Why is Prefinery the Best GrowSurf Alternative in 2024?

Both tools greet you with the campaign creation wizard right after you signup, but one makes everything easier for you than the other. We and our customers think it's Prefinery, but don't take our word for it — we encourage you to try both platforms.

GrowSurf's entire campaign configuration is through their wizard, so if you want to modify anything on the campaign you just get brought back to the wizard. Setting up a campaign seems quicker, but it assumes you know what you're doing from the start.

With Prefinery, the wizard requires the bare minimum information to set up your whole campaign dashboard according to your specs. There is a short checklist to help guide you afterwards which you can refer to at any time, but you are not forced to follow it. This makes it easy for you to find what you are looking for.

We believe that you should be able set up a referral program your way, not how we think you should.

With Prefinery's signup form you can collect more than just a name and an email address from your participants. You get a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) form builder to create a 100% customizable form in your own design and language. images, videos, custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to your form. On the other hand, GrowSurf's signup form supports very limited customization, including only colors and font sizes and does not support adding custom CSS.

When it comes to email layouts, GrowSurf requires you to use HTML code and inline styles to fully customize how your emails look. With Prefinery, you can also directly edit the HTML, if that's your thing, but we make it more convenient with fully customizable email layouts by using an easy, visual, block-based editor that you can use to create beautiful emails from scratch. Or, you can customize one of Prefinery's built-in templates.

Prefinery doesn't offer hosted landing pages, but does integrate with most landing page providers. GrowSurf does offer simple landing pages; however, they're no where near as full-featured as what is offered by dedicated landing page providers.

When it comes to branding, Prefinery — right out the box — will not have any kind of branding anywhere in your campaign for any of our paid plans.

With GrowSurf on the other hand, you kind of need to hunt those tick boxes down in their campaign editor.

Using Prefinery you can create unlimited email automation setups based on triggers, making Prefinery more like a drip-style email service. Prefinery's behavior-triggered emails can be used to promote your referral program and keep your customers highly engaged.

GrowSurf only gives you a fixed set of emails, where you can edit the subject or body, but you cannot add more emails. This means you cannot build complex drip campaigns, like send email 3 days after the participant opts in.

Both Prefinery and GrowSurf allow you to automate your referral program from end to end and support the following reward types:

Single-sided Rewards — Reward a person when they refer a friend, or when their friend performs a goal-based action.

Double-sided Rewards — Reward both people when a referral happens, or when the friend performs a goal-based action.

Milestone Rewards — Reward people when they reach specific referral goals.

However, only Prefinery supports vanity referral codes, which are based off a participant's name or email address, and are much easier to remember.

No other competitor offers specific features around running pre-launch or closed beta waitlist referral programs. With Prefinery, you can invite and send unique invitation codes to your participants. You can also choose from 4 different waitlist algorithms for how participants are ranked.

GrowSurf offers basic analytics whereas Prefinery tracks more KPIs like opt-ins, referral source, conversion rate, email metrics, demographics and form responses.

Prefinery's participant table lets you search, sort and filter participant information by over 55 data points (and you can customize the columns in the table). No other competitor offers the ability to dig this deep into participant data. Once your list gets massive, you'll appreciate this even more. GrowSurf unfortunately only provides a basic search (in the past X days/months) functionality.

Furthermore, accessing each participant's profile in Prefinery shows a ton of info, including their demographics, notes, email history, webhook history, referral history, etc.

GrowSurf supports more direct integrations namely with Tango Card, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, GetResponse, Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Hubspot, Slack and Integromat.

Both offer Zapier and webhooks integration which means you can also easily integrate Prefinery with any of the above.

When it comes to API, Prefinery's is the most robust in comparison to others.

Prefinery offers unlimited number of campaigns, even with our Free plan. GrowSurf only allows you up to 2 campaigns on their cheapest plan, with only up to 20 on the highest tier.

Over the past 16 years Prefinery has smoothly handled HUGE marketing campaigns, some with more than 800,000 participants. Many of our customers come from from competitors that just couldn't handle the load.

Prefinery has been around since 2008 — that's 16 years of experience — and was around years before any of our competitors.

Both Prefinery and GrowSurf have opt-in consent features requiring participants to agree to your terms when signing up, but only Prefinery actually records this on the participant's profile which you can reference as needed.

Prefinery was the first to offer GDPR compliance. Privacy, Security, and Cookie policies are duly published and our Data Processing Amendment includes the EU's SCCs (Standard Contractural Clauses). Everything is encrypted whether at rest or in transit. Prefinery doesn't use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or other trackers when you visit our homepage or use Prefinery.

GrowSurf also has no multi-user account support. Prefinery provides it for free and with no limits on the number of team members. You can specify their privileges (role-based access control), require 2FA for all team members on account, and audit log of who did what and when for all changes to the campaign.

Prefinery respects you and your participants' privacy.

With Prefinery, your participants will continue to be able to sign up even if you've reached your participant count limit — no person will ever be turned away! While an unlimited number of people can submit your signup form, if you go over your limit you won't be able to view those additional subscribers until you upgrade your subscription.

If you go over your participant limit with GrowSurf, they automatically upgrade you to the next plan up, pro-rated. However, Prefinery's per-participant overage fee is more cost-effective.