Gainsight CS vs. Planhat

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Gainsight CS
Score 8.9 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Gainsight Customer Success (CS) is presented as a growth engine for modern post-sale teams. Built for CROs, CS leaders, and operations pros, it provides visibility into customer health, expansion potential, and revenue risk. With automation, AI, and health scoring, Gainsight helps scale outcomes without scaling headcount. With its playbooks and success plans to CSQL tracking and journey orchestration, Gainsight CS helps teams to take the right action at the right time, every time. Access to…
$2,500
Per Company Per Month
Planhat
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Planhat, headquartered in Stockholm, offers their modular suite of applications to subscription based businesses, providing customer success product usage health alerts and guidance, as well as revenue management for tracking subscriptions and business health.N/A
Pricing
Gainsight CSPlanhat
Editions & Modules
Subscription
$2,500
Per Company Per Month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Gainsight CSPlanhat
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Gainsight CSPlanhat
Considered Both Products
Gainsight CS
Chose Gainsight CS
Gainsight CS is superior for our customer management. Asana and Outreach don't have the capabilities or integrations that Gainsight CS does.
Chose Gainsight CS
We've explored using the customer communities module. We will re-evaluate at a later date.
Chose Gainsight CS
It's mostly been Gainsight.
Chose Gainsight CS
I've only used Gainsight CS in my CS career
Chose Gainsight CS
Gainsight CS is always my first pick for a CSM tool - it's user friendly and intuitive; plus the tools like Success Plans and Health Score config really set it apart
Chose Gainsight CS
We selected Gainsight CS because of its maturity factor and where we are as a company- we needed to streamline processes across the CS org.
Chose Gainsight CS
Gainsight CS was the only CSP that could manage our data in the way that we needed.
Chose Gainsight CS
Gainsight CS just provided easier to use cooling and better reporting.
Chose Gainsight CS
Gainsight CS is beautiful and much more user friendly HOWEVER it does take more time to set up to have the desired impact than a software like ChurnZero.
Chose Gainsight CS
More customization with Gainsight CS, but Churn zero did have a great UI and easier to use. Would recommend CZ if you're a smaller company with no technical admin.
Chose Gainsight CS
It is the most flexible CS platform in terms of how to manipulate and use your data.
Chose Gainsight CS
ChurnZero, Planhat, Rocketlane and ServiceNow Customer Service Management
Chose Gainsight CS
Gainsight CS is a little more polished and has a wider range of capabilities. However, PlanHat did appear to be very easy to use. The biggest difference was PlanHats admin capabilities and how simple it was to configure. PlanHat was also considerably less expensive.
Chose Gainsight CS
Overall look and feel of the platform was what won us initially. We demoed these two side by side and everyday navigation for the CSM's was easier. In the end this is very important as the data is the data either way but if the CSM's enjoy using it and feel the impact on their …
Chose Gainsight CS
Gainsight CS provides access to a larger suite of features and integrations.
Chose Gainsight CS
Gainsight CS is more user friendly than ChurnZero on the CSM side and the UI in general is more up-to-date and easier to glean insight. ChurnZero just looks outdated.
Planhat
Chose Planhat
Overall performance is great in Planhat, and value vs investment (money) is good! Planhat is made for larger companies and teams that want to create a scalable way of working cross departments.
Chose Planhat
I have not used other CSM platforms but have trialed churn zero which had a much more user friendly interface, the cost was higher though
Chose Planhat
I believe Planhat is the best Customer Success Management tool in the market. It gives me a 360-degree view of all my customers and has a modern interface as compared to the other similar tools that I have used. Planhat also offers a competitive pricing that makes it easier for …
Chose Planhat
I was not the person involved in choosing Planhat, but it seems to me that Planhat is much better suited to an account management style role, whereas Hubspot is closer to a sales CRM instead. In my position, Planhat is better suited as it is more graphical, more flexible, and …
Chose Planhat
When evaluating Planhat, we found that it had a better UI and was a more rounded product than Churn Zero. Planhat was considerably more expensive than Churn Zero, but we felt that the extra investment was worthwhile given that the product better met our needs.

