Marsello: Loyalty, Email, SMS

April 30, 2025

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.

Dec. 16, 2024

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.

March 21, 2025

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.

Sept. 17, 2024

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.

June 12, 2024

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.

March 28, 2024

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.

Dec. 4, 2023

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.

Dec. 1, 2023

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.

Oct. 13, 2023

$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.

Aug. 8, 2023

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!

Sept. 2, 2022

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

March 31, 2022

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!!!

Jan. 24, 2021

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.

Jan. 24, 2021

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.

June 7, 2021

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.

Sept. 29, 2020

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.

Feb. 20, 2025

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.

Aug. 3, 2019

3 Aug: We do offer gift cards on our store and it was only last week we realised the purchase of gift cards would automatically be rewarded with points, which customers use the same gift cards to purchase items on our store and get rewarded with points again. That's duplication of points. We raised this to the customer support team, and Abby responded in exact words. "This wouldn't be considered a duplicate by the system." Abby also said. "We appreciate the feedback as we haven't had any similar opinions on gift card purchases being awarded points". By principle, gift cards should be seen as currencies, not a SKU in your inventory. When someone purchase a gift card worth $1000, who use it to purchase $1,000 worth of goods, merchants are now obliged to give $2000 worth of points which they could have just given $1,000 worth of points. If this is not duplication, what is it? Points should not be given to gift cards by default. If merchants decide to do so, they may have the option to opt in. Reward points are currencies and we ought to be careful with how it's being managed. Marcello's decision to make the opt-in as a default feature is a careless and inconsiderate one. We have made quite a significant loss due to the duplication of points. I'm sharing here so merchants are informed and can do the necessary to opt-out reward points from gift card purchases. ----- 28 May: Issue was rectified on 24 May. Matt did his best to rectify the problem and offered compensation for the loss and technical glitch which I appreciate. Although the glitch is taking a toll on our customer service's time (and we have no idea when the queries would end), we're pleased that Matt asked for thorough feedback so that preventive measures could be implemented. We had a constructive discussion and I believe the Marsello team would do their best to work on the enhancements. ----- 24 May: All loyalty points were erroneously deposited / duplicated twice on 10 May and to our dismay, we only found out 2 days ago. 38 hours have passed - the problem hasn't been rectified and our questions not addressed yet. We're crossing over the weekend (we're in SGT) and another 48 hours will be lost. We're going into a full blown crisis mode now and are forced to switch off the program. We have customers rushing to claim the vouchers and many of them have already used the vouchers from 10 May to 22 May. A huge loss is incurred and we're still waiting for the Marsello team to rectify and issue an official response. The matter has been escalated to Shopify and has expressed their full support towards our demand of compensation from Marsello. But first, the problem needs to be rectified and we're still waiting.

April 16, 2018

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.

Jan. 13, 2021

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