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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Watson Explorer

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AIBM Watson Explorer supports enterprise search with unstructured data analysis, machine learning, and content analysis to improve decision-making, support customer service or serve other business needs.N/A

    Sprout Social

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/ASprout 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
    IBM Watson ExplorerSprout Social
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Essentials
    $79 per seat/per month annual / $99 per seat/per month monthly
    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
    IBM Watson ExplorerSprout Social
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM Watson ExplorerSprout Social
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Sprout Social
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Would buy again
    106 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    93 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    108 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    92 Answers
    Features
    IBM Watson ExplorerSprout Social
    Listening/monitoring
    Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of IBM Watson Explorer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    IBM Watson Explorer
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    7.2
    114 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Boolean keyword searches00 Ratings6.980 Ratings
    Filtering out noise/spam00 Ratings7.196 Ratings
    Sentiment analysis00 Ratings7.077 Ratings
    Broad channel coverage00 Ratings8.090 Ratings
    Publishing
    Comparison of Publishing features of IBM Watson Explorer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    IBM Watson Explorer
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    8.2
    145 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Content planning and scheduling00 Ratings9.2145 Ratings
    Audience targeting00 Ratings7.2110 Ratings
    Content optimization00 Ratings8.2126 Ratings
    Workflow management00 Ratings8.4126 Ratings
    Engagement
    Comparison of Engagement features of IBM Watson Explorer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    IBM Watson Explorer
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    7.9
    132 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Automated routing and prioritization00 Ratings7.687 Ratings
    Customer interaction histories00 Ratings8.1116 Ratings
    Bulk actions00 Ratings8.1115 Ratings
    Marketing
    Comparison of Marketing features of IBM Watson Explorer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    IBM Watson Explorer
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    7.1
    96 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Lead generation00 Ratings6.869 Ratings
    Content marketing00 Ratings8.192 Ratings
    Paid media management00 Ratings6.23 Ratings
    Campaigns and promotions00 Ratings7.24 Ratings
    Channel coverage/integration
    Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of IBM Watson Explorer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    IBM Watson Explorer
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    8.4
    144 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Twitter00 Ratings8.8126 Ratings
    Facebook00 Ratings8.7143 Ratings
    LinkedIn00 Ratings8.6130 Ratings
    Google+00 Ratings7.846 Ratings
    Instagram00 Ratings8.6132 Ratings
    Pinterest00 Ratings8.246 Ratings
    YouTube00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Reporting/analytics
    Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of IBM Watson Explorer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    IBM Watson Explorer
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    8.2
    146 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Campaign success analytics00 Ratings8.6138 Ratings
    Real-time tracking00 Ratings8.1134 Ratings
    Competitor analysis00 Ratings7.8120 Ratings
    Account management
    Comparison of Account management features of IBM Watson Explorer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    IBM Watson Explorer
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    8.0
    138 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Role-based user permissions & privileges00 Ratings8.7132 Ratings
    Mobile access00 Ratings7.3124 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    IBM Watson ExplorerSprout Social
    Small Businesses
    Elasticsearch
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Sendible
    Score7.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Elasticsearch
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Emplifi
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Amazon CloudSearch
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM Watson ExplorerSprout Social
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.4
    (203 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.2
    (67 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (130 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.7
    (8 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (7 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.8
    (39 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.0
    (12 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.1
    (42 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM Watson ExplorerSprout Social
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    The Watson Explorer is great because it potentially replaces a meriad of other low-level analytics products that we would need to use for data analytics and data mining. WEX isn't really suitable much beyond doing text and data analytics and performing machine learning, so if your team doesn't really have a use-case that fits all of these categories, it is worth looking at an alternative.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sprout Social
    Sprout is typically the first platform that comes to mind when I think of social media content scheduling/platform management/social media management. However, Sprout is very pricey, and I don’t think there’s an obvious standout element that helps differentiate it from other scheduling platforms. For organizations with only a few social media profiles, I’d be more likely to recommend lower-cost or free platforms as opposed to Sprout. I’d probably only recommend Sprout for organizations with dozens or hundreds of social media accounts
