Adobe Social vs. Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Social
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Social, incorporates technology from Context Optional and Efficient Frontier. Adobe acquired Facebook advertising-management platform Efficient Frontier in November. Six months earlier, Efficient Frontier had acquired Facebook page-management platform Context Optional. Adobe Social is an enterprise social platform competing with Buddy Media and Involver, enabling things like automated content marketing and social sweepstakes and competitions. Customers tend to be medium to large…N/A
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Actiance was a social media compliance and archiving platform acquired by Smarsh in November 2017. It is now part of the technology underlying the Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform. Actiance products Vantage and Socialite are now Connected Capture. Actiance Alcatraz is now Connected Archive.N/A
Pricing
Adobe SocialSmarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe SocialSmarsh Communications Intelligence Platform
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe SocialSmarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Adobe SocialSmarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
Listening/monitoring
Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.4
9 Ratings
3% below category average
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Boolean keyword searches7.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Filtering out noise/spam7.57 Ratings00 Ratings
Sentiment analysis7.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Broad channel coverage7.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Publishing
Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.4
9 Ratings
7% below category average
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Content planning and scheduling7.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Audience targeting7.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Content optimization7.59 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow management7.59 Ratings00 Ratings
Engagement
Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.7
8 Ratings
5% below category average
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Automated routing and prioritization7.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Customer interaction histories8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk actions7.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Marketing
Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
8.0
8 Ratings
4% above category average
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Lead generation8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Content marketing8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Paid media management8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Channel coverage/integration
Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.9
9 Ratings
8% below category average
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Twitter8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Facebook8.09 Ratings00 Ratings
LinkedIn7.57 Ratings00 Ratings
Google+7.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Instagram8.57 Ratings00 Ratings
Pinterest8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
YouTube8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting/analytics
Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.8
9 Ratings
1% below category average
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Campaign success analytics8.09 Ratings00 Ratings
Real-time tracking7.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Competitor analysis8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Account management
Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.3
8 Ratings
11% below category average
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions & privileges7.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile access7.07 Ratings00 Ratings
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Adobe SocialSmarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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Enterprises
Social Suite by Reputation.com
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
Adobe SocialSmarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(16 ratings)
7.5
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.4
(11 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe SocialSmarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
I used Adobe Social when I use to have my own business on social media. After many months I was having no success in finding the correct clients for my products. Using Adobe Social I was able to market and discover different ways of searching for the correct clients and later on helped my business grow.
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Smarsh
This appliance is well suited for organizations that have a need to monitor, moderate, or log social networking site use or the use of any website. It is a very solid tool for any information security department to have at their disposal.
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Pros
Adobe
  • Adobe Social lacks strengths, as I believe Adobe themselves have acknowledged, given their decision not to continue support or development. But if I need to list three strengths, the first would be it can publish to some social media platforms with a success rate of over 50%. If that's a strength.
  • It has workflow processes, but they are over-complicated and poorly designed.
  • It has some basic analytics, but Adobe consultants usually recommend referring to Adobe Analytics instead. Which is great if you actually use Adobe Analytics.
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Smarsh
  • Discovery: It allows for easy discoveries by the compliance and cyber security departments.
  • Ethical walls: This keeps certain departments from talking to each other.
  • Very granular control. This is a big product meaning you can get very detailed with it.
  • Once it's configured and running, we hardly ever have any issues.
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Cons
Adobe
  • It would be great if Adobe scheduled video uploads for Twitter.
  • A time change in a social post automatically puts the post back to Level 1 of approvals. It can be a big hassle to have to start the process over for such a small change.
  • Adobe uses a different algorithm to measure engagement our company does. It would be great to upload your own algorithm into Adobe.
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Smarsh
  • Its configuration options were very large and required a good deal of time to learn all of the various settings.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
I wasn't in charge of making the actual management decision, but I would absolutely renew Adobe Social. As I mentioned, it provides strong and in-depth analytics and listening tools. The reports that it generates are very thorough and easy to read. I loved the platform and would recommend it to anyone
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Smarsh
It's the only product at this time that meets all of our requirements.
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Usability
Adobe
The reason why I give this rating is that the overall platform is simple to use. You don't need to be tech-savvy or have a vast understanding of how to work a marketing tool. It is very simple to use compared to different platforms and you learn a lot of different ways to build your business.
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Smarsh
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Adobe
The reason why I give this a 9 out of 10 in terms of support is because of the mobile app functionality. I have had many issues in terms of logging in and also loading pages. The app overall is easy to use but at what cost? Other than that it is great and I still enjoy Adobe Social.
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Smarsh
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Adobe
Training was long and a little confusing. While a number of features carried over, they were still covered in this elongated training. It would have been nice to have training tailored to experience level with the product.
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Smarsh
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Adobe
The implementation was done during our POC. We had a very mixed experience here, and have had some issues arise since based on the way the tool was implemented. An Adobe employee went ahead and made a change to our account that was unauthorized (helpful for our implementation) which caused issues in on boarding another team who needed the same change, but could not get it done without costly Adobe certification
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Smarsh
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Adobe
Hootsuite Enterprise is superior in many ways, but the biggest factor is probably that it is constantly evolving and adding new features, working directly with social media companies ahead of new releases. Adobe seems to have stopped developing their product.
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Smarsh
This was the only appliance of its kind that I have used. Other devices have different capabilities for web filtering such as the checkpoint firewalls, but none of them offered the overall solution that was deployed with this product at that time.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Although we chose Adobe Social believing it could provide ROI metrics we could not get elsewhere, that turned out not to be the case. Site Catalyst can give us everything we need without Adobe Social
  • Adobe Social did not create greater efficiencies and speed up our activity within social media. In fact, it has done the oppposite. It is very cumbersome with little clear benefit.
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Smarsh
  • Faster investigative work has led to increased employee efficiency when working on security investigations.
Read full review
ScreenShots