Sprout Social: Trending in the wrong direction.
October 03, 2019
Sprout Social: Trending in the wrong direction.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Standard
Overall Satisfaction with Sprout Social
Our team used Sprout Social for more than 2 years to publish on pages and profiles, schedule content, monitor, and report effectiveness on social media.
- Visual reporting. Providing graphs and charts of data.
- Publishing to some platforms (still working on development).
- This is not a great platform for teams. Their basic $99 plan includes a single user, and charges quite a bit to add more.
- This is not a great platform for agencies that have more than 5 accounts or less than 100 without paying a hefty price tag. Their deluxe plan is $149 for only 10 accounts. My team has access to more than 30 pages, and we'd have to disconnect a profile, then connect a new one, wait for it to load, and then produce a new report for our clients. It was too cumbersome to be effective.
- Value overall. Other competitors are offering more users and the same amount of pages for less money.
- Technical support. Our team spent about $2,500 with this company across 2 years - we published our final reports, made a single request for support with 3 different team members, and it was denied four times.
2 - Social Media Management / Account Service
Digital Director (review performance across accounts)
Digital Director (review performance across accounts)
- Negative ROI: Because the platform was so cumbersome to use between accounts (not cost-effective to spend for more than 10 accounts/across 35), we actually ended up not using it very often. This means that our software bill was large and our use if it was small. We're switching providers right now.
- Too costly per user. The company used to charge $99 for 10 accounts and one user when we onboarded two years ago. Now, this plan has increased by 50% in price.
- Positive analysis: We did enjoy the visualization of data and the ability to see the top posts and video usage. That helped us make a few key decisions, but in the end, we decided that we needed more features and users.
In the beginning, we selected Sprout Social because it was recommended to us by a top social media marketing influencer. We joined the platform and used it to publish, prepare reports, and monitor social on 100k following feeds and multiple platforms. Initially, we were happy with the results it provided and with the visual reports it prepared. At that time, we had 10 accounts and 2 team members.
As our team continued to grow, it became more difficult to use effectively for the needs of our clients and growing client roster. We enjoyed some of our time with the platform (the visual reporting mostly). Because our client (a multi-tiered organization) needed to be able to see, access, and use our posts - we actually ended up having to natively post from Facebook (using the Facebook scheduler) because we would have had to buy 5 licenses to gain approval and have them have the ability they would have had for free within the native platform. It also prohibited me from delegating tasks to team members or adding more accounts. In the end, the platform's price and limited capabilities as compared to client needs have won... and we're switching platforms.
As our team continued to grow, it became more difficult to use effectively for the needs of our clients and growing client roster. We enjoyed some of our time with the platform (the visual reporting mostly). Because our client (a multi-tiered organization) needed to be able to see, access, and use our posts - we actually ended up having to natively post from Facebook (using the Facebook scheduler) because we would have had to buy 5 licenses to gain approval and have them have the ability they would have had for free within the native platform. It also prohibited me from delegating tasks to team members or adding more accounts. In the end, the platform's price and limited capabilities as compared to client needs have won... and we're switching platforms.
Sprout Social Feature Ratings
Sprout Social Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Good followup Kept well informed Quick Initial Response | Slow Resolution Escalation required Need to explain problems multiple times Support doesn't seem to care |
No - Paying for escalated support is not an option to my knowledge. After years of paying into the company, I thought we would get decent support when we needed it. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. I had to ask to be escalated to a new level multiple times with my requests.
Unfortunately, I can't. The support team was quick to respond to me, but ultimately refused my request. I had to ask to speak to someone at a higher level before I was given anyone else's information to address my concerns.
Using Sprout Social
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Relatively simple Technical support not required Quick to learn Familiar | Do not like to use Not well integrated Inconsistent Cumbersome Feel nervous using |
- Visual reporting on usage
- Direct publishing to platforms - easy to do, but did incorrectly resize YouTube previews and images from time to time.
- Multiple users per account. This platform doesn't take delegation into consideration. If you want to have access to the data, then you need to purchase licenses for yourself and for the team members that need to be pulling the reports or doing the work. This software was very cumbersome to use in that respect.
- Pulling reports. Because of the limited number of users and profiles alotted per levels of membership - if you have access to more than 10 accounts/pages/profiles, you'll have to delete profiles individually and reattach them to provide reporting or pay for a large software bill just to leave them attached (doesn't work with social media management).
- Publishing. After testing multiple media types, we found that Sprout Social would contort or truncate certain types of media. This resulted in us having to use Facebook as a native platform to post. We ended up only using it for reporting.