Look at where a software company is rated badly rather than where it is rated well. Several support tools sit at 4.6–4.8 on G2 and 2.4–2.5 on Trustpilot. The gap is not about the product. Almost all of it is about money that kept being taken.
Why the two ratings disagree so violently
G2 and Capterra reviews are usually solicited. A vendor asks at the moment of highest satisfaction — just after onboarding, when the thing has been set up and nothing has gone wrong yet — and sometimes offers a gift card. The reviews are real, but the sample is chosen.
Nobody solicits a Trustpilot review. People go there on their own, and they go when they are angry, which in this category means one thing almost every time.
What the angry reviews are actually about
Not features. Not accuracy. Billing that would not stop:
- Charged after cancelling. One Wati reviewer documented $480 in post-cancellation charges. Cancellation friction is the dominant recent theme in that product's Trustpilot reviews.
- Frozen but still billed. respond.io's Trustpilot complaints centre on accounts being frozen while charges continued.
- Upgraded without asking. ManyChat users report contacts being imported from Meta Ads without consent and plans auto-upgrading as a result, with bills growing two to three times.
- Refunds refused at the limit. Chatbase users report denied refund requests after hitting platform limits they had not anticipated.
- Annual auto-renewal that is hard to stop. A recurring complaint about Tidio, and the likely source of its 24% one-star share.
Five products, one complaint. It is the most consistent finding in the whole category, and it is entirely knowable before you buy.
Six questions, asked before you enter a card
1. Can I cancel from inside the product?
If cancelling requires emailing support, you are relying on a support queue to stop taking your money — the same queue that reviewers say takes one to three business days. Self-serve cancellation is the single best predictor of a clean exit.
2. When does it take effect?
Immediately, at the end of the period, or after a notice period? All three are defensible. Only one of them is what most people assume.
3. What happens on an annual plan?
Annual is where the worst stories live, because the renewal is large and the window to stop it is narrow. Ask how much notice you get before renewal, and whether that notice is an email you might miss.
4. What happens if a payment fails?
This is the one nobody asks and it matters most, because it affects your customers rather than your invoice. One Interakt customer reported an active paid subscription ending without warning, stopping every campaign, with no resolution after three days.
The right shape is a warning first, degradation second, and never a silent stop in the middle of a customer conversation.
5. Can I export my data, and what exactly?
Conversations, contacts and knowledge base. If the answer is "contact us", assume that the practical answer is no.
6. Does the price I sign up at stay the price?
Not forever — no honest vendor can promise that. But there is a real difference between a company with a published price-change policy and one that restructures pricing and doubles some bills, or cuts a free tier from 1,000 contacts to 25 with the people who built on it still on it.
A test that takes two minutes
Before signing anything, open Trustpilot and read the one-star reviews. Not the score — the one-star reviews, sorted by recent.
You are looking for whether the same complaint appears repeatedly, and whether the company has replied. ManyChat has not replied to its negative Trustpilot reviews, and the silence compounds the impression that billing disputes go nowhere. A company that answers its worst reviews in its own name is telling you something useful about what happens when you have a problem.
What we do
Cancel from the billing page in the dashboard, in one click. No email, no retention call, no notice period, effective immediately. If a payment fails we warn you before anything changes, and we do not stop an agent in the middle of a conversation with one of your customers.
We are also small enough that this is easy to promise and would be very obvious if we broke it — which is, honestly, part of why it is worth asking a small vendor.
The uncomfortable one
None of this means the badly-rated products are bad products. Gorgias is a better helpdesk than we are for a fifty-person support team. Intercom's agent is more capable than ours on breadth. ManyChat does Instagram automation that we do not attempt.
The complaint in every case is not that the software failed. It is that leaving was harder than arriving. That is a design choice rather than an accident, and it is the one thing worth checking while you are still a prospect and they are still being nice to you.
Common questions
Why do support tools have good G2 scores but bad Trustpilot ones?
G2 and Capterra reviews are usually solicited, often shortly after onboarding and sometimes with an incentive, so the sample skews positive. Trustpilot reviews are unsolicited and people typically leave them when they are angry, which in this category is nearly always about billing rather than features.
What should I check before subscribing to a support tool?
Whether you can cancel from inside the product, when cancellation takes effect, what happens on annual renewal, what happens to your agent if a payment fails, whether you can export conversations and contacts, and whether the vendor has a published price-change policy.
What happens if my payment fails — does the AI stop answering?
It depends on the vendor and it is worth asking explicitly. Some platforms have stopped active accounts without warning, halting live campaigns. The right behaviour is a warning first and reduced service second, never a silent stop in the middle of a customer conversation.
How do I cancel Thredo?
From the billing page in the dashboard, in one click. No email, no retention call and no notice period, and it takes effect immediately.
Published 13 September 2026. Review patterns are drawn from public Trustpilot, G2, Capterra and Shopify App Store listings, linked at each mention; ratings move, so check the current pages before relying on them.