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Since Sprout Social was founded in 2010, many new social media management platforms have entered the market. There’s also been a shift in market share and popularity among the different social media channels. Many users have changed their go-to channel from Facebook to Instagram, while TikTok has entered with a big bang.
To help you stay on top of all these different networks, you need a solid software solution. Manual posting is just too ineffective. Plus, as you’ll see, most tools nowadays offer loads of other features like hashtags suggestions, analytics, and comprehensive reporting. Without these features, it’s nearly impossible to take your digital marketing campaigns to the next level.
While the team at Sprout Social has made sure that their product keeps up with the changes by for example including integration with TikTok, it has a hefty monthly price tag. Whether it’s because of financial reasons or simply because you like to do your due diligence, here are eight Sprout Social alternatives that you can also trial and test.
Top Sprout Social Alternatives:
Why Should You Check Out Sprout Social Alternatives?
Sprout Social is one of the most popular and professional social media management platforms on the market. While it can be used by brands of all sizes, its target audience is more towards bigger businesses with serious social media needs.
Its powerful functionality is not at the expense of user-friendliness. The interface is clear and easy to understand and attaching your social accounts is a straightforward process. You can also use the Smart Inbox to collate all your social messages, adding to the intuitiveness of the platform. This Smart Inbox feature along with its task assignment features, like posts approval, are some of the reasons why it’s so geared towards bigger businesses and agencies.
Not only is it a useful tool for staying on top of your messages and tasks, but it also makes it easy to create content and schedule your posts (which are standard features that you’ve come to expect of tools in this category and league). One of the ways that it does differentiate itself from many of the other social media tools, like Buffer, is that it also includes social listening. While it’s a popular feature, not all platforms include this.
However, here’s the catch… Great power comes at a price. As you would expect, this degree of functionality will cost you. For starters, Sprout Social doesn’t offer a free plan that many other tools do. Sure, it offers a generous free 30-day trial, but after that it becomes pretty expensive pretty fast.
Here are some of the pros and cons to keep in mind before you settle on Sprout Social:
Pros of Sprout Social
- The interface and publishing calendars are very easy to understand and use.
- It includes detailed reporting.
- It also includes social listening and other features to help with competitive analysis.
Cons of Sprout Social
- It’s expensive and doesn’t include a free plan.
- Some users have complained about its support.
What Are the Top Alternatives to Sprout Social?
- Agorapulse
- Buffer
- NapoleonCat
- MavSocial
- SocialBee
- Hootsuite
Instead of having to do the online research on your own manually, we’ve read the blog posts, compared the features, consulted the software review sites, and analyzed the feedback to present to you this list of possible alternatives to Sprout Social. Here are short summaries of the best alternatives to check out and how they compare to Sprout Social.
Super Sprout Social Alternatives
Formerly called Falcon.io, Brandwatch is an all-in-one social media management solution that’s trusted by some of the world’s largest brands like Carlsberg and Toyota. It offers a comprehensive, integrated content calendar, approval flows, and an intuitive social inbox to mention only a few of its main features. Then, to help you make sense of your performance and compare it to others in your niche, it also includes actionable social insights. Here are some of Brandwatch’s key features: Sprout Social isn’t the cheapest tool, but Brandwatch is even more expensive. While Brandwatch doesn’t share all their plans on their website, just to sign up for their basic social media management plan aimed at small businesses, you’ll already need to pay more than $100 per month. Also, according to online data, Sprout Social is also ranked higher than Brandwatch when it comes to usability and performance, which are two key areas. On the other hand, the same data suggests that Brandwatch users are quite happy with the product and support. Not only are they more likely to renew their plan than Sprout Social users, but they’re also more likely to recommend it to others in their network. Pricing: Brandwatch offers an Essentials plan that’s recommended for smaller businesses with only one to two users. Pricing for this plan starts at $108 per month. For more information about the pricing of their other more comprehensive products, you’ll have to book an online meeting with