If you’re leading Customer Success at a scaling SaaS company, you’ve probably outgrown your current setup. Health scores don’t reflect reality, reporting takes too long to pull together, and your team is stuck in reactive mode. Churn still happens without warning because no one has a reliable view of customer health. Expansion opportunities slip by unnoticed. And when leadership asks for forecasts or performance metrics, you’re left scrambling to pull together incomplete reports.
You know it’s time for a dedicated Customer Success Platform, but with so many vendors claiming to offer “full visibility” and “automation,” the real question is: which one actually delivers? This comparison is for CS leaders who need a platform that not only checks the feature boxes but solves real problems.
In this article, we have put together a holistic comparison of Churnzero against Gainsight. For teams that feel neither platform is the ideal fit, we have also included Velaris in the assessment.
In our evaluation, we have assessed the three platforms across the top 5 factors that are most important to consider when scaling Customer Success:
Visibility, health and analytics capabilities: Does the platform allow you to get a full view of all your accounts and understand their health?
Automation and digital CS capabilities: How well does the platform allow you to automate user journeys, eliminate manual data and put internal workflows on autopilot?
Project management and collaboration capabilities: How well does the platform allow you to collaborate with customers when managing mutual projects such as onboardings and implementations
Support and services: How responsive and helpful is the vendor when providing services
Pricing: How cost-effective and scaleable is the pricing model?
ChurnZero and Gainsight are both solid Customer Success Platforms. For Customer Success teams looking for an alternative that can provide them with high customer data visibility along with an easy-to-use interface and white-glove services, Velaris is a great alternative.
Let’s break down the key points of difference between ChurnZero and Gainsight so you can make an informed decision.
Both ChurnZero and Gainsight offer visibility and health management features that help CS teams organize, prioritize and proactively manage their customers. These features include:
→ Customer 360 view
→ Filters and segmentation tools
→ Lifecycle management
→ Customizable health scores
→ Reports on customer data and internal team performance
→ Comprehensive set of integrations
However, there are some disadvantages to each platform that buyers may want to consider:
ChurnZero
Lack of multi-layer account hierarchies: ChurnZero’s customer views are limited to accounts and users. Companies whose customer relationships exist on more than two tiers may not be able to have full visibility.
Integration challenges: Some customers report problems with integrations and custom data imports
Outdated interface: ChurnZero’s UI is complex and less intuitive than most other platforms in the market, making it difficult to navigate.
Gainsight
Salesforce dependency: Some of Gainsight’s features, such as their opportunity management pipeline, require customers to be using Salesforce as their CRM
Complex implementation: Bringing your customer data into Gainsight requires a long and intensive implementation period. Most companies also require a dedicated administrator post-implementation to maintain data hygiene and integrity.
Limited out-of-the-box functionality: While Gainsight’s capabilities are vast, unlocking deeper levels of visibility, such as three-layer account hierarchies, requires additional purchases and implementations.
How does Velaris compare to both ChurnZero and Gainsight?
Comprehensive customer profiles: Customer data consolidation, filters and segmentation, 360-degree profiles, and customizable health scores.Find every piece of customer data you need on a sleek and intuitive interface.
Full visibility across multiple account layers: Your customer data can be organized into contact, account AND organization level hierarchies in Velaris, right out of the box. Additional layers and relationships can also be created through custom objects. Track your customers progress across lifecycle stages and get a quick view of recent activities.
Unlimited integrations: Velaris will connect to any of your tools. If a custom integration is required, the Velaris team will handle the technical implementation for you.
Report customization requires support: During implementation, the Velaris team will set up reporting dashboards for you. However, if you need to customize these reports, you will need to reach out to the team, who will update and publish the new versions within a couple of hours.
2. Automation, productivity, and digital CS
ChurnZero and Gainsight both offer a suite of tools that help CS teams save time and scale their operations while retaining the human touch. These tools include:
However, there are some advantages and disadvantages to each platform that buyers may want to consider:
ChurnZero
Complete toolkit for automated user journeys: ChurnZero supports in-app messages, guided product walkthroughs, and end-to-end user journey automation.
Complex automation builder: Users report that building workflows can be time-consuming and difficult to configure without training
Gainsight
Customer forums tool: Gainsight offers a community-building tool that lets users create forums where customers can ask questions and share insights.
Difficult to use automation builder: Building automations in Gainsight is complex and requires extra assistance to implement.
How does Velaris compare to ChurnZero and Gainsight?
The most intuitive automation builder: Build automations on a Zapier-like drag-and-drop canvas. Automate entire customer journey flows, data entry tasks, and advocacy programs.
Built-in AI tools for Customer Success: Automatically summarize customer emails, monitor sentiment, and analyze support tickets. These features run in the background and keep your team informed.
Seamless email automation: Sync email communications with Gmail and Outlook to automate outreach and follow-ups directly from your preferred email client.
Lack of in-app communications builder: Velaris only offers email communications at the moment.
3. Project management and collaboration capabilities
Both ChurnZero and Gainsight offer project management features including task management, account planning tools, and playbooks to standardize processes.
Here are a few more things to consider:
ChurnZero
Collaborative customer workspace (Success Center): ChurnZero offers a shared workspace that allows you to send messages, upload documents and respond to customers.
