Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued) vs. Sprout Social

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Radian6 was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2011 and - along with Buddy Media - became Salesforce Social Studio. The product was retired in November of 2024.
$1,000
Per Org Per Month
Sprout Social
Score 8.4 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
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Sprout Social
Editions & Modules
Basic
$1,000.00
Per Org Per Month
Pro
$4,000.00
Per Org Per Month
Corporate
$12,000.00
Per Org Per Month
Enterprise
$40,000.00
Per Org Per Month
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
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Sprout 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
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Sprout Social
Considered Both Products
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
At the time, it was top of the line for us. It offered all of the requirements we had to moderate social media content for our clients.
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
Social Studio is most comparable to Meltwater in that they both have very basic analytics capabilities, but pull in mass amounts of data. crimson hexagon, Sprinklr and Cision all have much more advanced social media analytics capabilities, although they are potentially more …
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
They are in completely different ballparks. Radian6 is an enterprise tool. Mention, Google Alerts and Talkwalker are for anyone.
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
Compared to Radian6, I found Meltwater Buzz, Simply Measured, and Sprout Social to be much more user friendly. Meltwater Buzz and Radian6 are very similar products with many of the same functionalities but Buzz presents your analytics in a way that is much easier to understand. …
Sprout Social
Chose Sprout Social
Sprout Social is by far the most robust social media management platform I have worked with. Compared to Hootsuite, Sprout is designed for mid to large size businesses whereas Hootsuite is lower cost with entry level functionality ideal for smaller businesses. Sprout has much …
Chose Sprout Social
Prior to switching, we chose Sprout Social because we learned that competitor brands were using this service, and it made sense to align under the same software. However, once comparing actual needs, and looking at how teams navigate the software, it didn't make financial or …
Chose Sprout Social
Sprout social is a bit more advanced than Hootsuite in my experience, but it does not stack up to other social media monitoring or analytics tools that I've used as far as functionality. Having said that, it is a significantly less expensive tool than others such as Cision or Cr…
Chose Sprout Social
Meltwater buzz Spreadfast Radian6
Features
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Sprout Social
Listening/monitoring
Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
8.8
11 Ratings
14% above category average
Sprout Social
7.9
87 Ratings
3% above category average
Boolean keyword searches8.010 Ratings7.565 Ratings
Filtering out noise/spam8.010 Ratings7.576 Ratings
Sentiment analysis9.09 Ratings7.556 Ratings
Broad channel coverage10.011 Ratings8.865 Ratings
Publishing
Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
8.0
11 Ratings
1% below category average
Sprout Social
8.6
110 Ratings
6% above category average
Content planning and scheduling8.011 Ratings9.5110 Ratings
Audience targeting8.010 Ratings7.787 Ratings
Content optimization8.09 Ratings8.296 Ratings
Workflow management8.011 Ratings8.896 Ratings
Engagement
Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
9.0
10 Ratings
10% above category average
Sprout Social
8.1
100 Ratings
0% below category average
Automated routing and prioritization9.99 Ratings7.962 Ratings
Customer interaction histories7.010 Ratings8.288 Ratings
Bulk actions10.010 Ratings8.285 Ratings
Marketing
Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
8.5
10 Ratings
10% above category average
Sprout Social
7.3
78 Ratings
5% below category average
Lead generation9.09 Ratings7.357 Ratings
Content marketing9.010 Ratings8.574 Ratings
Paid media management8.08 Ratings6.23 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions8.09 Ratings7.24 Ratings
Channel coverage/integration
Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
8.3
11 Ratings
1% below category average
Sprout Social
8.7
110 Ratings
3% above category average
Twitter8.011 Ratings9.198 Ratings
Facebook8.011 Ratings9.3109 Ratings
LinkedIn10.08 Ratings9.1100 Ratings
Google+6.86 Ratings8.136 Ratings
Instagram9.08 Ratings9.099 Ratings
Pinterest6.54 Ratings8.633 Ratings
YouTube10.07 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Reporting/analytics
Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
8.3
10 Ratings
7% above category average
Sprout Social
8.7
111 Ratings
11% above category average
Campaign success analytics8.010 Ratings8.8103 Ratings
Real-time tracking9.010 Ratings8.6100 Ratings
Competitor analysis8.08 Ratings8.889 Ratings
Account management
Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
8.5
10 Ratings
6% above category average
Sprout Social
8.1
104 Ratings
1% above category average
Role-based user permissions & privileges8.09 Ratings8.299 Ratings
Mobile access9.010 Ratings7.992 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Sprout Social
Small Businesses
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.4 out of 10
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Sprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(52 ratings)
8.7
(168 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(38 ratings)
9.5
(65 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(10 ratings)
8.7
(95 ratings)
Availability
9.6
(5 ratings)
7.7
(8 ratings)
Performance
8.4
(5 ratings)
8.0
(7 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(8 ratings)
5.8
(38 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.6
(6 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.8
(6 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(23 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)Sprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
If you're tasked with publishing content to social on behalf of your organization then this tool is certainly worth considering. You have quick and easy capability to schedule across multiple platforms with drag-and-drop simplicity. It ties into Salesforce's real strength of its CRM platform so you can quickly tie social activity and leads to those already in your database. And it does a good job at monitoring and analyzing brand and competitor content across multiple media types. Having said that, if you're into deep-dive and full functionality SaaS tools then this might not be for you as it covers three areas adequately, but not in enough detail or strength to make it a star performer
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Sprout Social
IMO it's best for an organization that has a lot of different people working on social media. They could be in different departments or just different members of the same team responsible for different types of posts (corporate, e-commerce, branding, etc.). I don't think it's as vital for a one-person team working solely within the Meta platform, for instance, especially if they're less concerned with detailed analytics.
