Sprout Social Review
Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform that helps businesses streamline their social media strategies.
It provides tools for scheduling, publishing, and analyzing content across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Key features include social listening, engagement tracking, and performance analytics, enabling users to optimize campaigns and enhance brand visibility.
The platform supports team collaboration through shared content calendars, approval workflows, and reporting tools. With robust customer support and educational resources, Sprout Social empowers businesses to improve their social media presence and effectively manage online interactions.
4.8
Pricing
Standard ₹8282
Professional ₹12465
Advanced ₹20831
Ranked 1 from 10 Social Media Management Tools
Performance: |4.9| 
Sprout Social delivers reliable performance, allowing users to manage multiple social media accounts seamlessly. The platform efficiently handles scheduling, publishing, and analytics, ensuring that content reaches the target audience promptly. Its robust analytics tools provide insights into engagement and performance metrics, helping businesses optimize their social media strategies.
Uptime: |4.9|
Sprout Social boasts high uptime, typically exceeding 99.9%, which ensures that users can access their accounts and manage their social media presence without interruptions. This reliability is crucial for businesses that rely on timely content publication and real-time engagement with their audience.
Customer Service: |4.8|
Sprout Social offers excellent customer service, providing users with access to a dedicated support team through live chat, email, and phone options. Additionally, the platform features a comprehensive help center with tutorials, guides, and webinars, empowering users to maximize their experience and address any issues quickly.
Pricing: |4.7|
Sprout Social offers several pricing tiers to accommodate different business needs, starting at around $249 per month for the Standard plan, which includes essential features for managing social media accounts. Higher tiers provide advanced analytics, additional users, and enhanced collaboration tools, allowing businesses to choose a plan that aligns with their requirements and budget.
Overview
An Expensive Social Media Dashboard for Businesses
Sprout Social is an excellent tool for managing your social media, but to excel in your marketing efforts, you need a solid social media strategy. As a small to medium-sized business (SMB), you might lack the time or expertise to create one on your own. However, for the cost of a business lunch, you can hire a social media expert on Fiverr to elevate your business.
Founded in 2010, Sprout Social is recognized as one of the top social media management tools for businesses and brands, focusing primarily on business users, with over 20,000 customers currently on board.
It’s important to mention that Sprout Social is not a budget-friendly option. This is a common trend among many of the leading social media tools available today.
The good news is that Sprout Social offers a risk-free trial for 30 days, allowing you to test the platform without needing to provide your credit card information.
Unlike competitors like Hootsuite and SocialPilot, Sprout Social does not offer a team plan; instead, you pay per user each month. With the Standard plan, you can manage up to five social media profiles, while the Professional and Advanced plans allow for ten profiles.
Sprout Social can be utilized as a:
Facebook scheduler
Instagram scheduler
Tweet scheduler
Pinterest scheduler
The application supports automated posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. Additionally, you can use chatbots with Facebook Messenger and monitor Google My Business and TripAdvisor reviews through Sprout Social’s integrations.
Most reviews of Sprout Social indicate that it is a strong social media tool for businesses, but two crucial questions arise:
First, is the high price justified when there are more affordable alternatives available?
Second, is Sprout Social the right fit for your specific business needs?
We will be testing the Advanced plan, and by the end of this Sprout Social review, you should have clarity on these questions.
What Is Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform that enables businesses and organizations to effectively manage their social media presence. It provides tools for scheduling, publishing, and analyzing social media content across various platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Sprout Social also offers features like social listening, engagement tracking, and detailed analytics, helping users gain insights into their audience’s behavior and optimize their social media strategies.
Who is it for?
Small Businesses: Entrepreneurs and small business owners looking to enhance their social media presence and engage with customers effectively.
Marketing Agencies: Agencies managing multiple clients’ social media accounts, requiring robust tools for scheduling, analytics, and reporting.
Social Media Managers: Professionals responsible for developing and executing social media strategies, seeking efficient tools for content management and engagement tracking.
Large Enterprises: Organizations with extensive social media needs that require advanced features for collaboration, analytics, and performance tracking across multiple teams.
Content Creators and Influencers: Individuals who want to manage their social media presence, schedule posts, and analyze engagement metrics to grow their audience.
Nonprofits and Advocacy Groups: Organizations focused on community engagement and awareness, using social media to connect with supporters and promote their missions.
E-commerce Businesses: Online retailers looking to drive sales and engagement through social media marketing and targeted advertising campaigns.
