Brilliant Directories

RATING:

4.7

(658)

About Brilliant Directories

Brilliant Directories is an all-in-one directory platform designed to help businesses design and launch online communities. Administrators can utilize available themes to build membership websites or directories and personalize them using brand-specific images, a logo, social media links, text and other elements on a real-time design editor. The application includes a self-service member dashboard, which allows individuals to access profile pages and businesses to track payment subscriptions, transactions, email history and more. It offers a searchable directory, allowing professionals to submit company details, display corporate listings, engage with leads and gain ratings or reviews. Additionally, Brilliant Directories provides an email marketing module, which helps ...

Awards and Recognition

FrontRunner 2024
Software Advice's FrontRunners report ranks top products based on user reviews, which helps businesses find the right software.

Brilliant Directories Pricing

Monthly Plan: $145/month Lifetime Plan: $1,450 one-time payment

Starting price: 

$145.00 per month

Free trial: 

Available

Free version: 

Available

Slide 1 of 6

Brilliant Directories Reviews

Overall Rating

4.7

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4.5

Customer Support

5

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4.5

Most Helpful Reviews for Brilliant Directories

1 - 5 of 657 Reviews

User Profile

Dr. Virginia

Verified reviewer

E-Learning, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed August 2021

Our Search is Finally Over!

Overall, it has been an excellent experience with the Brilliant Directories team. I had many questions and found a lot of my answers in their very active Facebook group. They were very quick to answer all of my questions when I reached out to the team or support. This is literally one of the most comprehensive association/director/membership platforms available and you can have it up and running in a few hours. It is a game-changer for us since we've tried many other options.

PROS

We love the fact that with Brilliant Directories, anyone can have their site up and running ready to accept new embers within a day. This is a mature, robust platform with outstanding features. Our use case is an association with a multi-tiered member directory. After testing the site, we found that Brilliant Directors meets and exceeds our goals. The platform offers many features we had not thought of that will add great value and help us scale quickly. We like the fact that everything is built within the platform and the user interface is pretty good, especially compared to the competition.

CONS

A few of the feature limits, like storage, are potentially a bit low if the site membership grows significant, which is the goal. Fortunately, they have add-ons at affordable prices so the features can grow in pace with the site.

Reason for choosing Brilliant Directories

We've been working on our membership and business directory site since 2010. We began with WordPress, then moved on to several SaaS products and all fell short of our goals. After hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars, we are thrilled to find Brilliant Directories as our solution. Our use case is an association with a multi-tiered member directory. The platform offers many features we had not thought of that will add great value and help us scale quickly. We like the fact that everything is built within the platform and the user interface is pretty good, especially compared to the competition. The top three reasons we choose Brilliant Directories are: 1) It is a fully developed mature platform using a done-for-you model, 2) It is feature-rich to support organizations just getting started and those that are in high growth mode, 3) The price-point is a high value with a high return on investment (ROI)

Reasons for switching to Brilliant Directories

There is no comparison between the two platforms. I don't feel comfortable mentioning the name of our old platform, but the user interface was terrible. Brilliant Directories is a breeze in comparision, not only for us on the adminitstrative side, but for our members as well.

Frank

Marketing and Advertising, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed November 2020

If You Demand the Best - Look No Further

AS far as a business relationship goes, I have never been treated more professionally by any other company that I have dealt with online. I feel appreciated, respected, and valued as a long-time customer. The integrity of everyone that I have dealt with over the years is beyond reproach. The personal attention I always receive and effort put forth to do the best they can by their clients is unsurpassed. I cannot speak highly enough about their complete professionalism.

PROS

My directories have become the backbone of my business. The years that I have invested in learning how to maximize the constantly growing list of features and expanded capabilities have made my investment in the BD platform one of the most solid business decisions I have ever made in my inline career. Knowing that my search for the perfect platform to use as a foundation on which to build my business has allowed me to grow and prosper in a fiercely competitive marketplace.

CONS

The inability to build high-end landing pages that render beautifully in mobile view. While there have been improvements in this area, there is still a long way to go. I hope capability gets serious attention in the new year.

Reason for choosing Brilliant Directories

After so much disappointment with the alternatives, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase what for all appearances looked like a platform that was built by people who actually knew what they were doing. I'm continually patting myself on the back for making such a wise decision. Before BD everything was an expenditure, usually wasted. My BD purchase is an investment that has been paying dividends for over 5 years. The constant addition of new features can only improve my revenue going forward.

