Demostack vs. TestBox

While Demostack and TestBox both help teams create demos and POCs, the two platforms work in very different ways. Understanding how each product works makes it clear which platform will solve the specific problems your team is facing.

Demostack is better for simple sales enablement

Demostack works by cloning the front- and back-end of your product to make a semi-functional copy of it. Links can be clicked, reports can be filtered, and dropdowns drop down.

However, nothing done by the buyer in a Demostack clone is saved; there's no backend for changes to save to. 

This means that Demostack clones aren't really meant for deep testing. They only enable buying committees to click through your product to get a feel for how it looks and functions. 

In fact, most buyers will spend only 1.8 minutes testing in a click-through demo.

Sending buyers something they will spend 1.8 minutes on is great when you just need to quickly show them how a specific feature works, but it fails to deliver if you're selling a complex product that buyers want to research deeply before they feel comfortable purchasing.

TestBox is better for complex products

TestBox integrates with your live product to build fully functional, backend-connected POCs that let buyers deeply test every aspect of your software.

While buyers spend only 1.8 minutes in click-through demos, TestBox customers see their buyers spend a median of 53-94 minutes testing in their TestBox-powered POCs. Additionally:

• 40% of buying committees spend more than two hours testing.
• 21% spend more than five hours testing.
• 7% spend more than 10 hours testing.

Giving buyers a POC that lets them do detailed testing not only gives them the confidence they need to make the purchase, it also represents a significant amount of time your AEs and SEs aren't having to spend with those buyers doing this work hands-on in calls or workshops.

Demostack can be implemented faster, but it requires a lot of ongoing maintenance

Demostack can be implemented the day you purchase the product. It's a simple bot that crawls and clones your product, so you can start cloning immediately.

TestBox, on the other hand, has to build the integration with your product before your team can start using it. This generally takes about 45 days.

However, because TestBox is fully integrated with your live product, no ongoing maintenance is needed. Any changes your product or engineering teams make automatically appear in your TestBox-powered demo environments and POCs.

Demostack, on the other hand, clones your product at a specific moment in time. That means any time your product changes, you have to recreate all of your clones from scratch to capture any new features or UI updates.

If your product changes a lot, this can lead to heavy ongoing maintenance for your sales enablement, product marketing, and/or solutions engineering teams.

TestBox lets you fully automate the process of creating demo environments

If you have to redo your demos every time your product changes like you do with Demostack, your demo environment creation process isn't automated. It might be less effort than how you previously created demo environments, but you still have to do the work manually.

Because TestBox automatically reflects any changes to your product, the process of creating demo environments with TestBox is fully automated. 

All you have to do is add a new user to your TestBox account, and that person gets their own fully functional, always up-to-date, data-filled demo environment to use in sales calls.

Demostack vs. TestBox: Deciding which platform is right for you

If you're looking for a tool that helps you quickly create semi-functional click-through demos of your product to generate interest at the top of the funnel or to use as sales enablement assets, Demostack is the right choice for your team.

But if you're looking for a platform that lets your solutions engineering team completely automate the process of creating fully functional product demo environments and POCs, TestBox is the right choice for your team.

Both tools have excellent user reviews: both are rated 4.8 out of 5 stars on G2, with all reviewers providing either 5- or 4-star reviews. So the choice between the two platforms is really just about which platform's underlying technology will solve the specific problems you're trying to solve.