FEATURES |4.8|
Social Media Scheduling: Plan and schedule posts across multiple platforms, ensuring timely content delivery and optimal audience engagement.
Social Listening: Monitor brand mentions, industry keywords, and competitor activity to gain insights into audience sentiment and trends.
Analytics and Reporting: Access detailed performance analytics and customizable reports to track engagement, reach, and overall social media effectiveness.
Engagement Tools: Respond to comments and messages from various social media accounts in one centralized inbox, streamlining communication with followers.
Collaboration Features: Facilitate teamwork with shared content calendars, approval workflows, and task assignments, enhancing efficiency among team members.
CRM Integration: Integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) tools to track interactions and improve customer service through social media channels.
Mobile Access: Use the Sprout Social mobile app to manage social media accounts on the go, ensuring users can stay connected and responsive anytime, anywhere.
A Comprehensive Social Media Dashboard
Wherever you are in the Sprout Social app, the navigation menu makes it incredibly easy to access the features you need. There are numerous options available, including a social CRM designed to help you better understand and engage with your followers.
In addition to tools for content publishing, social listening, and follower engagement, Sprout Social also lets you conduct customer satisfaction surveys through Twitter. You can even boost Facebook posts directly from the app.
Social Inbox and Engagement
Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox offers a unique approach compared to other social media monitoring tools. If you’re accustomed to viewing social streams side by side, as seen in Hootsuite, or separately, like in Buffer, the Smart Inbox presents a different user experience.
The Social Inbox consolidates all your messages, featuring a convenient icon that indicates their source. You can interact with each message just as you would on the respective social media platform. This means you can favorite tweets, like Facebook messages, retweet, share, and utilize private messaging across your accounts.
A bar chart displays the number of messages that still require your attention, whether that means responding or marking them as complete. You can also adjust the date range to view messages from the last quarter, week, day, or a custom timeframe.
Social Listening
Great news: if you want to use Sprout Social as a Twitter hashtag tracker, you’re in luck.
The media monitoring feature in Sprout Social allows you to easily set up a Twitter search through the dashboard, enabling you to stay updated on topics that are relevant to your business or brand.
You can monitor the stream to like, retweet, or email content, and even mark items as spam, which can be quite useful. Additionally, you can set up multiple Twitter searches for various hashtags and keywords.
So far, so good. However, if you’re seeking a comprehensive social media tracker, you may be disappointed, even with the Advanced plan. This is because to access social listening features for other platforms, you will need to purchase the Advanced Listening add-on.
I tested it with Twitter, allowing me to monitor words, phrases, hashtags, mentions, and more, while also creating complex queries. This appears to be a valuable tool for brands looking to enhance their social media listening. However, it’s somewhat frustrating that you need to pay extra for access to additional platforms.
Publishing and Scheduling Posts
In the publishing interface, Sprout Social functions similarly to many other social media management tools. You select your social media accounts, input your link, and instantly see a preview of how it will appear in the panel on the right side of your screen.
This process works seamlessly for Twitter and Facebook, but not as well for Instagram and Pinterest. When scheduling content for Instagram, you receive a reminder to post through the Sprout Social app. Additionally, Pinterest Rich Pins do not display a preview in the web app, so you won’t know how your pin will actually appear until it’s posted.
After you finish editing your social media post, you have several options: you can schedule it, schedule and duplicate it (creating a new post for other networks), or schedule it and return to the compose window.
For scheduling, you can choose to send content immediately, select a specific date and time, or allow Sprout Social to fill engagement gaps by recommending optimal posting times.
Once you’re finished, you can view your social media posting schedule in Sprout Social’s calendar.
Unlike other social media calendars, Sprout Social’s calendar does not support drag-and-drop functionality. This means you’ll need to manually edit send times if you want to reschedule content. In my view, drag-and-drop calendars in tools like Hootsuite and Sendible are more effective for planning social media posts.
Team Features
Sprout Social offers several features that facilitate efficient social media scheduling for teams and large enterprises.
You can assign tasks to team members for any message using a pushpin, and team members can comment on these tasks as well. Additionally, you can group social media profiles together for easier management and reporting.
Inviting and adding team members is straightforward, and you can set permissions for what actions they can perform on each social media account or group. This allows teams to establish an approval workflow with minimal effort.
ViralPost
Sprout Social offers an interesting feature for publishing called ViralPost. This tool can automatically schedule your content to be posted at times when it’s likely to receive the most engagement.
