Sprout Social Review 2025: Features, Pros And Cons

Sprout Social is a social media management app used by brands that need in-depth analytics and advanced social media marketing features.

Despite the heating competition, Sprout remains one of the top players in the market, largely due to advanced functionality and strategic acquisitions. Sprout has even been named the best software for 2024 in G2’s Best Software Products.

Considering this recognition, we decided to find out whether Sprout is the best social media management tool. This is what this Sprout Social review is all about.

What We Think of Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a true market leader in the world of social media management tools.

It gives you audience and competitor insights, uses AI for scheduling posts, and even lets you manage your influencer marketing campaigns from the same app.

With a user-friendly interface and extensive customer support resources, it’s not hard to see why Sprout is trusted by brands globally.

What is Sprout Social?

Sprout Social is a social media management software developed by a company going by the same name—Sprout Social. The company was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, United States.

Sprout Social is one of the best social media management tools in the market. It’s used by over 30,000 brands worldwide to collect social insights and improve audience engagement.

Sprout Social Features

According to social media statistics, the number of social media users is increasing every year. While this increases the audience size that businesses can target, it also forces them to find tools that can help them maximize this opportunity.

One such tool is Sprout Social.

Sprout Social is arguably the most feature-filled social media management app. Some of these features are AI-powered and patented technologies that can make a big difference in your productivity.

Here are some of the features that stand out the most.

Smart Inbox

Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox is your communications hub. Here, you’ll find incoming messages, alerts and notifications, and even social media mentions.

From the Smart Inbox, you can reply to private messages, monitor hashtags and keywords, tag and filter messages, and view conversation history.

Some of the main features of this social inbox include:

• Message filters: Instead of scrolling through tens or hundreds of messages, you can use filters to show the exact messages you’re looking for. The available filters include source, tags, and message types.
• Activity chart: This bar graph located at the top of the Smart Inbox window shows you how many messages you‘ve received and interacted with. As you mark messages complete, the bars turn from gray to green, indicating your progress.
• Creating cases: If you receive a message that should be responded to by someone else, you can assign them the message by creating a case. You do this by clicking the pin icon at the bottom of the message and choosing the assignee, case type, and priority.
• Share conversations: You can share individual messages or full conversations with multiple team members and stakeholders outside Sprout. You can email a particular message or export the full thread to a CSV file.

Chatbots

Have you noticed that many websites have chatbots that pop up ready to answer your queries? Well, you can get one for your website too.

With Sprout, you can take advantage of the built-in bot builder to create a chatbot for tasks such as customer service and lead generation.

To get started, click on the bot icon on the left-side menu of your dashboard.

From here, you can customize one of the templates or create a bot from scratch. Here is what the process looks like when customizing the customer care bot.

On clicking the template, you’ll be taken through a few steps to connect the bot to your profile, e.g. Facebook business page. After that, you’ll give your bot a name and description.

After entering the name and description of your chatbot, you’ll be taken to the design window where you can customize the bot as you please.

The process of customizing a template is simple. By clicking the dotted boxes, e.g. ‘Add Message’, you’re given different options to choose from and guided through the necessary steps.

If you need help building your bot, click the question mark on the right side of the bot builder window. And if you’d like to see how the bot will work in real time, just click the preview icon.

If you’re satisfied with the results, click the ‘Offline’ switch next to the ‘Finish’ button to activate your bot.

Social Media Calendar

Sprout comes with a social media calendar to help you plan your content and campaigns. With this calendar, you can easily see scheduled posts, the platforms they’ll be posted on, and the time they’ll be published.

The social media calendar is a very dynamic tool that does more than schedule social media posts. You can also use it to:

• Collaborate with your team: Managing social is a team effort and Sprout helps you work with others to execute your social media marketing strategy. You can give users permissions to different parts of the calendar, view audit trails, and provide access to a shared content library.
• Share your calendar with stakeholders: It’s easy to keep everyone updated on the what and when. Just share links to the calendar or export a PDF version and email it.
• Find relevant content to fill your calendar: You can fill your calendar gaps with content sourced from online sources using the ‘Find Content’ feature. When you find an interesting article, you can schedule it in the Sprout Queue and view it on the calendar.

Workflows

Workflows let you create approval steps to guide the social media efforts of your team.

One way of using workflows is to get approval from external stakeholders such as clients. Internally, approvals may be necessary when you want to check a social media post for errors or compliance with editorial guidelines before publishing.

When creating an approval workflow, you’ll need to assign permissions to the users who will approve.

You can also create future workflows faster by duplicating an existing workflow instead of creating one from scratch.

ViralPost – An AI-powered Scheduling Solution

ViralPost is a patented solution that analyzes the engagement of your audience to determine the best times to publish your content. The algorithm analyzes the connected social accounts to identify the time your audience on that platform is likely to engage with your content.

You can use the ViralPost technology when posting content immediately after you create it, or when using the Sprout Queue.

