Brandwatch vs. Sprout Social

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Brandwatch
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Brandwatch, from Cision (acquired February 2021) is an enterprise social intelligence platform that is designed to allow brands to listen and analyze online conversation to extract meaningful insights, inform their business decisions and understand more about the return on their marketing spend.
$800
10k mentions
Sprout Social
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Sprout Social provides social media management, marketing, customer care, data and intelligence, and employee advocacy solutions for brands and agencies, including Ticketmaster, Chipotle, Grubhub, Subaru, and Zendesk. Sprout’s platform is used to simplify social publishing, engagement, reviews, analytics and listening for customers. Sprout also provides customer success and technical support, to deliver consistent value to all users. Any organization, regardless of size or industry, receives…
$249
per month per user
Pricing
BrandwatchSprout Social
Editions & Modules
Pro
$800
10k mentions
Enterprise
3000+
Unlimited mentions or Queries
Standard
$199 annual / $249 monthly
per user/per month
Professional
$299 annual / $399 monthly
per user/per month
Advanced
$399 annual / $499 monthly
per user/per month
Free Trial
Free
for 30 days
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BrandwatchSprout Social
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BrandwatchSprout Social
Considered Both Products
Brandwatch
Chose Brandwatch
Hootsuite visually looks better and has way more integrations/ suggestions/ areas to save copy/ resharing ability/plus Later is more affordable for small business owners but ideal for creatives to visualize and manually adjust feeds.
Sprout Social
Chose Sprout Social
I believe that Spredfast and Sprinklr are better in terms of community management and brand engagement. Spredfast has great reporting capabilities, however, the Sprout interface and overall display is easier to navigate and display a PDF for clients on how our content is doing …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BrandwatchSprout Social
Listening/monitoring
Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
7.2
53 Ratings
6% below category average
Boolean keyword searches00 Ratings6.739 Ratings
Filtering out noise/spam00 Ratings6.943 Ratings
Sentiment analysis00 Ratings6.924 Ratings
Broad channel coverage00 Ratings8.134 Ratings
Publishing
Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
4.9
57 Ratings
47% below category average
Content planning and scheduling00 Ratings7.057 Ratings
Audience targeting00 Ratings3.148 Ratings
Content optimization00 Ratings3.749 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings5.952 Ratings
Engagement
Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
5.9
55 Ratings
31% below category average
Automated routing and prioritization00 Ratings2.825 Ratings
Customer interaction histories00 Ratings7.751 Ratings
Bulk actions00 Ratings7.246 Ratings
Marketing
Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
4.7
39 Ratings
48% below category average
Lead generation00 Ratings2.531 Ratings
Content marketing00 Ratings3.135 Ratings
Paid media management00 Ratings6.23 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions00 Ratings7.24 Ratings
Channel coverage/integration
Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
7.5
59 Ratings
13% below category average
Twitter00 Ratings7.757 Ratings
Facebook00 Ratings6.459 Ratings
LinkedIn00 Ratings8.252 Ratings
Google+00 Ratings7.721 Ratings
Instagram00 Ratings7.049 Ratings
Pinterest00 Ratings7.214 Ratings
YouTube00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Reporting/analytics
Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
5.8
58 Ratings
30% below category average
Campaign success analytics00 Ratings4.354 Ratings
Real-time tracking00 Ratings6.455 Ratings
Competitor analysis00 Ratings6.847 Ratings
Account management
Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
Brandwatch
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
7.6
58 Ratings
7% below category average
Role-based user permissions & privileges00 Ratings7.655 Ratings
Mobile access00 Ratings7.551 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BrandwatchSprout Social
Small Businesses
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Publer
Publer
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Mention
Mention
Score 9.4 out of 10
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.3 out of 10
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BrandwatchSprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
4.3
(65 ratings)
7.4
(115 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(8 ratings)
9.0
(62 ratings)
Usability
6.1
(7 ratings)
7.0
(42 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(8 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(7 ratings)
Support Rating
4.1
(13 ratings)
5.1
(37 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(1 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BrandwatchSprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
Cision
The user interface is great and is easy to use for social media marketers of all ranges. In regard to planning and scheduling content, it allows all users with access to the capability to view all upcoming on an actual calendar. For organizational purposes, this is great and mitigates any confusion that other team members may have. The tool seems to always be updating which has its pros and cons because once you figure something out, there's a switch and you'll need to relearn how things are positioned but overall, it's not a heavy lift.
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Sprout Social
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
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Pros
Cision
  • Clean, beautiful visuals that can be easily incorporated into reports to be used internally and externally.
  • Customization-- anywhere from the queries you create to adjusting individual report widget/components this tool is very flexible.