To enable this feature, you’ll need to do a bit of setup. After establishing posting times for each social network, navigate to the queue settings and activate ViralPost. Then, simply specify how frequently you want the posts to be sent out, and let Sprout Social take care of the rest.
Add-Ons and Utilities
Beyond its core tools, Sprout Social enhances your social media strategy further with various add-ons and integrations. If you’re leveraging social media for customer support, the integrations with Zendesk, HubSpot Service, and UserVoice will be particularly beneficial.
The app also features a Twitter follower tool that allows you to see who has mentioned you, who is engaging with you, and which followers you need to follow back. These tools can effectively help you grow your audience and increase engagement. Additionally, there’s a Cleanup tool that assists in unfollowing inactive users or accounts that appear spammy.
Popular Social Media Management Tools
Service Offered
Sprout Social offers a range of services to enhance social media management for businesses. One core service is social media scheduling and publishing, which allows users to plan and schedule posts across multiple platforms, ensuring timely content delivery. Its intuitive interface simplifies content calendar management and optimizes posting times based on audience engagement.
Another key service is social listening and monitoring, enabling users to track brand mentions, relevant keywords, and industry trends. This feature helps businesses gauge audience sentiment, identify issues, and engage in meaningful conversations, allowing for prompt responses and strategy adjustments based on real-time insights.
Additionally, Sprout Social provides analytics and reporting tools that deliver in-depth performance metrics for social media campaigns. Users can generate customizable reports to analyze engagement and reach, empowering them to make data-driven decisions and refine their strategies for better audience engagement and results.
PROS AND CONS OF SPROUT SOCIAL
Pros of Sprout Social
Comprehensive social media management features
User-friendly interface with intuitive navigation
Robust analytics and reporting tools
Excellent customer support and resources
Strong collaboration tools for teams
Effective social listening capabilities
Mobile app for on-the-go management
Cons of Sprout Social
Pricing may be high for small businesses
Limited features in the lower-tier plans
The high learning curve for advanced capabilities may be a turnoff for some people.
No free trial available for new users
May require time to fully explore all functionalities
Integration options could be improved
Occasional performance issues during peak usage
Resources and Solutions
Why you should consider?
Comprehensive Social Media Management: Sprout Social offers an all-in-one platform for managing multiple social media accounts, streamlining scheduling, publishing, and analytics in one place.
Robust Analytics and Reporting: The platform provides in-depth analytics and customizable reports that help users track performance, understand audience engagement, and make data-driven decisions.
Social Listening Capabilities: Sprout Social’s social listening tools allow users to monitor brand mentions, industry trends, and audience sentiment, enabling proactive engagement and strategy adjustments.
Collaboration Tools: With features like shared content calendars, approval workflows, and task assignments, Sprout Social enhances team collaboration, making it easier for multiple users to work together effectively.
User-Friendly Interface: The platform’s intuitive design simplifies the process of managing social media accounts, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced users.
Customer Support and Resources: Sprout Social provides excellent customer support and a wealth of educational resources, including tutorials and webinars, to help users maximize the platform’s capabilities.
Mobile Accessibility: The Sprout Social mobile app allows users to manage their social media accounts on the go, ensuring they can stay connected and responsive anytime, anywhere.
EASE OF USE |4.7|
Sprout Social is designed with user-friendliness in mind, featuring an intuitive interface that simplifies social media management tasks. The platform’s dashboard provides a clear overview of all social accounts, making it easy for users to navigate between scheduling posts, monitoring engagement, and analyzing performance metrics. With drag-and-drop functionality and straightforward menus, both beginners and experienced social media managers can quickly adapt to the platform and maximize its capabilities.
Additionally, Sprout Social offers various resources to enhance ease of use, including tutorials, webinars, and a comprehensive help center. These resources empower users to learn how to utilize the platform effectively, ensuring they can leverage its features to improve their social media strategies. Overall, Sprout Social combines a user-friendly design with supportive resources, making it accessible and efficient for managing social media efforts.
Beginner-Friendly Social Account Setup
Sprout Social makes it easy for beginners to get started. The user-friendly interface ensures that even if you’re new to social media scheduling tools, you can quickly add your social profiles and start scheduling content with ease.
Effortless Setup
After entering your name, email, and password, the app guides you to connect your Twitter account, simplifying the setup process.
