The digital workplace has come a long way in just a few short years. The technology that enables internal communications is packed with countless modern features.
This can be a fantastic thing — or a bad experience.
How can you decide on the right features for your organization? Wading through FAQ pages and user reviews sometimes leaves you with more questions than answers.
Here’s a comparison of Blink and Unily to help you see if Blink could be an excellent Unily alternative.
Blink vs. Unily — quick facts
At first glance, comparing Blink vs. Unily, you’ll notice they are frontline-focused employee experience apps.
They both offer a wide range of features tailored to deskless workers and integrate with many external applications.
But Blink has robust social intranet software and chat features that make it an excellent solution for companies that want an effective way to improve knowledge sharing and communication within their organization.
For the cost, Blink offers better value in its modern intranet solution, considering Unily’s pricing. But teams looking for multichannel communications and gamified features may prefer Unily.
How they’re similar
Frontline focus
Both apps cater their services to frontline workers with a mobile-first design.
Blink’s platform includes features designed for deskless work, enabling employees to manage documents, engage with their coworkers, and stay up-to-date on policies from their phones. Besides that, the micro-apps within Blink let you perform specialized functions like push schedules, update cafeteria menus, and more.
While Unily doesn’t offer micro-apps, the mobile-first design lets users mark content for offline reading, so they can access content even in the most remote locations. Overall, communication and task management are improved in the app.
Social newsfeed
Both platforms offer feature-rich and engaging real-time social news feeds to encourage communication across your organization.
Blink’s Feed is intuitive and user-friendly, encouraging all employees to share stories, insights, photos, and videos. It offers a personalized experience to each employee, so they actually want to open the app every day. You can also send out company updates, create mandatory reads for compliance information, and create polls for feedback.
Unily’s social channels are similar in function, offering a range of channels based on topics where employees can share media-rich posts. Users can share posts to external apps like Slack for further employee engagement. But users have complained about notifications, “The operation has been very good, however the notifications may have delays.”
Integrations
Both platforms integrate with numerous industry apps within their platforms.
Unily can act as a pane of glass to anything you need, like Microsoft 365 and Google workspace. The Feature Store also lets you onboard new pre-built capabilities into your software in minutes. The only caveat is that Unily’s integrations are not always compatible with older software versions, so Unily may not fulfill all your software needs.
Blink also natively integrates with thousands of applications, acting as a digital front door to all your workplace technology through a single sign-on. It can be your all-in-one solution for integrating with Microsoft 365 and Sharepoint to niche products, and even Zapier supported apps.
How they’re different
Broadcast emails
Unily offers templates and email automation to simplify email communication for your team. Using data, you can also dynamically target user groups and track their activity to make sure you’re sending the most effective messages.
Comparing Blink vs. Unily, Blink offers news feed, Pages, and Hub for internal communications. These features let you share updates, write long-form information, and store documents to aid your employees. But it lacks a native external communications channel.
Chat
For private communications and team collaboration, Blink provides a secure chat system when you directly compare Blink vs. Unily’s chat.Users can send documents, polls, GIFs, and more. They can chat in teams or groups. And leaders can send one-way chat messages for announcements. These features and file sharing make Blink a great addition to your collaboration tools.
Unily lacks a dedicated chat function within the app, so teams must integrate with third party chat apps or use an external collaboration software product. For organizations looking for a good chat solution, Blink could be a great Unily alternative.
Rewards and recognition
Unily gamifies the workplace by enabling users to give teammates rewards via a points system on their software. This lets you engage employees through competition and reward custom badges based on company goals.
In comparison, Blink does not include any gamification feature for interaction — other than standard likes and comments as in social networks.
Content management
Blink’s Hub is a powerful tool that stores your organization's documents, policies, and resources in one, searchable location. Users can quickly find the documents they seek in their workflow and reorganize as needed.
While Unily offers document storage, uploading and finding necessary information is not as intuitive and straightforward as with Blink. The software leans on external platforms to store much of your relevant documents. Some reviewers have said, “Sometimes it's hard to find information that you are interested in.”
Teams looking for a comprehensive content management solution for their knowledge base will find when comparing Blink vs. Unily that Blink makes an excellent Unily alternative.
Extranet
Unily offers a hub that acts as a network for users outside the organization to access business statistics, get customer service, and keep alumni engaged. This service aims to bring every possible internal and external communication under one roof.
In contrast, Blink focuses entirely on internal communication features, which could lighten your communication department’s workload if your organization does not want to maintain an extranet.
Customer service
According to reviews, Unily’s software is not immune to bugs — and they may happen somewhat frequently. Some users have expressed their frustration with the issues saying, “The software has had many glitches over the year, causing many wasted hours for employees…to recognise and fix.”
For a solution with fewer bugs and outstanding customer service, Blink is a great Unily alternative. If any issues come up, your dedicated customer success manager is there to help you right away. To voice your ideas about features and new offerings, you can vote on Blink’s product roadmap page.
Blink vs. Unily — pricing
Both Blink and Unily price their services based on the number of active users.
Blink:
- Essential: $3.40 per person, per month
- Business: Price on application
- Enterprise: Price on application
- Enterprise Plus: Price on application
Unily does not release its pricing structure, so you’ll have to request a quote to understand how much their service may cost your organization. However, some reviewers have mentioned, “pricing is high, which is the only thing I didn't like.”
If your organization is more cost-conscious, then Blink may be a good Unily alternative.
Blink vs. Unily — final thoughts
Blink and Unily are both multi-faceted employee experience platforms that work well for frontline workforces.
If you’re looking for the best value option with excellent customer service, a well-designed intranet platform, and subtle yet thoughtful enterprise social features, Blink may be the solution for you.
If you want to move to a higher price bracket and feel multichannel communications and gamified rewards would engage your team the best, Unily could serve you better.
If you’re unsure, book your demo today with Blink and try it completely free for 14 days.
Looking for more comparisons?