them. Agorapulse offers an intuitive interface and several useful tools to help with publishing, team collaboration, monitoring, and reporting. In addition to offering you the tools to help you stay on top of your content, it also includes a Social Inbox and Inbox Assistant to make managing your incoming messages and comments easier. It doesn’t support all the social media networks that you would hope for, however. It currently supports only Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google My Business. Here are some of Agorapulse’s key features: Agorapulse and Sprout Social both target the same audience — larger organizations with more heavy-duty social media management needs. They’re also quite similar in terms of features as well as pricing. One area where Sprout Social has the upper hand, however, is when it comes to integrations. With TikTok growing in popularity, integration with TikTok is fast becoming standard. Agorapulse also doesn’t support Pinterest, which, while not the newest rage like TikTok, can still be an effective social media network to include in your marketing strategy. On the other hand, you might find that Agorapulse’s team management features are more user-friendly. It, for example, includes an Inbox Assistant, because they know that even if you have a team to help you, messages can quickly pile up (hence, the saved replies feature too). While Sprout Social also offers saved and suggested replies, it’s available only in its top-tier plan. All in all, both are full-featured social media tools that are better aimed at bigger companies, both in terms of needs and budget. Pricing: Agorapulse offers a free plan, two subscription plans as well as custom pricing for enterprise clients. The Pro plan costs $79 per month (yearly billing)/$99 per month (monthly billing) for two users and 10 social profiles. The Premium plan costs $199 per month (yearly billing)/$249 per month (monthly billing) for four users and 20 social profiles. NapoleonCat is one of the newer social media management tools. It places a lot of focus on its user interface, and, compared to many other similar tools, it’s much more visually pleasing. While looks and design matter, it’s never a replacement for features and when it comes to functionality and user experience, NapoleonCat will also impress you. It’s easy to get started and offers all the most important features, like scheduling and team management, and then some. For example, it can also double up as a content moderation tool and hide comments or delete spam automatically. Here are some of NapoleonCat’s key features: Sprout Social’s biggest drawback is NapoleonCat’s biggest pro — pricing. The real attraction of NapoleonCat’s pricing is that unlike most tools, it gives you the option to pay only for what you’ll use by letting you actually choose the number of social profiles and users you wish to connect. With regards to features, both offer a social inbox, competitive analysis tools, and access to analytics and reporting. In terms of integrations, though, Sprout Social offers the added advantage of supporting Pinterest, TikTok, and WhatsApp too. Pricing: NapoleonCat uses a sliding scale that allows you to choose how many social profiles you want to manage and the number of users that you want to add. To give you an idea of what you can expect to pay, for three social profiles and one user (the minimum requirements), pricing starts at about $23 per month for access to the standard features, while it will be double the price ($48 per month) for access to features like automated moderation and customized reports. To help you get to know the tools first, it also offers you a free, two-week trial. Founded in 2011 and trusted by well-known brands like IKEA and National Geographic, Iconosquare is a management, scheduling, reporting, and analytics platform. While it doesn’t integrate with all the platforms, it does include TikTok and LinkedIn analytics which few do. As for publishing, it offers integration with only Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It might not offer as many integrations, but it does include several powerful features to help you improve scheduling like user tagging, a first comment scheduler, and best-time-to-post recommendations. Here are some of Iconosquare’s key features: One of the features that set Iconosquare apart from many other similar tools is that it offers in-depth analytics. Armed with these insights, you’ll get a much better picture of just how your content is performing and be able to track your campaigns’ performance with pinpoint accuracy. As you can add multiple social profiles for different businesses and brands, similarly to Sprout Social, it’s also a good tool for agencies. Plus, Iconosquare has also recently added a new feature that lets you submit posts for approval so that team members and clients can add their input before posts get published. One area where Sprout Social is the better tool, though, is in the platform integrations department. While Iconosquare offers