Podium
Review generation and AI sales messaging for local businesses, not a listening tool
Entry price
Core $399/month per location, USD, published on the pricing page
Typical annual
Core $4,788/year, Pro $7,188/year, before phone seats and add-ons
Free trial
None published. Every plan button reads "Talk to Sales"; only a free Google report is self-serve
Contract
12-month initial term, auto-renewing unless written notice is given a month before it ends
About Podium
Podium sells itself in 2026 as an AI employee for local businesses, and that is the accurate description. The product is a lead conversion platform: a shared SMS inbox, a website chat widget, a phone system, payments, text marketing campaigns and five AI agents named Salesperson, Scheduler, Marketer, Concierge and Reputation Specialist. Review management is one module inside that, not the centre of it. What it does well is generate reviews: textable invites fired automatically after a job or a purchase, replies drafted by AI, and a leaderboard showing which staff member earned which review. It connects Google, Facebook and a set of industry-specific review sites, though not Yelp, which forbids third-party review requests. What it does not do is listening. There is no social, news, forum or blog monitoring, no Boolean query language, and no sentiment analysis beyond the star rating a customer left. If you came here for a monitoring tool, this is not one. If you run multi-location retail, home services, automotive or aesthetics and want more Google reviews and faster lead replies, it is a serious option from $399 a month on a 12-month term.
Full specification
Pricing & Model
- Entry price
- Core $399/month per location, USD, published on the pricing page
- Median annual cost
- Core $4,788/year, Pro $7,188/year, before phone seats and add-ons
- Pricing model
- Flat monthly fee per location on a 12-month term, plus per-seat phones and AI add-ons
- Free trial
- None published. Every plan button reads "Talk to Sales"; only a free Google report is self-serve
- Contract required
- 12-month initial term, auto-renewing unless written notice is given a month before it ends
- Overage pricing
- Bulk credits stop at the cap and do not roll over. Automations, Voice AI, AI Messaging and Phones overages bill at unpublished "then-current rates"
Searches / Topics / Queries
- What they call it
- Reviews / conversations / leads
- Entry tier limit
- Core $399/mo: 250 bulk message credits, 5 phone numbers, review response tools are a $15/mo add-on
- Mid tier limit
- Pro $599/mo: 500 credits, 15 numbers, AI Concierge and AI Reputation Specialist, review tools included
- Enterprise limit
- Signature, custom: AI Scheduler, AI Salesperson, AI Marketer, custom credits and volume discounts
- Boolean support
- No query language at all. You connect review sites and message contacts, you do not search a corpus
Mentions / Results
- Counting method
- Reviews collected and message segments sent. Bulk marketing is metered in credits that expire monthly
- Entry tier
- No mention volume exists. Core includes 250 bulk message credits a month
- Mid tier
- No mention volume. Pro includes 500 bulk message credits a month
- Enterprise tier
- No mention volume. Signature is a custom credit allocation with high-volume discounts
- Historical lookback
- Unlimited conversation history on every plan
Users & Seats
- Entry tier users
- Unlimited team members; phone and mobile app seats billed separately
- Mid tier users
- Unlimited team members; phone and mobile app seats billed separately
- Enterprise users
- Unlimited team members, seat discounts negotiated
- Extra seat cost
- Team members free. Phone and mobile app seats $30 per user/month for 1 to 4 users, $25 at 5 or more
Key Features
- Sentiment analysis
- No. A review carries the star rating the customer gave it; there is no sentiment model over text
- Emotion detection
- Not offered
- Intent classification
- No published taxonomy. AI agents qualify and route leads in conversation, which is a different thing
- Entity extraction
- Not offered. No themes, topics, brands or people pulled out of text
- Image recognition
- Not offered
- Webhooks
- Yes, first class: message, contact, review and invoice event types, with webhooks managed through the API
- API access
- Yes. REST API covering reviews, review invites, responses and summaries, plus conversations, contacts, campaigns, payments and SCIM
- Publishing tools
- Text marketing campaigns and review invites only. No social publishing or scheduling
- News / media coverage
- None. No news, blogs, forums or social listening of any kind
- Language support
- English product and interface. Messaging runs on US, Canadian and Australian numbers; no multilingual text analysis
- Interface languages
- EN
Best For
- Primary audience
- Multi-location local businesses in retail, home services, automotive, dental and aesthetics that want more Google reviews and faster replies to inbound leads, and that will use the SMS inbox and phone system every day. Communications and insights teams shopping for social or media monitoring are in the wrong catalogue entry: Podium does not do it.
- Regional focus
- North America first, with Canada and Australia; US local business verticals
Similar platforms
Other review & local reputation management tools, cheapest published price first.
Rep Core: $80 per location per month, reviews plus listings and local SEO
Compare Podium and ReputationCustom quote, no published pricing. Priced per location, users unlimited
Compare Podium and Chatmeter