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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Kustomer

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AKustomer is a customer service CRM platform built for managing high support volume by optimizing experiences throughout the customer service journey. Kustomer was acquired by Facebook in late 2020, but spun out in 2023 and re-launched as an independent entity, Kustomer, LLC.

    $8,544

    per year for 8 users (minimum)

    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
    KustomerSprout Social
    Editions & Modules
    Enterprise
    $89
    per month (billed annually) per user
    Ultimate
    $139
    per month (billed annually) per user
    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
    KustomerSprout Social
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsAll plans require an annual subscription and 8 users minimum.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    KustomerSprout Social
    Considered Both Products
    Kustomer, LLC
    Chose Kustomer
    The support we get with Kustomer is light years ahead. I was not an admin at the time we had Desk.com, but from a users point of view, Kustomer is a lot easier to use and much more intuitive.
    Incentivized
    Chose Kustomer
    The sales rep did a great job of making us feel heard and instilling trust. We felt that we would be valued as a client instead of just one of thousands, and a small company at that. When we signed they promised and delivered on an additional channel that they hadn't previously …
    Incentivized
    Sprout Social
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    88%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    94%
    Would buy again
    106 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    93 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    88%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    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
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    4 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    92 Answers
    Features
    KustomerSprout Social
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Kustomer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Kustomer
    8.1
    15 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Sprout Social
    -
    Ratings
    Organize and prioritize service tickets8.014 Ratings00 Ratings
    Expert directory8.212 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications8.611 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation8.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission8.015 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket response8.015 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Kustomer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Kustomer
    8.5
    13 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Sprout Social
    -
    Ratings
    External knowledge base8.013 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base9.013 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Kustomer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Kustomer
    8.1
    15 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Sprout Social
    -
    Ratings
    Customer portal8.710 Ratings00 Ratings
    IVR8.69 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social integration7.313 Ratings00 Ratings
    Email support10.015 Ratings00 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration6.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Listening/monitoring
    Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Kustomer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Kustomer
    -
    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 Kustomer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Kustomer
    -
    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 Kustomer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Kustomer
    -
    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 Kustomer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Kustomer
    -
    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 Kustomer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Kustomer
    -
    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 Kustomer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Kustomer
    -
    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 Kustomer and Sprout Social
    Feature
    Kustomer
    -
    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
    KustomerSprout Social
    Small Businesses
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Sendible
    Score7.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Emplifi
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    KustomerSprout Social
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (36 ratings)
    8.4
    (203 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.2
    (67 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    8.5
    (130 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    7.7
    (8 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (7 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.4
    (7 ratings)
    1.8
    (39 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    1.0
    (12 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    8.1
    (42 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    KustomerSprout Social
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Kustomer, LLC
    I would say the greatest strength of Kustomer is its flexibility. In the hands of a skilled admin, it can be adapted to tons and tons of different use cases. I've been able to make custom displays for different groups of agents, produce complex cross sections of users, draw interesting data relationships combining marketing contacts and customer-initiated contacts. For example, there's really no other data source in our company which could tell you which users received a specific promo code and checked out with it, received their delivery within 14 days and then can related that to the number of times they contacted us about using our product. At the intersection of communication, marketing, data, and relationship-management, Kustomer shines at the center. I would say it falls short when you are trying to coordinate multiple "side conversations" with multiple sources to resolve an issue. This is a tough task for any type of platform, but if you're maintaining 3 different email chains with a 3PL partner, the customer, and a separate internal conversation, it would be confusing anyway!
    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
    Kustomer, LLC
    • All customer data (past orders, communication with customer service, rewards account data) is in one place. This helps agents avoid confusion and reduces the number of tabs they need to open.
    • The Knowledge Base (or K Base) is very helpful. Any time we roll out a new policy or have a limited-time promotion, we can add all the relevant information and worksheets there for the convenience of the agents. That way they can stay in a chat while looking up the answer to a question.
    • We can seamlessly move from chat into email if the customer leaves or the queue times are too long. All the interactions will stay on the customer profile page, so they are kept up to date.
    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
    Kustomer, LLC
    • For our team, the feature that defaults all notes to begin in "done" status is difficult. Throughout each day we need to have notes open and assigned back and forth to different teams, and we have to remember to manually "open" each note. There is too much room for human error with this setting, and it is easy for important notes to be missed if a user forgets to open the note.
    • Similarly, it can be hard to remember to assign emails/notes to a particular team in addition to a user. We almost exclusively work out of team inboxes, and if someone on Care writes an email to a customer, the email will automatically be "done" when it is created, and it will be assigned to the user who wrote it, but not also to the user's team. There are instances where an email needs to be snoozed for several days/hours with further action needed, and unless the user remembers to assign the email to their team it may "awake" from the snooze and not be visible to anyone except the user who created it. Similarly to my first comment, this leaves a lot of room for human error and is not very intuitive.
    • Personally, I do not love that all tickets/emails/notes are jumbled together in the same inbox. While this gives visibility to everything on the "to do" list at the same time, it can be visually overwhelming. We have created unique folders for certain types of projects or categories of work, but have experienced tech glitches or just the awkwardness of another step to manually read the note, determine what type of category it is, and then manually assign it to another folder. Would love to have things auto-sort and take out this manual lift.
    • I love the idea of the autopilot setting, but we have not been able to use this for our work because it sorts items based on time, and not based on priority. In our line of work, we may have an urgent situation arise that needs attention before an email that was sent in 60 minutes ago. The autopilot feature would push the email to my associates sooner than it would the urgent situation from 5 minutes ago. Due to this, we manually monitor inboxes and assign work to ourselves and others.
    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
    Kustomer, LLC
    Because there's no other tool like Kustomer
    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
    Kustomer, LLC
    There is a learning curve, but it is more than worth it, especially to have a dedicated resource pointed at Kustomer and any other software it interacts with. The basic implementation is useful, and powerful - certainly a MASSIVE upgrade over taking care of your customers in an email inbox or shuffling between multiple windows and applications! It is also set up really well to grow and reconfigure with your business. I'm a big fan.
    Incentivized
    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
    Kustomer, LLC
    Because Kustomer is available when you need it
    Incentivized
    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.
    Read full review
    Performance
    Kustomer, LLC
    Because ages load quickly, reports complete in a reasonable time frame, given their complexity
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Kustomer, LLC
    I did not reach out to Kustomer support when we had an issue. Still, whenever we provide feedback to our manager regarding what can improve based on our experience using Kustomer, our manager always comments that Kustomer support always replies with some positive feedback based on our suggestions.
    Incentivized
    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
    Kustomer, LLC
    Because they are very hands-on in training us and very approachable
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sprout Social
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Kustomer, LLC
    It was very easy to understand.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Kustomer, LLC
    Nothing really because it is easy to use. After an hour of using it, we're already getting the hang of it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Kustomer, LLC
    Apps like Intercom, Zendesk, and Gorgios all treat customer inquiries as tickets, just tracking that one issue or interaction with a customer. Kustomer treats each customer as an individual, which allows us to provide top-notch customer service. Customers love that we're able to be more conversational and informal, while still solving their issues quickly. It also helps us build relationships with customers and increases repeat orders.
    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
    Scalability
    Kustomer, LLC
    Because customer is flexible and scalable
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sprout Social
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Kustomer, LLC
    • We’re getting so much positive feedback — which is not something you traditionally associate with a customer care team — because we’re making it effortless for customers to deliver both positive and negative feedback, and we can now resolve the bad feedback really really quickly.
    • Primarily from our increased efficiency with Kustomer, we’ve seen a significant reduction of $3 to $4 for every cost per contact.
    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.