Upmetrics is a tool designed to facilitate business growth through better organization of strategy. The software comes with templates to serve as a starting point for business plans, pitch decks, plus financial forecasting tools and strategic planning resources. It’s been used by more than 110,000 entrepreneurs across 195 countries to plan, launch, and scale their businesses.
This in-depth review covers everything you need to know about Upmetrics, from what it’s good at to what it really costs. Read on to see if Upmetrics is right for you.
Upmetrics: The Good and the Bad
Our team here at Crazy Egg conducted extensive research on Upmetrics and how best it can be used. We tried the software out ourselves and looked through verified customer reviews to assess what makes this business planning solution work. Based on our research, we’ve identified the top strengths and weaknesses of Upmetrics, which we’ll break down below.
What Upmetrics is Good At
Upmetrics shines with its ability to help founders, entrepreneurs, and business owners stoke their growth through tools and templates. With this software, you may find it easier to get a new business off the ground, get funded, or plot the direction of your organization for future growth.
Business plan templates: If you had to pick just one thing to use Upmetrics for, it would be the business plan templates that make it easy to put your ideas and goals into a written plan. There are more than 200 different sample plans to use as a reference for spinning up your new business, whether you’re starting a restaurant, a property management organization, a consulting firm, or just about anything else in between.
Upmetrics also provides a 40-minute business plan course that takes you through everything you need to know. This is great if you’ve never started a business before or are entering an industry you’re not familiar with. Even if you have prior experience writing business plans, Upmetrics still makes the process of writing high-quality business plans easier and faster by starting from one of their well-crafted templates.
Brainstorming: Not only can you leverage Upmetrics’ templates to quickly draft up a business plan, you can also use them as inspiration when you’re still in the pre-formation stage.
It starts with the industry-level categorization. Template categories contain multiple different options for specific business types. For example, the service-based business category contains 68 unique templates, ranging from car washes, daycare centers, and spas to insurance agencies, HR consultancies, law firms, and more.
Upmetrics even comes with a brain board for brainstorming the problems your potential business is trying to solve, and your unique value proposition. The software prompts you to brainstorm customer segments, KPIs, marketing channels, revenue streams, cost structure, and everything else you need to get set up for success.
Canvas modeling: You can use Upmetrics to create one-page visuals that describe key elements of your business. These are super handy for sharing your business plan with stakeholders, investors, and others in a much more striking and engaging way.
Canvases can pull items from your Upmetrics brain board and organize them in an appealing one-page grid format. Start with a template for a startup company, with fields populated for the value proposition, customer segments, revenue model, and more. Or, choose a more unique canvas, like the social lean canvas for new businesses trying to make a social impact, which foregrounds fields like organizational purpose and intended impact. These types of canvas models really force you to think beyond basic business ideas and go deeper on problem solving or defining success.
Pitch presentations: A big part of moving your business idea from dream to reality is making effective pitches. Upmetrics delivers a simple way to turn your business plan into a pitch deck for investors. Create a visually stunning and professionally-designed deck with ease while assuring all of the essential information gets covered.
These pitch decks are also really useful if you’re meeting with a banker and need to secure a loan. Plus, they can help you pitch your ideas to new strategic partners and even be tweaked to explain your business concept to prospective employees. Regardless of the different ways you plan to use the pitch presentation features, Upmetrics is an easy way to take all the key information and brainstorming results from your business plan or canvas and pull them into an informative and highly visual overview of your business.
Excellent value: Upmetrics starts at just $9 per month, which is a solid value when you consider the alternative of hiring a consultant that will charge hundreds of dollars per hour to guide you through the business planning process. With its combination of ease-to-customize templates and brainstorming guidance, Upmetrics can help you go from a bunch of disconnected ideas to a potent plan without needing to pay someone else for help. The low price point is particularly appealing to startups that may not have a ton of cash right now and need to be cautious about where money is going.
What Upmetrics is Lacking
Upmetrics is definitely a solid tool for what it’s intended to do: build business plans and pitches for early-stage companies. But that narrow focus means it lacks some things you may also want from a tool like this, including PM features to assist you with the execution of your plan.
Project management features: While Upmetrics has everything you need to create business plans and organize your ideas, it lacks the project management functionality required to bring your concepts to fruition. If you want to implement your ideas and track progress through specific tasks at an individual or team level, you’ll need to get a separate tool for project management.
In fairness, Upmetrics doesn’t brand itself as a project management tool in any way. So, it’s not like they’re promising something and not delivering it. But, it’s still worth mentioning since a lot of startups and young companies will also want a tool to help them follow through on their plans. Plan accordingly if you want a solution to support you after you’ve made your plans and pitches.
Full-service support: Upmetrics has a help desk where you can submit a ticket for support, plus a knowledge base where you can find self-help articles. Several Upmetrics customers, though, have said that the articles are limited in scope and don’t provide enough information to help them solve their problems. A few reviews specifically mentioned that video tutorials would be more helpful than the existing articles.
In our review of the knowledge base articles, it’s clear that these complaints are warranted. There are only around 50 total articles, some of which are just a few paragraphs without any images or actual directions. Many articles haven’t been updated for two or more years, meaning Upmetrics hasn’t addressed customer concerns about revamping these resources. Add to that the lack of a direct contact channel for support and you can see why this is a drawback.