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    IBM
    • Free to try - It's possible to use most of the useful features of Watson Explore on their trial/demo accounts.
    • Super well-designed data analytics tool - Most of the tools and features of the explorer are really useful, and truly help you fully understand the depth of any format of textual data.
    • Extensive sources compatibility - WEX can retrieve data from a large range of sources, and the compatibility there is quite good as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sprout Social
    • Social Scheduling: Sprout Social makes it easier than any platform I've used to schedule posts with each, and to batch-schedule the same post to run on multiple dates. The scheduling platform is intuitive and easy to understand.
    • Social Reporting: With just a few clicks of the button, you can easily export reports that are easy for both social media experts and complete novices to understand. I like how you can get a report within 60 seconds or so if needed.
    • Customer Service/Help: Whenever I've had a question, both my Sprout Social rep and the Help Center have been extremely easy to contact and quick to reply. Problems are solved very fast and it's made easy to understand.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    IBM
    • Support is just OK, like most of the other IBM Watson products. The setup/integration is really hands-on, but it's also problematic because support later may take a considerable amount of time.
    • UI could still use a little more improvement - part of the administration and sources dashboards are hard to navigate.
    • The Application Builder is a great part of the product, but hard to learn/understand - this is where we needed the most support from IBM and tutorials/documentation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sprout Social
    • I would like for Personal Instagram Accounts to be able to integrate with Sprout Social's Employee Advocacy platform. You are able to connect personally accounts to Sprout Social itself, which is great, but for employee re-sharing internal stories, this is not possible unless it is with a Business Instagram account.
    • I would like for the left hand tool bar to be more user friendly. There are so many tools and settings that are available, and I would like for it to be simplified in a way that makes it less cluttered.
    • An improvement can be made with the Sprout Social Mobile App. The user friendliness of the app does not allow as much autonomy as the regular webpage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Sprout Social
    Sprout Social is the best platform out there for social-media management, and now that I have all my clients using Sprout Social, it would be sort of silly for me to walk away format at this juncture. The only cloud on the horizon would be if Salesforce bought it (as has been rumored) and put it inside its walled garden.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Sprout Social
    Sprout Social is straightforward to use - built for anyone regardless of tech experience to be able to navigate. It integrates pretty seamlessly to the native platforms and brings a lot of things together to make a seamlessly experience for seasoned social media managers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    IBM
    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.
    Read full review
    Performance
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Sprout Social
    It is quick to post, however you have to refresh the page every time you add a new scheduled item.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Sprout Social
    The chat and online resources are great. The managers are too. They go through account reps pretty fast. Also, not a lot of onboarding once a product or service is sold. The ticket request system is terrible, they have too many people switching off roles, they take a long time to get back to you and don't plan on anything being fixed over a weekend - even if you have a problem. Their customer service via tickets is the worst.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    Google Cloud offers a Natural Language product, but it is just an API. This API doesn't offer the useful visualizations of relations, analytics, and graphs that IBM Watson Explorer offers on their interface. For this reason, we chose to go with IBM WEX. For later stages of our production, we decided to use Google's NLP API because we found that it was quick to integrate into production after studying data and developing models using IBM WEX.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sprout Social
    We started this agency using Later and switched to Iconosqaure because we needed more in-depth reporting. We switched from Iconosquare to Sprout Social because of the continuous scheduling bugs/issues we were having with our account and our terrible experience with their Customer Service team. We are planning to close our Sprout Social account and move to HeyOrca because of cost, ease of use, and the basic scheduling features Sprout Social doesn't offer.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • Positive - Trial/demo period. This was really useful for us to figure out what features of WEX we liked most and how difficult it would be to integrate WEX into our workflow.
    • Negative - On-boarding was long and almost always requires support from IBM support, unlike most other products this advanced.
    • Positive - WEX replaced a large selection of alternative products we would have to use for the same functionality, and having all of that function in one place was definitely helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sprout Social
    • One positive impact has been a huge time saver for our team. Where we once had multiple systems and delays from producing content to approval to publishing, now everything is seamless.
    • Another positive impact is streamlining the onboarding process for new team members. Sprout Social is user-friendly and intuitive, making it easy to study even for someone completely new to social media.
    • One negative impact has been the time it takes to wade through irrelevant social listening posts. The filtering is not effective enough to eliminate the noise.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    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.