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Home » Blog » Sprout Social Review 2024

Sprout Social Review 2024

by Top Rated Ten

Sprout Social Review (2024)

sproutsocial.com Review
Price
$249 per user, per month
Free trial
30 days
Standout features
Centralized social inbox, reviews management and advanced analytics

Our Research

Sprout Social has become a popular social media management tool for businesses that are looking for an easy way of managing their social media marketing efforts in one centralized location. Though it’s not the most affordable solution in the market with plans starting at $249 per month, it is feature-rich and user-friendly. Learn more about its features, capabilities and more to decide if it’s the right choice for your business with our Sprout Social review.

Sprout Social Pros & Cons

Pros

  • User-friendly
  • No contracts
  • Schedule and publish content
  • Review management
  • Centralized social media inbox
  • Robust analytics and reporting
  • Free 30-day trial (no credit card required)

Cons

  • No free plan available
  • It’s expensive

Sprout Social at a Glance 8.5 Editor Score

Features & Integrations

9.0

Integrations including mail, social media, SEO, CRM and more
 
 

Analytics & Reporting

9.0

Solid analytics built-in, set real-time input about your emails, including open, click
 

Ease Of Use

9.5

Relatively easy to learn and use, it offers a user-friendly interface that’s easy to understand and master
 

Pricing & Packages

8.5

3 plans ranging from $249 to $499, tiered pricing.
 

Customer Service

9.0

Support during US business hours and on Saturday, phone, email and live chat available across the US, Canada and internationally
 

8.5 Editor Score

How do I know I can trust this Sprout Social Review?

TopRatedTen.com authors, contributors, and editors are serious about research. We combine our own experience with the services we recommend, with reviews that come from verified users–just like you! Together, with reviews from industry experts, we find the Top 10 best products and services to make sure you can choose with confidence and ease.

Sprout Social

sproutsocial.com Review

Sprout Social: At a Glance

  • Sprout Social is a social media management and intelligence platform geared toward businesses and agencies of all sizes.
  • It is headquartered in Chicago and was founded in 2010.
  • Sprout Social ranked as Forbes Advisor’s fifth-best social media management software.
  • The platform is designed to enable businesses to manage multiple social media accounts and platforms from one centralized location.

Pros

What businesses love about Sprout Social is how easy it makes the otherwise tedious process of managing multiple social accounts. Unlike some social media management tools, it connects with a wide range of social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok and WhatsApp. One unique feature is its social listening tool, which helps you uncover and understand topics of interest, trends and more using artificial intelligence (AI) to comb the different social networks.

Cons

A major draw of Sprout Social is that it’s expensive―especially in a market where there are a number of other top tools that cost a fraction of the price. Plans start at $249 per month, and Sprout Social does not offer a free version like many of its competitors who offer similar feature sets. It does offer a fairly long, 30-day free trial. However, small businesses on a tight budget might struggle to justify the price tag if they don’t have a sizable following and social audience or the team to manage multiple social accounts.

How Sprout Social Works

Sprout Social is a simple yet comprehensive social media management platform. New users will need to connect Sprout Social to their social media accounts. Once connected, users can view their social inbox to see all messages they have received from their connected social accounts in one place, create, schedule and publish social posts, assign and view tasks, set up social listening, monitor reviews and run reports.

Sprout Social Core Features

As a feature-rich platform, Sprout Social offers a number of tools to help businesses more efficiently manage various social media accounts. While many social media management platforms connect with the key platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, Sprout Social also connects with TikTok, Pinterest, WhatsApp, YouTube and LinkedIn. It gives users the ability to use its smart inbox, plan and publish content, manage reviews, assign tasks, run reports and more.

Smart Inbox

With Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox, users can view and reply to all incoming messages from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, TikTok and LinkedIn. While it sounds like a simple feature, it can help save businesses a lot of time while also ensuring that they stay on top of messages and respond quickly.

Content Planning and Publishing

The content calendar is a very user-friendly feature that makes it easy to draft, schedule and publish social media content. It’s also a nice way to be able to view all upcoming social media posts across all platforms in one place. Unlike some of the more affordable and free social media management tools, you can publish content directly from your Sprout Social calendar, eliminating the need to publish content manually on individual social networks.

