DivvyHQ vs. Welcome: Comparing Content Marketing Platforms
The content marketing software world has evolved quickly over the past decade with a wide variety of platforms being introduced. This is a big reason why we do these comparisons, so that interested marketers have an easier time researching the differences and nuances between platforms.
But I want to start this post a little differently today. We’ve witnessed, first hand, an evolution into a new phase of maturity in our software category. In the past two years, several companies in our competitive analysis report have been acquired by larger players in the martech space.
In just the past few weeks, news broke that Welcome (formerly Newscred) was acquired by Optimizely (formerly Episerver), and ContentCal (not in our competitive analysis, but could be considered a competitor) was purchased by Adobe.
The reason I bring this to the forefront is that those platforms will no longer be considered “stand-alone” platforms that any company can use. These systems will likely be integrated into their respective software ecosystems. For example, if you had been previously evaluating Welcome for your team, but are not also a user of Optimizely’s Content Cloud (a.k.a. Episerver DXP), you may as well remove Welcome from your list of potential platforms.
Content teams need flexibility with the software tools they use. And DivvyHQ is now one of the only stand-alone content planning and collaboration platforms that gives you the freedom and flexibility to be used upstream of whatever martech stack you are using today (CMS, email marketing, social media management, etc.).
Despite this, we had already developed this comparison post prior to the news of Welcome’s acquisition, so we’re still going to dig into the details.
So without further ado, we’ll define how each solution stacks up in several categories, including:
- Pricing
- Content ideation features
- Content and editorial planning capabilities
- Workflow and collaboration offerings
- Content production and asset storage features
- Publishing functions and integrations
- Content and team performance analytics
- Service and support
- Setup and implementation requirements
- Security
- Other factors
Comparison Methodology
How did we complete the comparison of DivvyHQ vs. Welcome? Our staff dug into various resources, including company websites, free trials, knowledge bases, review sites, and additional sources. The full report and methodology is available here: Content Marketing Platforms: DivvyHQ vs. the Alternatives.
In deciding what features to spotlight, we included the tools and features that content, marketing and communications teams need to do their job. Consider the criteria to be similar to those used by analyst firms Gartner and Forrester for the annual reports they publish on content marketing platforms (CMPs).
While we did our best to gather all available information, but we certainly may have missed something. Not all platforms provide all details to the public.
If you’re a staff member for Welcome, and you see something we got wrong, leave us a comment. We’ll fix it.
Now that we’ve defined the how, let’s get started.
Enterprise Pricing
Budget is one of the first things you should nail down when considering tools. No need to waste time evaluating a platform that is way out of reach. Historically speaking, Newscred was always one of the most expensive platforms in the content marketing category. Since their rebrand to become Welcome, they seem to have lowered their pricing somewhat and offer per-user plans across a few tiers of functionality.
DivvyHQ also has a similar pricing scheme with per-user plans that can accommodate both small and large teams. But one big differentiator here comes in the form of Divvy’s unlimited-user plans that are ideal for enterprise organizations who need to scale the use of a content marketing platform across their entire organization, and don’t want to worry about the scale in cost that comes with user-based pricing.
Lastly, Divvy also provides a special, FREE user license for users who can get by with read-only access. Welcome also has a free option, which offers basic features for five users.
Content Ideation
Ideation is a key to keeping your content engine fueled. With many content marketing platforms providing features to support this, your team can keep your idea reservoir topped off and easily get ideas scheduled. That said, comparing DivvyHQ vs. Welcome in this area finds that the platforms offer very similar capabilities, namely:
- A centralized repository for ideas
- Intake forms for anyone to request content
Of note in this area… Prior to Newscred’s rework to Welcome, they provided an additional ideation feature that leveraged an integration with SEMRush to give content producers keyword and topic recommendations. It looks like they may have eliminated that capability post-rework.
Content and Editorial Planning Capabilities
Content marketing requires a consistent, proactive effort to plan all upcoming campaigns and content initiatives. A critical piece of planning technology is a robust content calendar, providing an aggregated, holistic view of all content and task deadlines.
DivvyHQ and Welcome both offer dynamic content calendars that update in real-time and guide each users’ day-to-day to-dos. In this part of the comparison, both platforms have similar features:
- Drag and drop entries (i.e., deadlines, projects, tasks, etc.)
- Robust filtering
- Flexible architecture for different calendar views for different users
- Content metadata management (allows for filtering and reporting of data)
- Project and task prioritization
- Duplication of projects
- Multiple views (list, calendar, etc.)
- Color-coding
- Campaign planning and management
As for differences, DivvyHQ offers shareable calendar views for non-users, which provides a greater level of visibility to stakeholders who have no need for an actual user seat. This can be a big cost saver by itself.
