Sprout Social vs. Vista 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.

Incentivized

When I need to schedule a full week of posts for multiple clients. the calendar view makes it fast and clear. When a client sends last-minute edits, I can quickly reschedule or update posts by dragging them in the calendar. When I’m short on time I use the AI tools to generate quick captions and adjust them to fit the brand voice. When I manage comments and DMs I reply to everything from one inbox, without switching platforms. When planning content, I use Canva inside Vista Social and publish directly, which saves a lot of time.

• 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.

Incentivized

• The design and layout of the site is simple, with the options to click through the different tools on the left hand side of the page. What I liked most about Vista Social is the ability to combine all the different tools that a social media manager needs into one platform.
• I typically use various different apps and platforms to write down notes, assign tasks to different team members, and look at my overall content calendar for the month. It is brilliant that Vista Social is able to combine all of these into one platform.
• When first signing up to Vista Social and exploring the platform, each page offers you a walkthrough of all of the tools available to you, which is really handy, as well as a customer support section on the right bottom hand corner.

• 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.

Incentivized

• I think the price is quite high compared to hiring a person for the same task. This may put one off from purchasing as with a bit more time you can do the same job yourself or with an employee for much less
• In my opinion, the interface is rather complicated visually and doesn't have an appeal. It is cramped with so many features that provide a sense of confusion whilst starting off
• In my experience, the tutorials do leave a few questions afterwards regarding set up and this can take more time to figure out by yourself.

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).

Incentivized

Very effective, efficient and an integral part of our daily work. Our team members are more productive and motivated to finish projects.

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.

Incentivized

Since the platform is user-friendly and easy to navigate, start using it and making content creation feel effortless. The dashboard and each module for content management and creation it has the visual hierarchies in place. Building, customizing and exporting reports to PDF facilitate the journey with the clients. Its overall usability is well rounded for such large and powerful tool.

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.

It is quick to post, however you have to refresh the page every time you add a new scheduled item.

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.

Incentivized

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

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.

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.

Incentivized

It's reasonably priced compared to others and offers more capabilities for creating and implementing marketing campaigns. For example, social listening, reputation management, and employee advocacy are all tools it has that I haven't found in the previous ones. It also supports all marketing campaigns, not just social media.

• 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

• The DM automation feature means we're not missing out on important messages when we're off the clock (after hours essentially), which is a huge advantage in hospitality where response time is everything.
• In most cases, time is money, and being able to manage all our platforms from one place has cut down hours of switching between apps and tabs. That in itself has boosted our company's productivity and allowed the team to respond faster to guests and potential leads.
• The real-time insights and mentions helps us tweak content and react to trends quicker, which has increased our visibility and bookings.