Melissa Data Quality Reviews

We use Listware Online to get personal information from home addresses.

We have only been using this for about two months, but it has sped up our processing significantly. It makes data mining easy and fast. We don't have to spend an entire month gathering correct information on leads. With LWO, all we need is a list of home addresses, and in minutes we have names and phone numbers to increase our chance of these leads becoming customers.

It's most useful in getting us names of homeowners. The phone numbers also make it convenient and easy to contact potential leads. This allows us to personalize postcards to advertise our services.

I wish there was a way to do a "test run" and see what a particular format will give you.

No issues.

No issues.

We have not needed much help, but the help we have gotten has been quick and simple.

It was very simple and easy. I was able to do it with minimal assistance, as it is very easy to understand.

Be sure, before you spend your credits, that you have everything set up the way you want.

Zscrubber. Melissa Listware Online is much easier.

I rate it a nine out of 10. It gets us all the information we need quickly and easily. It's convenient to be able to simply upload a spreadsheet and use a predetermined template; it only takes a few minutes to process.

Customer address verification.

Decreased charges incurred from UPS for incomplete or bad addresses.

Address verification. It ensures our customers get their packages, and we aren’t charged for incomplete address information.

Further improved address data.

Also, I'd generally prefer an API-based solution going forward, and one that does fraud verification at the same time.

No issues.

No issues.

Supportive as needed. Have not required much support.

There are some hitches, especially with the new encoding, but otherwise it’s relatively simple.

Generally, the cost is ROI positive, depending on your shipping volume.

Yes, we evaluated other options. Not disclosing them at this time.

I would also check out EasyPost and Whitepages and see what solution works best for you.

We utilize Melissa Data’s Business Coder product to return the NAICS code on businesses, based on business name and address. We bundle it with our own product to return the business’ industry.

Our organization does not use it directly. We use it in our product that we sell to other businesses.

We only use the one feature for the NAICS code. This allows our product users to know what industry a business is in.

Since we only use one service, and that is only to obtain the NAICS code on a company, the only suggestion is to continually update the database with NAICS codes on businesses.

We haven’t used any Melissa Data technical support.

Our programmers did the API install. As far as I know it went smoothly.

We also evaluated and requested a quote from Experian, which was far more expensive.

This serves our single need and we may utilize Melissa Data for other lookups, such as validate address lookup, in the future.

Test it out with real business data and validate that the industry is accurate. If not, send to Melissa Data and they will respond with more analysis and information. This was very helpful.

It gives me an assessed value of the property in question. My partner and I are property investors, and it's good to get an assessed value. Other databases that we extract information from don't always give us that. So we're able to get an assessed value to cull out properties that we're not interested in.

Extracting the property in question, the owner's address, and the address coming off of the APN number.

It really hasn't given us a phone number for the owner of the property, and that's one thing I'd really like to be getting. Either a phone number or email.

One thing I would want to have, when you're doing a property search, you can do it either on the FIPS in the APN number or the address itself. For some entries, I'll have the APN number, and some I'll have the address. Apparently it cannot process something when both the FIPS-APN and the address are on there. I have to sort, once with one and once with the other, which is a little bit of a pain.

It seems pretty stable. I haven't seen any problems with it.

I haven't seen any problems yet. I do have to go through White Pages to try and get information about an owner, which is a different set. I'd love to see that incorporated in Melissa Data.

There was one time I was trying to figure out how to actually get the databases loaded and called up tech support. They were very helpful. They actually got online to get onto my desktop and see what was going on. It was very helpful. They were able to find my problems, and I was able to move on with it. Instantaneously getting on my screen and see what's going on was extremely helpful.

This is my first time using a solution like this.

It took me a little time. There are a couple of nuances that I had to struggle through, to first figure it out. Having tech support there really helped guide me through it. As far as getting the database formatted the way it should be, that took a little time to do. That may have been my problem as much as anything else.

I think it's worth the value for me to run it.

I just did a Google lookup and found Melissa Data, that's how I got there.

I'd say it's a great product. If those are the parameters that you want to find, it seems to do real well.

What would make it a 10 out of 10 for me would be the improvements I mentioned above.

We had a project where we had purchased data files. We ran a standard name, address, and zip code, internal dedupe between the different files we had, and we were able to quickly notify our vendor that they had tens of thousands of duplications that they were not even aware of, that we would have ended up paying for if we had not used the MatchUp software on the front end.

• Being able to open up large files
• The extensive merge/purge capabilities

We handle large amounts of data, in the terabytes. It's important to be able to have a program that can handle that large amount of data at one time, and effectively do internal dedupes of the data itself.

One of the problems that we ran into this year was we probably spent over 40 hours finding and trying to drill down to where specific bugs were in the program, which was a tremendous waste of time for us. There were a couple of updates to Windows this year and the Melissa program kept crashing. It happened on two different occasions over a period of a few months. We were apparently the first firm that noticed it and reported it. They had problems figuring out what the problem was, so we had to drill down and spend a considerable amount of time, proving to them that it wasn't an issue on our end, but that it had something to do with the compatibility on their end with a Windows update. 

Once we told them what the problem was - even though their tech support is great to work with - it literally took probably about two months to fix the issue where we could actually use the program the way we needed to use it. Two months is just too long to solve a problem on a program when we had just purchased the program earlier this year.

When there's a Windows update, they should check the program in detail to see if there are going to be any conflicts with that update, instead of waiting for their clients to spend countless hours solving the problem of why the program is crashing.

Also, it would be nice to be able to do a merge/purge of larger data sets. What I mean by larger data sets, data sets in the terabytes, without any crashing issues. But from talking to tech support, it's probably as good as it's going to get.

