(Our last discussion on Capterra was from some years ago, and things change quickly on the Internet.)
Do you use Capterra, particularly for your B2B SaaS? If so:
We initially listed on Capterra as it seemed to rank very highly in google (position 1 or 2 always) for the key google search terms for our product. When your own product is on page 10 it seemed like a good way to get a bit noticed.
To get people to post reviews we basically just asked them, contacting our known good users. This is something we probably need to do more of. I know a lot of companies offer incentives (Amazon vouchers) to get people to post reviews and Capterra now ask if you do this.
Capterra do have a PPC offering as well and we used it around 4 years ago for a while and got great return on investment. However is it got more popular and the PPC prices went up we stopped doing it. I guess you just need to see how much it is for your category.
I would say of all the product review sites Capterra has easily driven the most traffic for us, it’s the only one we really bother maintaining.
Some traffic. No leads. Totally irrelevant.
How does this traffic convert?
It depends exactly what you want. I am not really interested in seeing a bump of a a hundred random people in my Google Analytics, I would rather 5 people who are real potential buyers. The people who did come from Capterra were highly targeted, they were actually searching for software. But it probably depends on your niche, I expect the more techy the product the less leads you will get.
They offered us $20 Amazon Gift cards for the first 20 reviewers and then gave the app “App of the year” badges in four(!) different nominations. Not sure what’s the benefit for them but we got some nice “social proof” content for the landing page.
Tried their PPC. Zero conversions. Shut it down
Capterra can work well for products with higher price points. Enterprise clients particularly will look to Capterra as a source of authority.
It can also work well if you take advantage of their review system. Though I don’t necessarily recommend it, I’ve seen companies game their reviews (one company had hundreds of reviews over a one-week period; I think they offered some kind of incentive at an industry conference). Asking for reviews is totally legit though, especially after a positive customer interaction. Those reviews help your listing to rise to the top and give it a lot of credibility.
If you are selling B2B, have a high CLTV, and can get your customers to leave reviews, then Capterra may be a good choice.
Mmm… Is there a proof of that?
I wonder because I’m occasionally taking part in looking for software meetings, and not once I heard someone mentioned that service.
We use it because we ASSUME the people coming from capterra are more serious than other web traffic
We get reviews by asking our customers.
We are testing paid apps. Start with the minimum bid, and see if you get any conversations with people who click. Do offer an immediate incentive to provide email, e.g. make a special capterra landing page and offer $99 voucher (e.g. equiv. to one month free service, but phrase in $$$).
I don’t have any data on that. But back when I was using it for Donor Tools, our competitors were spending a lot of money on it. Then again, that was the NGO space.
At MicroConf Growth 2018, there was a talk by Justin Mares of FOMO (Shopify App) that specifically said “we used Capterra as a leads channel with great success”. Their MRR is over 100K, so do with that info what you will. Like any channel, if you have the right message, the right LTV and the right customer, you can do great things. But if there’s a mismatch, it won’t work. As usual, “it depends”. 
Traffic is minimal. Got one good review. Negative: Capterra employees keep spamming me (email, phone) to make an appointment to “discuss future strategy”. I guess they want me to buy the premium membership.
If you’ve got some time add your software there. It can’t hurt. But don’t expect anything big from it.
Yes, they are very persistent about repeating the Amazon gift card campaign and can’t understand that we don’t want to spam our users with it.
I am resurrecting an old thread, because I am very interested in recent experiences. I always had my doubts as to advertising on Capterra (I couldn’t believe that so many people would learn about my SaaS from Capterra), but I decided to at least post a product page and get some reviews. Ran a promo-incetivized ($20 gift card) review campaign, got a few reviews, but I don’t see much point: if you are in the same category as QuickBooks Enterprise (nearly 14k reviews) or Oracle Netsuite, it’s difficult to get anywhere near the top of the list.
I see contradictory replies here: most people say that Capterra did nothing for them, while some say it worked great.
@jwr Just a remark: Don’t see the replies as contradictory.
Success of failure on Capterra depends on your SaaS, the competition, the customers, the market, …
So it depends. Same with all other marketing methods.
I also used their $20 gift card campaign and it allowed us to collect over 100 reviews. If someone searches for our product name Capterra’s link comes on the first page and it looks good, if reviews are positive of course.
Also if we were to try Capterra’s pay per click campaign having a number of favorable reviews also helps.
Well, I’m gathering reviews too, I just have my doubts as to whether anybody actually uses Capterra to search for software. They offer pay per click placement/advertising and I just can’t see how it could possibly generate converting traffic.
They don’t, they use Google but Capterra is pretty high in the “software for XXX” search results b/c they encourage vendors install a “5 stars” rating widget on their websites, which results in a very targeted link profile.
This is it. I have used Capterra successfully in the past and am planning on having another go soon. They are number 1 or 2 on Google for the in demand search terms.
