3 Best Co-browsing Software Companies
Below we'll show you 3 of the best co-browsing software solutions in the market and how they're different. We cover Upscope, Surfly and Acquire.
Essential read: Reporting on the ROI of co-browsing? Depends on your CEO
Related: What is cobrowsing?
Try reverse co-browsing: Show your screen to the client and cobrowse
Why do cobrowsing solutions differ? Aren't they all the same?
Not even close.
Co-browsing is fundamentally different to traditional screen sharing because it involves passing the code rather than streaming a video.
If you're passing code and all the changes to that code, you have to deal with all the different scripts, frameworks and technologies out there.
It takes a long time to get co-browsing to work across these technologies.
The way each company passes code is different.
The way you install co-browsing is different.
The way co-browsing is initiated is also different.
That's why we cover 3 different types of co-browsing solutions below.
What is the best co-browsing solution?
The 3 companies below have all been through the tough phase of getting the technology right.
There are some fundamental differences between them and the right solution depends on the type of customer you service, what sort of integration you need and whether you need live chat and more on top of co-browsing.
If you already have a live chat or phone system you're happy with and just want to add co-browsing then choose Upscope or Surfly. If you need live chat, video chat, bots, co-browsing and more for an all in one solution then try Acquire.
Upscope
We know who uses Upscope co-browsing and why.
Upscope's customers include companies like Square, Freedom Financial, Delta Dental, DriveCentric, Applied Data Finance and more.
The BIGGEST users are support agents, sales agents, onboarding teams, loan officers and others working in the financial industry, SaaS and health.
What does it do?
Upscope's core features are:
- Secure enterprise grade co-browsing for guiding users through an app.
- Secure API for integrations and white-labelling.
- Provides both code based and code-less universal co-browsing.
- Ready to go integrations with Intercom, LiveChat, Salesforce and others.
- Simple 'read out pin code' process to combine co-browsing with phone calls.
Who is it built for?
Upscope's heaviest users have job titles including words like 'agent', 'support', 'onboarding' and 'loan officer'.
They guide, educate and solve customer problems using Upscope to successfully onboard users, lower churn, sell and provide support.
The heaviest Upscope users include SaaS, finance and health companies who need to explain complicated processes or software to clients.
Upscope's main benefits
Upscope has great experience in servicing SaaS, finance and health customers including companies like Square, Freedom Financial, Delta Dental, DriveCentric, NurseGrid, Applied Data Finance and more.
Upscope has focused on getting the core co-browsing right for those who need secure co-browsing and is ISO27001 and SOC2 certified.
Upscope has launched HelloScreen.com for agents to share their own screen and have more control over co-browsing for demos and onboarding. This is an extension which can be installed and tried in minutes.
Upscope has enterprise features like a role based access control, full audit logs, usage reporting, multi-team options and a full REST API for integrations.
Integrates with most of the major live chat tools and CRMs like Salesforce, Intercom, LiveChat, Zendesk and more.
Also has in-browser calling.
What can Upscope improve on?
Upscope has in-browser calling but does not have live chat or video chat.
Would it be nice if Upscope had its own live chat system?
Yes.
Are we likely to build it any time soon?
Not necessarily.
We believe there's an incredible amount to build just on the core co-browsing experience. We'll focus on that first.
Surfly
Surfly has a feature that we at Upscope like and that's the ability to cobrowse without needing to install code to begin using it.
It's a little trickier with apps that require logins but for websites and e-commerce sites, it's a great feature.
What does it do?
Both you and your customer can browse your website without any downloads and also without any installs of code (which is unusual as most co-browsing tools need a one time install).
Surfly does this by providing a link that both user and agent browse on together. They also have an 'install code' option for companies that don't want to go to a third party link.
I think we'd like to add this feature at Upscope just for e-commerce and sales teams in the future.
Surfly's main benefits
You can cobrowse without installs and this makes getting started with Surfly very fast.
Surfly's main focus is co-browsing but they also have chat, video chat and further live chat integrations. Their Intercom integration looks cool. You type ^Surfly to start the screen share and off it goes.
The co-browsing is smoother than both Upscope and Acquire because both the user and the agent go to a surfly.com link and browse together.
What can Surfly improve on?
I think Upscope core users picked Upscope over Surfly because of the differences in the way they work with logged in users.
When Surfly starts a screen share it's a proxied browser so it asks them to login again. That's because they proxy everything and so they don't hold the user session.
There are workarounds but that would require some technical changes by each user's dev team.
Acquire
Acquire appears to be on a path of challenging companies like Intercom and Drift directly.
Initially their product, under the name Tagove, centered on co-browsing but now they have an entire suite of tools.
They have some heavy hitter clients and maybe their feature set reflects that.
What does it do?
It's an all in one solution.
While Upscope's focus is on post-sign up onboarding, Acquire's features cover several areas including sales, support and marketing.
Like Drift and Intercom, they are investing time into automation via bots and that's something we've seen spread rapidly in just the last 6 months.
Acquires main benefits
They do chat, video chat, bots and co-browsing together and their system works on mobile apps (which I'm assuming means native apps as they have an SDK for it though at time of writing I need to confirm that).
They have a great list of customers like Samsung, Lexus and TATA.
Great design and well documented.
If you're looking for a replacement to Intercom, Drift with co-browsing built in, these are the guys to talk to. They don't have onboarding email sequences yet but they certainly do everything else.
What can be improved?
While Upscope and Surfly primarily focus on getting co-browsing right, Acquire is an all in one solution that is a competitor to companies like Intercom. As a result, they don't have integrations to Intercom and other major live chat providers. As it's not their primary focus, you'll find both Upscope and Surfly to be faster and more secure within that core co-browsing functionality as well as providing better support and integration resources.
Learn more about how cobrowsing works in our ultimate guide.
