SendBird vs. Sparkcentral (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SendBird
Score 8.9 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
SendBird is a packaged messaging-as-a-service that is designed to help developers build and manage messaging function in less than 5 minutes. SendBird says it strives to build the whole messaging SDK and backend from the scratch to help developers save time and resources in order to allow them to focus on making apps and services more engaging. SendBird allows mobile developers to easily attach 1-on-1 messaging and group chat to their application. The developer kit also comes with…
$0
Up to 1,000 chat MAU
Sparkcentral (discontinued)
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Sparkcentral was a social customer care solution and cloud-based customer engagement platform that catered specifically to customer care teams within large enterprises, enabling them to deliver real-time social customer service. Sparkcentral was acquired by Hootsuite in January 2021. The product has since been discontinued.N/A
Pricing
SendBirdSparkcentral (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Up to 1,000 chat MAU
SPROUT
$49
Up to 10,000 chat MAU
TREE
$149
Up to 30,000 chat MAU, Broadcasting message is available
PARK
$499
Up to 100,000 chat MAU, Broadcasting message is available
ENTERPRISE
Contact us
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SendBirdSparkcentral (discontinued)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsWe offer Free plan but your Chat MAU will be limited to your service 1,000 and you’ll be limited to send only test broadcasting messages. Q. How is the Chat MAU calculated? A. Chat MAU (monthly active user) is calculated as any user who has sent or received a messaging data using SendBird platform during 30 days. Q. What happens if my app’s popularity explodes and I go beyond the Chat MAU quota? A. We don't have hard ceilings to prevent the Chat MAU rate from exceeding the pricing plan's quota (except for with the Sandbox option), but you will be charged for additional users beyond the stated limit. If your app exceeds the Chat MAU quota, you will be charged $0.012/user with Sprout pricing, $0.011/user with Tree pricing, $0.010/user with Park pricing, and even lower with Enterprise pricing. Q. Can I change the credit card information to another one? A. You can change your credit information on your Dashboard > Billing page.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SendBirdSparkcentral (discontinued)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
SendBirdSparkcentral (discontinued)
Small Businesses
Telegram
Telegram
Score 8.9 out of 10
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Telegram
Telegram
Score 8.9 out of 10
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Telegram
Telegram
Score 8.9 out of 10
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SendBirdSparkcentral (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(2 ratings)
10.0
(16 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(4 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
SendBirdSparkcentral (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
SendBird
SendBird is well suited tool for those who are having sound technical knowledge and in-hand experience of app development and APIs. One might find it difficult to integrate if not having a technical team or a good technical background. Once implemented, using or management is not an issue. Startups having low budget might find it a little bit costier.
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Discontinued Products
Sparkcentral has an extremely dedicated customer service team The platform UX is brilliant Reports are very detailed & easy to export The system is stable more than 98% of the time Queue management is extremely easy They need to work on a mobile app / making the website mobile friendly The ability to add more social media channels is essential
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Pros
SendBird
  • Moderation around comments & chats.
  • SendBird UIKit was super helpful for the design team.
  • Our devs raved about the API documentation being so thorough & easy to follow.
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Discontinued Products
  • The biggest advantage of the Sparkcentral platform is its "inbox zero" philosophy. With this, our customer support requests are queued within the app, and agents need to work down the queue to keep it empty.
  • The app is designed from the ground up for customer care - instead of taking a generic social platform, and sprinkling in some customer care tools. Everything about Sparkcental is designed for helping our customers.
  • Sparkcentral allows us to do much better CRM. We can make customer notes, see recent interactions, determine who helped the customer (and when).
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Cons
SendBird
  • It's support system is not that efficient
  • Documentation needs improvement
  • It's pricing is a little bit high comparing to other available options
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Discontinued Products
  • In the beginning our team had the option to see what another user was typing as they responded to a post. With the latest update, this was taken away. That feature was key for us to shadow agents remotely who are still in training to provide real time feedback.
  • Our company has a number of different brands that we manage. Having a truly unified queue would be a great addition for us!
  • The bulk resolve should allow the option to select on the posts that you wish to resolve instead of selecting a time frame for bulk resolve. Often we find that marketing posts generate more volume in the evening. However, there are sometimes posts where the customer needs assistance during that time. So, if we were to bulk resolve for a certain number of evening hours we would potentially miss a customer's concern through that option as it is currently. But, if the option was to go through and select on all marketing posts and then bulk resolve you would ensure that you are not missing a post where a customer needs assistance.
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Likelihood to Renew
SendBird
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
Sparkcentral has never given us a good reason to consider any other option. Aside from all the positive points I mentioned in previous areas of this review, something else that has really impressed us is their customer service (makes sense, they're a customer service company after all!). Any time we have a question or concern, we send them an email and we get a response almost instantly.
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Usability
SendBird
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
The system meets all my expectations.
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Support Rating
SendBird
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
Incredible customer service team that replies back very quickly, follows up on the reported issue till it's resolved in a very timely manner.
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Alternatives Considered
SendBird
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
Sparkcentral does what it has offered to do, where other software made empty promises, Sparkcentral delivers. They also inform us, anytime they are undergoing maintenance or when Twitter or Facebook has an API change, where in previous cases we would have to discover this ourselves.
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Return on Investment
SendBird
  • Using SendBird has decreased the number of support calls to where we were able to hold off on increasing our customer support team's headcount.
  • Customers have raved about having the chat functionality to review & assess their healthcare options without having to call in.
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Discontinued Products
  • Customers appreciate fast responses to the things they post on social media. This tool allows that to happen.
  • The dashboard allows us to keep up with how many are waiting in our queue so we can keep up with how busy we are during the day and manage it.
  • Customer satisfaction has seemed to increase while using this tool.
  • Being able to add notes with the customers address and phone info is awesome as well.
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ScreenShots

SendBird Screenshots

Screenshot of SendBirdScreenshot of SendBird chat roomScreenshot of Administration dashboard