Read full review
Pros
Discontinued Products
  • The amount of the information that radian6 can pull from multiple social platforms is absolutely phenomenal. Its just not only the pull but the way the information can be presented in dashboards was way good. It helped us understand in various aspects of our social presence.
  • Multiple profiles helped us to break down the Big/Huge social buzz cloud to smaller and more manageable pieces. This helped us concentrate on the lows and helped us to plan better on turning them to highs.
  • Radian6 allowed us to follow thru the crowd trends with the latest information presented in a single view. This also helped us to collect the social opinion on the product releases.
  • The ease of use, one need not be an expert to start using this platform. The interface is easily understandable by anyone.
  • A keyword can be edited quickly to tailor the needs and the results were quick.
Read full review
Sprout Social
  • For each account, customize posts for each platform, and schedule them to go live simultaneously.
  • Employee Advocacy via Sprout Social has integrated AI assistance for captions. Usually I would generate one suggested caption for employees to use/stem from when re-sharing to their socials. But now, EA message ideas display in random orders to better promote the full range of content.
  • Sprout Social has made the option to gamify the sharing concept quite easily with Employee Advocacy. Using the Leaderboard feature, employees can earn points in Employee Advocacy. Customized point values ensure you know how to climb the Leaderboard and start some friendly competition.
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Cons
Discontinued Products
  • Instagram Social Listening - it currently does not offer much social listening in terms of Instagram.
  • Instagram Owned - It currently stops pulling once an update is "old" by their standards, even if it receives recent comments. They can force pull, but you have to work with their tech team to do so.
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Sprout Social
  • Social media platforms don't always play nice with Sprout so it will always be a challenge to get all integrations to work properly.
  • Sprout Social is a growing organization and they are acquiring new technologies, which can be good. However, they often spend time in meetings upselling new services. I like to learn about enhancements and opportunities but prefer to focus on my investments first.
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Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
I spent a lot of time researching the right platform for me and our organisation (thanks to the other reviews on TrustRadius also). Having used other platforms when I found frustrations getting my everyday work done, I knew exactly what I wanted and this is why I chose Social Studio. While there have been a few hiccups, the quarterly update releases and the outstanding tech support have kept me more than happy.
Read full review
Sprout Social
I like Sprout for our needs and I like that it is easy to use. We want something better than HootSuite but don't need a high-level fancy program. The only think I don't like is customer service (except for chat).
Read full review
Usability
Discontinued Products
• Would rate this a 6. The User Interface is pretty intuitive, but the platform was still considered pretty intimidating by our non-technical staff when they first saw it. It took a while to get used to it and feel comfortable. There was quite a lot of setup work in the beginning (for example, we had to build our own reports using a canned report as a template, and this was not simple). Although it took a while to get it setup correctly, it’s quite intuitive once that work has been done.
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Sprout Social
Sprout Social's ease of use and navigation throughout the technology are relatively easy to figure out and teach. We also had a representative thoroughly walk us through the features and functionality to set us up for success in using the platform. I didn’t give it a ten because there were times when the navigation didn’t make sense, but once you figured out the quirks, it didn’t cause any trouble.
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Reliability and Availability
Discontinued Products
The platform is rarely down
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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
Discontinued Products
No issues with performance.
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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
Discontinued Products
As mentioned previously, it can be hard to get through to people who can help you. On occasion when I have spoken to customer service/tech support, they all seem nice and try to be helpful, however instead of admitting the system cannot do certain things, they will persist it saying that it can, which results in many wasted hours overall.
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Sprout Social
Sprout Social's customer support is extremely responsive. They're also always looking for suggestions on how they can make the product better and will actually take your ideas to their team to see if they're worth implementing. I've never had an issue that couldn't be resolved by them in a timely manner.
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Online Training
Discontinued Products
• We initially received dedicated online training for our team which was delivered by our account rep. This was pretty effective since it happened after our data had been loaded into the system and it had been configured for specific needs our organization. The training was perhaps a bit shallow though, as it was only an hour long. Online videos are available to be taken individually, and these have been useful.
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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
Discontinued Products
Implementation was pretty simple. Just a matter of giving the account rep a list of our search terms and having him set the system up to pull the data we wanted to see. Once this had been done, we tweaked it with his help. Process was pretty smooth, although there was some back and forth until it worked the way we wanted.
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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
Discontinued Products
Compared to Radian6, I found Meltwater Buzz, Simply Measured, and Sprout Social to be much more user friendly. Meltwater Buzz and Radian6 are very similar products with many of the same functionalities but Buzz presents your analytics in a way that is much easier to understand. I did a two week trial with Sprout Social and absolutely loved the product but our company needed the capability to connect to Salesforce, which is available on R6 and Buzz. Simply Measured is my all time favorite but I have only used the free version so I am not completely sure how it stacks up to Radian6
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Sprout Social
We are constantly exploring our options and looking for the most cutting-edge products that suit our needs as a business. Sprout ticked the boxes for what we needed when it was time for a change. Both are powerful tools, and you can only see by doing.
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Return on Investment
Discontinued Products
  • Monitoring social brand awareness is not something you can consider to have a meaninful impact in your business ROI short term, however it's a must for taking care of long term relationships and customer intimacy.
  • Radian6 connects with other analytical tools like webtrends, Google Analytics, etc..however it's not directly linked to a revenue driven platform, you can´t see the immediate ROI generated in the tool.
  • If you bet for social relationships you should consider this tool, no question on that. Social Commerce might be of course impacted postively by the proper use of this tool.
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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.
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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.