StarReply vs Podium

Podium is a text-first customer-interaction platform for local business — webchat, shared inbox, review invitations, payments and an AI receptionist. Reviews are one surface inside it, and the emphasis is on generating them.

It does not publish a price. No pricing page. The pricing page says "Plans designed to fit your specific business needs, talk to our sales team for details". Read from podium.com/pricing on 2026-08-14.

StarReply is a single agent pointed at one job — the morning after. It polls each location overnight, reads what each new review is actually about, drafts the reply in your voice, and routes it.

• 2★ and below is approval-only, in code. There is no autonomy setting that reaches it — the branch runs before the mode is read.
• Below 70% confidence in what a review is even about, the reply is held whatever the rating. The agent does not answer a review it is unsure it understood.
• A 30-second kill window between your tap and the listing, and a receipt for every read, draft, hold and post.
• $39/month for three locations. Published, flat, no annual contract.

• Your problem is review VOLUME — you do not have enough of them yet.
• You want webchat, a shared SMS inbox and payments in the same product.
• You have someone whose job is running the platform.

• You have plenty of reviews and a backlog of unanswered ones across several sites.
• The reply to a bad review is the thing that keeps slipping, and you want it drafted and waiting rather than automated away.
• You want the price on the page.

Birdeye is the other suite in this shortlist — StarReply vs Birdeye. GatherUp is the one that publishes a per-location price — StarReply vs GatherUp. Or read how the agent actually works.

How much does Podium cost? Podium does not publish a price. Its pricing page says plans are designed to fit your specific business needs and routes you to a sales team and a demo request. StarReply publishes $39/month for up to three locations and $99/month for up to twenty-five.

Podium gets me more reviews. Does StarReply? No, and that is the cleanest line between them. Podium is built around asking for reviews — text-first campaigns, webchat, lead capture. StarReply is built around the reviews you already have, and specifically around the one you have to answer today.

Can I run both? Yes. They read and write different parts of the same listing: Podium sends the request, StarReply drafts the reply. StarReply only ever writes a reply the rail already reports as unanswered, so it will not overwrite a reply another tool posted.

See the live demo →