This review has been sitting on my computer since 2021 and was updated in 2022 when Echobox tried to send me to collections. However, after sharing my experience with the collection representative, I never heard from them again. Have they changed? More on that and why I decided that I should publish this review.
Echobox offered to increase my traffic by 22% or more for $2100 a month. Had they delivered results, I would have been a fool not to pay.
A Sales Rep Promises Echobox Will Deliver Results
Echobox emailed me with a simple yet significant promise: to automate the scheduling of our content. Their system was supposed to pick out trending evergreen content and pull new content freshly published off our site, creating lead-ins and picking the best time to send it all out. It was supposed to be a system that learns and adapts to audience engagement trends, making intelligent decisions on when to post both evergreen and new content.
Echobox worked with some familiar brands.
Before reaching out to Echobox, I had noticed their collaboration with Newsweek, a brand I recognized. I had seen a few of their posts in my feed as suggested (which is not advertised) content, getting good results. This association, on top of being a suggested post, caught my attention. Suggested posts are shared by Facebook because they want to expose you to new content to keep on scrolling. Which is free brand exposure. A large part of how I built a large audience. Seeing Echobox as the service that posted on behalf of Newsweek’s Facebook posts made me think more seriously about their capabilities. It was not out of the realm that Echobox could figure out a method to Facebook’s madness.
I should have scrolled through Newsweek’s Facebook feed.
It looked like a solid endorsement of their service, suggesting they were equipped to handle the content needs of a significant media entity. They should be able to handle a smaller company like mine. This background laid the groundwork of trust and set high expectations for what Echobox could bring to my own content strategy.
They had promised I would hit the ground running.
The sales rep promised to get up to 22% or higher after 3 months as their systems learned what worked with us. The fact that this would take months reinforced the idea that this could be a valid solution. Had I been promised instant results, I would not have signed up. Despite there being a learning curve, I was promised Echobox would be ready to take over scheduling from Agora (more on them another day). In his own words, he said I would hit the ground running. I looked forward to spending less time calculating schedules. Due to the nature of our business, we would need to see the content to correct any problems before it went out. This was something I was promised they could do.
In order to get a $2100 per month fee, they wanted to lock me into a year-long contract. But I was no fool; I insisted on a 30-day cancelation fee should we lose traffic. They wanted to charge me $2500, but there were some communication issues on their end. So they gave me the 30-day period for $2100. Which seemed like a good sign that they would make up for their failures.
Initial Experience and Integration Struggles with Echobox:
The setup process began with an expected week-long integration of our Facebook and Google Analytics data. However, this process seemed prematurely completed, as Echobox handed over the system to me in less time than they had expected it to take. It was evident that the data processing was incomplete. But they were eager to get me going, clearly to get me to send out monthly payments.
Right from the start, my journey with Echobox was far from smooth. Expecting a seamless kickoff, I encountered a seemingly outdated system. The interface was lackluster. But I was willing to overlook that. Cosmetics are not the most important part of a service.
Adding to these challenges was the integration of our past content. I had provided Echobox with 5 years of past post links, which I was told would take a day to process. Yet, weeks into using the system, I discovered from Jamey, Echobox’s U.S. representative, that it was still struggling to process our historical Facebook data and the backlog of posts. They should have waited until their system processed our data before I started using it.
This would be reflective of how effective support was. Only the Sales and Billing departments were willing to respond quickly to me.
Echobox said we would hit the ground running, the first promise broken
Aug 11, 2021 – Onboarding Orientation
The most glaring issue arose on the first day when I realized that the content suggestions weren’t functioning. I witnessed this in a video conference with the onboarding expert; it became apparent that the system wasn’t loading suggestions properly. Although the expert acknowledged this issue and promised to reach out for support, there was no evidence of any action being taken. This lack of follow-through was disappointing and indicative of the gap between Echobox’s promised service and its actual delivery.”
Problems with Echobox
From the outset, the inadequacies of Echobox’s system were evident. After a lackluster onboarding experience and a 24-hour wait with no follow-up, I reached out to their support team. The interaction was less than satisfactory. It took four days just to get a basic acknowledgment of my concerns, and even then, the support team seemed to miss the crux of the issues. There was always a long delay between responses. Despite providing clear evidence of the problems, their initial response was to suggest rudimentary fixes like changing browsers or clearing the cache, indicating a failure to grasp the underlying system flaws.
