Everbridge Mass Notification Reviews

This solution is primarily used as one of our emergency notification methods, and we use many of the solution's features. If there's a significant emergency on campus, we can alert our community, faculty, staff, and students via text, voice calls, and email. We also have Everbridge tied into our social media so we can push alerts there, and we use the RSS feature to push notifications to our primary website. In one scenario, we had a significant emergency response from police and fire on the campus, and we used the solution to send out messages multiple times throughout the day. Initially, asking people to avoid the area, but also countering rumors and providing updates. In another instance, we had to close a building earlier than planned due to an unexpected incident. Most recently, we've been using what we call timely notifications via email only; it's a requirement under federal law for universities to inform individuals when crimes occur on or around campus. Unless we need people to take immediate action, such as seeking a safe location, we can send alert emails using a template. We have specific users with limited access and can only send out alerts via email using the created template, which is a good feature.   

We have two main campuses in Chicago that are relatively close to one another, with our staff spread across both campuses. We typically use the web version of the solution, but a few of us have the ManageBridge app that allows us to use it from our phones, although that isn't our preferred method. Approximately 20 staff split across two departments with different roles have varying levels of access to the platform. I'm in Public Safety which is in charge of security on campus, and we have several users who can send alerts. However, we typically rely on our Marketing and Communications department, responsible for launching emergency notifications. We work closely with them, and both departments ensure the facts are correct and the language is tweaked before notifications go out. Fortunately, we've had a little time in most emergencies to get the language right before sending the message. 

Everbridge contributes to our mission; it's conducive to keeping everybody safe and informed about emergencies on campus. It's a great tool, and while we can get information out inside our buildings using speaker systems, fire alarms, etc., for those outside of buildings or on their way to campus, we need to make sure they know to stay away or that they are informed, depending on the situation. The university has a substantial commuter population, so our communication must extend beyond just the buildings. The solution has been essential to keeping that communication running during emergencies.  

Everbridge Mass Notification increased our productivity; it's much more efficient than sending out emails as we used to. Additionally, the product we used previously took more time and wasn't as reliable as Everbridge. We can use the solution from any browser and even launch it from our phones if we have to. This flexibility saves time.

We like the simulation mode, a relatively new feature for Everbridge. It allows our users to practice sending out alerts, which is especially useful for new users transitioning to the platform, and was only possible after this feature was added. If we can't practice regularly, we'll be more nervous in an emergency which increases the chance of mistakes, and we need to be ready to send out those alerts.

The solution positively affected our mass notification capabilities; we customized our notifications using templates to look a little nicer when sending emails. We can also customize user permissions using the roles feature, which is very nice. 

When using the simulation mode, the capacity to send an email or text message to a small test group would be good, so those practicing with the solution can see what notifications look like on the user end.

We've been using the solution for less than a year.

The solution is stable; we haven't had any issues so far. It's always been up when we've logged in, the texts go out rapidly, voice calls take a little longer, but that's the nature of the beast, and emails go through pretty quickly too. In addition to our actual uses, we carried out testing where we sent notifications to everyone, which worked very well.

The scalability is excellent; Everbridge works for a small number of users and many users.

The customer support is excellent, and we're delighted by how quickly they respond. We recently had a minor issue, and they got back to us within an hour or two. They didn't have an answer at first but contacted me to say they were looking into it, which was really good to hear.

We previously used a solution called Rave Alert. It worked and was fine functionally speaking; we could send text, emails, and so on, but it wasn't as flexible as Everbridge. Everbridge allows us to customize user roles for who can send what. It also came at a much more competitive price point when we reviewed all the vendors, so we switched due to the usability, flexibility, and price. 

We also had our internal email tool separate from Rave and moved away from it because it had issues with different browsers.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward, and the Everbridge representative we worked with assisted us greatly. They helped us with the setup, migration, and ensuring we got our data into the platform so we could contact our users. As with all technical projects, we ran into a few issues, but we managed to troubleshoot them and get them sorted out.

