Changelog
Follow up on the latest improvements and updates.
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new
Local SEO
Social Marketing
Automations
Conversations AI
CRM
Now Available
AI Workforce
Product Updates: 2025-10-22
Small but mighty updates across Vendasta are now available to help you and your SMB clients capture leads, automate common actions, track performance, and more.
AI Workforce
- Customize an AI Chat Receptionist's lead capture flow by viewing and editing the default prompt in the "Capture Leads" capability.
- Direct AI Chat Receptionists to monitor the conversation for additional fields to automatically log key lead data beyond name, number, and email to a Contact record. Set these fields - standard or custom in AI workforce > AI Chat Receptionist > Configure > Capabilities > Capture Leads > Fields to capture from conversations > [add fields].
Note: Both of these updates are coming soon to AI Voice Receptionist too.
CRM
- Trigger targeted, one-off automation actions across multiple records in seconds directly from the CRM with Bulk Actions. This allows you to quickly execute tasks like sending a follow-up campaign or assigning leads without building a full workflow in Automations. Learn more
- Customize field names on forms without losing track of which fields they map to on CRM records with clear indicators of field origin.
Local SEO
- Assign dedicated, unique URLs and phone numbers to Google and Facebook listings to tailor the customer experience improve campaign tracking. Learn more
Social Marketing
- Add more posts on the fly when creating multi-post campaigns. Go beyond the preset options of 3, 6, 9, or 12 posts, up to a maximum of 20 posts per campaign, without having to start over. Learn more
- View Instagram post engagement metrics via the new Instagram Engagement Graph.
- Report post reach with new metrics available for LinkedIn and TikTok.
In line with Google’s official announcement about retiring the Google My Business Q&A API, Vendasta will make corresponding updates across our products.
Starting on
November 3, 2025
, the Google Q&A
sections will be removed from the following areas within the platform to ensure our platform remains aligned with Google’s current integrations and supported APIs:- Standalone Reputation Management
- Business App → Reputation Management
- Multi-location → Reputation Management
- Executive Report
As for Vendasta Services’ offerings, only the **Review Responses Plus** service will be affected by this change. Beginning November 3, 2025, Vendasta Services will no longer provide Google Q&A functionality within Review Responses Plus. All other features of this service will continue to operate as usual.
No action is required on your end — these updates will occur automatically.
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Tips to Stay Connected with Customers
As you adapt to this change, there are new ways to maintain customer engagement through AI technology. We’ve shared insights on how
AI Agents
are becoming a more effective way to manage customer Q&A. Learn more in our latest blog post: Google Q&A Feature Retiring: What Businesses Need to KnowTo help you preserve the value of your existing Q&A content, we recommend downloading your Google Q&A data before the retirement date. You can then repurpose these insights to train your AI Receptionist, enabling it to provide accurate answers to common customer questions and maintain a consistent experience.
If you’d like our team to assist with this, check out our AI Receptionist Setup service.
new
Social Marketing
AI
Now Available
Now Available: Get Smarter Social Comment Responses from Social Marketing's AI-powered "Suggest Reply" + Pexels Integration
More Context, Automatically
Engage your social media audience effortlessly with the latest update to Social Marketing. Extra context is now available to the AI-powered "Suggest Reply," improving the quality and relevance of AI-generated responses to social media comments.
"Suggest Reply" now utilizes AI Knowledge and Social Post Instructions when generating replies.
To update context for social posts and comment responses, go to
Business App > Social > Launch > AI Settings.
Why it's Important
- Craft sharper, smarter replies:AI-powered replies with full context are more aligned and intelligent, crafted with a deep understanding of not only the post content and comment, but the responding business.
- Ensure stronger contextual understanding:Each suggested reply is now more thoughtful and tailored, fitting the conversation seamlessly.
- Maintain consistent quality:Users can expect coherent, relevant, and consistent replies across all interactions.
- Increase efficiency:Replies will be generated faster and with higher quality, streamlining social media engagement for SMBs.
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Get Picture Perfect with Pexels
Never struggle to find the right image for social content again. Pexels imagery is available right in Social Marketing, providing direct access to a vast library of high-quality, royalty-free images, and streamlining your content creation workflow.
Why it's Important
- Browse & select high-quality images:Easily access a wide range of stunning, royalty-free images from Pexels, perfect for enhancing your social media posts.
- Save as drafts:Plan your posts ahead of time by saving selected images as drafts for future use.
- Schedule & publish effortlessly:Complete your content planning by scheduling and publishing your social media posts, complete with eye-catching visuals.
new
Vendasta Services
Now Available
New Vendasta Services: Express Website Build and Animated Display Banners
Deliver more to your SMB clients, faster, with two new products from Vendasta Services.
