Firstup helps organizations plan targeted employee communications, deliver campaigns across channels, and measure engagement. It combines audience data, AI assistance, and journey automation in a sales-quoted platform.
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Firstup is an employee communication platform for organizations that need to reach their workforce, including frontline workers. It combines targeted publishing, employee journeys, and engagement reporting, with a choice of delivery channels such as email, mobile, intranet, and digital signage.
The product connects audience data to campaigns: Firstup describes targeting based on employee attributes, behaviors, and preferences.
SocialChorus described itself as the creator of FirstUp. It announced a merger agreement with Dynamic Signal in 2021.
Creator Studio uses drag-and-drop tools for content across communication channels. Firstup describes AI-assisted writing and design, an approved design library, and the ability to include videos, images, polls, and links. Campaigns can be planned for multiple channels and adapted for each endpoint.
Audience targeting can use role, location, language, behavior, and other attributes. Personalized feeds present relevant content. The platform describes channel selection based on employee preferences. Configuration depends on connected data and licensed channels.
Firstup describes using employee behavior to select delivery time and channel; these mechanisms are not independently verified improvements in response rates.
CommsAI offers spelling and grammar correction, tone adjustment, and help with clarity and flow. It can generate subject lines and preview text, create searchable titles and descriptions, and automatically tag campaigns. These features support drafting and organization; the generative AI terms still assign evaluation of output and appropriate human review to the client.
For campaign comments, Firstup describes automatic sentiment labels of Positive, Negative, Neutral, and Mixed, with an average shown on the Results dashboard.
The visual journey builder supports drag-and-drop setup, attribute-based branches, and delays or conditions at each step. Firstup describes using HRIS and other system data to form dynamic audiences by role, location, language, and behavior. It also says employees who have already completed an action can be excluded from further messages about it.
Firstup describes a multi-step communication sequence triggered by employee attributes, dates, and events. Its journey builder offers templates and AI-assisted content creation.
Journey reporting identifies employees who have entered a sequence and those who are active, waiting, or finished with a step. It tracks delivery confirmations, opens, actions, and acknowledgments. An open does not itself establish that an employee completed a requested action.
The executive dashboard brings together KPIs, engagement trends, and audience insights, with custom date ranges and filters by audience, topic, and department. Journey analytics add channel sequences, employee progression, step performance, and acknowledgments. Those views help distinguish the reach of a communication from later engagement within a sequence.
Firstup describes AI Search as an assistant that scans the Firstup program and connected systems for natural-language answers. The vendor's embedded FAQ data says it tailors answers using employee context and permissions and supports follow-up questions. The information available to a particular employee depends on the connected sources and access rights; a generated answer remains subject to the product's AI limitations.
Journey creation requires a contract that includes the feature. A Creator Studio role with journey permissions is also required.
Manufacturing teams can target updates by shift, department, site, and language, using role and location information to select recipients. Firstup describes tracking views, clicks, and completion for these messages. The same solution identifies automatic translation, mobile microlearning, and safety updates selected by role, site, or requirement.
Targeting and measurement do not establish that sending an update satisfies an organization's training or safety obligations.
For healthcare organizations, Firstup describes communications selected by role, delivery preferences, and engagement habits, with delivery through mobile, web, digital signage, and other channels. It also describes searchable and bookmarkable content and access to frequently used work tools.
The mobile offering describes journeys for onboarding and benefits enrollment. Employee email can require acknowledgments for training, policy signoff, and compliance updates. An acknowledgment does not guarantee comprehension.
Firstup positions its internal communications offering around attribute-based audiences, AI assistance for tone, clarity, and grammar, mobile reach for deskless workers, and reports for leadership. This makes its scope relevant to communication teams responsible for coordinated messages across several parts of a workforce.
For HR teams, the vendor describes lifecycle-triggered communications, audiences based on department, shift, role, and location, campaigns that prompt and track employee actions, and workforce analytics. Those elements fit a recurring program such as onboarding or benefits enrollment where different groups may need different information at different times.
For IT teams, Firstup describes deployment as a standalone employee hub or integration with an existing intranet and collaboration tools. Provisioning, role-based permissions, and audit trails are included in the vendor's IT positioning.
The employee app is described as offering personalized feeds, push alerts, access to tools and tasks, employee-created posts, polls, and social features. The platform also lists email, an employee intranet, and digital signage among its delivery surfaces. Employee access is made available through the employer's Firstup instance; the exact experience can vary with the employer's configuration and purchased services.
The intranet can be deployed as a standalone hub or used within an existing intranet. Firstup describes a branded experience that can surface connected-system information and workflows. Digital signage uses ScreenCloud and can target content by site, department, or employee attributes; the vendor says existing displays or new hardware can be used.
Firstup describes bringing HRIS, Active Directory, and database information into employee profiles, with automated synchronization and attribute mapping. Its integration page lists REST APIs, SCIM, and flat-file transfer as connection options. This does not mean every named third-party integration or API capability is included in every agreement.
The developer documentation says Firstup currently issues authorization bearer tokens and provides the Client ID and Client Secret needed to obtain one. Its security materials describe hosting on Amazon Web Services, TLS 1.2 for data in transit, AES 256-bit encryption at rest, and SAML single sign-on. These are vendor statements about the service and its security controls, rather than a certification of every customer deployment.
Firstup pricing is per user per month, based on annual commitments, according to the pricing page's embedded FAQ. The quote depends on the platform tier and number of employees licensed as users. A user is defined there as anyone reachable through any communication channel on the platform. The site asks prospective customers to contact sales for an individual quote; no public dollar price is displayed in the reviewed pricing material.
