Gainsight vs Planhat 

For Customer Success and post-sales professionals, managing accounts without a dedicated Customer Success Platform often means dealing with challenges like:

• Scattered data across multiple tools
  
  
• Relying on spreadsheets and manual tracking
  
  
• Missed renewal and expansion opportunities
  
  
• Limited visibility into customer health
  
  
• Difficulty showing impact to leadership
  
  

To solve these problems, many teams turn to platforms like Gainsight and Planhat. And now, more modern options like Velaris bring AI, automation, and simpler setup into the picture.

Let’s compare Gainsight and Planhat, while also showing how Velaris stacks up as an alternative.

Comparing Gainsight vs Planhat vs Velaris

*Exact pricing varies by vendor and contract structure.

Platform overviews

Gainsight

Gainsight is one of the most established names in Customer Success software. It provides a very robust feature set, including advanced reporting, playbooks, and customer health scoring. That said, Gainsight is also known for its complexity and cost — it typically requires a dedicated operations team to manage. For large enterprises with complex needs and big budgets, it’s a strong option. For smaller teams, the overhead can be a barrier.

Planhat

Planhat is a Customer Success platform that also incorporates CRM and professional services functions. Its strength lies in helping companies consolidate tools across different teams, reducing the need to manage multiple systems. While versatile, Planhat can sometimes feel more like a CRM than a dedicated CS tool, and that flexibility may add complexity for teams that only need core Customer Success functionality.

Velaris

Velaris represents a newer approach to Customer Success. It’s an AI-first platform designed to give teams deep visibility into accounts while automating repetitive tasks. With 70+ integrations, simple setup, and built-in predictive insights, Velaris focuses on efficiency and usability. It’s particularly well-suited for mid-market and enterprise teams that want the power of automation and analytics without the heavy admin burden that comes with legacy platforms.

Feature comparison

Data consolidation and visibility

• Gainsight: Strong integrations with CRMs and enterprise systems, plus advanced dashboards. However, syncing data in real time can be complex and often needs admin oversight.
  
  
• Planhat: Combines CRM, Customer Success, and Professional Services data in one place. Useful for teams that want a single tool across functions, though this breadth can make it feel more like a CRM.
  
  
• Velaris: Centralizes data from all your systems into a single view. Designed for real-time visibility with AI features such as account summaries, Slack summaries and meeting analysis, making it easier for teams to see the full customer picture. Supports 70+ integrations and deep customization

Customer health and analytics

• Gainsight: Known for its detailed analytics and reporting capabilities, including customizable health scoring. Powerful, but often requires dedicated resources to maintain.
  
  
• Planhat: Offers customizable health scores and reporting.
  
  
• Velaris: Includes AI-driven health scores and predictive analytics out of the box. Designed to reduce manual setup while helping teams identify risks and opportunities early. One advantage of Velaris is that it can analyze both quantitative and qualitative data. By analyzing customer comms in tickets, emails and messages, Velaris can report on recurring themes and patterns in them.

Digital Customer Success and automation

• Gainsight: Provides robust playbooks, journey orchestration, and digital communication tools. Strong but complex to configure.
  
  
• Planhat: Supports playbooks and workflows that can span across sales, CS, and professional services. Flexible, but setup can be complex.
  
  
• Velaris: Uses a visual automation builder and AI tools to automate routine tasks, and personalize outreach at scale. Built to reduce manual admin work while scaling CS impact.

Project and task management

• Gainsight: Includes task management features, but they are often secondary to its broader CS functionality. Can be overwhelming for simple project tracking.
  
  
• Planhat: Offers task management that ties into its CRM and CS functions, making it useful for multi-team coordination.
  
  
• Velaris: Provides built-in project and task management with collaborative dashboards. Designed to help teams coordinate renewals, onboarding, and success plans in one place.
  

Other considerations

Ease of use

• Gainsight: Feature-rich but complex. Most teams need a dedicated admin or ops team to manage day-to-day tasks.
  
  
• Planhat: Flexible but can feel complex, especially since it combines CRM and CS functions. Some teams may find it less intuitive.
  
  
• Velaris: Prioritizes simplicity with intuitive dashboards and automation. Designed to reduce admin overhead and get teams up and running quickly.
  

Scalability

• Gainsight: Built for enterprise scale, capable of handling complex data structures and large teams. Best suited for organizations with significant resources.
  
  
• Planhat: Scales across multiple functions (sales, CS, professional services), though the all-in-one approach can become heavy as processes grow.
  
  
• Velaris: Scales with mid-market and enterprise teams by combining AI, automation, and integrations, without requiring heavy customization.
  

Integrations

• Gainsight: Strong enterprise integrations with systems like Salesforce, but syncing and customization often need technical expertise.
  
  
• Planhat: Offers integrations with CRMs, support systems, and other tools, but can fall short for complex requirements.
  
  
• Velaris: Offers 70+ integrations with real-time sync, aiming to make setup easier and reduce silos.
  

Support

• Gainsight: Offers enterprise-grade support and community resources, but navigating them can take time.
  
  
• Planhat: Provides standard support and resources, as well as access to the Planhat community. Experiences can vary depending on configuration complexity.
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• ‍Velaris: Emphasizes a hands-on approach with personalized onboarding and responsive support tailored for CS teams. Dedicated CSM and Slack channel offered to all customers.

AI Innovation

• Both Gainsight and Planhat have rolled out AI products by means of acquisition. However, these products are not part of their core Customer Success offering and need to be purchased separately.
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• Velaris is an AI-first platform that has built AI into the foundations of their core offering. For Customer Success teams, this translates into AI that feels seamless, actionable, and accessible without needing to buy extra products or manage disconnected tools.

To see how Velaris’ AI can help your workflows, book a demo here.

Choosing the right platform

Who should pick Gainsight
Gainsight is the right fit for large enterprises with complex data structures and big Customer Success teams. If you can dedicate an operations function to managing the platform and have the budget for premium enterprise software, Gainsight’s robust feature set and analytics can deliver value.

Who should pick Planhat
Planhat is a good fit for companies that want to consolidate multiple functions — like CRM, Customer Success, and Professional Services — into one system. If you’re looking for a flexible tool that can stretch across departments and you have the resources to manage that complexity, Planhat may be the right choice.

Who should consider Velaris
Velaris is designed for mid-market and enterprise teams that want advanced capabilities without heavy admin overhead. If you need AI-driven insights, automation, and deep visibility but also want an intuitive, easy-to-manage platform, Velaris offers a strong alternative. You can dive deeper into Velaris’ functionality by booking a personalized demo here.

Conclusion

Gainsight, Planhat, and Velaris each bring different strengths to the table. Gainsight delivers enterprise-grade depth, Planhat enables consolidation across multiple functions, and Velaris provides an AI-driven alternative designed for visibility and efficiency.

The right choice depends on your team’s goals, data structure, and the resources you have to manage a platform. What works for one organization may not be the best fit for another.

If you’re looking for an AI-driven platform that balances power with ease of use, book a demo with Velaris.