Three to four IT staff members and I were involved in the deployment, though we weren't all working full-time on it. One team member did a lot of the work and prepared our data; the others were available to help troubleshoot issues where required and oversee the process.

We set up a daily feed to EverBridge checking the information, including current students, faculty and staff, their mobile numbers, email addresses, etc., is correct. This process is automated and takes place every day at noon, and I get confirmation that it worked, so it is not maintenance per se. If there were an issue with the data, then that is something we would have to look into.

We implemented the solution using our in-house IT team, who are excellent.

It's challenging to quantify an ROI, especially in an area like emergency notification, but we're happy with the product, and the price is good for us.

The product's pricing is the most competitive of the three solutions we evaluated. One feature we have yet to use is the keyword opt-in functionality, which Everbridge included in the price. In contrast, Rave Alert wanted to charge us extra.

The opt-in feature is helpful for large-scale events such as graduations, where users who aren't typically included can opt into our notification system, as they'll be on campus for a day or more.

We had been using Rave for many years, and it was functioning, but we came to a point where we were long overdue for a good market analysis of the other products out there. We evaluated our current solution at the time, Rave Alert, Everbridge Mass Notification, and OnSolve CodeRED.

We didn't like the OnSolve platform's usability during our demo, so we quickly took them out of the running. We enjoyed the flexibility Everbridge offers and were surprised to find out they came in slightly cheaper than Rave, despite us being customers of the latter for many years.

I rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Before using Everbridge, our challenge was that our previous solution wasn't as flexible, and we experienced some issues with the platform. We also had problems with an internal email tool we were using, which was unreliable and had issues depending on the browser used. 

My advice to others evaluating the solution is to consider who will send messages and what type. There's an incident platform and a notification platform in Everbridge; they're the same tool, but the incident platform allows greater flexibility when providing different user access levels. Post-deployment, we had to look into how incidents work because we wanted one group of users to be able to send emails only, for example. The incident platform works well in enabling us to do that.

We plan to leverage the keyword opt-in feature for our next graduation and potentially similar events.  

We're a law firm with 200 employees; 90% of the firm is based in New York, and we have seven other offices, five of which are out of the country. 

We initially started using the solution for business continuity purposes, but since the pandemic, we switched to using it for IS outages. When we had hurricane Sandy, we used the platform to send blast notifications to everybody in the organization, informing them the firm would be closed. Now we use it more for IS purposes; we use Microsoft Outlook, and if there is an outage, we can fall back on Everbridge to send a message that our systems are down and report back as soon as they are up again.   

We can now contact our staff outside our network, which is essential when we have system or network outages. Everbridge is the only way we can send a message to everyone, primarily via text to their cell phones. 

The solution helps contribute to our organization's business goals and mission because we operate 24/7 and always look out for our employees. 

The platform has increased our productivity since we started using it for IS outages; if we experience an issue with Outlook, we can still contact all our staff by phone. That alone saved a couple of hundred phone calls to our help desk from employees reporting problems on Outlook. 

The ability to text all our staff and categorize by specific fields, such as department or position, are valuable features. We can gear messages to specific people or target a particular office, such as the New York office or Washington DC office only. We can target specific departments, such as corporate or litigation, which is very useful for us. Once, we had an active shooter near our Washington, DC, office, and we could send out a message to all the staff in that office. On another occasion, there was a Long Island railroad strike so we could contact all our staff who lived there. 

Everbridge can send out conference bridge meetings, but as nobody uses conference calls anymore, we would love to be able to generate Zoom links through the solution. That would be extremely helpful.

We've been using Everbridge Mass Notification for around six years. 

The solution is very stable. 

Regarding scalability, it's precisely what we need, and I rate the solution 10 out of 10 here.

We reached out to our account rep a few times, but we never had a problem we had to escalate to customer support. The support we have received, however, is excellent. 

