Static documents are boring most of the time – especially PDFs. They often fail to engage viewers due to their limited interactivity and overall plainness. 

It isn’t just a collective pet peeve: studies show that interactive content sees 52.6% more engagement compared to static content. In addition, users tend to spend an average of 13 minutes engaging with interactive content, compared to just 8.5 minutes for static content​, according to data gathered by Search Engine Journal.

Yes, some people will still read your PDFs from top to bottom. But don’t expect to sway multiple stakeholders off their feet with blocks of text. Aim higher. 

Today’s friendly face-off is between RELAYTO, a true master of AI interactivity, and Journey, the Monet of Digital Sales Rooms. 

(If you’re interested in seeing more Journey alternative posts, check out our blog.)

What Is RELAYTO? 

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RELAYTO is known as the leading Content Experience platform. It makes it fun and easy to transform your existing “boring” PDF content into engaging interactive experiences. Whether you're working with e-books, white papers, pitches, or proposals, you can import those into the platform and bring them to life with interactive elements like text, web content, images, videos, and audio, all optimized for viewing on desktop and mobile screens. 

It also allows you to create interactive microsites, presentations, flipbooks, infographics, videos, and custom landing pages a lot quicker than you would with apps like Canva. It includes plenty of AI features that can make any area (not just set areas) of your content look 10x more appealing. 

What Is Journey?

Journey is a Digital Sales Room tool that makes it nearly effortless for champions in your sales team to share resources with key decision-makers.

Its #1 purpose is to help sales teams turn endless email threads and attachments into one interactive workspace. 

“Can’t I just send a Google Drive link?”

You most definitely can. But that’s likely what your competition is already doing, so let’s up the ante with an alternative that’s sleek, smooth, and beautiful. 

Journey is the only DSR software that’s also described as a “storytelling platform.” Not only does it look great, but it simplifies the process of writing and linking essential information about your services in proposals, making it super simple and easy to use. Instead of emailing prospects PDFs, links, and case studies separately, Journey brings everything together in one place.

For customers, it provides all the information they need throughout a deal cycle in one beautiful location. For Sales teams, it helps them stand out in the sales process, improve win rates, and close deals faster. 

Side-By-Side Comparison

I’ll be sharing more details about each solution when it comes to pricing, capabilities, integrations, and more. However, I get that some of you just want the gist of a quicker decision. So here it is.

The Main Difference Between Journey and RELAYTO: Different Value Propositions 

As I’ve shared previously, RELAYTO is marketed across their marketing as a “Digital Content Experience” platform, as it empowers businesses to convert their PDFs and presentations into eye-catching interactive experiences. 

On the other hand, Journey is marketed as a Digital Sales Room (or storytelling) platform. Its value lies in the ability to enable B2B sales teams specifically while also conveniently including awesome templates for resources like proposals, case studies, and more. 

While both platforms allow viewers to interact with the content as they please and include plenty of available embeds, their proposition is pretty different right out of the gate. Here’s what I mean.

Below, you’ll see one functionality of RELAYTO, which is called a “hub”.

These hubs promise the following features:

• Hubs layouts

• Nested hubs

• Top menu

• Sidebar

• AI chatbot

Sound familiar? If it does, that’s because it’s essentially their version of a full-scale DSR. 

Unfortunately, the “hubs” functionality isn’t available for all plans. We’ll be discussing plans and pricing in just a second, but take a look:

Unless you’re on the Team plan onwards, hubs aren’t available. As such, you won’t necessarily get the same experience and features you would by signing up for a DSR, such as the sidebar and an AI chatbot.

You can, however, easily create something very much like a DSR without this functionality. After all, you can still divide your content by tabs, make it clickable, and include many embeds. The great thing about RELAYTO is that it allows you to be creative.  

But if you’re looking for what-you-see-is-what-you-get Digital Sales Room software, you might consider looking somewhere else. 

Pricing

Before anything else, let’s get the pricing straight. We don’t want to get all excited about a new tool only to discover their plans aren’t budget-friendly. Let’s have a look.

