EventScoop.co vs. Zola
Zola is a vendor marketplace that forces you to pay to interact with leads. EventScoop.co charges a flat monthly fee to message leads, manage bookings and payments and much more!
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Anything they can do, we can do better!
Zola’s primary selling point is its “free” listing for all businesses, meaning you only have to pay to connect with a lead. The platform grades each lead on a bronze, silver, and gold scale.
| Bronze | Silver | Gold | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the couple will spend with you | Credits Per Lead | Credits Per Lead | Credits Per Lead |
| Below 2K | 5 | 10 | 15 |
| 2K - 4K | 10 | 15 | 20 |
| Over 4K | 15 | 20 | 25 |
To non-Zola vendors, there’s no information on the cost vendors pay for these credit packs until you sign up. The price appears to be around $1/credit on the low end, and the price goes up depending on how much money you can make off the lead.
Instead of taking a percentage of your bookings, Zola has found a way to make money off of the leads you don’t book.
At its best, this structure is an honest attempt to bridge the gap between small businesses regularly making less than $2,000 per booking and more established businesses making far more.
However, the cost difference between a gold lead that can reap $2,000 versus one that can reap $4,000 is only $10.
If you’re making 50% of the revenue for the top-tier lead, shouldn’t it cost you only 50% (if that) to interact with potential clients?
Tired of receiving spam messages or fake leads?
We’ve got you covered. To protect our users time and energy, we’ve added security features for messaging that requires Captcha authentication for the first messages between you and a lead.
If you see something fishy, you can flag it for us and limit your communications with that lead.
Based on our research, we’ve found that Zola has succumbed to the common issue of fake leads that many of these platforms experience. Users have accused Zola, and similar sites, of fabricating leads to make money from vendors who engage with those leads. Yikes.
There will be no gatekeeping here! We want to make sure every vendor has the opportunity to grow their business on our platform. We don’t require you to pay additional fees to be a “featured vendor.”
Our verification process is included in your monthly payment, and that’s all.
You can gain badges based on your interactions on the platform to make your profile more eye-catching, but it doesn’t affect where you stand in search results. Therefore, it doesn’t negatively impact newer vendors – it’s more of a cherry on top as you grow more established