Reviews Management

Another key feature is its reviews management tool. Businesses can connect and monitor reviews from the Apple App Store, Facebook, Google My Business, Tripadvisor, Glassdoor and Yelp. Similar to the benefits of the smart inbox, Sprout Social’s reviews management tool is a really helpful tool for businesses to easily manage reviews and ratings across the major review sites. This helps businesses stay apprised to what customers are saying and respond in a timely manner, which can make a difference in your ability to keep existing customers and attract new ones.

Tasks

The tasks feature allows users to assign tasks easily to themselves or others. For example, if you receive a message in your inbox that is best suited for one of your team members, you can assign that as a task for someone else to respond to. There is an option to set up task notification emails to help ensure that people never miss a task. This is a helpful tool for businesses with multiperson teams managing social media. However, it’s not particularly useful for businesses that have one person in charge of social.

What Sets Sprout Social Apart

One unique feature of Sprout Social is its Social Listening tool. What it does is it helps users uncover key insights into what target audiences are talking about. Businesses can use this to develop content that resonates with readers more strategically. It also generally serves as an ideation tool for those who need a little inspiration into what type of content to post and topics to cover.

Sprout Social Pricing and Plans

Standard Professional Advanced
Price per user $249 per month $399 per month $499 per month
Price per additional user $199 per month $299 per month $349 per month
Free trial length 30 days 30 days 30 days
Maximum social profiles Five Unlimited Unlimited
All-in-one social inbox Yes Yes Yes
Schedule and publish posts Yes Yes Yes
Reviews management Yes Yes Yes
Social CRM Yes Yes Yes
Custom workflows No Yes Yes
Post scheduling optimization No Yes Yes
Message tagging No Yes Yes
Trend analysis for Twitter No Yes Yes
Paid social reporting No Yes Yes
Smart inbox No No Yes
Surveys No No Yes
Automated link tracking No No Yes
Chatbots for Twitter and Facebook No No Yes

Standard

The Standard plan is Sprout Social’s entry-level plan. For $249 per month, plus $199 per month for each additional user and up to five social profiles, it comes with access to all of its key features, such as the social inbox, content calendar, post scheduling and publishing, reviews management, task assignments and the social customer relationship management (CRM). A major drawback of the Standard plan is that it does not allow workflow customizations nor does it include optimized social posting.

Professional

The midrange Professional plan costs $399 per month and $299 per month for additional users. One of the main reasons why a business would opt for this plan over the Standard plan is because there is no maximum to the number of social profiles you can connect while the Standard plan is limited to five. It also includes a handful of extra features, such as optimized post times, message tagging and trend analysis for Twitter. Generally, this plan is geared toward large businesses and social media marketing agencies that are looking to manage numerous clients.

Advanced

The top-tier Advanced plan costs $499 per month and an extra $349 per month for additional users. This plan includes everything from the Professional plan, including unlimited social profiles as well as additional advanced features. For example, it has customer satisfaction (CSAT) and net promoter score (NPS) surveys to help you gather user data, automated link tracking to help better understand traffic sources, inbox rules and chatbots for Twitter and Facebook. This plan is ideal for social media marketing agencies. However, it’s generally not overly suitable for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Setup

The process of creating a new account with Sprout Social is quick and easy. To start, go to the Sprout Social website and click the button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen to “Start your free trial.” From there you will be required to input your name, email address and password. Next, you will be prompted to connect your social media accounts. It does a good job of notifying new users about what they need to do to be able to connect.

For example, to connect an Instagram account, you will first need to ensure that your account is set up as a business account, that you are the admin of the account and that it is linked to your Facebook business page. Keep in mind that while it will give you this type of key information, it does not walk you through how to make account changes so if your accounts aren’t set up properly to begin with, it can be a bit of a pain to set up.

Ease Of Use

Despite Sprout Social’s variety of features, it is a very user-friendly platform that has a very minimal learning curve. This is because it does a pretty good job of helping users get set up with prompts. Keep in mind that Sprout Social alone won’t supercharge your social media marketing effectiveness. Businesses still need staff who are social media savvy with marketing experience. In other words, Sprout Social will help bolster your team’s skills, but it is not a replacement for staff such as a social media marketing agency might be.