RelayTo Plans

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Public (Free):

• Free for individuals

• 1 user, 5 experiences, unlimited viewers

Pro:

• $65 per month (billed annually)

• 1 user, 20 experiences, unlimited viewers

Team:

• $800 per month (billed annually)

• 5 users, 50 experiences, unlimited viewers

Business:

• $2700 per month (billed annually)

• 10 users, 250 experiences, unlimited viewers

Enterprise:

• Custom pricing

• Build for larger organizations with additional features like dedicated account management, premium templates, and advanced security options.

All paid plans include a 60-day money-back guarantee. The Pro plan includes a 14-day free trial. Still, the free trial gatekeeps a few Pro features, such as uploading images, videos, and links instead of PDFs.

Journey

Free:

• $0 per user, per month

• 1 user

• Up to 2 Journeys

• Unlimited Journey Views

  
  

Starter:

• $29 per user, per month

• 1 user

• Up to 15 Journeys

• Unlimited Journey Views

  
  

Pro:

• $49 per user, per month

• 1 user

• Unlimited Journeys

• Unlimited Journey Views

  
  

Enterprise:

• $79 per user, per month

• Custom number of users

• Unlimited Journeys

• Unlimited Journey Views

  
  

All Journey plans, including Free, offer:

• AI to create your Journey presentation and text (with one prompt!)

• AI to create images and artwork

• AI-generated branded themes

• Handcrafted templates

• 10+ interactive blocks

• Passcodes, whitelists, blacklists, and email verification

• Access to insights to see how users are spending time on your Journeys

  
  

If I were to compare both solutions in terms of cost-effectiveness and suitability, I’d say…

• Journey is more cost-effective with its Free and affordable Starter plans (and more available functionalities.) 

• RELAYTO’s higher-end plans offer extensive support and customization, making it suitable for large teams needing advanced content and engagement features.

• Journey could be best for small to mid-sized teams needing cost-effective, customizable solutions with strong analytics and security features.

• RELAYTO could be the best option for teams requiring interactive content creation, advanced analytics, and extensive collaboration features, particularly for larger teams.

AI Capabilities

For sales teams specifically, AI couldn't be more timely. AI can save your bacon a hundred times over when you’re time-strapped – all while ensuring your content remains well-branded and consistent every single time. 

And even if you had to edit anything, it wouldn’t take half as long as it would if you were to craft everything. 

RELAYTO

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Of all the DSRs I’ve covered to this day, RELAYTO has to be the boss of AI features. If that’s something that floats your boat, you’ll go crazy with their tools. They include:

• Animated stickers

• Interactive Menu

• Multi-View Generator

• AI Animator

• AI Background Videos

• AI Navigator

• AI Engagement Insight

• AI Content Chat

  
  

But don’t go too crazy, otherwise, your presentations might end up looking like this:

Sadly, though, not all of the above are available for the Public plan. Only for Pro and beyond. 

Journey

Journey’s accessible AI capabilities apply to images, text, and branding. For example, let’s say you need to create a sales presentation ASAP and want to skip the drawing board. Just use Journey’s free AI tools to have a full, branded draft in roughly 2 minutes. Sometimes, it may need no editing at all. Other times, it may need a few tweaks, but that’s about it. 

UX and UI

It’s not uncommon for people to use UX and UI interchangeably. But here’s the quickest explanation I can give you: An uncluttered and easily navigable User Interface (how your platform looks and operates) makes the user experience (the way users interact with your platform) better. 

And a good user experience benefits your business across the board. Sales teams can quickly get the gist of the platform, find the tools they need, and accomplish tasks without unnecessary complexity or confusion. There’s less of a learning curve and faster adoption. Everyone’s happy. 

What I love about both solutions is that the user interface is minimal, unlike a few other platforms we’ve already seen during this series.  

RELAYTO

This UI was surprisingly easy to navigate. With all the AI tools they claimed to have, I was expecting a smorgasbord of arrows and a mishmash of features. Not the case! Everything is tucked away neatly on the right-hand side, where you can find both the Interactivity Studio and the Settings. 

The former is where you’ll find the good interactivity and AI tools you’re probably there for, and the latter is where you can adjust the document views, sharing permissions, and more. 

Source: RELAYTO

Source: RELAYTO

One small issue I encountered: Configuring the experience may take a while. Not sure if I was unlucky, but the first time I uploaded a PDF, it took several minutes to configure, to the point where I wondered if there were any bugs. 

