Cloud IQ — Local services in London

It’s a shame to leave this review, but we had a bad experience with CloudIQ and we feel it’s important to leave some honest commentary. If you are considering working with them, our experience should alert you to the likely pitfalls.

One month isn’t enough time for a proper trial (we only saw two significant conversions in that time) so we requested a three month extension to gather more data. We agreed to pay £300 a month in the extension period – technically a one year contract with a break clause at three months. At the three month mark we analysed the data and found a negative ROI (when properly calculated – more on that in a bit). We terminated the contract at that point, but CloudIQ insisted we should have served notice two weeks before the end of the trial, not that this makes sense as we’d discussed getting three months of extra data, not 2.5 months. They belatedly sent me their trial T&Cs that said not to worry as they’ll be in touch before the trial ends, but they just hadn’t done this. When I pointed this out, they said that the T&Cs they sent were an old version and not current (so why not send me the current T&Cs?). Now they insist we continue to pay for a service that we do not want and are not using, because we didn’t terminate the trial early. This is pretty shady practice – if they say ‘do not worry’ you should take that with a big pinch of salt. Their shifting justifications are dodging the fact that their product just doesn’t work, and that we didn’t end the trial earlier than we’d discussed. CloudIQ’s ROI claims aren’t supported by the data, and they are propped up with an overly generous measurement system.

When calculating an ROI, CloudIQ uses an attribution model that greatly flatters their performance, so watch out for that. It allocates 100% of the revenue generated to their overlay, which is rarely realistic. Long conversion times and multiple touch points before a sale should greatly dilute their influence, but there’s no allowance for that. We could also see previous customers being counted as new, which means they’d almost certainly have converted without CloudIQ’s help. With our knowledge of margins (cost of goods, etc), their overlays just didn’t show us a positive ROI. If you take CloudIQ’s numbers at face value, you may not realise the costs could be higher than the benefits.

On another point, the emails generated aren’t very customisable. In fact, our existing abandoned cart emails look much better, with our own layout and branding. So if we knew the customer’s email, it didn’t make sense to use CloudIQ’s system when already use a better platform for this. If you use CloudIQ in conjunction with any other overlay providers (e.g. newsletter signups), then the user experience is pretty bad with overlays fighting for presence over your website. This UX disaster has its own costs, as it will drive customers away, reducing time on site and number of pages viewed. Every extra service adds technical complexity too, so you should think carefully about chasing marginal revenue with a solution that has a range of costs associated with it.

Most critically, we feel aggrieved that CloudIQ has tried to keep us in an extended contract that runs beyond the trial period we had discussed. The contractual T&Cs contradict the discussions we had had about the trial extension. If we found their product didn’t work, how desperate must CloudIQ be to force a few extra payments from us? If you’re thinking of working with them, be wary of sales people who make...

I was a previous customer but found their product to have no real value... The price is astronomical, and it is not difficult to just code my own email reminder system for abandoned carts. so i didn't renew the subscription.

now they won't stop calling my mobile almost every day! They even tried phoning me with a different number after i started to automatically reject...

Two fraudsters used the company as a refence for employment to obtain a rental contract by deception. When the company were asked to confirm if the fraudsters worked for them, they declined to assist. Cloud IQ should help victims and not protect criminals even if they are staff. Fraudsters are criminals and hurt vulnerable people...