Financial forecasting: Upmetrics comes with features for financial planning, which is a great inclusion. This includes financial forecast calculators, financial health dashboards, reports for balance sheets, profit and loss statements, break-even analysis, operating expense reports, and more. You can even add reports to your business plan as a way to show investors that your ideas are profitable. Sounds great, right?
Well, lots of Upmetrics users have complained about these financial tools. This seems to be the number one pain point we found in the verified reviews we examined. Some users say that it’s tough to adjust financial tables and edit them within the template, and others just seem to struggle to get their desired outputs. Based on these reviews, it’s safe to assume there’s a bit of a learning curve with the financial tools, or at least improvements Upmetrics has yet to make at the time of this writing.
Mobile app: While this isn’t a deal breaker, it would be nice if Upmetrics had a mobile app. This would make it much easier to make changes while you’re on the go. When it comes to business planning and brainstorming, ideas can strike at any moment. But, if you’re not in front of a computer, you’ll have to save them for later until you can update your ideas in Upmetrics.
Upmetrics Pricing & Options
Upmetrics has a simple pricing structure, with four different plans to choose from.
It starts with a limited free demo version of the software. You get limited access to the platform and anything you create in it, from business plans to pitch decks, gets branded with an Upmetrics watermark. This is basically a glorified free trial with no time limit on it.
The entry-level Solo plan costs $12 per month ($9 per month if you choose to pay for a year up front) and gives you the basic tools to formulate business plans from scratch. However, this tier does not include the Upmetrics business plan course, strategic planning features, and plan analytics.
The next steps up, the Team and Premium plans, cost $19 and $64 per month, respectively. Those two plans come down to $14 and $48, respectively, when you pay for a full year at checkout, essentially giving you three months of access for free. The main differences are that the Team plan is limited to five workspaces, five strategic canvas models, and five team members, whereas the Premium plan comes with unlimited everything.
Subscriptions are covered by a 15-day money-back guarantee.
We’ll break down the most common use cases for Upmetrics below, and you can try their free demo to get started.
Upmetrics for Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses
Using Upmetrics to create a business plan for your startup is the platform’s most common use case. Anyone with an idea for a new business can use Upmetrics to create a viable plan that’s above and beyond a basic concept in your head.
For experienced entrepreneurs and first-time business owners alike, Upmetrics has all of the tools you need to plan, present, and communicate your ideas to improve your chances of succeeding.
You can browse through over 800 business plan templates across categories like:
- Food, beverage, and restaurant businesses
- Transportation, travel, and logistics
- Mobile app and software development
- Retail and ecommerce companies
- Professional service providers
- Event planning
- Real estate agencies
Upmetrics also has tons of niche-specific templates for small businesses like laundromats, handyman services, car detailing, and many more.
You can start by building a business plan in Upmetrics, then take your ideas and use them to pitch investors or secure funding from a lender.
If you own an existing small business, Upmetrics is also an excellent way for you to map out a new concept or expansion. Whether you want to launch a new product or expand into a different market, you can use Upmetrics to strategically plan your ideas.
Upmetrics for Business Consultants and Advisors
For solo consultants and advisory firms, Upmetrics adds consistency and professionalism to your services. You can help your clients create business plans and financial statements, adding value to your suite of service offerings and streamlining your processes.
Upmetrics can be used to create accurate forecasts using visual financial reports and graphs. Not only does this help save you time, but it makes things easier for your clients to understand.
The software is really useful if you’re consulting with clients who want to raise funding or scale with new strategies.
Upmetrics makes it easy to add clients as collaborators so they can add their input to your plans. When it’s time to share those plans, one-page canvases, or pitch decks with stakeholders and investors, you can just export what you need or share the reports through a view-only link.
Consultants would need to sign up for a Premium subscription, which comes with unlimited workspaces, unlimited strategic canvas models, and unlimited team members. At $48 per month with an annual contract, you could cover this cost (and then some) with the fees you collect from a single client.
Upmetrics for Students and Business Schools
Business schools and educators can leverage Upmetrics as a teaching tool. This is a modern way to teach students studying entrepreneurship or business management about how to write a business plan.
Practicing pitches and writing business plans are core parts of the curriculum for every business school. Upmetrics helps set those students up for success with these types of projects and gives them the tools they need to turn fictional ideas into real businesses. The diversity of templates ensures you can adjust classwork and discussion to be focused on the types of businesses your students are truly interested in.
The collaborative nature of Upmetrics also works well for group projects in the classroom. As an educator, you can also design your business plans to use as a sample for teaching purposes. This helps show your students exactly what you’re looking for, and you can easily share it with the entire class by sending them the link.
If students in your business school are attending local, regional, or national competitions for business ideas, Upmetrics can help them shine above other students, which is a significant advantage when there’s real prize money on the line. Not only will this help your students, but it’s also a win for your school and the credibility of your institution.
Upmetrics offers a 30% discount to students and non-profits, and you can check your eligibility here.
Summary
Upmetrics is an excellent tool to help turn business ideas into reality. We recommend it for writing business plans, creating pitch decks, and creating visual representations of your business strategy for sharing with stakeholders and investors. It’s perfect for entrepreneurs, small business owners, consultants, and business schools. Get a free demo to try Upmetrics today.
