Trying Free Trials of Every Poshmark Bot I Can Find: ClosetPilot

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Dear reader, I write this as my pounding heart rate slowly returns to its normal resting rhythm.

I just installed ClosetPilot, and, having enabled my free trial of pro features, decided to give automatic offers a spin.

I did not take this feature on lightly, because I knew there would be no visibility as to which items are getting the offers. To prepare, I raised my "dangerously low" item prices to make sure I didn't accidently lose money while sending the same offer to everyone (I like 20% off and $4.99 shipping, but this is probably not a great idea for those $12 Nike tops).

But even with taking care of pricing, I immediately ran into an issue: I had accidentally selected "free shipping" for my offer settings.

It was not hard to do, as this is what the selections box looked like.

I thought I had selected $4.99 shipping, but soon found out that I was sending free shipping offers by having sold an item immediately at $15 with free shipping, earning me a grand total of $4.33.

The item? A good conditional Kuhl flannel shirt I bought for myself a year ago brand new on sale for $47.

Yeah. Not great, Bob.

So, I'm going to try to carry on with this trial and review process in as unbiased a way possible, but this was kind of a stressful start.

ClosetPilot Ease of Installation

I'll hand it to ClosetPilot, installing the extension, getting it running, and upgrading to "pro" via a free trial was extremely easy. After you click "install" in the app store, you're immediately redirected to an instructions page, which was succinct, simple, and had screen shots of the tool in action. Navigating to Poshmark as instructed, I found the extension automatically popped up and prompted me to sign in with my Google credentials, which was super handy and smooth. The tool also works on any page on Poshmark, which is awesome.

Pro features were all in my free version of the tool, but were toggled off. My curiosity got the better of me, and on clicking them, I got a pop up with two Pro pricing options, pay by the month for $39.99, or pay by the year, at a breakdown of about $19.99 a month. I selected monthly payments with a 7 day free trial, which moved me to a single page checkout process of simple credit card info input. Then I got the pro features immediately.

This was again a very smooth process.

ClosetPilot Ease of Use/Layout/User Friendliness

ClosetPilot Pro was pretty simple to get up and running, though I did feel a bit confused by features that seemed to overlap, like "offer sending" and the autopilot offer sending, which had different selections and caught me off guard.

That's because things are organized as sort of "above board" and "below board," meaning tools that run in the background vs. right in front of you.

This was a little confusing because, as you can see from the above screencap, the first two icons from the left represent those dashboards/feature environments, but they're not the most intuitive. There was hover text as well, but "foreground" as a category of tools didn't immediately make sense to me. This is definitely how a developer would see these features, which is kind of endearing, but I think it would improve users' experiences to put thing in a language that would make more immediate sense to us--especially to the less tech-comfortable.

Another knit-pick is that the buttons were all the same color, which didn't help me quickly process the differences between features, a suggested order of operations, or where I should start. Not a huge deal, but a little bit of friction that was there every time I used the app for the entire week.

ClosetPilot Features

Speaking of features, that "little bit of friction" was a persistent theme as a poked around tools for the first time. When I tried use the follow back function in the "follows" section of my news feed, I got a pop up message that warned me I wasn't on a page with "follow" buttons, and I should try some random person's follower list. That seemed odd, as I wanted to try reciprocal following, and it took some poking around before I realized I need to be in the "my followers" section of Poshmark. Would be nice if this was suggested or I was redirected here!

This was not the most important part of my experience, but it was a first impression that stuck with me.

Generally speaking, these were the features I tried:

-Autopilot: continuous sharing and sending offers in the background.

-Sharing: sharing your entire closet in the foreground.

-Reciprocal sharing and following

Tools I did not try:

Closet Organization: this is a drag and drop tool that would be way to unweildy for a 500+ item closet. I tried moving a couple of items to the top but quickly gave up as on a laptop with a touchpad, dragging and dropping in general is really tough.

Edit and Share: I legitimately could not figure out what this did. I did try it, but it seemed exactly the same as sharing to me.

Party Sharing: Yeah no. I just... I don't care. This isn't a dig at the tool, just party the party stuff in general is not for me.

General Pros of the Tools: I like the transparency of the activity log showing which items had offers sent and letting me know autopilot was checking for new likes; auto pilot was powerful; following/sharing was efficient, though I remain unsure on a personal level whether this is an activity Poshmark rewards. Captcha solving wasn't foolproof (I had to solve manually anyway a couple of times), but was surprisingly nice to have and mostly worked.

Cons: things can feel a bit hacky and glitchy--it was possible to click on other features and have them seem to start working on top of each other; error messages were always helpful (ie. didn't tell me clearly to to do); loading my whole closet and others' whole closets every time I navigated to them was hugely disruptive to doing just about anything else. There was a way to turn this off, but I couldn't consistently remember where that toggle was so I tended to just give up and let things load.

Tool by Tool Extremely Brief Reviews

Sharing in the Foreground: 6/10

Fast, solved captchas, seemed reliable, I noticed no ordering issues in my closet, but it only seemed to load 288 out of 530+ of my listings for sharing without manually loading everything via a very discreet button. Share speed was adjustable, which was nice. But again, it lost points for that making it more clear how to properly lose the tool.