Journey

Journey is also pretty easy to maneuver, and even easier on the eyes. The main toolbar is on the right-hand side as well. For a larger interface, you can collapse the sidebar on the left (which represents the DSR’s chapters.)

Other options (such as text editing, colors, etc.) appear by your cursor as you’re editing certain items, so it doesn’t stress you out as you’re doing it. 

Real-time AI Interactions

Both tools have AI Chatbots as a major functionality. In my opinion, sales enablement tools must have it. And the more accessible, the better. 

Not only because they’re an amazing self-servicing option for viewers but because they help sales teams get customer insights and improve their sales tactics, day after day. 

RELAYTO

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This technology guides customers through the sales process, answers questions on the spot, and even predicts what customers might need next. 

Sadly, the AI chatbot feature is only available for hubs, or if you’re in the 14-day free trial. Just as a reminder, the hubs are only available from the Team plan onward.

Journey

Journey also includes an AI chatbot, which can help prospects find instant answers to any questions regarding the presentation. While they can also chat with the sales teams in real time, some users would rather keep that type of contact as a last resort. And that’s okay!

Document Views

Say what you will, but infinite scrolling is far better than having to click arrow after arrow. It may sound lazy, but we want to give our potential customers the least amount of effort. Seamless scrolling is particularly effective for content-heavy presentations, as it mimics the natural fluid motion of social media feeds. Pretty awesome.

Having alternatives like flipping pages can be just as valuable. This view type creates a sense of structure and progression, especially for presentations that require a more linear flow with a clear sense of beginning, middle, and end.

Both platforms have different types of document views. Here they are. 

RELAYTO

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RELAYTO has a neat AI-powered feature called The Multi-View Generator™ which offers 9 unique ways to view documents. These include:

• Flipbook

• Slide

• Carousel

• Page scroll

• Cinematic Slider

• 3D Slideshow

• Pageless scroll

• Cards

• Cube

For those presenting slides, the Slide View showcases content in a modern and appealing way, with bigger slide displays. If you're working with a book or brochure, the Flipbook View mimics the feel of a real flipbook. There are a lot of effects you can choose from. 

Journey

Journey is on the simple side. it offers infinite scrolling in a cinematic kind of way. It just keeps the scrolling smooth until viewers reach the end of the presentation. Nothing too fancy. 

Analytics

The more data you have on how prospects interact with your content, the better results you get. However, you need high-quality data. Not only by the numbers but by the names wherever possible – be it desktop or mobile. 

Let’s see the analytic potential of both tools. 

These analytics offer sales teams real-time visibility into how recipients interact with their content. Knowing who opened the DSR and which sections they viewed or clicked on helps sales teams prioritize follow-ups and tailor their approach based on client interests. Understanding whether clients accessed the DSR from mobile or desktop devices informs content optimization for different viewing experiences.

RELAYTO

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With RELAYTO Analytics, you can gain real-time insights into user behavior and engagement. The platform's user-friendly analytics dashboard lets you track how users interact with each document, page, and asset.

You can see if users navigated through the document, hovered over elements, and more, giving you valuable information to guide your decisions. Plus, you'll receive notifications around the clock about actionable buying signals, so you can follow up the right way.

The sad part is that individual analytics and interaction analytics are only available for the Team plan and above. 

Journey

The great thing about Journey is: even in the Free plan, you get anonymous analytics on how certain stakeholders have interacted with your Journey.

You'll receive instant notifications via email on all plans, and on Slack and email from the Pro plan and beyond, detailing who viewed your Journey, how many times, for how long, when they left, and where they clicked.

On the Started plan, you can already get access to advanced, Clearbit-enriched analytics. This gives you priceless information on companies and the people in it, including the key decision-makers you need to impress. 

Content Creation and Customization

At minimum, sales enablement tools should have pre-made templates and intuitive customization features to help teams create better-looking content, faster. You want to craft more impactful client interactions, but you also don’t want to obsess about minute details.

Both RELAYTO and Journey offer awesome templates you can pick and choose, as well as content libraries where you can keep reusable content close at hand.

RELAYTO

RELAYTO gives you the one-click ability to turn any content into little “digital microsites” with animations, responsive navigation, click-worthy call-to-actions and more.

Only caveat is….

You’ll have to upload your content fully customized. Otherwise, you’ll need to settle for RELAYTO’S limited customization options for colors, fonts, and more. 