TikTok and LinkedIn analytics, for the standard features like publishing it works only with Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. This makes the analytics for LinkedIn and TikTok a little less valuable seeing that you first need to publish content before you can get analytics. That said, if you’re mostly active on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, Iconosquare will tick many of your boxes for cheaper. When it comes to pricing, Iconosquare’s top-of-the-range plan costs the same as Sprout Social’s entry-level plan. Pricing: Iconosquare offers only two paid plans and custom pricing for bigger social media teams and agencies. The Pro plan costs $59 per month (monthly billing)/$49 per month (yearly billing) for three social profiles and two team members. For the ability to add unlimited team members, you can check out the Advanced plan that costs $99 per month (monthly billing)/$79 per month (yearly billing). Buffer is one of the most popular social media management platforms, especially among beginners. Its main focus is on scheduling and posting and integrates with all the main social media platforms. With the help of its easy-to-navigate calendar view, planning and collaborating on your campaigns are straightforward. While content forms a key part of any digital marketing campaign, all the efforts will be in vain if you don’t engage with the comments. To help you with this, they offer a number of engagement tools. You can view all the comments that still need a reply via its unified dashboard, while the smart alerts powered by machine learning will prioritize key conversations. Then, to figure out if your efforts have delivered the desired results, it offers in-depth insights and reports for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Here are some of Buffer’s key features: One of the features that distinguish Buffer from Sprout Social is the difference in pricing. While Buffer’s free trial period is shorter, it does include a free plan. When it comes to their paid plans, Buffer can also work out much cheaper depending on how many channels you wish to connect (though, it sadly doesn’t support YouTube). You see, unlike Sprout Social, Buffer charges you per channel. If you’re an agency, it will work out about the same as Sprout Social (but keep in mind we’re talking about comparing its top-tier Agency plan to Sprout Social’s entry-level Standard plan). This makes Buffer an excellent alternative to smaller businesses. Considering that it’s also easier to use, Buffer is a better tool to start with if you’re still a small business that’s relatively new to social media marketing. Pricing: Buffer offers a free plan and three subscription plans. After a free, 14-day trial, pricing is as follows when opting to be billed monthly: According to their website, their goal is to create enterprise-level social media software but at an affordable price. Trusted by brands like Domino’s Pizza, it’s a great tool for brands with multiple locations. Included in its list of features is an intuitive campaign calendar that you can use to schedule, publish, manage and boost your content. In addition to offering a unified calendar, it also has a single inbox that eliminates the need to switch between different social accounts, making replying to messages much less time-consuming. Here are some of MavSocial’s key features: Unlike many of the other alternatives that we’ve included on our list that beat Sprout Social when it comes to pricing, MavSocial and Sprout Social are priced similarly, that’s if you don’t need to add multiple users. Neither includes a free plan, but MavSocial’s cheapest plan is slightly cheaper. Integration-wise, Sprout Social supports a few more networks (TikTok, WhatsApp, and Pinterest). It also offers better reporting, according to online articles. What makes MavSocial such an attractive tool and alternative is its strong focus on visual media. If your social media marketing strategy includes a lot of user-generated content (UGC), for example, you’ll love its UGC tools. It will automate your UGC permission requests on Twitter and Instagram to free up time and avoid issues with copyright. Alternatively, you can always tap into its free, licensed stock images to create your own visual content. While Sprout Social also has media integrations and an asset library, it’s merely to help you organize and edit your own visual assets that you’ve, for example, created via Canva. Pricing: After a free, 14-day trial, pricing works as follows when billed monthly: Founded only in 2016, SocialBee hasn’t been on the social scene for very long, at least compared to many of the other leading tools. It offers a wide range of features to help you manage your social media accounts and schedule, publish, and analyze your posts more efficiently. It also offers a number of features to help you with the actual content creation process. You can, for example, integrate it with Canva to help with the design side and use Unsplash or GIPHY to import additional