Reasons for switching to Brilliant Directories

WordPress directory themes and plugins, even when built by the best developers always fall short because the person who built them has never had any actual experience running a directory site. It doesn't take long when using these products to discover that they fall woefully short in meeting the needs of someone wanting to run a 'professional' online directory. These products are simply NOT up to the task. Compared to BD, they are toys.

SK

Real Estate, 11-50 employees

Used more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

2

VALUE FOR MONEY

2

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

2

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed June 2017

NO SOURCE CODE

None. Waste of money.

PROS

Lots of features. Their salesmen are good at telling you all the things you want to hear. After your payment clears the bank, you learn the truth about the limitations.

CONS

Their claim to provide the source code is BS. Regardless of what they tell you, they limit access to the source code and you will spend a lot of money trying to customize the system. I believe they limit access, so they can sell you Customization Hours. The designs are way outdated and customizing is very limited. Look deeper at their examples. We fell for the initial purchase and then a follow up email for another license for super cheap, so before I could get into customizing their product, I owned two licenses (and still do, for sale by the way). On the surface, BD appears to be perfect. It is great as long as you don't need unlimited access to the code or REALLY need to customize it (not talking about changing colors). You decide.

Vendor Response

Hi SK, Jason Haloossim here, founder at BD. Thanks for your feedback. It helps make things better for our entire community. I want you to know that we care, and I'm sorry you had a bad experience. We want users to have great experiences - and we try to achieve this is by listening to your concerns. I'm very sorry you had a hard time editing source code it's one of the main things developers love about BD. You also have access to your MYSQL Database, FTP, and even cPanel. Beginners love the easy point-and-click settings and developers love the access to source code to make custom edits. Here is a link on our website that shows you how to edit source code: http://bit.ly/2vGvenc Here is a Press Release that explains how BD is built with developers in mind: http://bit.ly/2hCHHTE We want you to succeed with your website and try our best to eliminate obstacles. I'm really sorry you had this bad experience, but I want you to know that our team is here to support you.

Replied August 2017

Ivars

Information Technology and Services, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed December 2022

Excellent software to build your dream directory

Your customers can have membership plans so they can publish in your directory. BD has many useful tools integrated - like SEO, Payment gateway, and different cine of post types.In BD you can costumise everything. Also, their ready-made templates and ready to go out of the box. Builders have blocks to start with and like the flexibility to edit the code.

PROS

Brilliant Directories is an easy way to create business directories (my use case).The user interface looks clean and intuitive.Page speed looks great.Builders have blocks to start with and like the flexibility to edit the code.Several types of posts are available and like the access control etc settings.Their tutorial videos are also a huge help given how many features the software has.Absolutely amazing and friendly support.

CONS

With so many features it can be bit hard at the beginning I would have liked them to increase the bandwidth and storage

Reasons for switching to Brilliant Directories

I have used WordPress for over a decade, and now, will never go back ;) although it will take me some time to become proficient with BD, it will be worth the time invested so I never have any more hassles of maintaining a WordPress site.

Keith

E-Learning, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed August 2022

My favorite straight-out-of-the-box membership directory builder!

It has been my favorite SaaS purchase all year. Worth every single penny, and I feel confident that this company is going places!

PROS

Candidly, the training videos and support team has always been so helpful and detailed. Where most software tutorial videos end up being insanely long and boring, Brilliant Directories nails it with a great library of FAQs, pipelines for setting up and configuring your website, and a Youtube library of webinar replays that give you ideas how to incentivize upgrades. A close second is, of course, the powerful website builder itself. The whitelabel functions are not obnoxious and you can customize nearly all colors and pages to your liking.

CONS

So far I am so excited about the items on the roadmap for Brilliant Directories. My only complaint would be the learning curse for beginning to conceptualize the feature trees for members and how each member can tag themselves to be listed in different sub- or sub-sub-categories. I am still practicing, but with many preview tests, it is very evident how unlimited the possibilities are.

Reason for choosing Brilliant Directories

It appeared to have the least complex integrations and setup compared to WordPress plugins, and the demo website looked professional/modern and unique enough that I didn't think it would scare away too many cold leads visiting my homepage for the first time.