Launch a Professional Website in a Single Day with Express Website Build
Express Website Build delivers a fully functional, five-page WordPress website with professional design and mobile responsiveness,
all within the same business day.
What's included
This turnkey website creation service includes:
- up to five essential pages (Home, About, Services, Contact, etc.)
- a mobile-optimized layout
- lead capture form integration (up to five fields)
- core SEO structure
- one round of revisions
Each site also comes preloaded with Vendasta’s standard plugin stack for SEO, security, and backup. Optional add-ons for extra pages or consultations are available.
Who it’s for
Express Website Build is ideal for agencies and marketing professionals who need to launch small business websites quickly without sacrificing quality or credibility.
This new service provides an efficient solution for agencies seeking to fulfill urgent client requests, to pilot new offerings without adding in-house design burden, or to leverage website builds as an on-ramp to other digital solutions.
Pricing & Availability
- $149 USD (one-time)
- Available now in the Marketplace as Express Website Build
- Requires WordPress Hosting Pro and 3-month Website Support
- Same-day delivery: Orders received with complete assets by 10:30 a.m. CST are guaranteed same-day delivery; later orders are completed the next business day.
Animated Display Banners — High-Impact HTML5 Ads for Modern Campaigns
Animated Display Banners delivers professionally designed HTML5 ad sets that capture attention and drive engagement more effectively than static ads.
What's included
- set of six animated HTML5 banners (built to IAB specifications and optimized for display across desktops, tablets, and mobile devices)
- static backup images
- ClickTAG integration (if provided)
- one round of revisions.
- fast turnaround: 48 hours after receiving client assets
Who it’s for
Animated Display Banners is best suited for agencies managing awareness or retargeting campaigns that require professional, brand-consistent creatives without the delay of traditional design workflows.
Pricing & Availability
- $100 USD (one-time)
- Available now in the Marketplace as Animated Display Banners
*Note: "Digital Ads: Creatives" is now called "Standard Display Banners" to align with this release. This update gives partners two flexible solutions for their clients’ display advertising needs, one for traditional creatives and one for dynamic HTML5 motion graphics.*
new
Reputation Management
Social Marketing
Automations
Business App
Conversations AI
Executive Report
Partner Center
Campaigns
CRM
AI
Now Available
Now Available: Connect Shopify Stores to AI Receptionists
October brings a host of updates across Vendasta, most notably a new integration that has customers filling their shopping carts without ever leaving their conversation with an AI Receptionist.
AI Receptionists become Personal Shoppers with New Shopify Integration
Connect a business' AI Receptionist to their Shopify store to provide customers with a personalized shopping experience. No more searching, filtering, and scrolling through inventory, just direct links to the items that fit their criteria.
When connected to a Shopify store, the AI Receptionist can:
- search the catalog to get available products matching shoppers' criteria
- provide product details for shoppers' review
- add items to a cart for the user
- provide the link to the checkout page
Convenient, Conversational Commerce via Any Channel
Customers can shop and add to cart from a business's website, or any other channel connected to an AI Chat Receptionist, such as SMS, WhatsApp, phone, Facebook Messenger, or Instagram.
Connect in a Few Clicks
Just add the new Capability, add the store URL, and save - and it just works.
- In Partner Center or Business App, go to Administration > Integrations > Browse > Shopify > Connect > [paste in store domain] > Add connection.
- Go to AI Workforce > AI Chat Receptionist > Configure > Add a capability > Access Shopify > [select store from dropdown] > Save.
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More Updates
APIs & Integrations
- New integration: Kixie. Automate sales outreach and close deals faster by connecting Kixie directly to Business App. Learn more
Automations
- Stop marketing campaigns mid-sequence for a contact when a condition is met (e.g., a meeting is booked or an email bounces) by adding "Pause campaign for Contact" or "Pause campaign for Company" actions to an automation.
Campaigns
- Personalize messages faster with dynamic content fields that display as draggable “chips” with clearer styling, and support for dark mode.
Conversations AI
- System-generated notification emails are sent from Business App with the professional sender name “Team at [Business name],” to ensure recipients recognize the sender.
- Duplicate conversation threads for a single contact are prevented by intelligently detecting and linking SMS conversations with the same number that were created by web chat replies. Conversations are not merged for security purposes. Anyone can say their phone number is ___, and if conversations were auto-merged, it would introduce a security risk: anyone on web chat could gain access to the conversation history of a contact by just saying their number is ___. To prevent this, the conversations are kept separate, but linked together in Business App so that the business can keep track of all conversation in one spot for a single contact.
CRM
- Delete contacts, companies, and tasks in bulk within the CRM, saving significant time on administrative cleanup. To delete, navigate in Partner Center or Business App to CRM > Contacts / Companies / Tasks > [set desired filters] > Select all > Bulk delete.
- Maintain customized CRM filters and sorting with saved views, which are now saved to the database and persist across all devices. Just log in and your settings will load automatically.