Chose Planhat
Planhat compares relatively well to Totango, despite not coming along with the massive price tag. It was able to perform all of the functions our CSM team was needing and hoping it could do for us. It was able to highlight the customer's health according to the metrics we …
Chose Planhat
Planhat was better value for money, seemed to be more user-friendly, and required less time to set up.
Chose Planhat
We needed a software that would not take months to set up and learn how to use. We needed powerful data that was easy to understand and action based on health scores dropping, etc. It was also important for us to be able to get our full team on the platform so that we could all …
Chose Planhat
Planhat was the most agile and easy to use software, while still having unique and powerful features that allowed us to really customize the software around our organization and needs. Planhat is more than a Customer Success tool in essence and adds tremendous value and …
Chose Planhat
Planhat has a better UI, covers a wide range of features and use-cases. It covers hybrid tech-touch and high touch well. Strong on revenue management.
Chose Planhat
Planhat won on best UI, easy to use, easy to set up and had the enterprise-grade features we were looking for.
Chose Planhat
e came to Planhat from a competitor and are not regretting our choice: - T
heir API is very complete and allows a lot of flexibility in building your own integration-
The Account 360 is really helpful for everyone on the team to understand what's been going on for a specific …
Features
Gainsight CSPlanhat
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Gainsight CS
8.2
Ratings
8% below category average
Planhat
8.5
Ratings
5% below category average
Role-based user permissions8.20 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Gainsight CS
7.5
Ratings
15% below category average
Planhat
8.8
Ratings
1% above category average
API7.60 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com8.90 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Integration with Marketo6.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Eloqua7.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Customer Data Extraction / Integration
Comparison of Customer Data Extraction / Integration features of Product A and Product B
Gainsight CS
8.3
Ratings
7% below category average
Planhat
8.0
Ratings
10% below category average
Product usage8.80 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Help desk / support tickets7.90 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Customer Success Management
Comparison of Customer Success Management features of Product A and Product B
Gainsight CS
8.5
Ratings
2% below category average
Planhat
8.6
Ratings
1% below category average
NPS surveys8.90 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Sponsor tracking9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Customer profiles7.70 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Automated workflow8.10 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Internal collaboration8.10 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Customer health scoring9.90 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Customer segmentation8.10 Ratings7.50 Ratings
CSM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CSM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Gainsight CS
9.0
Ratings
4% above category average
Planhat
8.7
Ratings
1% above category average
Customer health trends9.70 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Engagement analytics8.80 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Revenue forecasting8.30 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Dashboards9.20 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Gainsight CSPlanhat
Small Businesses
ChurnZero
ChurnZero
Score 9.6 out of 10
ChurnZero
ChurnZero
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CustomerSuccessBox
CustomerSuccessBox
Score 9.5 out of 10
CustomerSuccessBox
CustomerSuccessBox
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Webex Experience Management (discontinued)
Cisco Webex Experience Management (discontinued)
Score 8.5 out of 10
Gainsight CS
Gainsight CS
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Gainsight CSPlanhat
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
9.7
(0 ratings)
Online Training
5.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
6.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.4
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Gainsight CSPlanhat
Likelihood to Recommend
It's great for being able to capture all information in Gainsight CS. The only challenge is some of the task management and visibility into workload that is very clunky. After watching the roadmap for 2025, I'm feeling more hopefully that some of my pain points will be handled. However, it's still challenging that the task-management basics will still be clunky. I'm excited for the AI scheduling of tasks, but this would be better if the improvements to task /workload visibility is updated.
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Planhat is very cost-effective compared to its competitors and offers a similar level of functionality. So if you are looking for a CS platform that will give your CSM's all the data they need to manage their portfolio, then Planhat will do the job very well. I was part of the team that was tasked with selecting a CS platform for Pexip, and the combination of cost and performance made Planhat a clear winner against the other two products we were evaluating.
I still use Salesforce on a daily basis because that's the platform we use to generate quotes. It would be nice if I only had one platform to perform all of my CS tasks in. I'm not sure if that's a criticism of Planhat or not, as I don't know if it has a quoting module that we haven't implemented, or whether that function simply isn't available.
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Pros
  • Logging customer activity is incredibly intuitive and easy for team to do and reference.
  • Using the rules engine to generate CTAs for our team to intervene where needed has been helpful in automating relevant activities in bulk. We have a churn prevention program run through CTAs where Gainsight CS will notice risk criteria we've built in, then alert CSMs and their managers of potential risk concerns, like low product adoption or negative survey response, with clear next steps and actions laid out for what to do.
  • More broadly, it has inspired a new mindset on our team for how to work with customers. Through working with Gainsight CS, they have become less transactional and look at accounts more holistically. Success Plans allow for this, as they create plans with customized customer goals and the tasks it will take to achieve those goals.
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  • Excellent customer support and onboarding experience. They are very quick to respond to queries via the live chat. Our CS manager was brilliant in helping us get set up and making sure we were getting the most from all the features.
  • The platform and features are very user friendly and intuitive. It's an extremely powerful tool with a lot of functionality, but thankfully it doesn't take long to learn how to use it.
  • The customer portal is a game changer. The ability to share playbooks, data, and meeting notes all in one place is so useful for our customers and helps build trust and transparency.
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Cons
  • Would love to see a Gainsight OPs/Admin checklist that guides CS Ops team through specific pieces of information needed to execute specific playbooks (best practices)
