like geography, average order value, number of appointments and more.

Furthermore, the platform’s dashboard pulls activity from each Thryv instance across your franchise, allowing you to view each unit’s success metrics such as:

• Payments
• Invoices
• Estimates
• Bookings
• Clients
• Thryv Use

And as your business evolves, you can quickly update the software across all locations. You also can quickly and seamlessly log into any individual location and perform any action the unit’s Thryv administrator can do. You can jump back and forth between different locations, and add new employees to your location’s Thryv accounts.

Data Transparency. With Hub by Thryv, data retention is unlimited. It can display weekly, monthly and daily views of selected activities, along with comparisons to prior month or year (to date).

Particularly important is the ability to get full financial line-of-sight. You’ll get standardized data across every location, which you can then export to .csv or Microsoft Excel^® files. Thryv also integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks^® Desktop or Online platforms.

Best Practices. Hub by Thryv’s Leaderboard shows which locations perform the best. It can list unit totals for each activity you choose to measure, including gross results and date-range average.

Likewise, the Data Explorer tool helps you compare which location performs best in a given category, such as completed appointments or payments received. And the dashboard’s franchise map provides an at-a-glance look to see which locations are performing well, handily illustrating activity levels.

Brand Consistency. Make it easy for franchisees to be brand compliant — build your brand and control your business’s messaging from one place. Tailored to your specific industry, Hub by Thryv helps you provide access to dozens of brand-consistent resources designed to help franchisees grow their business.

You’ll also get custom account templates, so you can ensure every location has the necessary tools to provide the standardized customer experience you expect.

Lead Routing. Hub by Thryv’s Lead Router puts all your leads in one place, automatically routing them to the most appropriate location. You’ll be able to assign as much access as you choose for employees to monitor leads and manage your new business pipeline.

Streamlined Sales, Flexible Payments. Create customized estimates, invoices and receipts all from the dashboard. You’ll also get a clear look at any outstanding invoices. Plus, your customers can choose their preferred method of paying, whether with credit/debit cards, ThryvPay, PayPal, Braintree, Venmo, Square, Stripe, Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Thryv stands out from other software providers by offering our own payment processing service, ThryvPay. It’s designed specifically for service-based businesses, providing contactless payment options and recurring payment scheduling.

ThryvPay offers competitive flat-rate fees on credit card transactions and a budget-friendly ACH payment processing option. ThryvPay is integrated with Plaid, so you’ll immediately know if funds are available — no more bounced checks.

And with ThryvPay’s new financing option through Wisetack, your franchises can invite customers to pre-qualify for financing early in the buying process.

Online Scheduling. Today’s customers like managing their own time, and Thryv’s online booking helps them do just that — customers can choose the day and time that works best for them. No more playing phone tag or interrupting work just to take appointment calls. And you can send automatic appointment reminders by text.

Your franchisees get time back, and customers can manage their own schedule right from their phone.

Robust CRM. Manage, message and market to your customers all in one software. You can categorize client records  by information such as services received, date of the last service, upcoming appointments, payments, conversations and even uploaded documents.

Also, with Thryv you can organize multiple jobs, patients, cases and more under a single contact. For instance, if your franchise offers child/elder daycare, multiple children/adults can be registered to one family name. For a home staging company, you can record multiple residences for a single family. Or for auto services, franchisees can track maintenance for several vehicles owned by one person.

Franchisee and Customer Communication. Thryv’s centralized inbox displays every customer communication in a single thread — no matter where it came from. Whether your clients love Facebook Messenger, SMS/text messaging, email or Google, Thryv organizes conversations as though they all came from the same place.

Your franchisees can manage every conversation from their inboxes and respond immediately.

As the franchisor, you’ll get visibility into all interactions. That way you can see how everyone contributes to the customer experience. It’s ideal for simplifying and organizing the way you communicate with your franchisees and your customers.

Hub by Thryv Pricing

Hub by Thryv’s base package pricing is competitive with Vonigo, but Thryv offers much more. Key features include social media management, online review management and reputation management.

Plus, Hub by Thryv doesn’t nickel-and-dime you for the services you need most; technical support is available 24/7 and always free. Additionally, there’s a specified support team for ThryvPay.

Vonigo’s Starter package doesn’t even offer the services franchises need, so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison to Hub by Thryv. Franchisors are forced into the Professional or Premium packages, with the Premium package most comparable to Hub by Thryv.