Besides, if you want to upload anything other than PDFs in order to customize it, you’ll need to upgrade your plan to Pro. 

Journey

With Journey, you can create unique content for every prospect regardless of what their branding looks like and reuse a winning template for future deals. You can even add their logos as part of your presentation without having to hunt down for a PNG of their branding. Because you don’t have time for that!

You can start from one of Journey’s handmade templates, create your own from scratch, or have AI do the grunt work for you. No code needed. 

A few users can’t wait for Journey to include more customizable options, such as font sizes and colors. 

Sharing

It's crucial for digital sales rooms to have single link sharing with adjustable access controls. It makes the sharing process smoother while maintaining security at its strongest. Instead of making prospects’ lives harder with multiple links and documents, a single link makes it easier to distribute your content – no matter how many elements it may contain. 

RELAYTO

RELAYTO helps you share your content in different ways. Depending on the plan you subscribe to, you can make it public, gated, or private.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro plan if you want to secure your presentations with email addresses and passwords. 

Journey

With Journey, you can safeguard your rooms with passcodes and verification straight from the Free plan. However, you’ll need to be in the Pro plan in order to get Access Permissions. 

Access Controls

Access controls like password protection, whitelisting, and blacklisting are crucial for digital sales rooms (DSRs). Without them, you have little to no control over who will be accessing potentially sensitive sales content and from where. So don’t take this type of security feature lightly. 

Controls like that help protect proprietary information, maintain confidentiality, and prevent unauthorized access. They are absolute non-negotiables for expensive deals involving sensitive details, such as customer data. 

RELAYTO

A lot of sought-after security features will only be available from the Pro plan and above. For example, requiring email addresses to view the content, along with password protection and privacy.

If you’re on the Team, you’ll have access to email gates with whitelisting. From the Business plan, you’ll get Single Sign-On (SSO) as a more robust security safeguard for larger teams and businesses. 

Journey

With Journey, you can better control safe content distribution with email verification, password protect, whitelists, blacklists, and expiration dates. For reinforced security, SSO is coming soon for Enterprise plans.

White Labeling and Custom Domains

When a sales room reflects the company's branding without any third-party logos or URLs, it builds trust and credibility with clients. That’s because the entire customer journey feels seamless and consistent with the company's identity. Thankfully, both tools offer different white-labeling options in different plans.

RELAYTO

For RELAYTO, custom domains are only available for the Business plan and above. If you want the "Powered by RELAYTO" branding to go away, you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro plan. However, if you’d like your presentations to reflect your business from top to bottom, you’ll need to be on the Business plan (because that’s where business branding is available.)

Journey

Similarly, with Journey, the “Made with Journey” branding goes away as soon as you update to Pro, and custom domains are also available only for the Enterprise plan. 

Integrations and Embeds

The right integrations make everything smoother and more functional. You want to sync data and workflows seamlessly, cutting down on manual work and all the headaches a siloed system carries with it. 

When software allows easy integration with widely used tools like HubSpot and Salesforce, it wins our hearts. The more stuff we can embed to create more fluid interactive experiences, the better.

RELAYTO

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RELAYTO boasts an impressive suite of 1000+ widgets available for embedding. The only issue for some users is that non-branded embeds are only available if you’re on the Team plan. Otherwise, embeds will be RELAYTO branded. 

HubSpot and Salesforce integrations are only available for Team and above as well, which is a bummer.

Journey

All Journey plans (including the Free plan) integrate with Slack, Salesforce, Segment, Google Drive, and HubSpot. Gong is the one integration only Enterprise members have access to. 

As far as embeds go, I honestly can’t put a number on it.

Why You Should Choose Journey If You’re in B2B Sales

With a DSR, you can create presentations divided into chapters or files, guiding different stakeholders toward the specific areas they’re likely to be interested in. Ideally, you’ll be able to do this no matter the plan you’re in. 

Plus, you need straight access to tools that make navigation easy, such as an AI chatbot that answers questions about the presentation right away.

Finally, you need an effortlessly customizable canvas that combines all your sales materials – videos, slides, product demos, and support documentation – and all resources into one platform. And one that brings you results like this…

View case study on UserEvidence

And this…

View case study on UserEvidence

Get Journey for free today.