It promptly brings you back to a screen where you can add additional social media accounts. At the bottom of this screen, there’s a helpful reminder indicating how many more profiles you can connect.
Adding more accounts is just as simple. Similar to other platforms, personal LinkedIn accounts can’t be connected, which is expected since Sprout Social is primarily geared toward business users.
To complete the setup, you’ll enter information about your company, the number of employees, and your time zone. You’ll also answer a few quick questions to tailor the app to your specific needs.
Saved Replies
Sprout Social has introduced a new feature to its Advanced plan designed to streamline social media management for businesses and teams: saved replies. This feature allows you to create and store personalized responses for follower messages on social media.
You can quickly insert a saved reply as-is or adjust it to better suit the conversation. These replies are managed within your Asset Library, where you also keep media and images for use in your social posts.
Chatbots
Sprout Social includes a chatbot feature that helps you stay highly responsive on Twitter and Facebook. If these are the main platforms where you engage with customers, the chatbot can significantly reduce response times, allowing you to provide quick replies without needing to be online all the time.
You can configure bots tailored for customer support, lead generation, shopping, or content discovery, or even create a custom bot from the ground up. The tool offers a useful (though slightly complex) flowchart interface that allows you to define which responses are triggered at specific times. As chatbots become more common, this feature is a valuable addition.
ANALYTICS & REPORTING |5.0|
Auto-Generated In-Depth Reports
Sprout Social’s analytics are often ranked among the best social media measurement tools by many reviews. Similar to Sendible, Sprout Social automatically creates reports based on the social accounts you’ve connected. However, these reports aren’t generated instantly—it can take up to 24 hours to compile all the data.
Analytics
Sprout Social gathers data from your business accounts, offering the flexibility to view overall analytics or focus on specific platforms and accounts. It provides insights into engagement, follower demographics, and more, helping you gain a deep understanding of your audience and content performance.
If you’re looking to enhance your social media strategy with Sprout Social’s analytics, this is a great place to start.
Reporting
Sprout Social also allows you to generate reports for all your accounts, as well as for specific groups or individual accounts.
While you can customize reports by adjusting the reporting period or selecting specific data, the default reports are quite useful and help save time for busy social media managers. Additionally, Sprout Social provides reporting on customer service interactions through social media.
Apps and Integrations
Sprout Social gathers analytics from Twitter profiles, Facebook pages, Instagram (both personal and business profiles), and LinkedIn pages. You can also integrate Google Analytics with just a few clicks, giving you a complete view of your social media content’s performance.
(Note: For further details on Sprout Social’s analytics, see Sharon’s separate post on the subject.)
Getting started with Sprout Social
Visit the Website: Go to the Sprout Social website and click on the “Get Started” or “Start Your Free Trial” button.
Enter Your Information: Fill out the registration form with your name, email address, and a password. Alternatively, you can sign up using your Google account for a quicker process.
Select a Plan: Choose a pricing plan that fits your needs. If you’re starting with a trial, you may be prompted to select a trial option.
Provide Additional Details: Complete any additional fields, such as your company name and social media handles, to help customize your experience.
Confirm Your Email: Check your email for a confirmation message from Sprout Social. To validate your email address and activate your account, click the given link.
GTMetrix
SUPPORT |4.7|
1. Support Channels
Sprout Social offers multiple support channels for users, including live chat, email support, and phone support. This ensures that users can reach out for assistance based on their preferences and needs.
2. Help Center
The platform features a comprehensive help center that provides a wealth of resources, including articles, tutorials, and FAQs. Users can easily search for specific topics to find relevant information and troubleshooting tips.
3. Onboarding Assistance
For new users, Sprout Social provides onboarding assistance to help them get acquainted with the platform. This includes personalized walkthroughs and setup guidance to ensure users can maximize the platform’s features from the start.
4. Webinars and Training
Sprout Social regularly hosts webinars and training sessions covering various topics, such as best practices for social media management and in-depth feature tutorials. These sessions are valuable for both new and existing users looking to enhance their skills.
5. Community and Forums
The platform encourages community engagement through forums and user groups, allowing users to share experiences, ask questions, and learn from one another. This fosters a sense of community and collaboration among Sprout Social users.
6. Feedback and Improvement
Sprout Social actively seeks user feedback to improve its services and features. Users can submit suggestions and report issues, contributing to the platform’s ongoing development and enhancement.
7. Resource Library
In addition to the help center, Sprout Social offers a resource library with guides, case studies, and industry reports. These resources help users stay informed about social media trends and effective strategies.
