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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Khoros Communities

    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Khoros Communities is a fully-featured community platform, built for self-service support, education and collaboration. Organizations can host a vibrant space where customers can find answers, develop expertise, share experiences, and connect with their brand.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
    Khoros CommunitiesSprout 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
    Khoros CommunitiesSprout Social
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPricing is variable based on the needs of the customer.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Khoros CommunitiesSprout Social
    Considered Both Products
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Chose Khoros Communities
    I prefer it to the other 2.
    Incentivized
    Sprout Social
    Chose Sprout Social
    Our organization previously used Spredfast (now Khoros), which was useful but limited in functionality. A few years ago we transitioned to Sprout Social, which at the time appeared to be a more dynamic product and an overall better fit for our organization. I can't speak to the …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    70 Answers
    94%
    Would buy again
    106 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    48 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    93 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    86%
    Happy with the feature set
    64 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    108 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    81%
    Implementation went as expected
    38 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    92 Answers
    Features
    Khoros CommunitiesSprout Social
    Listening/monitoring
    Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Khoros Communities and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    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 Khoros Communities and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    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 Khoros Communities and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    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 Khoros Communities and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    7.1
    96 Ratings
    9% 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 Khoros Communities and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    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 Khoros Communities and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    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 Khoros Communities and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Khoros Communities
    -
    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
    Khoros CommunitiesSprout Social
    Small Businesses
    Higher Logic Thrive
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Sendible
    Score7.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Higher Logic Vanilla
    Score5.5 out of 10
    Emplifi
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Verint Community
    Score10 out of 10
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Khoros CommunitiesSprout Social
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (95 ratings)
    8.4
    (203 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    4.1
    (8 ratings)
    9.2
    (67 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.5
    (130 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.7
    (8 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (7 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.0
    (5 ratings)
    1.7
    (39 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    1.0
    (12 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.1
    (42 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.6
    (86 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Khoros CommunitiesSprout Social
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Khoros Communities is my go-to when I'm part of a big company with lots of customers who want to help each other. It's awesome for talking about products, giving ideas to make them better, and getting help when I need it. If my team is spread out or we're working from home, Khoros Communities is handy for sharing updates and working together. It's also a good tool for events, helping with planning and discussing what happened. But if my group is small or not very active, or if I just need a simple place to chat without too many extras, Khoros Communities might be more than I need. Plus, I've got to be ready to keep an eye on things to keep the community positive, and it works best when I have a plan to grow and keep the community lively.
    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
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    • Increase in suggestions from our clients to know what we should improve.
    • Reduce technical support costs and incredibly increase sales.
    • It helps to interact with customers and we receive positive and negative reviews and based on their comments we can make changes that increase sales.
    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
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    • Self Service, Low and No Code. The Community Managers should be able to some UI Tasks by self with doing any code updates.
    • Salesforce Integration: The basic Integration should also include the basic level of business requirement. (Contacts and Accounts Mapping)
    • Slack Connector Update: There is no update on this connector till the time its launch. The other team has lot of options to push the notification in multiple slack channels. And unfortunately Khoros does not. This creates a lot work for Community team to bring internal teams to the community to respond or acknowledge an post.
    • More Integrations: Since now the Khoros communities does not comes up with the integrations with basic support tools like JIRA, Confluence, Github etc.
    • Search Improvisation: Apart from last search update there is no updates we see in this feature. The team should think of Putting Some AI based Search into the community which helps the Community managers to manage the content accordingly
    • Some update on AI and Gen AI: Khoros communities did not shared any thoughts about their plans for putting these technology in community
    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
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give Khoros Communities a solid 8. The system is extremely easy to use, enabling our team and community members to navigate and interact with the platform with ease. The wide range of features offered by Khoros Communities has greatly enriched our online interactions and improved the efficiency of our customer service. The technical support team has also been extremely helpful, could be quicker sometimes for answering our questions but they efficiently resolving any problems we have encountered. The platform is perfectly scalable, capable of handling our growing user base without any performance problems. What's more, Khoros Communities offers excellent integration capabilities with our other software tools, making our operations smoother and more efficient
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Like every backend, it can always be improved upon. The excellent thing is that Khoros have a hugely active customer support community as well as a fantastic case management system to triage support issues and requests. So regardless of your level of knowledge or familiarity, you're well supported out of the box.
    Read full review
    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
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    I've hardly ever seen downtime in any of their production communities. There's the occasional reboot needed for config reasons or if patches are applied, but these take place after customer approval and typically last only a few minutes.
    Read full review
    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
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    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.
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    Support Rating
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    They are responsive and proactive. They are really on top of things. They send personal emails to check in on you. It feels like they really know you. You only get emails from 3-4 people at Khoros – they must be customer assigned.
    Read full review
    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
    In-Person Training
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    I think it is engaging and has good instructors.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sprout Social
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    It was out of the box training - pre-recorded/ not live. There was nothing for more advanced topics like APIs. They do have a good knowledge base and community that you can access and folks in there are responsive. I would however like more advanced training options.
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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
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    We were up against a hard stop with Jive’s contract ending and Khoros connected us with a deployment partner to do accelerated deployment using a template approach. It could have happened in 2 weeks. We did not end up going that way since we wanted more customization. Lithium handled technical stuff like migration, but a lot of the process is self-deployment. It’s one of the ways they teach use of the system is having the user self-implement.

