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

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Sprout Social
Score 8.1 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
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)Sprout Social
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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
Smarsh Communications Intelligence PlatformSprout 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
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)Sprout Social
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)Sprout Social
Listening/monitoring
Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
7.2
53 Ratings
6% below category average
Boolean keyword searches00 Ratings6.739 Ratings
Filtering out noise/spam00 Ratings6.943 Ratings
Sentiment analysis00 Ratings6.924 Ratings
Broad channel coverage00 Ratings8.134 Ratings
Publishing
Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
4.9
57 Ratings
47% below category average
Content planning and scheduling00 Ratings7.057 Ratings
Audience targeting00 Ratings3.148 Ratings
Content optimization00 Ratings3.749 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings5.952 Ratings
Engagement
Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
5.9
55 Ratings
31% below category average
Automated routing and prioritization00 Ratings2.825 Ratings
Customer interaction histories00 Ratings7.751 Ratings
Bulk actions00 Ratings7.246 Ratings
Marketing
Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
4.7
39 Ratings
48% below category average
Lead generation00 Ratings2.531 Ratings
Content marketing00 Ratings3.135 Ratings
Paid media management00 Ratings6.23 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions00 Ratings7.24 Ratings
Channel coverage/integration
Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
7.5
59 Ratings
13% below category average
Twitter00 Ratings7.757 Ratings
Facebook00 Ratings6.459 Ratings
LinkedIn00 Ratings8.252 Ratings
Google+00 Ratings7.721 Ratings
Instagram00 Ratings7.049 Ratings
Pinterest00 Ratings7.214 Ratings
YouTube00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Reporting/analytics
Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
5.8
58 Ratings
30% below category average
Campaign success analytics00 Ratings4.354 Ratings
Real-time tracking00 Ratings6.455 Ratings
Competitor analysis00 Ratings6.847 Ratings
Account management
Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)
-
Ratings
Sprout Social
7.6
58 Ratings
7% below category average
Role-based user permissions & privileges00 Ratings7.655 Ratings
Mobile access00 Ratings7.551 Ratings
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User Ratings
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)Sprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(2 ratings)
7.4
(115 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.1
(2 ratings)
9.0
(62 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(42 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(8 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(7 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
5.1
(37 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Smarsh Communications Intelligence Platform (with Actiance)Sprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Sprout Social
Sprout [Social] is great for small businesses, small agencies and those who need a platform but don't want to spend a fortune. If you need multiple user log-in's, the cost will add up. This is great to share a log-in for different people to use or add one or two users
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Pros
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.
Read full review
Sprout Social
  • The Landscape system that Sprout Social offers allows me to modify all the images that I want to publish on my social networks. This service allows me to modify the size of the image, add filters, modify the colors and much more, it is a very important tool to be able to have a better presentation of the images that we use in our publications on social networks.
  • It offers me a perfect statistical system where I can consult all kinds of movements that have occurred in all my social networks, I can see statistics individually or generally. The statistics allow me to see group reports, participation, information on audience movement on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and also allow me to view the activity that has occurred in my account.
  • Sprout Social allows me to view a record in real time that shows me all the movements that my social networks are having by my employees. As Director of the Marketing Sector, this is a very important role, as I can know what actions my employees are taking to improve marketing with social networks.
Read full review
Cons
Smarsh
  • Its configuration options were very large and required a good deal of time to learn all of the various settings.
Read full review
Sprout Social
  • I'd love to see more robust tag reporting capabilities, but they mentioned that this is something in the pipeline for improvement.
  • I wish it was easier to batch content and shift it to approval or draft mode. Sometimes clients can change their mind and moving through each post individually can be a bit time consuming. This is a very minor thing.
  • I'd love to see more customization options come to its reporting feature so we can insert graphics. Currently it supports the insertion of text only.
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Likelihood to Renew
Smarsh
It's the only product at this time that meets all of our requirements.
Read full review
Sprout Social
While I am currently no longer working with the company in which I was employed and utilized Sprout Social, I do know that the company is still utilizing Sprout Social on a daily basis and I do not foresee a time when the subscription would be cancelled.
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Usability
Smarsh
No answers on this topic
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is extremely user-friendly. The publishing feature is easy to use, and provides previews of what your content will look like once posted. I also love the calendar view where you can view all posts you have scheduled for the month. The collaborative nature of the platform makes working directly in Sprout Social with clients a breeze, and we are seeing our content get approved much faster.
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Reliability and Availability
Smarsh
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.
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Performance
Smarsh
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
Smarsh
No answers on this topic
Sprout Social
Sprout Social's customer support is extremely prompt and always helpful. Not only do they provide quick and useful service, but the representatives follow up multiple times to ensure that the issue is fully address and/or completely resolved. The overall experience is exemplary; very few other companies provide comparable service.
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Online Training
Smarsh
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
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Implementation Rating
Smarsh
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.
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Alternatives Considered
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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Sprout Social
I used Buffer previous to Sprout Social for two years. It was a good solution as we were getting a handle on scheduling content. It was the first real tool we had for this. But we outgrew it and they began removing features that were critical to our workflow, such as the RSS Feed. While their 50% off policy for non-profits was very helpful, once we started adding up the cost to use features like Replies and Analytics, we discovered that our needs were simply too robust for Buffer to handle. Sprout Social was the solution suggested by all our peers and we've been very happy with it ever since.
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Return on Investment
Smarsh
  • Faster investigative work has led to increased employee efficiency when working on security investigations.
Read full review
Sprout Social
  • Sprout has given insights to lead our creative refreshes every quarter. As we have a healthy budget on paid social, it is crucial to understand the type of creative that works best.
  • Sprout has the ability to send notifications based on certain types of messages received. This is crucial for social media teams who don't have 24/7 coverage but need to be notified of urgent matters.
  • Sprout has saved me hours of time as I no longer pull analytics natively from each social platform. The generated reports give me a look at all of the platforms and can be customized.
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.