Fuel Cycle

The back end is very robust and intuitive. It can do a lot of different activity types depending on objectives. The navigation around back end makes sense even for the non tech savvy on how to do something like create an activity card to your community to react to. I also like the dynamic user groups and the email builder. The app is also pretty nice and easy for users to use. The email builder is VERY good on making your emails look however you need them to look. Also, the FUEL CYCLE team are very knowledgeable and helpful. Both [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] are great resources to help you when you have questions or challenges.

Having an online community that awards points redeemable for digital gift cards via the GiftBit API is the weakest aspect of the FUEL CYCLE community administration experience. The redemption process for a user will frequently go sideways on you either by fault of user error or on fault of the GiftBit API or GiftBit's emailer. This experience can cause member attrition as well as create extra time spent by you (and dollars) to make things right with those members who don't redeem properly, don't receive their claim code email or generally don't understand how it all works. You gotta make sure you take care of your members properly. I've had experience with Tango Card's API connected to an online community with significantly fewer issues.

The 2nd weakest aspect is the survey platform tools that integrate with FUEL CYCLE. SurveyGizmo is free CPCs but that's because its so limited and incapable of performing anything more complicated than a quick poll or simple survey. Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey aren't that much better. In future, I hope to see FUEL CYCLE EXCHANGE get some better survey platform options like Decipher or ConfirmIt. For an administrator that wants to run lots of complex surveys with routing, with quotas, etc, the current options aren't great for that. This is why I feel the platform is best for an end user client and not a research agency and not a third-party consultant. Its a fine tool but best wielded by someone at the brand closer to research objectives.

Fuel Cycle is easy to use and allows for a wide range of research methods. Some of the tools are built and managed by FC but at the same time they bring in fabulous partners that give me as a researcher a single place to go to execute a wide range of studies

The learning curve was a bit steep but the company has reacted to feedback and recently has begun to add templated activities that simplify the way in which you interact with members of your panel. These improvements will make it easier to use and simplier to learn if new to the tool

Having our members in one platform. Love the integration of Qualtrics to make programming easier. I like the incentives and being able to give points.

Launching an activity seems to be difficult. You have to import the link, set up the activity + set up the communication email.