Podium charges $289+ a month, on an annual contract, for the review engine most customers actually buy it for. Askback is that engine as a tool you own, running on your own $5 VPS or desktop with your own Twilio and SMTP credentials. $34, once.

• SMS + email review requests — Bring your own Twilio and/or SMTP so you pay Twilio's roughly $0.008/SMS directly instead of a platform markup, on your own sender reputation.

• Smart routing — 4-5 star ratings go to your Google review page with click-through tracked, while 1-3 star ratings go to a private feedback form in your inbox.

• Customer import — Add customers manually or import a CSV from your booking or invoicing tool, with common header aliases accepted.

• Templates with merge fields — Separate initial and follow-up templates per channel using name, business, link and job-ref placeholders.

• Automatic follow-up — One polite reminder after N days if there is no response, never more than one, guaranteed at the database level.

• STOP opt-out honored — An inbound Twilio webhook handles STOP/START, and opted-out numbers are never messaged again.

• Dry-run mode — DRY_RUN=1 runs the whole pipeline of render, queue and log without sending anything so you can test templates safely.

Runs as a Windows desktop app or on any $5 VPS (Docker included).

What's included:

• Full source code (MIT): https://github.com/bensblueprints/review-request-automator

• Lifetime v1 updates

• Setup guide (README quick start)