Are you on the hunt for the perfect communications software for your organization and having a difficult time choosing between Blink and Dynamic Signal?
Read on to find their key similarities and differences and make the decision that's best for your workforce.
Dynamic Signal vs. Blink — quick facts
Both Dynamic Signal and Blink are designed as mobile-first employee communication platforms with web and desktop apps.
One major difference between the two apps is that Dynamic Signal also aims to transform employees into employee advocates across external platforms. Blink is entirely focused on the employee, while Dynamic Signal focuses more on company PR and image.
Dynamic Signal was founded in 2010 in San Bruno, CA, and Blink was launched in 2019 in London, UK. Blink comes with modern features and UI that the Dynamic Signal app doesn’t. For example, Blink offers features like micro-apps, payslips, staff rosters, and customizable branding.
In contrast, Dynamic Signal relies on other, sometimes older, methods to engage their frontline workers, like gamification techniques, external social sharing, and newsletters.
Dynamic Signal’s approach is likely to work better with desk-based workers and organizations that want to use user-generated content, while Blink is more successful among frontline workers.
Dynamic Signal vs. Blink: How they’re similar
When choosing between Blink and Dynamic Signal, note there are some similarities between the two apps:
Mobile
Blink is a great option if you want to encourage more engagement and communication across all levels of your organization. It suits companies with many frontline and mobile workers. As a newer company, Blink comes with modern features, and the user experience feels like any other consumer social app, making it intuitive and fun to use.
Dynamic Signal also offers a mobile app that makes it possible for deskless employees to stay up to date and connected wherever they are.
Integrations
Dynamic provides two-way integrations with third-party tools like Teams, Yammer, Slack, and more, along with an API to create custom integrations.
Blink is also highly customizable. It offers personalized branding, integrations, and micro-apps — for payslips, lunch menus, or anything else your organization might need.
Analytics
A strength of Dynamic Signal lies in the robust analytics and reporting tools that track member views, shares, post reach, and more. Users frequently name the “extensive reporting” as a major plus of the platform. However, users say “reports require external spreadsheet software as native report management is poor.”
Blink also offers extensive analytics that encompasses active users, reach, impressions, likes, comments and link clicks, with visualizations right in the app. The platform enables you to filter data by timeframe or team, so you can track the effectiveness of specific campaigns.
How they’re different
There also some key differences between Blink and Dynamic Signal:
Newsletters
If you are looking for multiple communication methods, Dynamic Signal could be a good choice. Along with feed posts, users can create news posts, newsletters, automatic digests, and send push notifications for important announcements. Plus, the audience targeting features let publishers deliver their content to the right people.
Though Blink offers Pages for static blog content, there is no newsletter feature available from the beginning. In terms of variety of content for Blink, users say the platform “would benefit from more video options.”
Content approval
Blink’s focus on user-generated content means that there are less barriers for your employees to post and share content on the news feeds. This leads to a high volume of content, which can sometimes be overwhelming. Users say “the feed may need better filtering options.”
For companies that want to consistently produce content held to higher standards of uniformity, admins can utilize the planned approval workflows.
Gamification
Dynamic Signal offers badges and leaderboards to encourage frontline workers to interact and complete configurable goals.
Blink does not have any gamification features other than the social feed’s likes and comments.
Omni-directional communication
A strength for Blink is its thoughtful focus on encouraging communication from every level of the organization. The feed page is easy to participate in for any worker, and the people directory opens lines of communication across the organization.
Dynamic Signal is more of a top-down communications platform, which means there are fewer opportunities for workers at all levels to engage with others. While there is a news feed, moderators review employees’ submissions, which could discourage true engagement.
Chat feature
Blink offers a chat feature for employees to communicate, send documents, and kick of video calls.
In Dynamic Signal there are no fully-fledged chat features, so it would not replace shadow IT like Whatsapp. Similarly, there are no do not disturb or away features found in other chat software to let workers step away from work during breaks.
Intranet
Blink’s Hub serves as a powerful reference where important documents, files, and policies are easy to organize and find through search.
In contrast, Search experience to find news and articles tends to be poor in Dynamic Signal. Users must rely mainly on manual navigation, which means it would not make an ideal intranet replacement.
Setup time
With excellent customer support and a great UI, Blink is one of the easiest employee communication apps to onboard.
Users won’t require any technical training to engage with the tool. And on the backend, the fully managed tool lightens the load on the IT team.
However, as a newer communication and engagement platform, many features are still being rolled out and beta-tested, which means elements are constantly changing.
While the development team is agile and fast-moving, occasional bugs do occur.
With Dynamic Signal, learning the platform can take some time as many features are quite technical. While this means it can be powerful, it isn’t a set-up-and-go tool.
Both admins and users will require training to take full advantage of the features, however, users often say they receive “good support from the customer success team” which can help make the onboarding process go more smoothly.
Dynamic Signal vs. Blink: pricing
Blink offers four levels of paid service based on company size:
Blink levels:
- Essential: $3.40 per person, per month
- Business: Price on application
- Enterprise: Price on application
- Enterprise Plus: Price on application
Dynamic Signal has recently been integrated into Firstup’s line of products. The company customizes your plan with features, so you’ll have to grab a custom quote for more information.
Dynamic Signal vs. Blink: final thoughts
Both Blink and Dynamic Signal are excellent choices for an internal employee communications solution.
If you want a hands-off and engaging platform with great value, go with Blink.
If your team already has an internal communication plan with specific messaging requirements, and has the resources to commit to a higher-effort platform, go with Dynamic Signal.
If you’re not sure, try out Blink’s powerful frontline employee communications solution for free.