No automatic KPI tracking in Success Plans: Success Plans require manual updates and do not automatically track progress against goals.
Lack of internal workflow templates/playbooks: While ChurnZero offers “Journeys” for user flow standardization, it lacks tools to document and manage internal Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
Gainsight
Lack of a customer portal: Gainsight does not offer a shared workspace to collaborate with customers.
Lack of automatic Success Plan KPI-tracking: Like ChurnZero, Gainsight's Success Plans do not automatically update progress metrics.
How does Velaris compare to ChurnZero and Gainsight?
Built-in task management, playbooks, and Success Plans: Standardize internal processes while managing customer-facing projects from a single workspace.
Automatic KPI-tracking: Monitor real-time progress of Success Plans using auto-updating KPIs to evaluate performance and outcomes.
Frictionless customer portal: Velaris offers a customer portal that lives inside your product. Customers can view tasks, messages, and updates through an in-app widget. No login required.
Lack of document sharing capabilities: Velaris does not yet offer the ability to share files and documents through the customer portal, although this feature is in development.
Each vendor carries a slightly different approach to support and services. Here’s a full breakdown of their offerings:
ChurnZero
Knowledge base: ChurnZero provides an expansive library of self-service training resources from help center articles, live data assistance, templates.
Long implementation period: ChurnZero typically takes 4-6 months to go live.
Lack of personalized consultations: ChurnZero leans towards self-service, meaning you may not receive support tailored to your needs.
Gainsight
Gainsight Help Center: Gainsight has expansive documentation on their products within their Help Center.
Longest and most complex implementation: Due to the complexity of the platform, Gainsight takes more time and resources to go live than any other Customer Success Platform. Implementations may take an average of 4-8 months to complete.
Lack of personalized consultations: Gainsight’s Customer Success team may not offer in-depth guidance on how to make the most of the platform.
How does Velaris compare to ChurnZero and Gainsight?
Effortless implementations: With an average go-live time of 4 weeks, Velaris’ implementation periods are at the top of the industry. You will have a dedicated team that handles the heavy lifting on the technical side, even if custom integrations are required.
Personalized onboarding and consultation: The Velaris team will consult with you to understand your specific needs and build out the early playbooks and automations for you, giving you a solid foundation to start on.
Knowledgebase: Access all our help articles within a searchable knowledge base.
Responsive feature development: Velaris is highly responsive to new feature requests and suggestions for feature improvements.
5. Pricing
ChurnZero
ChurnZero uses a user-based pricing model with additional charges based on contact volume and automation usage. According to Vendr, ChurnZero’s pricing typically ranges from $19,700 to $87,500.
Gainsight
Gainsight offers two main pricing tiers:
Gainsight Essentials Includes access to core Customer Success tools such as Customer 360, automation, Playbooks, Success Plans, dashboards, surveys, and health scores. This plan supports up to 10 users and 100 customers per user.
Gainsight Enterprise Adds advanced capabilities like forecasting, organizational mapping, and sponsor tracking. This plan starts at a minimum of 20 users and 200 customers per user, making it more suitable for large, enterprise-level teams.
Velaris
Velaris provides a full-featured platform for a flat base fee, which includes 5 users. As your team expands, additional CSM licenses can be added at a consistent rate. This makes Velaris a scalable option for fast-growing teams that need predictable pricing without sacrificing access to advanced features
Final recommendations
ChurnZero and Gainsight are both solid options for scaling Customer Success operations. Each platform offers core features like customer health tracking, automation, project management, and reporting. However, both are primarily geared toward enterprise teams, which may limit their accessibility for midmarket or fast-growing startups due to higher cost and implementation complexity.
Gainsight is best suited for large teams with extensive resources. It offers deep functionality but requires significant time, technical expertise, and administrative effort to implement and maintain. The lack of a built-in customer portal also makes it less ideal for teams that need to collaborate directly with customers.
ChurnZero provides useful tools for journey automation and scaling operations, but its interface is more dated and harder to navigate. Its rigid account hierarchy may pose challenges for businesses with more complex customer structures or layered relationships.
For teams exploring alternatives, Velaris is a strong contender. It delivers all the essential capabilities, like health scoring, automation, reporting, playbooks, and project collaboration, on a platform that is both easy to use and quick to implement. Velaris also stands out for its white-glove onboarding, customizable features, and responsive support, making it a good fit for teams that want flexibility, control, and faster time to value.
Why choose Velaris over Churnzero and Gainsight?
4.7
Best-in-class service
You’ll have a dedicated Velaris CSM who will scope your needs and create custom recommendations for you on how to best use our platform.
Easy to use, yet powerful
Velaris offers a powerful and flexible Customer Success Platform that helps you scale your CS operations at twice the speed and with half the effort.
Go live in 4 weeks
We know you can’t afford to spend half a year implementing a new platform, especially if you’re growing fast. We have an average time-to-live of 4 weeks, plus we handle all the heavy lifting for you.
Integrate with anything
For anything that doesn’t integrate natively, we will build a custom integration for you. Our team of engineers will handle it all - with minimal work on your end.
Want to see Velaris in action?
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