  • When creating reports, sometimes it's difficult to find the correct variable that you are looking for as it's nested under various categories
  • Would love ability to "heatmap" specific individual customer engagement based on CSM inputted customer contacts at meetings
  • Would love to see more analysis on engagements - how often, how frequent - built into the product
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  • Allow for cc'ing of AEs or others within the same organization from the messaging center. When I went to send a message from within Planhat, I had to manually type out the AE's email address every time if I wanted them cc'd.
  • The fonts were funky if I went to add text into an existing email template. For example, if I added in an extra sentence or paragraph, in Outlook on the recipient's end, the font was different despite looking the same within Planhat. Gmail was all consistent, Outlook was showing a different font.
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Likelihood to Renew
Great tool and we've spent a lot of time getting it up and running. Unless something else comes a long that does a similar function for less money we will consider jumping cause we are always looking to save budget where we can. Till then I think we are satisfied with Gainsight at the moment.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
I give it this score based on the implementation at my current employer. I don't know if it could be higher based on if the implementation went better, or if there is something on the vendor side that could help. If this were asked at my previous employer, I would have given it a score of 9 or 10.
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It takes a while to learn Planhat even for experienced users. It has limitations in terms of what data you can present where, but its important to set internal guides outside Planhat as well so everybody working collaborative. But as CSM Planhat is a great- and critical tool which I use daily to optimise my work schedule and customer interaction with various topics.
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Reliability and Availability
Rarely any issues with availability or outages. When they do occur, there is excellent communication and consistent updates. Bugs are usually addressed in a timely manner, and communication around those issues is also extremely good
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No answers on this topic
Performance
There are some times when it can take almost a minute to load some of our reports or the rules engine. Within a rule it can also take time to load the actions as they each load one at a time when scrolling. The ability to scroll without waiting would be ideal
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
The CSMs are very hands-on and helpful, both Elaine and Lane have provided a lot of guidance and value over the years. Support is responsive and will jump on things as needed. The thought leadership and community is probably the most valuable part of our support from Gainsight.
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Planhat support is excellent. We have a dedicated resource allocated to work with us, and he is extremely knowledgeable, articulate and responsive. The wider support team at Planhat is also very good, responding quickly to any issues logged. As an end-user, you can chat with Planhat support if you encounter any issues or have any questions, and they have always helped me.
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Online Training
The online videos are very good for basic tasks in the platform, but it isn't very descriptive or helpful trying to make your own specific variables fit the simple example that is typically used. Typically, I'll watch a video, try on my own and still have to get help from support or Customer Success team
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
I was not part of the implantation (I took over later). However, based on what was passed to me, the tool was not well implemented at our org. I think this had to do with complexity, wrong person assigned in our org, and org buy-in. I think it would have been very successful if we had a better assignment process internally.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Gainsight CS simply had a broader set of functionality that we wanted. That said, if Vitally or ChurnZero were to close a few of the functionality gaps that mattered to us, we would prefer to use either of those competitor products.
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I believe Planhat is the best Customer Success Management tool in the market. It gives me a 360-degree view of all my customers and has a modern interface as compared to the other similar tools that I have used. Planhat also offers a competitive pricing that makes it easier for my team to evaluate as compared to other similar platforms. The support team of Planhat is also great which makes it the right fit for my organisation
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Scalability
It can lean a little heavily toward Customer Success, but the ability to customize many areas based on specific user or account characteristics allows you to make it work across many different roles. This also makes collaboration within the tool across teams possible. It a flexible tool if you have a skilled admin to help guide your process building.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • No metrics yet, but we have improved our at-risk customers by identifying risks earlier via our automated health score and with our Gainsight approved mitigation workflow, CSMs and leaders have better discipline with mitigation efforts and sharing at-risk customers across the org so other teams can step in and assist
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  • Planhat has, for the first time, given us a 360-degree view of all our customers and access to all the different types of communication we have with them across different departments and functions.
  • The ability to automate workflows, tasks, and assign playbooks to the various phases of our customer lifecycle has aligned all our departments.
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ScreenShots

Gainsight CS Screenshots

Screenshot of the Journey Orchestrator, used to build personalized, scalable customer journeys with lifecycle-based emails, playbooks, and triggered workflows, so no customer slips through the cracks.Screenshot of an AI Cheat Sheet. These offer AI-generated summaries, suggestions, and insights tailored to each account—so CSMs spend less time analyzing, and more time acting.Screenshot of AI Scorecards. These are used to analyze renewal and churn data to recommend new measures, refine weights, and create high-impact scorecards (or refine existing ones), to forecast with more precision and act with confidence.Screenshot of Success Plans, where users can create clear, outcome-based plans with customers—then track progress, assign owners, and show stakeholders exactly how value is being driven.Screenshot of Gainsight Home, which provides one place for customer success teams to prioritize, act, and prove impact—powered by real-time insights, AI signals, and workflows designed to drive retention and expansion.Screenshot of Customer 360. This interface brings together usage data, health scores, playbooks, and account details into one unified view.

Planhat Screenshots

Screenshot of Insights identify outliers in a portfolio to help users understand risks and opportunities.Screenshot of Displays clients through any filter to shows only the information that matters.