Maybe… if the onboarding expert actually contacted support, I would not waste my time pretending web browsers were the problem. Instead, it made me look like the problem.
They had promised I would hit the ground running.
The issues intensified when it came to Echobox’s handling of content. The system was indiscriminate, failing to distinguish between new, evergreen content and low-performing content. It was all evergreen as far as the system was concerned. Never mind it had never picked out Evergreen content. New articles requiring timely publication were often skipped, disrupting the strategic flow of our content deployment. This treatment resulted in a haphazard scheduling pattern, where even poorly performing articles were repeatedly and inappropriately scheduled within the same day, sometimes within minutes of each other, contrary to best practices on platforms like Facebook.
This flaw in content categorization was compounded by Echobox’s sluggish suggestion system. We had to use that system to avoid seeing duds go out and new content being queued. So much for automation. It failed at picking evergreen content. Generating a day’s worth of content suggestions took over 32 hours, a clear misalignment with the 24-hour daily cycle. This slow pace and the system’s failure to properly separate new content from evergreen posts forced us to revert to manual intervention. We found ourselves filling the gaps and correcting the system’s missteps.
Moreover, Echobox consistently missed scheduling content during peak engagement times. The system left glaring ‘Share Gaps’ during key hours, despite our data indicating these times as crucial for audience interaction. This oversight in scheduling meant missed opportunities for optimal engagement, further diminishing the efficacy of our social media strategy.
Issues with Jamey’s Response and Support:
As my frustrations with Echobox’s system mounted, Jamey, Echobox’s U.S. representative, stepped in. However, his involvement did little to alleviate the issues; I only mention him by his first name because things got worse under his represnstation. Instead of directly addressing the system’s failures, Jamey responded with a barrage of generic FAQ responses that sidestepped the core problems. He wanted to do conference calls that could be addressed by email. I humored one, I literally read off what I wrote to him in the email. Based on his reaction, he did not read what I sent.
I was seeking concrete solutions to the content suggestion failures and the system’s inability to manage share gaps effectively. Jamey kept suggested a conference call to discuss these issues, insisting I reiterate concerns I had already detailed via email. This redundancy felt like a waste of time, especially when manual content selection was offered as a workaround – a solution that completely missed the point of using an automated service like Echobox.
In a subsequent conversation, Jamey claimed that the suggestion feature would now provide hourly updates, a significant change that was supposed to occur from September 3rd. However, when this update failed to materialize as promised, my follow-up communications were met with silence. Even after a week of no improvement, reaching out to support only resulted in being redirected back to Jamey with no resolution.
Jamey’s approach was inconsistent at best. Initially, he implied that the system could perform hourly updates, but later, he contradicted himself, suggesting these were just ‘tweaks’ that could be made, deviating from what was initially sold to us by Echobox’s sales team. Furthermore, he mentioned that the suggestion feature wasn’t meant for long-term use, a crucial piece of information that was never communicated during the sales conference. Then, it became a custom feature they could do for me.
Dealing with Jamey was increasingly frustrating. It felt as if I was being used as a test subject for system features that were still in development rather than a client receiving a fully functional service. This experience left me with little faith in both the system and the support provided by Echobox.
Reevaluation and Decision to Withdraw from Echobox:
Despite the mounting issues, I initially considered giving Echobox another chance at a later date, hoping that improvements would be made. However, this consideration was short-lived.
As my thirty-day trial period neared its end, I decided to reevaluate Echobox’s performance with Newsweek’s Facebook page – a key influencer in my original decision to try Echobox. This time, I went directly to their page, not relying on something hitting my feed. My findings were disheartening. The page was littered with posts that had virtually no engagement, a stark contrast to my smallest site, which, despite having 10% of the audience size, consistently saw better interaction on posts.
A particular instance that stood out was a Newsweek video post with only one comment after 24 hours, emblematic of the engagement issues I observed. This lack of interaction, especially on a platform where engagement is crucial, led me to reassess the value of Echobox’s service for my needs.
It wasn’t just the lack of engagement that was concerning. Many posts appeared to be engagement bait, yet they still failed to draw any significant audience response. This included a range of topics from politics to celebrities – content typically known to spark conversation.
