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SearchAds.com vs. Sprout Social vs. Talkwalker by Hootsuite

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    SearchAds.com

    N/AN/ASearchAds.com is a resource that helps users optimize and scale Apple Search Ads campaigns with Competitor Intelligence and remain competitive in end-user App Store searches. It's from MobileAction, an ad and market intelligence focused company headquartered in San Francisco.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

    Talkwalker by Hootsuite

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/ATalkwalker is a consumer intelligence company that bring sin data from 30+ social networks, 150 million websites, and 100 data partners to give customers a unified view of their consumers. Talkwalker is a Hootsuite solution since the 2024 acquisition.N/A
    Pricing
    SearchAds.comSprout SocialTalkwalker by Hootsuite
    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
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    SearchAds.comSprout SocialTalkwalker by Hootsuite
    Free Trial
    NoYesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details———
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SearchAds.comSprout SocialTalkwalker by Hootsuite
    Considered Multiple Products
    MobileAction
    No answer on this topic
    Sprout Social
    No answer on this topic
    Hootsuite
    Chose Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Sprout Social seemed like a really great tool, but a lot of the features on Talkwalker were more what we were looking for in terms of reporting and the deeper listening software available. Social listening seemed more new to Sprout Social so we wanted a product with more …
    Incentivized
    Chose Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Talkwalker is a complete package and within budgets and easy to use.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Would buy again
    106 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    93 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    108 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    92 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    Features
    SearchAds.comSprout SocialTalkwalker by Hootsuite
    Listening/monitoring
    Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of SearchAds.com and Sprout Social and Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Feature
    SearchAds.com
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    7.2
    114 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    -
    Ratings
    Boolean keyword searches00 Ratings6.980 Ratings00 Ratings
    Filtering out noise/spam00 Ratings7.196 Ratings00 Ratings
    Sentiment analysis00 Ratings7.077 Ratings00 Ratings
    Broad channel coverage00 Ratings8.090 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publishing
    Comparison of Publishing features of SearchAds.com and Sprout Social and Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Feature
    SearchAds.com
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    8.2
    145 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    -
    Ratings
    Content planning and scheduling00 Ratings9.2145 Ratings00 Ratings
    Audience targeting00 Ratings7.2110 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content optimization00 Ratings8.2126 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workflow management00 Ratings8.4126 Ratings00 Ratings
    Engagement
    Comparison of Engagement features of SearchAds.com and Sprout Social and Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Feature
    SearchAds.com
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    7.9
    132 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    -
    Ratings
    Automated routing and prioritization00 Ratings7.687 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customer interaction histories00 Ratings8.1116 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bulk actions00 Ratings8.1115 Ratings00 Ratings
    Marketing
    Comparison of Marketing features of SearchAds.com and Sprout Social and Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Feature
    SearchAds.com
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    7.1
    96 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    -
    Ratings
    Lead generation00 Ratings6.869 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content marketing00 Ratings8.192 Ratings00 Ratings
    Paid media management00 Ratings6.23 Ratings00 Ratings
    Campaigns and promotions00 Ratings7.24 Ratings00 Ratings
    Channel coverage/integration
    Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of SearchAds.com and Sprout Social and Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Feature
    SearchAds.com
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    8.4
    144 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    -
    Ratings
    Twitter00 Ratings8.8126 Ratings00 Ratings
    Facebook00 Ratings8.7143 Ratings00 Ratings
    LinkedIn00 Ratings8.6130 Ratings00 Ratings
    Google+00 Ratings7.846 Ratings00 Ratings
    Instagram00 Ratings8.6132 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pinterest00 Ratings8.246 Ratings00 Ratings
    YouTube00 Ratings8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting/analytics
    Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of SearchAds.com and Sprout Social and Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Feature
    SearchAds.com
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    8.2
    146 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    -
    Ratings
    Campaign success analytics00 Ratings8.6138 Ratings00 Ratings
    Real-time tracking00 Ratings8.1134 Ratings00 Ratings
    Competitor analysis00 Ratings7.8120 Ratings00 Ratings
    Account management
    Comparison of Account management features of SearchAds.com and Sprout Social and Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    Feature
    SearchAds.com
    -
    Ratings
    Sprout Social
    8.0
    138 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Talkwalker by Hootsuite
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions & privileges00 Ratings8.7132 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile access00 Ratings7.3124 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    SearchAds.comSprout SocialTalkwalker by Hootsuite
    Small Businesses
    Similarweb
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Sendible
    Score7.2 out of 10
    Followerwonk
    Score6.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Similarweb
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Emplifi
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Crowdbooster (discontinued)