Positive

The pain point we experienced before using Everbridge was that our previous mass notification system was slower and more challenging. In a high-stress situation, we need to be able to get messages out to our staff quickly and efficiently. 

Before Everbridge, we used a system called Send Word Now, but it's a more clunky application; there are around four different navigation pages to send one message. Everbridge makes the process straightforward because we can configure a message on one page and send it quickly. This gives us confidence because we know that we can act relatively quickly in an emergency, even if we are very stressed. 

Before we used Send Word Now, we relied on email. We used Send Word Now for several years, and our position required us to assess the market periodically. The Everbridge name came up in a business community tabletop exercise, and other businesses and government agencies were starting to use it. This piqued our interest, and we contacted a salesperson to investigate further.

I can't speak to the complexity of the deployment as I'm not in the IT department, and I was minimally involved.

Regarding maintenance, I maintain the daily feed which comes into Everbridge. Sometimes we get error messages because the feed has incorrect information, which is helpful as they allow me to fix the mistakes. For example, suppose an employee puts their phone number into the internal firm directory but forgets to include the area code. In that case, I'll get an Everbridge error message informing me.

We see an ROI, though the solution doesn't generate capital or involve production. It's available 24/7, and we can use it whenever necessary. Our foreign offices, including our Hong Kong office, also use the product, which is helpful.

We recently renewed our contract, and the pricing is on the higher end. We have a yearly license with a three-year commitment, which seems standard, so we have no issues with that.

We evaluated all the big names in the marketplace. 

I rate the solution 10 out of 10. 

We use Everbridge for emergency notifications within our organization and send out calls for staffing. The mass notification suite is the only Everbridge solution we're using now. I had a call with Everbridge about six months ago to look at some of their ancillary solutions. We haven't delved into it too much, but I generally prefer consolidating on a platform and going with one vendor if I can.

My company operates two hospital systems in Oklahoma. We have a physician-owned hospital, two primary acute care facilities, and 70 ambulatory centers around the state. 

About 30 people have direct access to Everbridge, but our user base is around 3,000. Several departments regularly use the platform. The registration staff is responsible for any critical event notifications. The nursing department uses it for staffing notifications, and the IT team sends critical communications regarding outages and upcoming maintenance activities.

Everbridge has several benefits. We can put out calls for staffing needs daily. These messages can be targeted to campuses, job roles, and specific floors that are short-staffed. This feature has been highly effective. We also have mass notifications that we send out for other reasons, like system outages, safety threats, etc. I can generate those notifications in seconds. Spinning up alerts, sending them, and tracking their utilization is effortless.

Everbridge helped us get in front of issues. We have several folks that I would refer to as system-wide directors who spend a lot of time traveling between campuses. We needed a mechanism to get notifications to them regardless of where they were. Everbridge's architecture allows me to accommodate that workflow and others unique to my organization.

We didn't have a solution before, so Everbridge was a considerable improvement in that sense. Email was the only mechanism we had for mass notifications, and it was highly ineffective.

Everbridge is essential. In addition to inclement weather events, we've got incidents like mass shootings. We had an incident recently at our partner campus next door, and we used Everbridge to send out alerts to our staff for that potential mass shooting event. 

The solution also increased productivity. We've had high-status areas that otherwise would have gone unstaffed had we not been able to use Everbridge to put those calls out. Also, we get surprise audits from our various credentialing agencies. Everbridge allows us to put teams on alert when those surprise audits happen so we can prepare those areas for visitors.

I haven't calculated how much time I've saved using the solution, but it eases the burden of figuring out which teams I need to connect with and what messages I need to send. I can get into the system and fire off a notification in 30 seconds. It's highly efficient. 

Everbridge can break up our organization into groups for sending targeted notifications. That's probably the feature I find most helpful. Tornadoes are a huge issue here in Oklahoma, and our campuses are about 30 miles apart. Using this feature, I can send tornado warnings to the campus that's in immediate danger.

