Marsello: Loyalty, Email, SMS

Disappointing Experience — Overpriced, No Refund, Poor Support We had a very bad experience with Marsello. They charged our business $300 CAD even though we never got to use the app. When we reached out within 30 days, explaining that we found their service too expensive for their poor features and wanted a refund, they outright refused. Their customer support was unhelpful and dismissive. Despite the fact that we hadn't benefited from the platform, they kept the full payment — which feels like they simply took our money without delivering value. For a loyalty program, their pricing is overrated and the service (poor features) does not match the cost. I strongly do not recommend Marsello to any business. Poor policies, bad customer experience, and no flexibility. Be careful before signing up — they do not stand behind their product.

Priced out of the app. I was a loyal user of this app, but they increased their rates while decreasing the benefits. As a struggling business, I could not afford the rate increase and lost all access to my customer data, including their loyalty points.

Customer service is absolutely terrible. The experience has been disheartening and only foreshadows what is to come if we stay with them. We just signed up with Marsello and as soon as we became a paying customer, we couldn't get a hold of anyone. BEFORE signing up, I met with several staff members and they all seemed quite eager to help. Support does reply to our emails but the response time is usually about 6 or more hours. Even then, you reply and they don't get back to you for another few hours with a very generic response. How do you expect a business owner to sit tight while being kept in the dark? Customers have already signed up and waiting to use our loyalty program, only to be told it isn't working. This has a negative impact and only serves to discredit our business in the eyes of our customers. 'Ghosting us' speaks to their lack of professionalism as a whole. Their point system is buggy and it is evident. They haven't ironed out all the kinks. EDIT: The issue was escalated and the technical team took over. This are up and running now. EDIT: Now we are experiencing the same issue again and we are being ignored.

Caution: Unreliable Service and Unresponsive Support We had a very disappointing experience with this company. After dedicating three months to testing their platform, we encountered numerous bugs and technical issues. Despite this, we were charged in full during that entire period. In the first month, we were billed for an API and an additional site, despite not having any additional sites. We raised this issue multiple times but received little to no support. Our main point of contact, Jason McLean, was dismissive of our concerns, repeatedly stating that their company is exceptional and without faults. Unfortunately, their loyalty program was completely unusable due to persistent bugs, and their customer service was slow to respond. When we requested a refund for the services we couldn’t use, we were told that they do not offer refunds, citing their terms and conditions. There is alot more to say about it, but we will leave it here. We strongly advise caution if considering this company.

I was an early adopter of this app on the free plan. They decided to do away with that plan and are asking a min of $1,500 a year to unlock my data (that's a pretty big jump from free!) It's unfortunate that an app that's supposed to help me build loyalty with my customers would treat their loyal users with such disrespect! I am scared to trust them again even if I did start paying. I don't know how to get my data out so I can keep my promises to my customers.

We were with MARSELLO for a few years and then suddenly we had been charged hundreds more as they charge per customer with their new pricing structure. It is a complete scam and not worth it.

We've been loyal customer with Marsello for over 5 years. We initially singed up for their unlimited plan for $199/month. Out of no where, during the busy black Friday season, they paused our account demanding over $3,000+/mo. The recent change took our store from $199 per month to $3,000+ per month with no benefits. I signed up for unlimited contacts and unlimited emails from the beginning. The price suggested is outrageous as there are many other alternatives available for better prices. This is a shame given our continued business relationship for almost 5 years. It is crazy Marsello would do this to a loyal customer and demand us to pay 15x what we have been paying. I am hugely disappointed. It is extremely frustrating that I have such little time to make changes to a 5 year system, especially with the busy holiday season. Would never recommend this to anyone.

Price hike is insanity for small online shops. $125/month being the smallest loyalty option after having been on a free plan for years is way too high.

$100+ a month....what? LOL. Bye Marsello! You were great when you were great. I'm not sure what the heck warrants 9.99 to $130/month but I'll gladly find another rewards program for my customers.

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!

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

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.

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.

Although the app itself has great features, the support is the worst I have ever experienced. I have been waiting over a month (close to two) for technical resolution of a problem the Marsello tech caused and they keep blowing me off by rewriting my complaint in their own words or just telling me they are too busy or by not bothering to reply at all for days. If you think you may need assistance with the app, look elsewhere. They re really not interested in helping existing clients. While the issue above was resolved, the company randomly claimed that their "prices were too low" and they raised the cost of my subscription by like 1,000%-- it went from about $30 monthly to over $160. So, BEWARE... if you think this it it available at a "good" price, they may decide again to "make their prices match competitors" and mark up what you're paying by orders of magnitude. And at this point, like me, you may find that you're in too deep to change. BEWARE. Beyond that, their site does NOT work well on mobile. If you're looking for something you can manage on the go, this is not the app for you. Furthermore, they charge you based on customers but offer no method to determine if those customers are active (even though they have a Lost Customers segment). Once a name is on your list, you pay for it forever, even if it is "lost." They should have an opt-in preset email flow so clients can regularly audit their lists to keep costs low.

I had a horrible experience!! Where do all these 5 star reviews come from?! First off, there's utter lack of support. Their "support" is a bunch of know-nothings who keep deferring to their “team in New Zealand” and then nothing else happens. Placing support into a time zone out-of-synch with the rest of the world is NOT a good idea. If they want to charge $199/month they must do better than that. The app had 3 major bugs when we tried it out: (1) An existing customer was able to get a referral discount, even though only new customers should get a reward (2) Points for referral actions weren’t tracked properly (3) The system sent out emails to advocates with faulty point balances These errors go to the core of a loyalty system. If you can’t track points and redemptions properly, you might as well shut down. Moreover, they failed to tell me the Shopify file names and code sections where they added code. So I can't ascertain whether the uninstall is done properly. I fear they leave code behind, given how poorly and sloppily they have performed so far. A terrible experience and big waste of time.

Also revised 5 star review to 1 star. I've had the exact same experience as the person below - Mountain Madness Soap Co. Marsello is clearly being run by new owners. Also on a grandfather plan, my fees went up without warning. Even worse is they paused my loyalty app without telling me! I had to wait until a customer contacted me asking when our loyalty app will be back online! In contacting support they were unapologetic, didn't care why I was on the old plan and pretty much said this is the new plan, pay up if you want your loyalty app to go back online. In the process of changing apps now