Security
Data Encryption: Sprout Social employs encryption protocols for data transmission, ensuring that user data is protected both in transit and at rest. This helps safeguard sensitive information from unauthorized access.
Secure User Authentication: The platform supports secure login options, including multi-factor authentication (MFA). This adds an extra layer of security, requiring users to provide additional verification when logging in.
Regular Security Audits: Sprout Social conducts regular security audits and assessments to identify and address potential vulnerabilities, maintaining a robust security posture.
Access Controls: Users can manage permissions and roles within their accounts, allowing organizations to restrict access to sensitive information and features based on user responsibilities.
Compliance with Standards: Sprout Social adheres to industry standards and regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, ensuring that user data is handled in accordance with legal requirements.
User Education: The platform offers resources and best practices for users to enhance their account security, including guidance on creating strong passwords and recognizing phishing attempts.
Review
PRICING |5.0|
How much does Formidable Forms cost?
Sprout Social Pricing: You Get What You Pay For
Sprout Social is loaded with features designed for businesses and enterprises, but this level of functionality comes at a cost. While most reviews praise the platform for its publishing, monitoring, engagement, and social media analytics capabilities, the pricing isn’t as well-received.
With per-user pricing, costs can quickly escalate for larger teams, so it’s worth considering when choosing a social media management tool for your business.
If you choose to invest, you can pay using any major credit card or PayPal. Additionally, you can (and should) take advantage of a free 30-day trial before committing to any Sprout Social plan.
With a 30-day free trial, if you find that Sprout Social isn’t the right fit, it’s easy to end your trial and close your account. If you’ve already signed up and need to cancel later while seeking a refund, be sure to check out our guide for a step-by-step walkthrough of this straightforward process.
Sprout Social
STANDARD
₹8282
/MONTHS
Number of Social Profiles: 5
Number of Users: 1
Post scheduling: unlimited
Traffic & Conversion tracking
Exportable reports
Team approval workflow
Sprout Social
PROFESSIONAL
₹12465
/MONTHS
Number of Social Profiles: 10
Number of Users: 1
Post scheduling: unlimited
Traffic & Conversion tracking
Exportable reports
Team approval workflow
Sprout Social
ADVANCED
₹20831
/MONTHS
Number of Social Profiles: 10
Number of Users: 1
Post scheduling: unlimited
Traffic & Conversion tracking
Exportable reports
Team approval workflow
Sprout Social
STANDARD
₹8282
/MONTHS
Number of Social Profiles: 5
Number of Users: 1
Post scheduling: unlimited
Traffic & Conversion tracking
Exportable reports
Team approval workflow
Sprout Social
PROFESSIONAL
₹12465
/MONTHS
Number of Social Profiles: 10
Number of Users: 1
Post scheduling: unlimited
Traffic & Conversion tracking
Exportable reports
Team approval workflow
Sprout Social
ADVANCED
₹20831
/MONTHS
Number of Social Profiles: 10
Number of Users: 1
Post scheduling: unlimited
Traffic & Conversion tracking
Exportable reports
Team approval workflow
Sprout Social Alternatives
Frequently Asked Question.
Sprout Social is a social media management platform that helps businesses manage their social media presence through scheduling, publishing, analytics, and engagement tools across various social networks.
Sprout Social offers various pricing plans starting at approximately $249 per month for the Standard plan, with higher tiers available for more features and social profiles.
Yes, Sprout Social offers a free trial that allows users to explore the platform’s features without committing to a paid plan. Specific terms and length, however, could change.
Sprout Social supports multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, allowing users to manage their accounts from a single dashboard.
Yes, Sprout Social is designed with an intuitive interface that makes it easy for users of all experience levels to navigate and utilize its features effectively.
Sprout Social offers robust analytics tools that provide insights into engagement, reach, audience demographics, and content performance, helping users refine their social media strategies.
Yes, Sprout Social allows users to schedule posts in advance across multiple social media platforms, ensuring timely and consistent content delivery.
Yes, Sprout Social offers customer support through live chat, email, and phone, along with a comprehensive help center filled with tutorials and resources.
Yes, Sprout Social has a mobile app that allows users to manage their social media accounts on the go, including scheduling posts, monitoring engagement, and accessing analytics.
Yes, Sprout Social provides collaboration tools, such as shared content calendars and approval workflows, enabling teams to work together efficiently on social media management tasks.