Sprout Social Review (2024)
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
Analytics & Reporting
9.0
Ease Of Use
9.5
Pricing & Packages
8.5
Customer Service
9.0
8.5 Editor Score
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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
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
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 | 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?
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.