You can manage the structure of the groups in two different ways, and I'd like to see some consolidation. They have something called "groups" and another called "rules." You can achieve your objective with either, but it's somewhat redundant. 

I would also like to have more visibility into logins. They could reduce the steps I need to take to troubleshoot failed notifications, carrier issues, or folks who have stopped SMS messaging. I can get there, but it takes a fair amount of drilling down and investigating to answer the question. It would be helpful to have more visibility on the back end.

I have been using Everbridge for about three and a half years now.

Everbridge is probably one of the most stable platforms I have.

Everbridge will accommodate my needs for the next 25 years. We might see an uptick in use a little on the IT side. I'm looking at the other solutions Everbridge provides and how they might fit into our strategic plan. I'm doing that across several different domains and vendors. We've got a lot of one-off solutions, but as vendors release new offerings, consolidate, and merge, we're looking for ways to consolidate.

I rate Everbridge's support a ten out of ten. I've logged a few tickets over the years. Their team is responsive and thorough. Most of our issues have been due to a lack of understanding on our part. I've never faced a technical issue, outage, or bug on the platform, which is rare. 

Positive

The initial setup was incredibly smooth. The engineering team that came to our site was helpful. Most of our challenges were self-imposed. We didn't know the platform, the jargon, or how things functioned. After the training, we built everything, stood it up, and turned it on.

I was responsible for everything on our end. I established the feed from our HRIS system to onboard users, set up the groups' custom data parameters, and configured the rules built into the system. After deployment, it doesn't require upkeep, which has been delightful.

We deployed it with help from the vendor team. They were knowledgeable and super professional. Everbridge's engineers consulted with us. They understood the unique challenges we had as an organization and devised solutions for them.

We changed plans halfway through our engagement with Everbridge. I liked the original license agreement a little better, but I understand the model they went to. They shifted to a consumption-based model, which isn't ideal. It has limited my use of the platform to some degree, but I get it. I understand where they're coming from.

I rate Everbridge Mass Notification a ten out of ten. If you plan to implement Everbridge, I suggest getting creative. The platform's native features enable you to target your messaging creatively. 

I've got information that is not necessarily in our databases but needs to be included in Everbridge notifications. For example, I added a custom field to Everbridge that I use to tag specific members of a leadership team and use that tag to target those groups. Everbridge is constructed to enable you to accomplish anything you want in terms of message targeting.

We use the solution when we want to get a message out to all of our staff or throughout the state. We use it to notify them of service unavailability and other issues, including emergencies such as power outages. When we have inclement weather, we use the solution to inform staff if they don't have to come into the office or if they need to take any precautions.  

We also use Urgent Desktop alerting by Everbridge; it's similar to Mass Notification and allows us to send alerts to company desktops.   

The most significant benefit of using the solution is leveraging multiple ways to contact our staff; we can get to them by email, text, and phone to ensure the message gets through. Then there's the feedback loop to inform us that they successfully received the message. We noticed the benefits of using the product immediately.   

Regarding Everbridge contributing to our business goals and mission, it enhances our communication, helps us keep our staff informed, and serves as a tool for our continuity of operations plans.  

The product dramatically increased our organization's mass notification capabilities, especially in our ability to verifiably contact.  

The platform has improved our productivity by making it easier to communicate through multiple methods and streamlining and providing accurate notifications around events.   

The most valuable features are the ease of use and the ability to set up templates for similar events, which helps streamline and makes it faster to get the message out, especially during a crisis.

Regarding improvement, it could be clearer around selecting groups of users to notify; it could be more intuitive to pick who we want to send messages to.

In terms of pain points, it was more difficult to reach out to staff in the way that is most effective for them.

We have been using the solution for five years. 

The platform is stable. 

The solution is scalable. We don't have plans to increase our usage, as we are already using it to the fullest extent. 