The final straw came when Echobox’s representatives, in response to my doubts after showing them what I had found. They referred me to a ‘Case Study’ from 2020, claiming a doubling of Newsweek’s traffic. However, this was outdated and irrelevant because it was nearing the end of 2021. Facebook’s algorithms and audience behaviors evolve rapidly; what worked in 2020 might not hold the same effectiveness in 2021. Never mind it can change month by month. They did not try to explain why Newsweek had so little engagement.
Given these observations, I decided to retract my offer to revisit Echobox’s service in the future. The evidence before me made it clear that Echobox was not delivering on its promises.
Cancellation Challenges and Legal Aftermath:
My decision to cancel Echobox’s service was met with an unexpected obstacle. They informed me that to avoid a hefty bill of $25200.00, I needed to have used their system for at least 60% of the month. This requirement starkly contrasted the initial promise of a 22% monthly increase in traffic, which, had it materialized, would have justified the cost. It should come as no surprise I insisted I was not paying, and I demanded they remove my data from their system. To continue using their service to meet the cancellation criteria would have been more costly in terms of reputation and engagement. The Echobox system had already cost me more than what they wanted me to pay that month.
So In Summary
It was not ready to take over for Agora.
The system had not completed analyzing our data weeks after it was promised.
Failures that were likely caused by not fully processing our data:
- It did not pick evergreen/top-performing content,
- It picked poor-performing content
- It was scheduling the same content on the same day over a very short period of time. In one case, it tried to schedule the same post 3 times in one day.
- It never picked top-performing past content.
- We had to go back to Agora.
Failures that can not be explained away by not completing the processing of our data,
- Skipped peak times
- It would sometimes schedule content 7 minutes apart.
- It would sometimes skip new content.
- It would treat new content that had gone out a few days earlier as top-performing content, even if it had performed poorly.
- It could not make lead-ins
- Suggestions took 36 hours to generate
- We had to manually handpick content outside of Echobox’s system.
On top of that, the support was slow at a vital point. At the start, it took 4 days to get a response, and that did nothing. Later, I would have issues not addressed. In one case, after a week of waiting, I filed another request only to be told to contact the person from whom I was waiting for a response.
Worst, they would not look into issues. Falling back on possible browser issues or no one else was facing the same problem. Despite the orientation expert seeing this, I have to wonder what would have happened if she actually did contact support. Things promised to us by a sales rep later proved untrue, but even then, support was inconsistent about these features.
Only a fool pays for something that would destroy their income source.
Echobox sent a collection company after me.
The situation escalated when Echobox sent a bill collector after me in 2022. They wanted me to pay for the full year and had no knowledge of the cancelation period I had requested prior to signing up. In response, I shared my entire experience, outlining the myriad issues and the system’s failure to deliver. I share the emails that were sent. Surprisingly, after presenting my case, there was no further contact from anyone or any acknowledgment from Echobox regarding my request to remove my data. This lack of response and resolution left a lingering concern about handling my data and the company’s overall professionalism.
Why I Decided to Publish My Echobox Review Now
For years, this review of Echobox has been a draft on my computer. It was initially written in 2021 and updated in 2022. When Echobox tried to send me to collections, I wrote up this experience and sent it to them. This resulted in silence; instead of letting me know, they deleted my data. No apologies or acknowledgment of my request for deletion, which would lead to closure.
I should have published this back then. It lay dormant until now. The reason for my silence was not satisfaction or resolution; rather, I had lost that spark of taking a deep dive I once had.
However, as I transition to a new computer, I found this unpublished experience. Never mind, I am in the middle of a Copytrack.com deep dive. A copyright enforcement company sent me two different complaints on the same image, which their client, wenn.com, does not own. Copytrack reawakened that spark I had with Hosting-Reviews-Exposed.com. More on that in a later post.
I’m reminded of the importance of sharing my experience. If Echobox is a serious business, they will work on these failures; if not, prospective customers can consider my experience before signing up. Perhaps my experiences can help mitigate the damages if things have not improved. Regardless if someone’s experiences reinforce my opinion, they should share it.
Again, this is from 2021; maybe, just maybe, they got better. I may later take a deep dive into their reviews. To see if they did improve.
Screenshots will be added later.
Before I decided to finish this experience, I decided to check and see if Newsweek had any improvement on their social media. If you look at it, you will know why I decided to publish this post. Newsweek, if you read this, I have so many suggestions for improvement.