But remember, Vonigo’s pricing is per person. You’re not the only person operating your franchise, so that adds up fast.

When you pair multilocation discounts with an unmatched return on investment, Hub by Thryv is the most affordable option for your growing franchise.

It includes Thryv’s essential features, and comes with integrations that connect to apps you already use, like Gmail, QuickBooks, Jotform, Yext, Constant Contact, Indeed, Mailchimp, Shopify, Typeform, Zoom, ShareAble for Hires and Clover.

Thryv Reviews: What customers* say

“The program is very easy to navigate and user-friendly. All aspects of your business can be run from one easy-to-use platform. No other service program has done what Thryv has been able to do for my company.” — Matt L., director of franchise research and development; verified current user; G2 review; 2/3/2022

Pros

Having the ability to collect payments onsite. It solves all our marketing problems and all social media is completed in one place. Thryv organizes, automates and synchronizes sales, marketing, customer service and support.

It’s a huge time-saver by consolidating different software into one platform. You also can get help 24/7 from knowledgeable and dependable representatives. Thryv acts very quickly on our feedback and requests. It’s like Thryv has become a part of our staff.

Cons

Thryv can do so much, it can be overwhelming at first. But take your time to get to understand all the capabilities it has to offer; it’s worth it. Keep a list of questions and take advantage of the 24/7 support; Thryv’s customer representatives are very knowledgeable and will hunt down answers if they don’t have them themselves. There’s no need to go it alone.

Thryv customer service

Thryv is the only small business software that comes with personalized setup and support from small business experts. Through hands-on onboarding, specialists will help each unit populate their Thryv, using the features you care about most.

Our specialists are ready 24/7 with technical expertise and business know-how. So no matter when or where you or a franchisee needs help, you can reach us via phone, chat or email. Or, if franchisees prefer to learn on their own, we have in-app suggestions and a robust online knowledge center with how-to guides, videos, tips and tricks.

And we don’t just set up Thryv and say goodbye. Our team of client success partners works around the clock to help you and your franchisees get the most out of Thryv. From optimizing your online presence, to coming up with your next great marketing campaign, they’re full of new ideas and best practices. You and your franchisees can use our experts to set goals, strategize and grow your business.

But Thryv users know best what’s working well and what could work better. So we encourage you and your franchisees to join the dedicated HighThryver Facebook group. There, you can submit software update requests and share feedback with our experts.

And you can vote on features most important to you, helping us choose what to update next.

Vonigo vs Hub by Thryv

More than 75% of franchise brands have less than 100 locations. Like so many independent businesses, they struggle at times to meet modern consumer expectations. So it’s essential your franchisees have the right tools to compete in today’s constantly evolving franchising landscape.

Marketing automation, reputation management, online presence and social media services are nonexistent at Vonigo. But they’re vital to building a lifelong customer relationship. Vonigo doesn’t have any capabilities designed to keep a happy customer for life.

Plus, Vonigo’s limits on support don’t help you get stuff done. Since when has a problem occurred during a standard workweek or fit neatly into an email conversation? Thryv’s free, unlimited, always-available service is there for you no matter when a problem strikes.

Need more reasons?

With Hub by Thryv, you can standardize your brand, drive consistency and manage compliance, providing franchisees the necessary tools for incredible and consistent customer experiences. It’s about far more than simply providing appointment, scheduling and billing software like Vonigo.

Thryv also has more payment options — such as ThryvPay, with its competitive rates, convenient processing, transparent reporting and payment dispute assistance. With Thryv, you will be able to integrate with QuickBooks no matter which plan you choose, unlike Vonigo, where you have to be a Professional or Premium client.

And if you want to offer payment capabilities, you have to be in Vonigo’s top plan to get its Authorize.net integration.

Thryv’s security measures include data encryption and customizable account access. Further, the platform is HIPAA-compliant and our document storage protocols ensure sensitive documents are safe.

But Vonigo only offers role-based permissions in its top two packages. And storage is limited in its lower two packages — at 50 gigabytes and 100 gigabytes respectively.

Being able to monitor and systematize the entire customer journey is essential to growing your franchise. At the same time, scaling your business and helping franchisees operate more efficiently is paramount.

Hub by Thryv makes it easy to stay organized so you and your franchisees never miss a message, appointment or opportunity to connect with your customers.