Sprout Social is an easy-to-use social media management tool that allows its users to schedule posts to multiple social accounts, track follower growth, and add influencers from the same tool. The chat function offers a smooth communication channel between employees in different departments and branches of your company. But this tool is not aimed at small or medium businesses and startups. If you are looking for a cheaper alternative that provides similar functionalities, we have just what you need.
Plans for Sprout Social’s pricing
Multi-tiered pricing models characterize most social media management solutions. There are three pricing tiers: Standard, Professional, and Advanced with Sprout Social. You can’t save money by registering more users, because the cost per user per month for all plans is the same regardless of how many people you have.
Sprout Social offers a free trial that is available to all subscription tiers. Because you won’t be required to insert a card to gain entry, your involvement is essentially zero.
Prices start at a flat rate of $99 for each user.
Sprout Social’s cheapest plan is $99 per user per month, which is still a lot of money. According to Sprout, “the essential tools for starting” are included in this tier. With a price tag like that, you’d expect a comprehensive plan.
Sprout’s lower tier, however, falls short in almost every way when compared to its competitors, such as Hootsuite. While Hootsuite’s free tier has three profiles, Sprout’s free tier has five, but the first paid tier of Sprout gives you 10 profiles for $25/month.
Sprout’s Standard plan is clearly overpriced. In spite of this, Sprout is still the best option for small businesses interested in using the software (relative to the other tiers). There are better options for small businesses out there because of the high price.
Cost-basis plan: $99 for each individual user
However, Sprout Social’s most basic plan still costs $99 a month per user. “The essential tools for getting started,” as Sprout claims, are indeed included in this package. For the price, it’s reasonable to expect a comprehensive plan.
Sprout, on the other hand, is a far cry from its competitors, such as Hootsuite, in almost every way. However, Sprout allows you to have five profiles, while Hootsuite only allows you to have three, while its first paid tier allows you to have 10 profiles for just $25/month.
Sprout’s Standard plan is overpriced, and it’s not hard to see why. This plan is still the software’s best entry point and the best option for small businesses interested in Sprout’s software (relative to the other tiers). Even though it’s expensive, there are more affordable options for small businesses.
Standard Plan Features
- 5 social profiles: Sprout Social lets you sign up five of your social accounts to its platform (but you can pay an undisclosed fee to add more profiles without joining a pricier plan)
- All-in-one social inbox: Any direct messages sent to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn accounts can be read and responded to through the Sprout Social dashboard
- Publish, schedule, draft, and queue posts: Create campaigns and posts in advance so that you can spend your time on your business itself, as your posts trickle out steadily
- Social content calendar: Get a bird’s-eye view of your upcoming posts and campaigns to see if you need to change or update any posts
- Review management: See how your business is faring on Facebook, Google My Business, and TripAdvisor
- Profiles, keywords, and locations monitoring: Look for trends on social media, and see if your business is being mentioned alongside any specific words or locations
- Tasking and CRM tools: These tools allow you to keep in touch with your audience, keeping track of customer profiles and history
- Group, profile, and post-level reporting: Get feedback from a broader or more granular level by consulting analytical reports
- Paid promotion tools to boost Facebook posts: Allows you to control paid posts through the platform
- iOS and Android mobile apps: Use the Sprout Social dashboards via its mobile apps
Sprout Social’s advantages and disadvantages
For managing social media presence and automating campaign tasks, many agencies and large businesses use Sprout Social.
Sprout Social has some advantages and disadvantages that you should weigh carefully before deciding if it is a good fit for your company’s needs.
Sprout Social’s advantages
- Supports many social platforms & communities, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Reddit, TripAdvisor, and Glassdoor.
- A dashboard with a clear hierarchy of information
- A robust system for in-app reporting
- Supports CRM integrations.
Cons of Sprout Social
- Features for social listening that aren’t as comprehensive
- It’s too expensive for small and medium-sized businesses because of the user-based pricing model. It costs $89 per month for each user if paid annually, or $99 per month if paid monthly.
- It is not recommended for novices
- User familiarity with social media management tools makes it difficult for newcomers to navigate and discover the best tools for their tasks.
- In order to customize or white-labeled the reports, it is not possible.
Conclusion
All in all, Sprout Social is proving to be one of the more well-rounded and business-focused social media management tools on the market. The ease with which you can bring together your disparate social media networks is impressive. This functionality, combined with the ability to track multiple interactions on each network, makes this an effective and comprehensive tool for anyone managing a number of online initiatives.