Sprout Social

Pros: Great user interface (I like it much better than Hootsuite's interface). Customer service is superb! Anytime I had any issues with using SproutSocial, their customer service was a chat or email away. Their customer service seems like a very small team of people, but they are very quick to respond and get to a solution. I've used SproutSocial for several different companies, both large and small, and it works great for managing it all. Analytical reports are clean and better than the ones in Hootsuite. My favorite features are the reports, social listing tools (You can see who's interacting with your company or specific keywords you set up) and being able to 'check off' messages or notifications that you have seen or responded to already. In HootSuite, you cannot do this and sometimes messages can be missed. Another favorite feature in the reporting is being able to compare your company page with competitors and see how you stack up agains the competition. Following/unfollowing accounts on Twitter is another great and useful feature.

Cons: There are a couple social networks that cannot be integrated with SproutSocial, and therefore I have to resort to also using Hootsuite. Things like LinkedIn Showcase Pages, Youtube, Vimeo, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups to name a few cannot be scheduled or automated. SproutSocial covers the larger social media pages you need to manage like Facebook pages and Twitter. Because it cannot schedule at all social networks, I have to do most of my scheduling in Hootsuite.

Comments: I discovered Sprout Social through a Facebook ad. Before deciding to take the trial, I read some of the reviews here and on Capterra and my expectations soared and became somewhat unrealistic to be honest. The pricing threw me off because $99 monthly seemed kind of steep given the features. Nevertheless, I had nothing to lose by trying it out so I decided to signup for a trial. I’ve used/currently use Hootsuite, Buffer, Swift Social, Kontentino, and many other social media managers, so I had a lot to compare Sprout social with. Sprout social is easy to use, the layout is fairly simple and uncomplicated, the dashboard is somewhat of a mix between Social pilot and Kontentino, so are the features. My favorite features are the Smart inbox and the Sprout queue. The social queue is similar to Hootsuite Auto schedule function. The RSS function in the feeds tab is also really nice as I was able to connect it to my Feedly account. A major use of this is the post via RSS function, which I used to auto tweet blog posts from influencer blogs in my niche. The Asset Library is also an amazing feature as it is a great way to store images for future use. The discovery tab shows suggestions on accounts to follow and unfollow, people who have conversed with, and people who mentioned you in a post. Sprout social is a great social media manager, however, It doesn’t seem all that superior to Hootsuite or Swift social. Considering the cost, I expected more out of it. Which I’m aware is rather ridiculous. I will say this though, the “Reports” function offers a variety of important stats such as: Group reports, Twitter profiles [For tracking profile performance to determine the impact of twitter content], Twitter comparison, Twitter listening, Facebook page report, Facebook competitors, Engagement reports, Team reports, Task performance, Trends, Instagram profile analysis, LinkedIn page, Tag report, Google analytics and Sent messages. To me, Sprout Social’s unique feature is its analytics function. No other SM manager, except perhaps SMHack, has such powerful and detailed social media analytics.

Pros: The Digital Asset Library
The Analytics feature
The RSS feature can serve as a social media content generation tool.
Easy UI

Cons: The pricing is rather steep. There are other SM managers with more powerful features which could prove to be a better substitute to Sprout Social. MavSocial has a better Asset Library feature, SMHack provides just as detailed analytics, Swift social has powerful RSS feature, and Hootsuite is cheaper, has an automatic scheduling function, as well as one of the easiest SM Managers to use due to the numerous tutorials online and it's inbuilt mini-tutorial.

Comments: We are a global organization with team members in both the US and UK who manage social communication for events. Sprout allows us to easily manage our social posting and approvals. With the function to put into draft mode, we can approve posts before they go live. In addition, the ability to post on Instagram is a gram changer for us! We don't need to have people posting on their phones and running the risk of posting on the wrong account. In addition, the reporting features allow us to see the impact our social communities have through our content sharing.

Pros: I've used Sprout for the last six years at my company and it is my one constant. Sprout is extremely easy to use and to get new team members acquainted with. I have seen the platform upgrade over the years, but the calendar function is probably one of the best features to see a full view of your social scheduling. In addition, the ability to follow multiple hashtags is a great feature as our organization attends many events globally that we need to keep track of.

Cons: I've had issues setting up my Google analytics tracking on here. When reaching out to support I didn't get the best response to fix it.

Comments: We love Sprout Social and highly recommend it to others. We've used other scheduling platforms, and nothing has come close to being able to handle our needs the way Sprout Social can.

Pros: Our team has used a variety of social media scheduling platforms, including Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and others, and Sprout Social is by far our favorite for many reasons. • As an agency with hundreds of profiles, Sprout Social makes multiple account management a breeze.
• The scheduling browser is very easy to use.
• It offers ideal posting times to help you optimize reach and engagement.
• It offers a birdseye view of the month. (One of our pain points with Hootsuite was that this was not an option.) There are also many features that those who work with social media every day can appreciate that the average user might not, such as: • The option to schedule and create a new post without having to click into a new window each time.
• The ability to download reports by platform and specific date easily and quickly.
• The option to view data which allows you to see which content is performing the best.

Cons: I won't beat around the bush. It's pricey. Very pricey. If you're a freelancer or not using social media daily, it may not be worth the investment. If you're an agency working with multiple clients or if social media is part of your daily routine, a scheduling software that offers everything Sprout Social offers is well worth it.

Comments: I would say I'm pretty neutral about it. I was so excited about using them but if I could rewind time I never would have switched.

Pros: I manage 13 different social media accounts so I need scheduling software to keep up with everything! The majority of the reports on sprout are the same as you can find on your social media channel, but having everything in one place makes reports easier.

Cons: We have had some issues with Sprout since we signed up and the customer service along with the follow-through has been less than ideal. First off you have no account manager, the guy who signed us up washed his hands of us the second he got the check. I found this out when we were having issues connecting our Instagram. After 2 MONTHS, yes 2 months, of talking to support and engineers none of which could help us solve the issue we finally spoke with someone who had an idea of what was going on. After a couple of hours on the phone with him, everything was all fixed, except it wasn't truly fixed. The next day we discovered that since they were having issues connecting our business FB to our business Instagram they just created another business page for us to connect it to. So now we have a business page out there that isn't ours that we can't get Fb to remove.
In addition to this major issue we have has small ones such as not being able to post a gif, and not being able to post multiple photos to Instagram through the desktop. It seems the more we use Sprout the more we realize it is not up to par.