Workflow and Collaboration Offerings
Among the most valuable and important areas of content marketing platforms, these tools put a lot of emphasis on automating and streamlining the content production process with pre-built content workflows and collaboration functionality. These features amp up productivity and efficiency. Both platforms have similar offerings in this area, namely:
- Task management
- Custom workflow builders
- Automated workflow scheduling, notifications, and reminders
- Commenting with @mentions in content to tag users
- Real-time browser notifications
Content Production and Asset Storage Features
When it comes time to produce content assets, even the most well-oiled machine can misfire. The content production process is messy and having a tool that centralizes collaboration and asset storage is essential to avoiding bottlenecks and bumps in the road. DivvyHQ and Welcome both share the following features here:
- Content archive and auditing
- Unlimited storage for content and assets
- Asset library
- HTML content editor
- Change tracking and version history
- Social post editor
Publishing Functions and Integrations
When multiple platforms within your marketing tech stack are capable of communicating and sharing information, your team can work faster and even automate a variety of typically manual processes.
Below, you can see the available integrations that both solutions share.
DivvyHQ Integrations
- WordPress
- Zapier
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- Microsoft OneDrive
- SharePoint
- Box
- Optimizely (formerly Episerver)
- Kentico
- Microsoft Outlook calendar
- Google calendar
- iCal
Welcome Integrations
- WordPress
- Google Drive
- Dropbox
- Box
- Other integrations
Need a custom integration? Both platforms have open APIs to enable connections with other platforms or home-grown solutions.
Content and Team Performance Analytics
Content analytics has become table stakes in the content marketing category. Content producers need to understand how their content is performing out in the wild. Many content platforms also take this a step further by providing tracking and measurement of internal performance metrics so content managers can understand how their teams are performing.
In this area, both solutions include:
- Time tracking
- Internal content production analytics
- Content performance analytics
One big, noteworthy difference between platforms falls within this category. Welcome’s analytics offerings rely totally on customers implementing javascript-based tracking and content publishing within the Welcome platform via integrations. In other words, if a customer is utilizing their own methods for publishing content and hasn’t implemented Welcome’s tracking mechanism, the reporting area will be mostly worthless.
Divvy, on the other hand, only relies on API connectors to over 100 popular data sources (ex: SalesForce, Google Analytics, all social platforms, most email platforms, etc.) to pull real-time performance data direct from each platform. This also allows for the creation of custom dashboards that each customer can configure to their specification. No special implementation required.
Service and Support
Even the best software product can fall flat if it’s not implemented and supported properly. So it’s crucial to understand the service and support options for each system. DivvyHQ provides:
- Live onboarding teams
- Content strategy review and recommendations
- Dedicated support teams
- Analytics analysis and recommendations
- Online support chat
Prior to their rebrand and rework to Welcome, a large portion of Newscred’s offering revolved around content strategy and creative services. In 2020, Newscred sold off their services division to focus on the software. To that end, Welcome now only provides a live onboarding team and a dedicated support team.
Setup and Implementation Ease
Once you’ve pulled the trigger on a platform, it’s time to dig into the implementation process. You likely want the deployment to be as hassle-free as possible. With DivvyHQ, it only takes about 4 hours (or less) of your time for implementation and training, and no special coding is needed.
Welcome is also a no-code solution, but their implementation process, especially with the required integrations and analytics tracking setup, will likely call for a much larger time and training investment.
Security
Your IT team will undoubtedly have questions about security with any new software. Both solutions follow strict, industry-standard security protocols with:
- Robust user permissions and rules
- SSO (single sign-on)
- Two-factor authentication
Everything Else
The last section in our competitive analysis is a mixed bag of miscellaneous (albeit important) considerations. Neither solution requires a full-time employee to manage it. This is often a key cost consideration as some enterprise platforms will require implementation partners or dedicated employees to just manage the software.
Lastly, mobile-friendly applications are a big plus for marketers on the go. The entire DivvyHQ application is mobile responsive, whereas it does not appear that Welcome supports mobile usage.
DivvyHQ vs. Welcome: What’s Right for You?
To wrap up, I’d say that Welcome, prior to their acquisition, was a solid content marketing solution with many great features for content teams. However, you should definitely consider how their recent acquisition positions them in the market. Simply put, if you’re not either an existing Optimizely/Episerver customer or in the process of implementing Optimizely solutions, then it may not be the best solution for you.
As we’ve said before in these comparisons, if you just compare features, Divvy and Welcome check a lot of the same boxes and may seem to be very similar, but we’re not. To determine which platform is ultimately better it really comes down to which platform is more intuitive, streamlined, and easy to adopt and start using.
With DivvyHQ, you get an affordable, user-friendly, and feature-rich solution that content marketers love. Request a demo today for a personalized walkthrough.
