There are a lot of reporting tools that claim to be designed for marketing agencies,but they aren’t all created equal. From features, to pricing, to usability, each reporting tool is different, and it can be tough to find the right one for your team and clients without testing dozens of options — which is madness.To make it easier, we tested three of those options for you:
In this article, we dive into features, pricing, user experience, and key differences between ReportGarden, DashThis and Cyfe as reporting tools. For a quick overview of how they stack up, we included a comparison chart.
For a deeper look at ReportGarden vs. DashThis vs. Cyfe, read on for:
You might have noticed that we’re writing about the difference between our service and someone else’s. We brought in a writer to test all three platforms herself. She’s done her best to give each platform a fair shake because we want you to make an informed decision. That said, we think we offer the best reporting toolkit for agencies. Want to give ReportGarden a try? Get started with a seven-day free trial here.
DashThis vs. Cyfe vs. ReportGarden Features
The three contenders we’re evaluating differ primarily based on the additional features they do (or do not) offer on top of digital marketing reporting, although the experiencefor each differs noticeably. There’s a clear distinction between dashboard tools and full-service marketing agency management and reporting tools. Dashboard tools offer a polished way to track and report agency analytics to both clients and internal leadership. The more capable tools handle everything you need to manage clients, campaigns, andreporting.Key features for an agency management tool include:
- Ready-made templates, along with custom dashboards and reports
- A seamless ability to share reports with clients
- Integrations with key data sources (like Mailchimp, Google Data Studio, and other marketing software)
- Support for budgeting, invoicing, proposals, and more.
With those features in mind, let’s take a closer look at what ReportGarden, DashThis, and Cyfe offer.
Key Differences in Features
ReportGarden, DashThis, and Cyfe all offer the main reporting features you likely need — features that can drastically improve your reporting process. All three offer dozens of integrations, ready-made dashboards withvarying amounts of customization available, and the ability to share those reports,both internally and with clients. All three reporting tools connect with popular data sources, from Google Analytics to LinkedIn Campaign Manager to Google AdWords, on at least some of their pricing plans.
Difference #1: Reports and Functionality
To find out how the ease of use and functionality compares across the three tools, we tested each one, building a basic dashboard for Facebook Ads with each.All three tools offer a seamless flow to create an account and hook up your data sources (for our purposes, we connected a Facebook Ads account). From there, the user experience diverges quite a bit.Both ReportGarden and DashThis felt fairly intuitive, and we were able to create our reports in about 5-10 minutes each.In ReportGarden, we were able to fully customize the look and feel of each widget, as well as howthe data was presented visually. Here’s a peek at the dashboard we made with ReportGarden’s drag-and-drop editor:
In ReportGarden, users choose how to display their data, then choose KPIs to pull.And here’s the one on DashThis, where we created each widget individually:
With DashThis, each widget is added individually, and users can choose from preset or custom widgets.Cyfe took a little longer to get a handle on because much of the functionality is almost hidden away — seemingly in the name of presenting users with a more minimalistic interface. Widgets are added individually in Cyfe, too, but there seemed to be fewer options to customize each.After a bit more time, we cobbled together this dashboard using Cyfe:
Our sample Facebook Ads dashboard in Cyfe took a little longer to build.One of the biggest differences that stood out while testing these reporting tools was that neither DashThis nor Cyfe offer ready-made templates users can open and add their own data to.With DashThis, you can create your own templates from the dashboards you build, but there aren’t any created by the company itself. Similarly, Cyfe allows users to duplicate an existing dashboard, but doesn’t provide ready-made templates.ReportGarden, on the other hand, offers more than 20 pre-existing templates for popular white label reports and dashboards. It takes less than two minutes to open the Facebook Ads report template and choose your own connected data source — and just like that, the report is ready for clients. (You can also create your own custom templates in ReportGarden, too.)
ReportGarden offers more than 20 existing templates users can choose from.
Difference #2: Shareability of Reports and Dashboards
Both ReportGarden and DashThis place an emphasis on making it easy to share reports and dashboards — regardless of whether you need to share across an internal team or with clients.
From the DashThis report editor, it’s easy to share via email, PDF, or link.This is an area where Cyfe seems to fall short. Depending on the pricing tier you choose, you can either share reports via a public URL, within your team, or via weekly data exports. Those options might work for in-house marketing teams, but they aren’t up to snuff for agency-level reporting on marketing efforts. And it’s worth noting that noneof those sharing options are available on the Free plan we tested.
ReportGarden’s Client Portal is an effortless way to share with clients and make it easy for them to keep track of the reports you share.On the other end of the spectrum, ReportGarden’s Client Portal is designed to make it effortless for clients to view every report or dashboard you’ve shared with them — all in one central location. You can even schedule for a report to pull new data daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly, and automatically publish the updated report to the Client Portal.
Difference #3: Additional Client Management Features
The biggest difference that separates ReportGarden from other reporting tools like DashThis and Cyfe is the breadth of features available. ReportGarden isn’t designed to be justa reporting tool — it’s built to handle all of your client management needs, including:
- Budgeting
- Invoicing
- Proposals
- SEO reporting and audits.