Background sharing: I thought I was going to love this: slow, continuous sharing throughout the day at a speed unlikely to trigger captchas. But I found it weirdly excruciating and kept closing out of it. 7/10, but honestly 2/10 for my personality/level of actual adhd.

Autopilot offers: this worked great but scared the hell out of me. 7/10.

Foreground Offers: 8/10 Concept, N/A Usefulness for Me

I actually didn't use this after my autopilot experience, and to be honest, deferred to our tool instead, which isolates only new offers and shows pictures/allows individual adjustments. I don't say this to be petty, just to distinguish the levels of control available, and why that's important to me with a big closet, but not so big that I don't care about losing items on several items.

To be frank, I'm not a bins reseller, so I have to be careful about COG vs. what I take in on Poshmark. The idea of sending a single offer type for every item in my closet, sight unseen, was just too much for me. But for a seller with 100-200 items or a very consistent cost of goods or pricing strategy? I'm sure this would be great.

I absolutely did notice a difference in sales with it running for a couple of days (after inflating every price in my closet to make sure I could afford to send the offers), and it was actually incredibly relaxing to just have sales roll in without having to be on my phone all day.

While the execution made it unusuable for me (for example, I lowered a bunch of prices for closet clearout and then was too scared to turn it on/didn't want to have to ajust all my prices manually again), it was easily my favorite feature.

***If it works for you, I think autopilot is the star of ClosetPilot and potentially worth the price point of the entire tool.***

Features Breakdown: Is ClosetPilot Worth $39.99 a Month?

I would say yes if social stuff is important to you, and if you can get autopilot offers to work for your particular closet.

The following and reciprocal sharing worked very consistently and quickly, self-sharing was solid, though had its quirks, and auto offers worked magically great and was surprisingly delightful. I would say this made the biggest difference in both sales and quality of life for me.

There's also that closet organization option seemed a little painstaking. It's a good function to have if you have a handful of star items you want at the top and your closet isn't huge.

Overall Impressions/Final Thoughts about ClosetPilot

This is a solid tool, overall. But greater visibility/finer-tuned options for auto fucntions, a more defined product journey and layout, and perhaps some warning pop ups or "are you sure" confirmations would be nice as you choose settings that will run completely hands off for hundreds of items at a time.

Grade:

7/10 for ease of use: it's simple enough to start using immediately, but loses points for being a little too easy to mess up in a big way.

8/10 for effective: I experienced few bugs or issues; things mostly worked as promised.

7/10 for useful (compare to other options at this price point): again, for my closet size, it's an odd combo of a little too powerful and yet not robust enough (ie. I don't want to have to mess with loading settings to share my closet multiple times a day without the loading disrupting anything else I do on Poshmark; auto offers is realistically not an option for me despite it being the best features due to lack of visibility or gating).

Exit Impressions:

Canceling my free trial was easy; the product was gracious and let me finish out my week trial despite canceling a day early to be safe. I received a personalized email from the founder thanking me for trying the tool, asking for feedback, and offering another month free for providing any input on my experience.

This was a really nice touch and very thoughtful I think; it made a great final impression. I would give ClosetPilot a 10/10 on being on the up and up with business stuff in general: it did what it promised, the free trial was legit, nothing weird happened with payments, billing was clear and straightforward, and the request for feedback felt sincere and generous.

ClosetPilot Vs. ClosetWitch

I have to hand it to ClosetPilot: they're killing it with the onboarding process! At ClosetWitch, we can certainly stand to streamline our "getting started" process.

But I feel like ClosetWitch wins from a power-seller features standpoint. I mean, we literally built the exact tools I wanted as 500-ish item seller, so take this all with a grain, but, I really prefer out targeted offer sending for likes from the last 24 hours that you hand-approve before sending to the "one size fits all" approach.

And, PRO UPDATE ALERT: in our upcoming Pro mode, we're working on a feature that uses item offer history to send intelligent auto pilot offers--as in, items will continue sending offers that you've sent by hand in the past, not just an arbitrary offer for your entire closet. If you're a control freak like me, you will like this!

I also went running back to ClosetWitch for price adjustments on Closet Clearout days (lowering prices in bulk for items with new likes) and obviously, relisting for the "just in" stream is our star product, and doesn't exist many other places, including ClosetPilot.

That said, ClosetWitch simply doesn't do any social stuff (no reciprocal sharing/following). ClosetPilot wins here. We didn't build it because a lot of other tools offer this, even in their free modes, and 1. without there being a compelling sales advantage (in my opinion) for Posh sellers to do these actions, and 2. without being a competitive differentiator for us as a tool, we just wanted to focus on other stuff instead, like a better offer process.

Anyway, all in all: you really can't go wrong with ClosetPilot for a medium sized closet. Just price your items carefully!

What do you think? Have you tried ClosetPilot? Is there a tool you swear by that you'd like me to try? Are we being stupid not offering auto following? Tell me everything below.

XOXO

Cathy @ClosetWitch