Looking for a Vivial alternative? Here is an honest side by side.

The short version

Vivial, the company formerly known as The Berry Company, was acquired by Thryv in 2022, and vivial.net now sends visitors to a Thryv page that says Vivial's online marketing business is now Thryv. So a Vivial customer today is a Thryv customer: a software platform with listings, reviews, a website builder, paid search and social add-ons, scheduling and payments, priced by plan rather than from a public price list on that page. Gold Strategics gets a business found, answered and followed up, with a managed website and a small set of tools around it, at published prices, month to month, with the site and domain in your name. If you want one platform running your listings, ads, social posts and payments, Thryv does that and we do not. If you want a website that belongs to you outright, a bill you can predict, and the freedom to leave without losing the site, that is the gap we exist to fill.

Where Vivial is strong

Fairness first. Thryv described Vivial as a regional provider of digital and print marketing for small businesses, and the Thryv page puts the number of Vivial clients at 25,000. Thryv, the company that now runs it, publishes The Real Yellow Pages, is publicly traded, and offers a broad platform: listings and reputation management, a website builder, search, ads and social add-ons, plus messaging, scheduling and payments in one login, with support it describes as available around the clock. You can try the software free for 14 days without a credit card. For an owner who wants everything in one dashboard, that breadth is real. None of the criticism below is about whether Vivial or Thryv is a legitimate company. They are.

Why people search for an alternative

Read through the complaints collected about Vivial and The Berry Company on ComplaintsBoard and the Better Business Bureau file that now displays under Thryv, and the same few themes come up again and again. Most of the Vivial complaints date from before the Thryv acquisition, so treat them as history of the old model rather than a verdict on today's terms. We are deliberately not quoting a star rating here, because scores shift and cherry-picking one is not honest. The patterns are what matter.

The contract. Complaints from the Vivial and Berry years describe twelve-month agreements that renewed automatically, in some cases at a higher price, and customers who found out only after the renewal date had passed. Others describe cancellation requests that took weeks of calls and emails to confirm. Whatever the merits of each case, a yearly term that renews unless you stop it is the structure to ask about, so get the term and the notice window in writing.

The pricing. The Vivial and Thryv page does not publish prices. It offers a free trial, says upgraded plans are available for a fee, and refers to Thryv's terms for plan and pricing details. Unpublished pricing is not a scandal, most of the industry works that way, but it means you cannot comparison shop without a sales conversation, and the all-in figure depends on which add-ons you take.

The website. The theme with the biggest consequences is control. Several complaints from the Vivial years involve websites and domains: an owner who asked for the rights to their website back during a billing dispute, one who said a domain had been replaced with one the company owned, and one who said a site was published without approval. Losing the site means losing the design and the search history built up under it, which makes the cost of leaving much higher than the last invoice. Your own contract governs your situation, so read it, and ask the ownership question in writing before signing with anyone, us included.

How the two models compare

The rows about scale and paid ads are not spin, they favor Thryv for some buyers. An owner who wants ads, social posts, listings and payments in one dashboard gets more from a large platform than from us. The rows about pricing, contract, and ownership favor the smaller model, and they are the three things former customers complain about most.

What our alternative looks like in dollars

None of it is billed one tool at a time. The Operating System includes getting found in search and AI assistants, automatic follow-up and the rest of the list above at one price, and if you are mid-contract with Vivial or Thryv, we can plan the switch around the date your contract ends.

Who is better served by Vivial

You should stay, or choose Thryv over us, if the platform itself is what you are buying: listings, reputation management, paid search, social media and payments in one place, from a company that also publishes the Yellow Pages. We do not manage paid advertising, post to social media, offer call tracking or run invoicing, and a provider that pretends that does not matter to some businesses would be selling you short. Because Thryv publishes The Real Yellow Pages, it also fits owners who want a print directory presence alongside their digital work. If that is you, get the term length, the renewal notice window and the site ownership terms in writing, and you can be a happy customer there. Our Thryv comparison covers the platform in more depth.

You should look at us, or any smaller managed provider, if the website itself is the point: you want it built well, kept fast and secure, owned by you, and priced in public, with tools that answer the phone traffic your reputation already generates. That describes most one-location trades and local service businesses we talk to.

Leaving Vivial without losing your footing

If you decide to move, the order of operations matters. First confirm in writing who controls your domain, because the domain is the one asset you cannot rebuild. If it is registered to you, everything else is recoverable. Second, check your contract end date and renewal notice terms with Thryv client care, and give notice in writing before the renewal window. Third, request an export of your content and images, and keep copies of what you sent and when. Fourth, have the new site built before the old one goes dark; we build on a staging address and switch the domain over in one step, so there is no gap where searchers find nothing. We do not charge extra for any of that, it is just the $250 build fee and the first month.