Signpost was founded in 2010 in New York and built its business on an AI-driven marketing assistant called "Mia" that automates reputation management, SMS customer follow-up, and reactivation campaigns for local SMBs. For HVAC, the pitch is that Mia handles the touches a busy one-truck or five-truck shop rarely gets around to: firing review requests post-job, sending maintenance reminders, asking for referrals, and re-engaging dormant customers with targeted SMS outreach.
The product combines CRM, marketing automation, and reputation into a single SMB-focused platform. Core reputation features include automated review solicitation via email and SMS, negative review interception, monitoring across major sites, and AI-generated customer communications based on behavioral triggers. Beyond reviews, Signpost offers appointment reminders, referral campaigns, customer segmentation, and reactivation outreach, making it more of a complete SMB marketing stack than a pure reputation tool.
Signpost was acquired by Hibu in September 2023, which brought it under a larger local-marketing umbrella and expanded distribution through Hibu's SMB sales network. Pricing starts around $199/user/month, putting it between NiceJob and Podium. For HVAC contractors who want reputation management bundled with marketing automation and don't need deep ServiceTitan integration, Signpost is a reasonable all-in-one. The main trade-offs versus more focused tools are the broader (sometimes thinner) feature set and a product that's less vertical-specific than ReviewBuzz or RealWork Labs.