Security

Sprout Social has a number of built-in security tools to help keep users, their accounts and their data safe. For example, it uniquely has the option to enable account access for instances where users are getting assistance from support. It also has the option to enable two-step verification for an added layer of security.

Customer Service and Support

Support is available 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday via live chat, phone and tickets. Granted, it does not provide the support phone number through the user dashboard. Instead, users will be limited to contacting support by live chat or a ticket submission. While support is generally knowledgeable and helpful, it is a bit annoying that users must input their name and email address to use live chat support―even when accessing it from their user dashboard. In instances where users are having a technical issue, support may ask to remotely access your account, which can be very helpful and a fast way to resolve an issue.

 

Sprout Social Alternatives and How They Compare

Sprout Social Zoho Social Buffer Hootsuite
Ratings
Starting price $249 per month $10 per month (billed annually) Free; $6 per month $99 per month (billed annually)
Free trial 30 days 15 days 14 days 30 days
Social networks Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, WhatsApp and Pinterest Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Google and Pinterest Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Google and Mastodon Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest
Unified social inbox Yes No No Yes
Content calendar Yes Yes Yes Yes
Publish content Yes Yes Yes Yes
Assign tasks Yes Yes No Yes
Analytics and reports Yes Yes Yes Yes
Social listening Yes No No Yes
Post time optimization Yes, with select plans No Yes Yes
Customer support channels 24 hours per day, Monday through Friday, via live chat, tickets and phone 24/7 via phone or email Email Chat and support tickets, Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to p.m. Pacific time

Sprout Social vs Zoho Social

Zoho Social is a very affordable alternative to Sprout Social with plans starting at $10 per month with annual billing for up to nine channels (or social profiles). It is a feature-rich social media management platform, however, it’s not quite as feature-rich as Sprout Social. For example, it doesn’t offer a centralized social inbox, social listening or post time optimization. Due to its affordability, many small businesses will find that Zoho Social is a good choice for managing social media efforts.

Sprout Social vs Buffer

Buffer is one of the best free alternatives to Sprout Social. Its free plan gives new users the opportunity to familiarize themselves with Buffer and schedule up to 30 posts per month across three social channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Google or Mastodon). Its paid plans start at $6 per month, per channel, making it a very affordable solution for businesses that are looking for an easier way to schedule and manage social media calendars. In general, Sprout Social tends to feel more geared toward the needs of agencies, whereas Buffer feels more aligned with the needs of individual businesses.

Sprout Social vs Hootsuite

Hootsuite starts at $99 per month when billed annually. This includes up to 10 accounts, one user and unlimited posts. It’s a more affordable option than Sprout Social’s entry-level plan, which starts at $249 per month. However, Hootsuite’s midrange and top-tier plans are more expensive than Sprout Social, making Sprout Social the better value for agencies.

Who is Sprout Social Best For?

Sprout Social has two key use cases. First, it’s a high-quality solution for businesses that lean heavily on social media for marketing and advertising and want a centralized way to monitor and manage all social channels in one place. Second, it’s a good solution for marketing agencies that offer social media management as it has a number of features that help teams manage social campaigns, run ads and optimize accounts.

Bottom Line

Sprout Social is a high-quality platform, but given that it’s also a very expensive platform, it’s a get-what-you-pay-for type of thing. The price alone is prohibitive for a number of small, budget-strapped businesses. It’s also not a great value for those who do not have a large social media following and for those who do not operate in an industry that makes sense for social. For example, while it’s a great tool for something like clothing brands, it’s generally not great for, say, a manufacturing company.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Sprout Social is a good social media management tool for those that depend heavily on Instagram. However, it may not be the most practical platform for businesses that solely use Instagram as it’s very expensive if you are only using it to manage one social media account.

To gauge the effectiveness of your social media efforts, monitor the key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your goals. For example, if you’re looking to increase online visibility and brand awareness, review your posts’ reach and impressions. If you want insights as to how appealing your post or ads were, consider clickthrough rate, share rate or engagement rate. For insights into how effective it is in converting users, look at your conversion rate.

Sprout Social helps facilitate the process of social media marketing as it gives businesses the tools to organize all platforms in one place, draft, schedule and publish posts, assign tasks to coworkers and more.

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