Everbridge Mass Notification is the first solution of this type we've used; we previously relied on email etc.

The initial deployment was straightforward and took about a month. A team of five was responsible for the implementation, and it doesn't require any maintenance on our end. 

We have the solution deployed state-wide and have approximately 500 total users.  

The ROI is not quantifiable, but the solution provides the service we pay for and does it effectively. 

The product is fairly priced. 

I rate the solution nine out of ten; there's always room for improvement.

The main pain point we experienced before using the solution was the difficulty in reaching out to staff in the way that was most effective for them. It was more challenging to get messages out and made us less effective overall. 

Using multiple products from the same vendor helps with potential integration and ease of use.  

Having multiple Everbridge products affects the learning curve when implementing subsequent solutions, but we don't have any data on time saved because the integration is very new. The products are well integrated.

Using Mass Notification and Urgent Desktop creates efficiencies. 

I recommend Mass Notification; it's a great product, the implementation is easy, and it's effective.  

Everbridge is primarily for emergency communication. It could be used for smaller alerts, but we mostly use it for life-threatening events, like extreme weather or an active shooter. Only a couple of employees (security and campus communications) use and maintain the solution. 

I took over Everbridge and re-engineered it for our university. I updated all the templates and trained various users. In the past, our campus use was simple and limited. I re-architected it to work with multiple systems. Everbridge was already in place when I joined, but I overhauled how we utilized the tool and connected it to more systems. We have optimized the platform over two years using all the communication templates and features natively in the software.

The administration is cloud-based, so we log in and manage that. Nothing is on-prem except our contact list, which we upload via the API. Everbridge is deployed in two locations: our communications office and our public safety/emergency office. Those are the administrators. We have about 30,000 end-users who receive notifications, including faculty, staff, students, and online students. 

Everbridge enabled us to minimize the number of people and amount of labor involved in sending out notifications during a crisis. Then maintenance has been minimal, so we don't have to maintain it as much when it's not in use. These systems have been consistent once we connected them and set them up. There are several ways to access the tool and send mass notifications during a crisis. Everbridge is reliable and effortless to use. 

We can immediately get messages out through various channels from one platform during a crisis. Everbridge allows us to send messages in minutes. In an emergency, that can save lives. We reduced the number of people managing those individual channels from 10 to 1. 

Instead of crafting multiple messages for various applications and logging into different platforms like TV, website, email, etc., we can send alerts from one place. We have saved a lot of time by creating templates with messages that have been pre-authorized. 

We only need to change a few fields, which saves us some headaches. It publishes messages to different channels automatically. That saves a huge amount of time compared to sending notifications from each tool one at a time. It also reduces the risk of error. For example, someone might fail to copy and paste the information correctly or mistype something in one channel. There's a lot less risk because it's in one area now.

Everbridge is a dynamic tool that integrates well with our other systems. We can trigger messages from one platform to multiple places. The messages are sent to campus TVs and our website. We've been able to connect it through a lot of different options.

Everbridge has a huge amount of documentation, which is great. I think they've done a wonderful job on that. However, it can be difficult to sort through all of that to find what you need but I am glad they have it and it is up to date. 

They have a vast knowledge base for help articles, and it can be a little overwhelming sometimes. Trying to dive into specific use cases can take time but their support staff is really quick to answer any questions.

I have managed and updated our Everbridge instance for almost six years. The tool has been in place at the university for more than 10 years.

Everbridge has been perfectly stable so far. I've never had login issues or downtime.

Everbridge is highly scalable. You can use it for multiple departments. For example, you can use the tool to notify people about IT outages. It has multiple potential use cases. We decided not to use it for those use cases, but there is a lot of potential if our university decides to go that route. And we could utilize a lot more additional functionality.

I rate Everbridge support a ten out of ten. They've always been responsive to tickets or feature requests. I have monthly meetings with my account representative. When we submit information to them, they've been phenomenal about getting back to us with answers and suggestions.