With DashThis and Cyfe, you can build dashboards and reports, then share them with clients or your team. With ReportGarden, you can manage everything for clients, campaigns, and reporting, on one platform.
DashThis vs. Cyfe vs. ReportGarden Pricing
When it comes to pricing, ReportGarden, DashThis, and Cyfe don’t lend themselves to easy head-to-head comparison. Each tool uses different and varied pricing models, and they don’t always line up with each other. That said, we’ve done our best to explain and compare each reporting tool’s pricing model, along with helping you understand how, when, and why your costs may increase.
ReportGarden Pricing
ReportGarden charges for packages on a monthly basis, and the three premium plans (Professional, Agency, and Enterprise) include just about all of the features they offer. The key difference comes down to how many accounts and dashboards you need, your monthly ad spend, and how many keyword units are included in the plan.Here’s a breakdown of what each package costs and the allowances they include:Standardcosts $149 per month and includes:
- Up to 30 connected accounts and dashboards
- $20,000 monthly budget spend
- 200 keyword units
- All Google (search engine) and basic social media integrations.
Professionalcosts $299 per month and includes everything in the Standard plan, plus:
- Up to 70 connected accounts and dashboards
- $50,000 monthly budget spend
- 750 keyword units
- 10 invoices and 10 proposals (per month)
- Access to all integrations (Social+, Bing Ads, email and retargeting, call tracking, marketing automation, and premium integrations).
Agencycosts $699 per month and includes everything in the Professional plan, plus:
- Up to 170 connected accounts and dashboards
- $150,000 monthly budget spend
- 1,000 keyword units
- 30 invoices and 25 proposals (per month)
- Localisation pack.
Enterprisecosts $1299 per month and includes everything in the Agency plan, plus:
- Up to 300 connected accounts and dashboards
- $300,000 monthly budget spend
- 2,000 keyword units
- 50 invoices and 75 proposals (per month).
DashThis Pricing
DashThis pricing is among the most straightforward of the reporting tools we looked at here. Every plan includes all of the features DashThis offers, in addition to your own account manager. Prices scale as the number of dashboards increases, and that’s all.Here’s a breakdown of what those plans look like:
- Individual costs $33 per month and includes up to 3 dashboards
- Professional costs $109 per month and includes up to 10 dashboards
- Business costs $209 per month and includes up to 25 dashboards
- Standard costs $339 per month and includes up to 50 dashboards
- Enterprise costs $499 per month and includes up to 100 dashboards.
Cyfe Pricing
Similar to ReportGarden, Cyfe’s pricing works on a sliding scale based on a few factors, including premium features, number of users, and the number of dashboards you need. They offer five packages, including a custom offering (you’ll have to contact Cyfe for pricing on that one).Here’s a breakdown of those packages:
- Their Free plan includes 2 dashboards and 1 user. From the looks of it, the free plan is capable, but visual customization sharing features are limited.
- Solo costs $29 per month and includes 5 dashboards and 1 user. This plan also includes unlimited widgets, some customization, and public URL sharing.
- Pro costs $49 per month and includes up to 10 dashboards and 5 users. Pro also includes custom logo, theme, SSL domain, and team sharing.
- Premier starts at $89 per month and includes 20 dashboards and unlimited users. Premier offers additional dashboards for an extra $4 per dashboard per month and weekly data exports.
Which Reporting Tool Is Right for Your Marketing Agency?
Now that we’ve gone over the key differences in features, pricing models, and packages for ReportGarden, DashThis, and Cyfe, let’s talk about the kind of team each of those tools works best for. Based on our research, we made some recommendations in our comparison chart from earlier:
- ReportGarden is best for marketing agencies looking for ready-made templates with full customizability. With ReportGarden, you can create internal dashboards to keep a pulse on performance and in-depth reports to explain performance to clients. As your agency scales and takes on more clients, there’s no substitute for effortless client, campaign, and reporting management — together in one platform.
- DashThis is best for one-man-bands and small agencies that need a simple dashboard tool. The tool is perfectly capable for sharing professional-looking performance data with clients, but lacks some of the customization options and quick-start templates agencies may need. The tool is also focused more on dashboards than reports, so it can be difficult to convey in-depth information on performance if you don’t want a dashboard for every client.
- Cyfe is best for in-house marketing teams that don't need many dashboards or users. The lack of easy external sharing and limited dashboards make Cyfe a better option for in-house marketing teams than agencies.
That said, only youcan say for sure which tool will best fit the needs of your individual team, agency, and clients. ReportGarden offers a seven-day trial that’s 100% free(we won’t even ask for your credit card information), so you can see if our platform works for you.You might have noticed that we’re writing about the difference between our service and someone else’s. We brought in a writer to test all three platforms herself. She’s done her best to give each platform a fair shake because we want you to make an informed decision. That said, we think we offer the best reporting toolkit for agencies. Want to give ReportGarden a try? Get started with seven-day free trial here.
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