- Serve international users and clients better with field names, forms, and templates translated to the language set for the user.
- Fine tune follow up and re-engagement campaigns and workflows with new, filterable fields "Last meeting scheduled" and "Last meeting completed" for contacts and companies.
- Filter companies based on which products they do or don't have active, making it easy to create hyper-targeted lists for upsell or cross-sell campaigns.
- Design forms instantly by simply uploading a screenshot or describing your brand for the platform to generate perfectly on-brand styles with AI-Generated Form Styles.
- Streamline lead capture via forms that now support Smart Company Enrichment. Company information automatically populates the form when a user enters just the company name, saving them time and ensuring accurate data is submitted to the CRM.
Reporting
- [Executive Report] Configure the order, and hide or show sections of the Executive Report on a market-by-market basis to focus client reporting on the services you provide.
Reputation Management
- Get incredible insights on customers with review matching, which automatically connects new reviews to known contacts. Deeper context for every review, clarity on request conversions, and more personalized follow ups are just a few of the benefits delivered through this update. Learn more
Social Marketing
- Publish to Clickable.bio pages with multiple images and videos without compatibility errors, allowing for richer Instagram content.
WordPress Hosting
- Upgrade client sites to PHP 8.2 and 8.3 directly from the hosting dashboard for enhanced performance, security, and compatibility.
new
Reputation Management
CRM
Now Available
New in Reputation Management: Match Reviews to CRM Contacts
Get incredible insights on your customers with review matching, which automatically connects new reviews to known contacts. This upgrade gives you deeper context for every review, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your review requests and follow up with customers in a more meaningful way.
How it Works
New reviews are automatically matched against customer data (name, email, phone), providing unmatched visibility into real customer engagement.
Why it's Important
Review matching gives you and your clients more context about who left each review, providing insights that can inform decisions, at both strategic and individual customer levels.
- Know your reviewers:Identify reviews tied to known contacts with high confidence.
- Know what's working (and what's not):Track how review requests convert into actual reviews or NPS feedback.
- Know how to follow up:Take smarter follow-up actions with full customer context.
How to Access
- Navigate to Business App. Launch Reputation Management > Reviews > Manage Reviews.Matched reviews display a linkable name that connects to the contact's timeline.
- Reviewer names in the review cards will indicate match status. If the reviewer's name is hyperlinked, the review is matched to an existing contact.
- Click on a linked name to navigate to the reviewer's contact record in the Business App CRM. In the contact's timeline, you will see a Review Card with detailed review information, including the review, rating, source, and submission date.
Multi-location businesses can analyze request conversion across locations.
- Navigate to Multi-location Business App > Reputation > Requests.
- View total request and response data.
- Filter by Reviews or NPS to see how many requests result in each type of response.
Note: All new inbound reviews submitted on or after September 30, 2025 will be analyzed and matched with contacts. Historical reviews will not be matched.
Ready to get started? Find more details and FAQs
here
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Automations
Business App
Partner Center
CRM
APIs & Integrations
New Integration! Automate Your Sales Outreach and Close Deals Faster with Kixie
We’re excited to announce the full integration of Kixie, the powerful auto dialer and sales engagement platform, directly into Vendasta! This new partnership brings a proven sales tool—trusted and used by Vendasta's own sales teams—to your organization and your SMB clients, making it easier than ever to connect with leads and drive sales.
Why This Update Matters: Connect, Convert, and Save Time
For any business focused on growth, speed and efficiency in sales outreach are critical. This integration solves the problem of slow, manual lead follow-up and fragmented data, which often slows down your sales cycle.
What Kixie Solves and the Value You Gain
- Eliminate manual data entry:Save time and ensure data accuracy by automatically logging all calls, SMS, and meeting activities in your Vendasta CRM. One-Way contact sync automatically keeps Vendasta CRM records in sync with Kixie.Note: Deletions in one system do not remove records in the other.
- Follow-up with Leads Faster:Capture immediate interest and drive more sales faster with inbound leads that flow directly into the Kixie dialer through configurable automation actions.
- Make data-backed decisions:Gain a complete view of every customer's interaction and sales engagement in one place. Call logs, SMS, and meeting activities are logged in Vendasta alongside AI-analyzed call recordings.
- Automate PowerList Management:Optimize sales outreach by ensuring the right leads are targeted immediately with timely follow-up by automating management of Kixie PowerLists. Use new Automation actionsAddContactToKixiePowerListorRemoveContactFromKixiePowerListto manage leads within Vendasta workflows.
All of this means your sales teams can spend less time organizing and more time engaging and closing deals.
Accessing the Kixie Integration
This integration is available in both Partner Center and Business App.