They do a wonderful job providing customer service and training. Their engineers are always available to help you with troubleshooting or figuring out new ways to utilize their tools. 

Positive

We see an ROI from the ease of use and reliability. Other systems can't manage a crisis as well as Everbridge. Unlike other SMS platforms or other tools, Everbridge is designed for emergencies, so the reliability is there. We haven't compared it with other tools because we've been with them for so long. This is the tool we trust for our emergencies and we utilize it instead of other ones we use for general communication.

I can't speak about other emergency platforms. I'm talking about commercial text applications that send students academic notices and grades versus Everbridge, which is what we use for a life-threatening emergency. 

The pricing seems fair.

I rate Everbridge Mass Notification a ten out of ten. Everbridge developed great knowledge and insight over the years, and its representatives bring that to the table during emergencies. They provide useful suggestions, training, guides, emergency planning programs, and other options to help you benefit from the tool and the professional knowledge that they bring. They've been involved in many emergencies over the years.

I find that beneficial, especially if you have several new employees or people that haven't had to face some of these mass emergencies before. They prepare you with tons of information. I recommend looking beyond the technical aspects of the tool. As a whole organization, Everbridge provides many benefits, including workshops, training, speakers, guidance, various scenarios, and great customer service. 

Anytime there is a major event—outages, weather situations, or things of that nature—we use the solution.

More people are in the know, especially when we have dangerous situations going on. Hospital-wide, people know about them. We have different facilities and this is a good communication tool to get information out. It gets to more people at one time, quickly, than any other platform.

If the health system I work for did not utilize this, it would risk not getting critical alerts out to the right people ASAP. And then, people wouldn't know if they're walking into a dangerous situation or if there are downtime procedures that they might need to utilize.

It has affected productivity in a good way and has saved us time. We typically have certain distribution lists, via email, and those notifications are not going to reach everyone at the same time. Instead of having to email certain groups of people, taking the time to type things up, you can just send an automated message out, either to certain groups or hospital-wide. Having to send messages out manually by email takes time and energy. It's easier to send out mass communication to everyone that a message needs to go to.

It can be utilized in different ways. There are different numbers that users can be called at. They can be sent messages. They can be sent calls to whichever number they have listed. It is a better way to get those communications out to people.

It will call and leave me a message, letting me know what's going on. I like the fact that it leaves automated messages about whatever the problem or alert situation is. It lets you know. That capability is valuable because people now tend to keep their phones with them, more so than anything else. They're more prone to listen to or see an alert coming through their telephone rather than via email.

If the user could personalize their dashboard a little bit more, that would be helpful.

Also, we were using Everbridge HIPAABridge, but we recently did away with that. Some things did not get to people in a timely manner. It was supposed to be just like text messaging, but sometimes providers received things late or not right away.

Because we were pleased with Everbridge Mass Notification, we went with HIPAABridge, which was the secure chat. But when they made changes to that platform, our health system wasn't pleased with it because there were a lot of things missing. HIPAA Bridge was good. It wasn't perfect, but it did what it needed to do. When they sunset that particular product or they rebranded it, they got rid of HIPAABridge and changed it to just Everbridge. And when that happened, the look changed and some of the functionality changed as well. Some things were taken away instead of things being added. 

Along with that change came glitchiness and delays, and it was not user-friendly. That is what made us get rid of it. And now, we use a different vendor for secure messaging and that product is easier to use.

I have been using Everbridge for over six years, as long as I've been in the health system.

I haven't personally had any problems with the technical support.

Positive

I can't speak about ROI in monetary terms, but when an alert goes out saying that "XYZ" is going to happen today, or is about to happen, or is happening, it gets people ready to do what they need to do. They'll know what their workflow is going to be, and in some cases, ahead of time. That way, they aren't just thrown into something. The staff or the health system will be aware that something is going on so that they can prepare for it.

