Agorapulse vs. Sprout Social

Agorapulse has been a huge benefit to us as a business and is the most comprehensive platform we've used, having previously been with Hootsuite and ContentCal. It is likely to be better for companies that are managing multiple social profiles and want to consolidate these into one manageable platform. Given the amount of features it provides, it might not be suitable for individuals. The reporting is a fantastic part of the platform, which includes brand awareness for certain profiles, the best time to post for engagement, and details that all help with strategising. The inbuilt link shortening and tracking is useful, we've set this up and need to explore its capabilities further. Overall, we would recommend Agorapulse and it's a great asset to our business.

Incentivized

Sprout [Social] is great for small businesses, small agencies and those who need a platform but don't want to spend a fortune. If you need multiple user log-in's, the cost will add up. This is great to share a log-in for different people to use or add one or two users

Incentivized

• Calendar sharing - great for internal and external approval
• Community management - it means we can keep on top of engagement for all of our clients in one place
• Report - it's really useful for us to be able to create such in depth reports that we can use internally but also share with clients so they can see the results of what we are doing

Incentivized

• The Landscape system that Sprout Social offers allows me to modify all the images that I want to publish on my social networks. This service allows me to modify the size of the image, add filters, modify the colors and much more, it is a very important tool to be able to have a better presentation of the images that we use in our publications on social networks.
• It offers me a perfect statistical system where I can consult all kinds of movements that have occurred in all my social networks, I can see statistics individually or generally. The statistics allow me to see group reports, participation, information on audience movement on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and also allow me to view the activity that has occurred in my account.
• Sprout Social allows me to view a record in real time that shows me all the movements that my social networks are having by my employees. As Director of the Marketing Sector, this is a very important role, as I can know what actions my employees are taking to improve marketing with social networks.

Incentivized

• Would love to have a draft feature. We often don't schedule things until the assets are ready, or use a placeholder image and swap them afterwards
• Editing posts intended for multiple channels is not as easy as scheduling them in the first place. I would love to edit and have the same menu I do as when I'm scheduling where I have my base text and then the adjusted text for each social media. It's rare that something I've planned to be a similar post across channels, needs editing, but only for one of those channels. e.g. Correcting mistakes or changing strategies.
• Currently, I export the analytics and put it in a Google Sheet where I have more control over the data, which I love. For me to use the Agora Reports system, I would need substantial features like comparing metrics in the same charts, using direct line charts instead of smoothed (smoothed charts look nice, but just obfuscate data), separating out paid growth, etc. It's probably too large an ask for what Agora is trying to provide, which is why the export tool is very useful.
• While I'm talking about it, a slight bug with the export tool is that when you export two things in quick succession, it just sends a duplicate of the first report via email. I'll export a CSV of Global data and then a CSV of Content, and if I do it too quickly, it doubles up the Global data and I don't get the Content until I resend.
• More specific filtering for listening. Sometimes someone has our brand in their name and we get ALL of their content. We have to add each user like this to the filter instead of being able to filter out usernames that contain it.

Incentivized

• I'd love to see more robust tag reporting capabilities, but they mentioned that this is something in the pipeline for improvement.
• I wish it was easier to batch content and shift it to approval or draft mode. Sometimes clients can change their mind and moving through each post individually can be a bit time consuming. This is a very minor thing.
• I'd love to see more customization options come to its reporting feature so we can insert graphics. Currently it supports the insertion of text only.

Incentivized

The decision has been made. It's time to get to work--no steps back. I feel confident this product is well suited to help me make progress. I want to get down business and utilize the functionality of this product to meet my marketing goals. I feel very comfortable with the choice I have made.

Incentivized

While I am currently no longer working with the company in which I was employed and utilized Sprout Social, I do know that the company is still utilizing Sprout Social on a daily basis and I do not foresee a time when the subscription would be cancelled.

Incentivized

Any time I onboard a new team member, they are very quick to adapt to Agora's user interface and therefore require a very quick onboarding process from me, which is a massive plus. While I think having an all-in-one platform would be ideal, there is something to be said about only having a few bells and whistle so that my team can focus on what is most important to us and our clients, content

Incentivized

Sprout Social is extremely user-friendly. The publishing feature is easy to use, and provides previews of what your content will look like once posted. I also love the calendar view where you can view all posts you have scheduled for the month. The collaborative nature of the platform makes working directly in Sprout Social with clients a breeze, and we are seeing our content get approved much faster.

Incentivized

Agorapulse occasionally has outages or shuts down. It never interferes with my use of the application or any of my posts

Incentivized

Uptime was OK, but given the fact that we are in Europe, there were some specific problems: They tended to take the system down for maintenance during the night in the US, which was during our workday. This was definitely problematic and hard to explain to our clients.

Agorapulse has generally had great performance. Occasionally I have issues with my videos being posted on Instagram. I still am not sure why. the format of the videos is the same as the videos that are going through.

Incentivized

It is quick to post, however you have to refresh the page every time you add a new scheduled item.

The support from Agorapulse is excellent. Any time we have made contact they have been quick to reply, and given added extra information to help. The initial sales experience was also good. Not pushy like a lot of other companies, more that they would like to help. And they certainly did for us at a difficult time which built a fantastic relationship with us from the very start. Communication is great too, with just the right amount of emails and updates. Overall we feel that they genuinely care about their clients and users.

Incentivized

Sprout Social's customer support is extremely prompt and always helpful. Not only do they provide quick and useful service, but the representatives follow up multiple times to ensure that the issue is fully address and/or completely resolved. The overall experience is exemplary; very few other companies provide comparable service.

Incentivized

I did not train in person

Incentivized

The staff walked me through the whole platform and asked me if I had any questions. They were very helpful in answering any questions I had.

Incentivized

Their training is good, but the promotion of it is even better. I don't need or have the time for training, but I was always happy to know it was there. They did a great job sending updates out and making me aware when there was a new feature that I may want training for. As for the training I never used it, so I can't comment on that

Be sure of the game play mechanics you need to achieve your objectives, it will help significantly in setting up the game and creating the assets

Make sure you do it all the way. Do not break it into phases. Pour yourself a coffee, start it in the morning and you'll be done before you finish that coffee.

Want to post the same content on different profiles? Don't duplicate your posts, you can just select what platform to post them onto! You can even change around the copy/hashtags/etc to optimize the posts for each platform.

Incentivized

I used Buffer previous to Sprout Social for two years. It was a good solution as we were getting a handle on scheduling content. It was the first real tool we had for this. But we outgrew it and they began removing features that were critical to our workflow, such as the RSS Feed. While their 50% off policy for non-profits was very helpful, once we started adding up the cost to use features like Replies and Analytics, we discovered that our needs were simply too robust for Buffer to handle. Sprout Social was the solution suggested by all our peers and we've been very happy with it ever since.

Incentivized

I'm not sure I understand what is meant by scalability.

Incentivized

• It has saved our company a lot of time digging through all different social medias to be responsive to consumers
• It has helped us be more responsive to prospects, so better lead generation
• Agorapulse allows us to be in touch quicker with our prospects, meaning better lead to appointment generation as well.

Incentivized

• Sprout has given insights to lead our creative refreshes every quarter. As we have a healthy budget on paid social, it is crucial to understand the type of creative that works best.
• Sprout has the ability to send notifications based on certain types of messages received. This is crucial for social media teams who don't have 24/7 coverage but need to be notified of urgent matters.
• Sprout has saved me hours of time as I no longer pull analytics natively from each social platform. The generated reports give me a look at all of the platforms and can be customized.

Incentivized