How to Connect
- Log into Business App or Partner Center
- Navigate to Administration > Integrations > Browse > Kixie > Connect
- Enter Kixie Business ID and API Key in the Pre-Connect form
- Authorize the Integration via Kixie webhook setup
- Confirm Sync is enabled for Contacts and Activities
- Test Automation Actions: Add/remove contacts from Kixie Powerlists, and trigger AI call analysis for recorded calls
The LinkedIn reconnection migration, originally scheduled for September 9, 2025, has been
postponed until further notice
. This upgrade was set to bring exciting new features to Social Marketing, including Hashtag Support, @Mentions and Carousel Posts.We’ve made progress in identifying the root cause of a technical issue discovered during rollout and have determined a new migration path. However, this updated approach may cause scheduled posts to be moved to Drafts. This would require manual reassignment and rescheduling, something we are actively working to avoid.
To ensure the best possible experience, our development team is investing more time to explore, test, and validate a solution that minimizes disruption. As a result,
the migration has been on hold until a better approach is confirmed
. We will announce a new migration date once we have greater clarity and confidence in the implementation plan.What this means for you:
- No action is required at this time. Your LinkedIn connections remain intact, and posts will continue publishing as usual.
- Stay tuned for further updates as we continue working to deliver a better approach.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
new
Social Marketing
Coming Soon
Notice: LinkedIn Upgrade Requiring Re-Connection Postponed
The LinkedIn API upgrade requiring reconnection of Linkedin accounts in Social Marketing, originally scheduled for
September 9, 2025
, has been postponed
. We’ve delayed the migration after noticing an issue so that everything keeps running smoothly.What this means for you:
- Your LinkedIn connection is not affected.
- Posts will continue to publish as usual through the legacy integration.
- There are no known issues at this time.
We are actively investigating the root cause and will announce a new migration date once it is determined. Once the upgrade has taken place and you've re-connected client accounts, you'll be able to create richer, more engaging posts on LinkedIn with several new features, including:
- Hashtag Support: Improve content discovery and reach new audiences by using hashtags in your posts.
- @Mentions: Tag specific profiles or companies to engage with and get noticed by relevant accounts.
- Carousel Posts: Tell a more complete story and showcase multiple images in a single post.
We appreciate your patience and understanding, and we’ll continue to provide updates as they become available.
new
Conversations AI
AI
Now Available
Now Available: AI Voice Receptionists Transfer Live Calls
Ensure every call gets to the right person, every time with Vendasta's AI Voice Receptionist. Always available to answer calls to answer customers' questions or help them book appointments, AI Voice Receptionists can now transfer live calls when appropriate.
Never Put a Customer On Hold Again
Navigating complex phone menus or being put on hold while an employee figures out who to transfer a call to can be frustrating for clients. With live call transfer, AI Voice Receptionists can instantly route calls to the right contact, ensuring a seamless and professional experience.
Provide the Human Touch as Needed
Simplify customer acquisition and engagement for SMBs by ensuring that their customers are directed to the correct person or department. This helps businesses deliver tailored customer experiences without tying their team up with endless lead qualification.
How it works
The AI Voice Receptionist can transfer a call to one or multiple numbers based on specific conditions that you set. You can find this new feature by navigating - in Partner Center or Business App - to
AI > AI Workforce > Voice Receptionist > Configure > Capabilities > Add a capability >Transfer Call.
With this new capability, you can set up the AI Voice Receptionist to:
- Route by Department/Function:Send callers directly to specific department if they mention a certain reason for calling, such as billing.
- Route by Employee Name:Connect callers directly to a specific employee, which is great for businesses that rely on strong client-staff relationships.
- Route by Location:Connect callers to the correct office based on a mentioned location. Perfect for franchises and multi-location businesses!
- Route by Urgency:Escalate critical issues to emergency support, ensuring a fast response.
- Route by Schedule/Time:Set conditions for the receptionist to transfer calls to different numbers based on the time of day or business hours.
- Route by VIP/Account:Configure the receptionist to recognize key clients and route their calls directly to their account manager, providing a personalized touch that builds loyalty.
- Route by Language:Connect callers who ask to converse in a specific language, such as Spanish, directly to a Spanish-speaking agent to making the business more inclusive and customer-friendly.
FAQs
How many numbers can the AI be instructed to forward calls to?
There is no limit to the number of phone numbers you can set up for call transfers.
Can I set the call forwarding to only work during certain days or times?
Yes, you can use the Criteria description to specify conditions for when the AI should transfer calls, including the day or time. The AI is aware of the current date and time and will act accordingly.
Will a transferred call be recorded and transcribed?
No, the recording ends as soon as the call is transferred, and our system does not record or transcribe the transferred portion of the call.
What if the transferred call is not answered? Will the AI Voice Receptionist jump back on?
No, calls are transferred permanently. The caller would need to hang up and dial again to speak with the AI Voice Receptionist.
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