It's gotten the job done and that's why we've kept it. It just does what it needs to do as far as alerting people goes. Especially in our department, if we have major or critical downtimes, Everbridge is how our health system is alerted. There are people who rarely check their emails and this is the tool that gets the job done when it comes to communication.

Multiple Solutions - One Vendor

It's preferable to use multiple products from the same vendor because there are cost savings involved when you do that. It's better to have one line for support instead of having to reach out to three different vendors. It's ideal to utilize one vendor for everything, if the solutions work. 

Using multiple features from Everbridge helped our organization with cost savings, at the time. It also created efficiencies at the time because we could go to the administrative dashboard if someone had an issue with passwords or needed a reset. There was just one dashboard and we could choose what we needed to do or where we wanted to go.

We use Everbridge Mass Notification for sending out robocalls to our residents. In the broadest sense, if we have a message to go out to all residents, we just send a blanket message. We have about 27,000 individuals in the system. They are either who have signed up to use it or are pulled from white pages and yellow pages. 

We have mass notifications, such as COVID notifications, that go out to everyone. When we were setting up testing or inoculation centers, we would send messages to let everybody know what was available. In addition, we do targeted messages so that if there are street closures for repairs or an event, we can target a particular section of town and send a message out to residents in just that area.

It provides the ability to push out messages. We have a website, and we have social media, but they, of course, are targeted. If somebody is not looking at the website, they're not going to see it. You have to actively seek out the website to find that. Social media people have to be on social media, and they have to be on at the time you're sending messages out. For a robocall, you choose your time and send it out, and you get a ready-made audience.

It hasn't helped us save time, but it gave us another avenue to get the communications out. It has improved our ability to communicate.

Most recently, the ability to pull from white pages and yellow pages is valuable. It used to be that we were using the system and people had to sign up to be included in it, and just last year, we were given the option to pull from white pages and yellow pages, which broadens our audience considerably.

There are certain aspects of the system that don't work exactly as I would like them to. I've been working with them literally for years to get certain things resolved, and there are always issues and problems. One of the issues that we've been dealing with recently and for some time now is that some people don't get the message. It goes out to 27,000 people, and afterward, I hear from people that they did not get the message, or their phone didn't ring, and it didn't go to voicemail. Nothing happened, and they were just dropped. This seems to be an ongoing issue.

In conjunction with that, there is an ability for me to download a spreadsheet that lists what happened with the outgoing call. It lists everybody included in the call and what they should have received. In other words, if they hung up, if it went to the voicemail, or if they picked up and answered, all that is in the database/spreadsheet. That doesn't seem to correspond to reality in all cases. Sometimes, it says that people got the call, but they didn't.

Another issue is that when the call comes in, it sometimes gets truncated, so the beginning of the message is missing from the call. These are all glitches that we've been working on with them, and they're still ongoing. If you let it go to voicemail, it records your message, but sometimes, it truncates the beginning. What happens is that in the end, it says, "To repeat this message, press two", and then it says that three times. If you do not press two, it repeats the message anyway, so that winds up with a long voicemail message on people's machines or voicemails.

I've been with the town for about six years, and very soon after I started with the town, I took it on. It was with the town prior to my coming there, so I don't know how long they've been using it.

Its stability is fine. There are no problems.

We send out messages, and certain people don't receive them. They get it one day and then the next day, we send the same message, and they don't get it. According to Everbridge, there is a possibility that this is because of the number of people involved, and they are looking into this. 

I've contacted their tech support. They're relatively easy to get hold of. I've reached out to them at night, and I've reached out to them from outside the country. I never had a problem getting through to somebody. Their frontline people are very helpful in using the system. For example, if the mapping changed and I had a question about that, I could call and get help over the phone, and they seem to be knowledgeable about that and very helpful. The downside is connecting with the actual tech people. When there's a problem where the frontline people need to get tech people involved, there's an extra step, and that's more complicated. I'd rate them a seven out of ten.

