2015 Top 10 Social Media Management Software Ultimate Comparison

SMMS users have spoken! According to user feedback on TrustRadius—ratings and research frequency—here are the top ten social media management suites for 2016:

Sprinklr, Hootsuite Enterprise, Sprout Social, NetBase, Spredfast, Adobe Social, AgoraPulse, Oracle SRM, Viralheat, and Shoutlet. (Engagor, which is just shy of Top Rated, and Expion, which is used by agencies, were close runners-up.)

But, it can be tricky and time consuming to dig into the nuances that distinguish these products. So, we put together an overview to help you quickly and easily compare leading SMMS tools. Use this chart to narrow down your choices, based on the qualities and features that are most important for your use case.

Here’s what you’ll find in this chart:

• Top-Rated SMMS products for small businesses, mid-sized companies, and enterprises.
•  Ultimate feature comparison across 38 social media management features, including listening/monitoring, publishing, engagement, marketing, channel coverage/integration, reporting/analytics, and account management. Features marked in green are standouts—they score at or above average among the leading products.
• Comparison of user ratings for product attributes like usability, support, training, and implementation. Attributes marked in green are exceptional—they score at or above average among SMMS leaders.
• Alternatives to leading products, based on top buyer comparisons.
• Top industries using each product (based on reviewer distribution).

Compare the Top Ten Social Media Management Suites

Best SMMS Products for Small Businesses, Mid-sized Companies, and Enterprises

Some products are well-liked across the board: AgoraPulse, NetBase, Hootsuite Enterprise, and Shoutlet are Top Rated SMMS products for all three company size segments. Spredfast (Top Rated for Small Businesses and Mid-size companies) and Sprinklr (Top Rated for Mid-size companies and Enterprises) span the lower and higher ends of the market, respectively. Others, like Sprout Social, Engagor, and Viralheat are Top Rated for Enterprises, but receive much lower ratings in other company size segments. While Adobe Social and Oracle SRM are not Top Rated for any segment and have much lower overall ratings than the other products included in this article, it is significant that they are used only by larger, more complex companies, often within a broader ecosystem of tools from the same vendor.

Drawing a Clear Comparison: Context for SMMS Ratings & Reviews

Ratings and reviews are a helpful gauge of overall customer satisfaction as well as how well a product serves a particular use case. They’re a very convenient and accessible way for you to hear from users like you during your research and evaluation. Our Buyer’s Guide to SMMS does some of the work for you, with an overview of the social media software landscape and summaries of user feedback by-product.

For a more consolidated view of the space, charts like the one above provide a quick overview and make comparisons across key metrics even easier. But simplicity comes at a cost—summary charts can’t encapsulate the granular level of market context, curational commentary, and reviewer insight available elsewhere on our site. So, we’ve included some context to assist you in understanding and comparing user ratings of the Top SMMS tools.

In order to navigate the Top SMMS Comparison Chart with clarity, we think it’s worth noting a few things about specific SMMS tools:

• Adobe Social, although it receives low marks overall, rates notably higher for Mid-size companies (7.3) than for Enterprises (4.8). Reviewers say Adobe Social’s integration with Adobe Analytics and the Adobe Marketing Cloud is its biggest strength, especially for tracking conversion as a KPI. Conversely, it’s difficult to use Adobe Social for campaigns that aren’t straightforwardly focused on measuring conversion, and video is a weak point. Reviewers who were unhappy with Adobe Social recommended checking out less expensive tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, or Shoutlet, which are designed for a very different use case than Adobe Social.

• Oracle SRM is an amalgamation of several smaller social tools acquired by Oracle, including Involver, Collective Intellect, and Vitrue. While some reviewers have experience with the Oracle Social Cloud as a whole, others rate and discuss specific modules (acquired products).

• AgoraPulse has the highest feature ratings for Channel coverage/integration, suggesting that users are very satisfied with the functionality offered by the vendor. However, AgoraPulse does not cover all social channels, such as LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, and YouTube. (This functionality is offered by several competitors, including NetBase, Hootsuite Enterprise, Spredfast, Sprout Social, Sprinklr, and Engagor.) Drill down to compare products in terms of both channel breadth and depth, and make sure a product’s strengths align with your particular priorities.

• Spredfast, which users are very likely to recommend and likely to renew (generally high satisfaction scores), gets surprisingly low scores for usability (5.3), availability (3.2), performance (5.4), and implementation (4.9). Some of these issues may be related to continual product innovation—which users like, since it means constant improvement and new features, but also struggle with, as it results in potential technical difficulties and a learning (or re-learning) curve for new releases. Since Spredfast recently acquired Shoutlet, buyers considering Spredfast should take a look at Shoutlet as well—the company plans to eventually integrate what it sees as complementary feature sets of the two platforms. See the interview we did with Spredfast re: the Shoutlet acquisition for more details.

The perspectives of users like you are a valuable resource as you evaluate SMMS options. If you are a more visual thinker, take a look at our Social Media Management TrustMaps, which visually compare user ratings and research frequency by company size segment. Use the company size filter to see the best SMMS tools for Small Businesses, Mid-Size Companies, and Enterprises. For more detailed information about individual products, including pros, cons, use cases, and ROI, find and filter user reviews here. Using our advanced filter, you can narrow your search to look at reviews that match your role, company size, department, experience, industry, and job type.

For a more comprehensive look at individual vendors and trends in the space, you might be interested in our Buyer’s Guide to Social Media Management Software, available for free here. And, if you’d like to find out which products have gained market visibility over the last year and how this relates to M&A in the space, check out our analysis of the fastest growing SMMS vendors for 2016.