    Overall, the implementation was super easy to do. Doing single sign-on (SSO) was the only hard part. The implementation ended up taking nine weeks total, but in hindsight, we could have done in it six. Most of the implementation time was spent in course work, which consisted of on-demand training - approximately 7-8 hours that you are required for you to do, before they turn on the system. During this nine week period, about 50% of my time was spent on implementation.

    We had a deployment manager who we were able to email 1-1. I leaned on him heavily. He was great at all hours, for example, they would call back at 7pm PST. They were very responsive.

    Content migration strategy is important to consider. Moving from an existing community you need to strategically choose how your layout will be. Two different systems will have two different ways to format communities. For example, Jive has communities with sub-communities, whereas Khoros has community, category, and boards.

    Contact migration is also an important consideration. You need to think through how you are going to move contacts from your old community to a new one. For example, are you going to create new logins and passwords? We were hoping to use the integration with Salesforce.com to be a portal, but ended up using an in-house solution that works well to maintain same the same logins. The next related question is are you going to be able to keep them connected to all the posts in your old community? We migrated old posts. If you have a tech-savvy team, you can do a self-migration. Khoros has a migration services team that we utilized. It cost us $10k to move content and posts were kept tied to the user.

    The next consideration is your launch/promotion plan. Khoros helped us out and gave us a lot of examples. They shared pre-launch email dates, follow-up emails, FAQ pages (e.g. to explain why switching, why better).
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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
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    Large companies and organizations with complex community needs are well served by Khoros communities. The platform's advanced analytics and reporting features helps organizations seeking deeper insights. The gamification is the best way to boost user engagement, Khoros Communities has a rich feature set. Also with customization options offered by Khoros Communities, companies can develop a unique and customized community experience.
    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
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    Scalability
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    I think I would give Khoros an overall 7, while there were things we really liked about it. I also saw things that just did not work well for us. We like using iG but it was not the friendliest in using it on that platform. Sometimes the software would glitch or lag which is not helpful during high critical moments
    Incentivized
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    Sprout Social
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
    • We are able to see what our different cohorts of customers are doing within the community, and we are able to create content and programs based on the engagement we get from these different groups.
    • We have been able to start an Idea Exchange space where our customers can share, vote, and comment on features they would like to see in our products. It quickly became a very popular place within the Community.
    • With the discussion forums, we are able to use the Accepted Solutions functions to help deflect tickets and Support interactions working on a 1-to-many scale.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    ScreenShots

    Khoros Communities Screenshots

    Screenshot of the Khoros Communities solution, and some of its tools available to build an enterprise-class online community and scale member engagement.Screenshot of discussions, which can be enabled to connect product experts and brand-enthusiasts through peer-to-peer discussions. Both newbies and experienced users can read, post, and easily respond in forums.Screenshot of where community members can submit, vote on, and discuss ideas to improve products, and share insights, all while driving engagement, and building brand loyalty. Idea boards deliver value for product managers, marketers and customers.Screenshot of events, that provide a platform to schedule, announce, inform, and discuss everything from the smallest group gathering to the largest user conference. These community-hosted activities harness the enthusiasm generated by interactions between members, company, and brand ambassadors and foster deeper connections with audiences. Users can integrate Zoom meetings and webinars within the community, or host live-stream video outside the community with URL links to any video hosting platform like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook or others.Screenshot of where to design a brand-approved community without custom code. It includes expert-created templates and a drag-and-drop interface to customize page layouts, navigation, and brand themes.Screenshot of some of the dashboards, reports, and benchmark data used to track visitors, usage, trending topics, interaction preferences, and agent responsiveness.

    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.