Neutral

When I came on board, it was already in use. I wasn't here before that, so I don't know the pain points or challenges we experienced prior to using Everbridge Mass Notification.

We haven't used any other solutions by Everbridge. We are only using Everbridge Mass Notification. For the most part, it's just robocalls, but we occasionally also send out text messages using Everbridge Mass Notification.

I was not involved in its deployment. The maintenance involved would be when they implement changes. In some cases, we had to almost relearn the system. There was a change about a year ago that impacted the mapping, and it worked entirely different than previously. We had to basically relearn how to do this.

Their mass notification capabilities change all the time. We get emails on practically a daily basis, and sometimes, many emails in the course of the day about changes and upgrades to their system, many of which do not impact us. For the ones that do not impact us, we get a message saying that they've changed their systems in Singapore. They're doing a lot of changes on an ongoing basis, and some of them do impact us.

It's not an investment that has been made for financial purposes. It's an investment that has been made to get the message out to people and certainly, the messages do get out. In that sense, we have seen an ROI.

It's fairly easy to learn and use. It has a lot of details, so you do need to pay attention to what you're doing. I'd advise asking a lot of questions because there are capabilities that are buried, and there have been times when we've only found out that something is available by asking about it.

I'd rate Everbridge Mass Notification a seven out of ten.

We are currently using Everbridge as our mass communication software for events considered emergencies or crises. I am responsible for mass notifications. We do use IT alerting as well, but I am responsible for the mass communications piece of emergency response.  

We use this software in the event of a crisis or an emergency, either weather-related or safety-related, and we use it globally. The emergencies and crises can be anything from a landslide to an earthquake to an active shooter to chemical spills and so on.  

For my particular role, the incident management piece is the most valuable. This is where we can set predefined templates with predefined contacts attached to those templates so that an operator can just pull up the template and send a message out to a contact list straight away.  

One place where Everbridge can be improved is its language libraries. It is weak on languages. Because we are trying to deploy it globally, it affects our usage across languages. They have some weaknesses in that area and it is really noticeable when trying to scale globally.  

We have been using this product within our organization for about 10 years.  

I would say the stability of the product is very good.  

We currently have over 150,000 contacts in the product database. As far as users, we have trained users who are actually the operators who are sending out the messages. I would say we have between 200 to 300 operators globally.  

I am not always pleased with the service level where we are receiving from the Everbridge technical support team. On a scale of one to ten, I would give them only a six or seven-out-of-ten. The technical support can definitely be improved and could be more consistent.  

I have been doing some ongoing exploratory research to find out what other software is on the market that has similar capabilities. I am looking at other products on the market that may be competing to see how they compare and to gauge user opinions.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this solution as an eight or nine-out-of-ten. I say that after reviewing some of the other products on the market. I have not been able to find anything that is decidedly better.  

The advice that I would give to others looking into implementing this product is that I would definitely recommend it for many organizations that do not need a global solution. If they do not need multiple language capabilities, it is something that can be deployed very quickly and it is a very good product. It needs some language tweaking. A good example of the limitations would be that online training is not available in multiple languages.  

Additional features that I would like to see in the next release of the Everbridge Mass Notification is really, mostly, additional language support. Also, there is one piece within the software that is called Scenarios which could be more fine-tuned. It currently needs some work to improve that functionality.  

Our primary use is for fire and EMS alerts to a group of rural subdivisions organized under the Firewise USA program and served by the Mendocino County Office of Emergency Services. Currently, Everbridge is used for emergency notifications and Nixle is being evaluated for close to real-time alerts and information updates.

It has been used successfully for large scale notifications as well as defined geographic area targeted notifications. The use of Nixle SMS service for incident notification and ongoing information is being discussed.

SAME and polygonal geographic targeting allow for localized mass notification which reduces communication volume.

Online training materials and support documentation could be improved.

An additional feature that should be included in the next release would be a contact database upload/download/sync.