The pricing page presents three packages. The descriptions below reflect its text as captured on November 12, 2026; a particular order schedule governs the customer's actual purchase.
| Package | Publicly described scope |
|---|---|
| Essential | Email, web, and a company-branded mobile app from one publishing action; audiences based on HR and people-system data; drag-and-drop editing and a shared calendar; retargeting; AI Search; and campaign analytics. |
| Professional | Adds AI content creation and governed templates, AI-enabled channel and time selection, behavior-based targeting, embedded widgets, employee posts and polls, translation, an executive dashboard, AI sentiment insights, and data export. |
| Premier | Adds a no-code journey builder and templates, event-triggered messages, decision splits and exit criteria, journey analytics, personalized homepages and knowledge hubs, employee directory and document search, and employee self-service access. |
Firstup says its pricing scales depend on the number of licensed users. Its embedded FAQ data describes implementation support. It also mentions consulting services. The public comparison also uses visual indicators and dollar symbols for some features; those symbols alone do not establish their exact inclusion or add-on price. No amount, free trial, or self-service purchase path is stated in the reviewed pricing material.
The general terms put fees, currency, and payment terms in the applicable order schedule. Unless the schedule says otherwise, invoiced amounts are due within 30 days. The terms say fees are not conditioned on delivery of future functionality outside that schedule, which matters when evaluating features described as planned rather than currently available.
For a multi-year schedule or a multi-year renewal term, the general terms permit an annual fee increase of up to 10% over the then-current fees. The same terms call for notice of renewal increases at least 60 days before the current term ends. Unless the applicable schedule says otherwise, renewal is automatic on the stated terms unless either party gives written non-renewal notice at least 30 days before expiry.
The general terms also state that termination generally does not refund paid fees or excuse amounts due for the schedule term, with an exception for client termination under the specified material-breach provision. They distinguish a 30-day cure period for remediable material breaches from a 10-day period for breaches of Section 2. An individual order schedule may alter the applicable commercial terms.
Fees exclude taxes, which the client pays unless it provides satisfactory proof of exemption. At Firstup's reasonable discretion, overdue fees may accrue interest at the lesser of 1% monthly or the legal maximum. The client must reimburse reasonable collection costs for non-payment or late payment.
Workvivo describes a digital employee headquarters bringing communication, company knowledge, and AI together. Staffbase describes an employee communications platform connecting communication, knowledge, and action for frontline and office employees. Both are relevant alternatives for organizations comparing ways to reach and connect their workforce, although the vendors' descriptions do not establish equivalent features, contract terms, or results.
The generative AI integration terms warn that output can be inaccurate, biased, infringing, offensive, or similar to output for others. They put responsibility for evaluating output and ensuring appropriate accuracy, including human review, on the client. The terms also prohibit use for discriminatory purposes or certain automated adverse decisions about individuals, including hiring or termination.
As between the parties and where lawful, the client owns AI output, but similar output may be produced for others and rights may not be enforceable. Firstup may modify or disable an AI integration for a reasonable purpose at its discretion. Platform fees do not depend on the integration except for fees specifically related to it in a schedule. AI integrations are optional for platform use.
The AI Integration terms allow third-party providers access to client content for interoperation and place the exchange under applicable third-party terms. The vendor's CommsAI page describes its data as encrypted, never stored, and never shared, and says the feature uses OpenAI's enterprise API. These statements occur in different documents and contexts; they do not establish that every piece of customer data handled throughout the platform is never stored or shared.
Firstup's AI page labels AI Actions as coming soon. Its AI Search description says it works inside Microsoft Copilot and Teams. Separately, the page's embedded FAQ data says Search works in Teams today and describes Copilot integration as planned. The two statements are inconsistent, so neither should be treated as independent confirmation of current Copilot availability.
The accessibility statement is specifically for the Firstup.io website. It describes partial conformance with WCAG 2.1 level AA, meaning that some website content does not fully conform. That statement does not establish the accessibility of every employer-configured app or service.
The platform privacy notice applies to services made available by an employer and says the employer controls its Firstup instance and submitted Customer Data. The notice does not cover the employer's own data practices and directs users to the employer's privacy policy for those practices. Information submitted directly to Firstup through a website form is addressed separately under its website privacy notice.
Firstup says employee title or hire date can be used by the employer to create groups, while prior service interactions can influence delivery channel and timing. The platform notice describes collection of log information such as IP address, referral URL, time, and crash data, along with device and browser information, approximate location, and information about service use. The platform notice says Firstup does not honor browser Do Not Track signals.
The platform notice says users seeking to exercise the listed privacy rights must contact their employer, with Firstup's privacy contact available if they cannot do so. Its erasure discussion also identifies limits: information retained for legal reasons, information that cannot readily be deleted, and data resynchronized by the employer may affect removal. The data processing addendum describes retention for the duration of the agreement, subject to legal and compliance exceptions.
On service termination, the data processing addendum provides for return or deletion on the client's written request and/or as agreed, as required by law and subject to legitimate retention. The agreement FAQ says support and engineering may process data outside the United States, primarily in Ireland and the UK. Customers outside the United States may elect EU storage, but their data may still be processed in the United States.
The current platform privacy notice contains an unfilled UK complaint-contact line: it shows “XXXXX” and placeholders for the customer or a retained third party and contact information. The rest of the notice is not identified as a draft. This incomplete local contact line is distinct from the notice's other contact and privacy-rights provisions.