It was crashing a lot, that was one of the problems, it was crashing non-stop. It took them a couple of months, after we had conveyed to them what the specific problems were, but they finally got it fixed where it was no longer crashing.

It has good capability. It probably has about as good a capability as what it's ever going to have.

The tech support people are very accommodating. They're very receptive, they're very knowledgeable.

When you're learning any software program, it takes a little while, but we've used several programs from Melissa over years, MatchUp, Personator, RightFielder, Dirty Harry. MatchUp is fairly straightforward as far as how to use it. It's probably simpler to learn than most of your other merge/purge type programs that are available out there.

We just researched on the internet. There weren't a lot of choices - we're going back probably 13 years - back then as there are now. 

I know Melissa has gone the route where everything is going to the cloud, where you have to pay an ongoing annual fee. We specifically want to use a desktop solution, not a cloud solution - which is the direction many other firms are going, they're going to a cloud solution. But we prefer using a standalone desktop solution, where we are purchasing the software program one time, plus occasional updates, as opposed to having to use the cloud, based on the volume of use.

In terms of advice to others, if you have a large file with many, many terabytes, break it down into smaller files, the program will typically process it a lot quicker.

The best way to learn is try some small test files to see if it's working the way you want it to work, as far as your math logic. A lot of times you have to set up your own unique math logic combinations in order to get the results that you want.

I give it an eight out of 10 overall, because it does involve the cloud, and it can handle unusually large data files.

However, it's not a 10 because, if you don't have the threads set correctly - they have a multi-thread option - if you don't have those threads set correctly it will, in certain instances, cause your program to crash.

I mainly use name and address lookups and Listware Online for mass mailings.

It cuts down significantly on time in trying to match names to addresses. I can do in a few hours what would otherwise take days to accomplish.

Listware Online. I can enter a list of addresses and get names of residents, whether owners/renters, and their phone numbers.

Many issues, sometimes I have to completely log out and start over.

I have never used tech support.

Polk Data.

Easy, but I did not purchase a big package; I have mostly taught myself the program.

Pricing is very reasonable.

Various reverse address, reverse name people search programs; none of them worked for what I need.

Depending on your needs, it is adequate. My need is simply an easy lookup system for mailings.

We use Melissa during subscriber onboarding and the KYC process to verify a provided address.

The customers' addresses are now complete, correct and follow one consistent format. This ensures the delivery of services/products, and all data to be consistent and valid.

Address searching and verification. The user can quickly search for an address and verify it in a multi-country setup.

More countries should be supported by Melissa.

We did not encounter any issues.

We did not encounter any issues.

We have been provided with the highest level of support up to now.

We used local products but decided to switch to Melissa where they support multiple countries at the same time.

It was straightforward. There was documentation that was easily read and understood. A dedicated Melissa contact responded to our clarification questions and we were able to integrate with Melissa without any issues.

We advise our customers to buy the high volume bands of Melissa.

We investigated various solutions and decided that Melissa was the best fit for our business and customers’ businesses needs.

Melissa offer a high quality product with great service. Their pricing is also very competitive.

NCOA to keep our addresses up to date.

Our membership addresses are kept up to date.

Getting the most up to date address for our members. We like to keep in touch with membership a few times a year so we want to maintain up to date addresses to be sure they receive any information that we mail to them.

It will mix up family members at times, so we will change addresses at times that shouldn’t be changed.

No issues.

No issues.

Good.

No previous solution.

Yes, but too long ago, I don’t remember which.

Cleansing addresses of referring healthcare facilities to improve duplicate identification and geocoding their addresses.

• Address parsing
• Cleansing
• Standardization
• SSIS integration

No issues.

No issues.

Have not had to use technical support.

Nothing previously.

Simple.

Did not evaluate other options.

You need to have a specific strategy wrapped around its use so that you can fully utilize its capabilities.

We use Personator to validate any address entered into our system. We also use their GeoPoints to get the most precise, rooftop level geocoding. We do not use the name, email, or phone validation built into Personator.

We use Express Entry Service to fuzzy search; in case there are multiple matches for the address entered, we present them to the user to pick the right one.

We used to use a third-party product that had to be installed and maintained onsite. Since we switched to Melissa Data web services, we do not need to maintain those servers and/or software. Also, we get the most up-to-date addresses from USPS.

Address validation, standardizing and formatting.

In the three years we have been in production with this, we haven’t seen any major issues.

No issues. In fact, we have increased our request volume in the last three years and they have been able to accommodate us easily and smoothly.

Excellent. I mostly contact Jason Chapple who provides front-level support and, if it is something he cannot handle, he forwards it to their technical team which responds with a ticket number immediately. In the last three years we had a few questions about their address validation/formatting, but those turned out to be non-issues.

They also have good documentation and their lookup sites are good for validating results.

We had to write a new Java client to use this service in our application. The complication is only in terms of integrating that into our legacy software. Otherwise, their software/API is pretty straightforward to use.

We did a RFP with various vendors. This one was the most accurate and most reasonably priced for our purpose.

The price for address validation is similar in all software. However, price for geocoding decides the actual pricing. If you get their most accurate geocoding (called GeoPoints), then it will add about $10k+ per million requests.

They were willing to work with our preferred vendors, though it involved extra steps to get the license.

Yes, we tried Pitney Bowes, Service Objects, Trillium, Texas A&M, Informatica. We also considered USPS and Google Maps, though they didn’t fit into our model.

• I suggest you try both their online product and batch mode. If they provide a sample program to consume their (web) services, then try that as well.
• When we selected the product, we got an evaluation license for the products and tried some of the most difficult addresses in our database (based on use case).
• I also suggest you negotiate to send them a sample file with at least 1000 addresses that they can process and send back validated and geocoded. Then, run the results against Google or other sites that are available out there to verify their results are correct.