Sprout Social is designed to be an all-around social media and marketing management tool. It offers a variety of functions from post scheduling and management to comprehensive analytics and response tools.
That way you can not only produce plenty of content for your social media followers, you’ll also be able to stay on top of their reactions and responses.
One of Hootsuite’s biggest competitors (and we’ll come back to that in the FAQ section), Sprout Social is widely regarded as one of the best apps for social media marketing. But does it live up to the hype?
We’ll take a close look at how Sprout Social compares with some of its biggest competitors. We’ll go over the pros and cons of this platform, some of its main features, and give you our final evaluation whether this product is worth the cost.
Table of Contents
- How Sprout Social compares to other social media management tools
- Pros and Cons
- Support
- How to Use Sprout Social
- Pricing
- FAQS
- Conclusion
How Sprout Social Compares to Other Social Media Management Tools
In each of these categories, we’ve rated these companies from 1-10 based on real user reviews. The scores all skew high, but that’s because we’ve picked some of the best and most competitive social media marketing management tools out there.
All of these tools are good platforms for social media optimization. Let’s see how Sprout Social measures up.
| Sprout Social | Agora Pulse | Loomly | Content Studio | |
| Customer Service | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 |
| Ease of Use | 7 | 8 | 8 | 7 |
| Features | 9 | 8 | 7 | 8 |
| Value | 8 | 9 | 9 | 9 |
Now, we do want to note here, Sprout Social can be one of the more expensive products in this niche. While it has some more advanced features and functionality, Sprout Social’s pricing is such that we really recommend it to bigger businesses and businesses very dependent on social media marketing.
Pros and Cons
While Sprout Social is one of the best social media marketing tools, it has pros and cons, just like any software. Let's look at where this program shines, and where it falls a little short.
Pros
- Makes post scheduling a breeze
- Auto-generates monthly reports on several metrics
- User-friendly interface and design
- Fantastic Customer Service
- Polished report design is customer-ready
Cons
- Price is higher than similar programs
- Doesn’t interface with Facebook Groups and some other platforms
- Post drafts can be difficult to manage at times
Support
One of the big advantages of Sprout Social is its customer support. Starting with an extensive resource library and blog, through email and phone support, this is one company that cares about making sure you have the resources to use their platform.
We highly recommend spending some time on the blog. Not only are there helpful troubleshooting tips, but you’ll also get a better sense of how to optimize your social media campaign.
You can reach their customer support representatives from at 1.866.878.3231. They also offer email support through their website, but they don’t publicize the email you’ll use.
How to Use Sprout Social
Sprout Social shines on one hand as a superior post scheduling tool. They make it easy to set up a calendar and release content regularly. You can schedule quite a ways out, without running into conflicts or queue issues.
From your calendar, it’s also easy to see where your posts are going, and which social media accounts are linked to your Sprout Social account.
If you have a collaborative team managing your social media campaign, you can also take advantage of the workflow approval system to make sure your content is consistent and always up to standard.
Analytics are platform-based, visual, and easy to read and interpret.
While monthly reports look a little different, but just as clean. Sprout Social’s reports are one of it’s best features since these can be used to pitch your services to new clients and explain how your social media team is doing internally.
Pricing
Let’s take a look at their pricing schedule. We’ve mentioned a couple of times that this can be a more expensive service, and it is. Generally, we recommend Sprout Social as a good option for established businesses with large budgets and a solid following on social media.
It’s a less friendly platform for solopreneurs and small businesses.
| Standard | Professional | Advanced | |
| Price Per User | $99/m0 | $149/mo | $249/mo |
FAQs
Sprout Social has some of the better analytics in the business. Their reports are fairly detailed, while also being customizable for you and your business’s needs. Some of their metrics include:
-Group Reports: An analysis of the productivity and activity of all connected profiles.
-Tag Report: An analysis of your inbound and outbound tags used in connection to any of your posts or when mentioning your business.
-Competitor Reports: You can also get some insight into how your competitors are using social media, and how successful their posting seems to be.
-Individual Platform Performance: This will give you a better sense of where your followers are most active. You can also get a better idea of what kinds of posts are most engaging to your followers.
It can be hard to make direct comparisons between two different platforms. We will say that Sprout Social has a wider variety of features and functions than Hootsuite, as well as a more user-friendly interface.
But, Hootsuite is also significantly cheaper than Sprout Social and may be a better option for some businesses.
Yes, as of a recent update, Sprout Social will be able to schedule and auto-post to Instagram just like other social media platforms.
Conclusion:
Overall, we think that Sprout Social is an effective and helpful social media tool. It works across a wide variety of platforms, provides a great deal of analytics and reports, and makes working collaboratively with a team easy.
However, its pricing makes this one of the more expensive social media schedulers and productivity tools. It’s a good media management suite but clearly targeted at larger businesses that can afford to spend a little more on their social media management.
While a good tool, we would strongly encourage you to consider whether the benefits of this program are worth the cost. It certainly can be, but this isn’t going to be a good fit for every company.