stock images, if Canva’s selection of visuals isn’t sufficient. For those instances when you’re working as part of a bigger team, it also includes teamwork and collaboration features like approval workflows, role assignment, and a commenting system. Here are some of SocialBee’s key features: Pricing: SocialBee offers three subscription plans. After a free, 14-day trial, pricing works as follows when billed monthly: If you’re a regular reader of Influencer Marketing Hub, you’ll most likely already be quite familiar with Hootsuite and its list of features. It’s one of the most popular tools for social media management, especially because of its pricing. Included in its list of features are scheduling (including bulk scheduling) and publishing, content curation, analytics, team management, and detailed reporting. While it does include social listening, it’s available only as an add-on and only with its most expensive Business plan. Here are some of Hootsuite’s key features: While Hootsuite offers cheaper plans than Sprout Social, if you want to be able to access all its powerful features, it can get pretty expensive fast. Just like with Sprout Social, if you want to use the social listening features, you’ll need to pay extra as it’s available only as an add-on product. That said, while both offer the same free trial period of a month, Hootsuite also offers a free plan (albeit very limited) which Sprout Social doesn’t include. As you would expect of tools in this price class, both offer integrations with all the main platforms. Sprout Social integrates with Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and WhatsApp, while Hootsuite integrates with all these, except WhatsApp. That said, Hootsuite is better value in terms of third-party integrations. One useful feature that Hootsuite offers is post boosting. This way you can make your organic posts more impactful by adding an ad spend for better visibility. Enterprise clients can also take advantage of ad campaign management features helping them to publish and manage on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Pricing: Hootsuite offers a free plan, three subscription plans and custom pricing for enterprise clients. With the limited Free plan, you can add one user, two social accounts, and five scheduled posts. After a free, 30-day trial, pricing is as follows when opting to be billed yearly:
1. Brandwatch Social Media Management
Sprout Social vs Brandwatch
2. Agorapulse
Sprout Social vs Agorapulse
3. NapoleonCat
Sprout Social vs NapoleonCat
4. Iconosquare
Sprout Social vs Iconosquare
5. Buffer
Sprout Social vs Buffer
6. MavSocial
Sprout Social vs MavSocial
7. SocialBee.io
8. Hootsuite
Sprout Social vs Hootsuite
Wrapping Things Up
While pricing shouldn’t be the only factor that you use as a measuring stick when you’re shopping around for a social media management platform, no one (not even larger businesses) can deny that it plays a major factor. Unfortunately, that’s the one big area where Sprout Social isn’t the best. That being said, depending on your needs, some of the alternatives to Sprout Social can in the end work out more expensive. However, another huge con is that Sprout Social doesn’t offer a more reasonably priced type of starter plan to give you the opportunity to at least learn its features while you’re still growing.
You should guard against simply choosing the cheapest solution, though. After all, you need to spend money to make money, right? This is especially true when it comes to marketing. What you can’t take away from Sprout Social is that it basically supports all the platforms that you’ll ever wish to use. One of the fundamental rules of social media marketing is that you should build a presence where your target audience is. So, investing in a cheaper tool that doesn’t offer features for that particular network might very likely end up costing you more in the long run.
The best advice is to take your time, consider all your options, and take advantage of the free trial periods that most offer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a free version of Sprout Social?
There is no free version of Sprout Social. However, you can try Sprout Social for free with a 30-day free trial. With this trial, you can access your analytics, schedule posts and access reports.
Is Sprout Social similar to Hootsuite?
Sprout Social and Hootsuite are both social management platforms, but their pricing, support, and features differ. Both services offer some of the best marketing products; however, Hootsuite is better for media management and has more extensive enterprise features and integrations.
Is Sprout Social accurate?
Sprout Social is accurate and great for businesses of all sizes. Sprout Social is a reliable platform for publishing and social listening across multiple social networks with market-leading tools.
What platforms does Sprout Social support?
Sprout Social supports publishing, monitoring, engagement and analytics across the major social platforms, including:
- TikTok
- YouTube