    Score7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (discontinued)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    1-Social
    Score5.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    SearchAds.comSprout SocialTalkwalker by Hootsuite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.4
    (203 ratings)
    8.3
    (13 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.2
    (67 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (130 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.7
    (8 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (7 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.8
    (39 ratings)
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.0
    (12 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.1
    (42 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SearchAds.comSprout SocialTalkwalker by Hootsuite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    MobileAction
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Hootsuite
    Talkwalker is well suited for big companies and agencies that are looking for a long-term solution to keep track of the industry and/or their brands and key competitors. While setup requires a bit of dedication (especially in terms of custom filters and tags), once it's done, the tool will give the user a lot of flexibility to analyze the conversations and find the relevant results that answer the business questions. Companies just looking for a tool to track a short time period, or simple things like Twitter hashtags, won't take advantage of the full capabilities of this tool. Therefore, they could feel frustrated when comparing the outcomes/usage versus the costs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    MobileAction
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Hootsuite
    • Truly global listening platform - monitor a deep range of media types from all over the world. Particularly strong in supporting competitive monitoring and analysis briefs across regions and countries. It monitors content in original language which I believe is a very strong monitoring factor.
    • Easy to use yet powerful dashboard visualisations - the dashboard interface is among the best I have seen. While it can accomplish many things, and under the hood is a very powerful and complex tool, the user interface is very intuitive, slick, quick and packed with all the KPIs you could want.
    • Customisation of the tool is a great feature. You can build your own dashboard and reporting spaces to suit your needs. You can schedule alerts from the system in a variety of outputs to keep you up to date with the latest events.
    • Customer support & technological advancement - the team at Talkwalker are highly proficient, always willing to support our every need, however big or small. Talkwalker aim to release around 4 software updates each year which means the platform is always full of the latest data visualisations and monitoring technologies
    • Having 'traditional' media monitored alongside social as well as owned media assets in one dashboard space is invaluable to help brands understand where their media footprint lies and how they perform in each media set, relative to the others.
    • AI - Talkwalker has introduced greater AI capabilities recently which means the capability of the tool in monitoring is ever-increasing, and the accuracy of targeting content and sentiment analysis is improving. The Visual Insights and image recognition technology is a really strong feature, and a very welcome addition to the monitoring aspect
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    MobileAction
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Hootsuite
    • The system is complicated. With everything that you're able to do, it does come at the cost of simplicity. It definitely requires training and a high level of expertise to properly leverage what it can do.
    • The system can be slow. If you "ask" it to do too many things at once, it can get hung up and do the spin of doom.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    MobileAction
    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
    Hootsuite
    Love it! In most cases, Talkwalker is a no-brainer: I can confidently recommend it to clients.
    Read full review
    Usability
    MobileAction
    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
    Hootsuite
    Despite all the functionalities available on the platform, I never felt overwhelmed or confused
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    MobileAction
    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
    Hootsuite
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    MobileAction
    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
    Hootsuite
    Talkwalker gets the job done at a basic level. It performs regular indexing of existing webpages and tracks the instances in which a particular brand or company is mentioned. Especially for being free, this is an awesome resource. However, it should be said that this product does not perform nearly at the level of the paid options.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    MobileAction
    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
    Hootsuite
    They are very helpful, but can sometimes be a little too quick and not explain things in as great a depth as we would like. They have great staff and programs, and we don't really have any other major complaints. Support is very responsive and helpful when need be.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    MobileAction
    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
    Hootsuite
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    MobileAction
    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
    Hootsuite
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    MobileAction
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Hootsuite
    I have yet to find another tool that would provide me with such a detailed information per query. It's such a find! Plus, I get separate emails per a search query and I'm able to archive those emails to the appropriate folders and always have a way of looking back. It's very useful for building monthly reports.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    MobileAction
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Hootsuite
    • The free tool is a no-brainer. It absolutely helps ferret out mentions on social media that I wasn't aware of before.
    • Now, I can use the tool for clients, too, so for consultants, it can be a great way to help stay on top of what's being said about them online, as well.
    • Using the paid version would help delve into even more insights for your business.
    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.