  • Excellent Customer Service and support. My Brandwatch rep is always open to hearing from me for questions and often reaches out to me to check in on my status or see if I would like to participate in beta programs.
  • Constant innovation. It seems like Brandwatch is constantly updating and adding improvements to their platform--especially with their 2019 acquisition of Crimson Hexagon.
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Sprout Social
  • 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.
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Cons
Cision
  • Very steep learning curve- good luck training casual users on the difference between a query, a rule, a category etc
  • Lack of access to FULL historic data is a serious drawback- populating that data takes a minimum of 24 hours and incurs additional costs
  • Volume limits mean you may have to build your query to exclude mentions that may be useful in getting the full context of the situation
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Sprout Social
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cision
Brandwatch is a simple tool that is easy to learn and understand. Without any rigorous training, the team can learn to use it and interpret the results in an efficient manner. It saves a lot of work and helps the team to focus on other important time consuming tasks. I would like to continue using Brandwatch.
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Sprout Social
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.
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Usability
Cision
I've invited quite a few of my colleagues to try Brandwatch, and all of them were able to use its features with no assistance, and most of these had never used a social listening/monitoring tool before, or even a digital analytics tool! Brandwatch is not only easy to use, but filters, widgets, menus and other options are in intuitive places - it just works
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Sprout Social
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Cision
No answers on this topic
Sprout Social
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.
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Performance
Cision
Brandwatch craps out sometimes. Pages freeze, data doesn't populate for hours. It's fine if you're not in a hurry but something to keep in mind if you're working in real-time. It's not as bad as Talkwalker but it's impacted timely delivery of work for me, and one of the first things I teach when introducing the platform is the process for closing out and re-logging in to see if it unfreezes
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Sprout Social
It is quick to post, however you have to refresh the page every time you add a new scheduled item.
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Support Rating
Cision
The Brandwatch Consumer Research customer success team is outstanding. Every member of their team has been wildly helpful and remarkably pleasant. These people go above and beyond to ensure you have all the tools and help you need to find success on their platform. I had several calls where we discussed difficulties users where having on the platform that resulted in an overall improvement in reporting across the board. They didn't just answer our questions, they dug deeper to find root problems and helped us build out dashboards to alleviate them.
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Sprout Social
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.
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Online Training
Cision
good knowledge, great tips, although the program seems a bit disconnected. It could improve it they create more free webinars and a good content calendar and tackle little topics in each webinar. Their trainers are top notch and they know a lot about the tool but they fall a bit low on technical level understanding of how the tool actually works
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Sprout Social
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
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Implementation Rating
Cision
Not that I can think of.
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Sprout Social
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Cision
If you're using it to monitor your brand's social presence only, or if you're in an agency and using it to monitor existing clients and provide reports to them, then this is a great tool and you're hard-pressed to find something better. But if you're wanting it more for new business and discovery, there are tools that do this much better, including Sysomos and Crimson Hexagon. So it depends on what specifically you're trying to do. My agency was already using this product when I arrived, so I did not have a choice in the matter, but I've evaluated both of these other tools. Crimson is similar enough that the slight increase in cost doesn't justify switching. Synthesio is the most expensive competitor in the market (no matter what they tell you), but you get what you pay for. If you can afford it, go with Synthesio.
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Sprout Social
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.
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Return on Investment
Cision
  • At a high level, the biggest impact the Brandwatch Analytics has had is giving us the ability to quantify the impact of social media for our clients. In the world of social, ROI is defined and interpreted differently across clients (particularly where it's more difficult to apply traditional ROI) - so this may mean reporting on earned media for some, while for others it's measuring increasing engagements or social mentions over time.
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Sprout Social
  • 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.
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ScreenShots

Brandwatch Screenshots

Screenshot of

Sprout Social Screenshots

Screenshot of Sprout’s social media publishing tools, used to schedule and post messages to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn simultaneously from a single Compose window.