When creating a new social media post, scroll down to the ‘When to post’ section and click the ‘Use Optimal Times’ drop-down link.

If you’re creating content to be published later, instead of struggling to figure out when to post it, just let ViralPost handle the timing for you. For this, click the Publishing menu, select ‘Sprout Queue’, and then click ‘Manage Queue Settings’.

In the window that opens, select the queued message and click ‘Edit’.

In the next window, select ‘ViralPost’ and then click on the ‘Set By’ drop-down to choose whether to create settings for individual days or weekdays/weekends.

You can choose how many times you want to post per day and even select the time range. Once you’re done, click ‘Save’.

Now you can create your content and select Sprout Queue in the ‘When to post’ box. The app will determine the exact time to publish your content.

Social Media Listening

To be successful in social media marketing, you need a social media listening tool.

Sprout Social is one of the best social listening tools around. With it, you can easily engage in the social media conversations that relate to your business.

To get started, click the Listening icon on the left side menu and you’ll be taken to the Listening window.

To start listening, you need to create a topic. You can do this by clicking the ‘+ New Topic’ button on the left side of the window or the ‘Query Builder’. Both options lead you to the query builder window from where you can customize your topic.

When creating your topic, you’ll specify a title and description, the network to listen to, and the keywords to track. There are several other optional settings you can use to create topics that fit your exact needs.

Using the social listening tool, you’ll be able to:

• Understand your audience: The listening feature lets you know what your audience is talking about so you can better understand their interests and concerns. This will help you gain the insights you need to improve your social media marketing strategy.
• Manage a crisis and avoid negative PR: Using alerts, you can get notified whenever conversations negatively mention your brand or products. This way, you can respond quickly and deal with the issue before it affects your business negatively.
• Identify and track consumer trends: Identify trending topics and understand the related customer behaviors that you can leverage to increase your reach and engagement rates.
• Conduct competitor analysis: Research your competitors and their audiences to know what their customers think of their businesses and products. You can also identify gaps in your competitors’ social marketing and get the insights you need to fill them.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing statistics indicate that 92% of consumers trust influencer recommendations. For this reason, businesses that partner with influencers have higher chances of growing their customer base and increasing their revenues.

To help you run successful influencer marketing campaigns, Sprout Social gives you access to an influencer marketing platform called Tagger.

Tagger is one of the best influencer marketing platforms we’ve ever reviewed. Sprout Social acquired Tagger in August 2023 to add influencer marketing capabilities to its offerings.

Although the two apps work separately, Sprout can help you integrate the two for a seamless operation.

Using Sprout Social’s Influencer Marketing solution, you can easily execute your influencer marketing strategies and generate reports to track results. You can also:

• Find influencers to partner with: Avoid searching the internet and choose a partner from thousands of vetted influencers. These influencers have had their social accounts analyzed to ensure they can drive authentic engagement with your target audience.
• Manage your influencer marketing campaigns: From negotiations and contracts to payments, you can manage the entire partnership with your influencer on the same platform.
• Track campaign progress and results: You can track the progress of your campaigns in real time and use the insights gained to make any necessary changes. You can generate reports, customize them, and even compare performance between the influencer campaign and your organic content.

Review Management

Sprout Social also lets you manage social reviews from within the same app. This helps you save time and avoid the inconvenience of switching between apps.

Some of the review platforms Sprout Social integrates with include Facebook, Google Play Store, TripAdvisor, and Yelp.

To get started, click the star icon on the left menu and connect your review accounts.

With the Reviews feature, you can know when your app or product has been reviewed, organize your reviews, and even reply to them.

For improved efficiency, you can use filters to create a custom view that makes it easy for you to manage your reviews.

Analytics and Reports

After all is said and done, you have to measure and track the impact of your social media marketing efforts. This is where the analytics and reporting features of Sprout come in.

On the Reports page, there are pre-built reports that you can use to see how different aspects of your campaigns are performing. You’ll find the most basic reports at the top of the Reports window.

Scrolling down the window will reveal other reports in categories such as competitive analysis, content performance, and customer care. You can measure results for both organic and paid campaigns.

Here is an example of a paid campaign report.

With such a summary report, you can quickly see whether your strategy is paying off or not.

These analytics and performance reports will help you know what content to create, compare your organic and paid efforts, and determine the ROI of your investments.

Sprout Social Pricing

Sprout offers three main plans, with the fourth being a custom plan for large enterprises. Here is a quick guide on which one you should choose.

Standard plan is best for basic social media management and extra solutions like AI-powered copy suggestions. This plan supports only five social accounts.

Professional plan is best for creating custom workflows, generating competitor reports, and integrating with Helpdesk and social CRM tools.

Advanced plan is ideal for building chatbots, creating social inbox rules, and running automated surveys to collect NPS data.

Enterprise plan is best for large social media teams that need a custom onboarding process and professional consulting services.

Note that there are premium add-ons that you can add to Sprout Social’s plans. These include social listening, premium analytics, employee advocacy, and influencer marketing.

Ease of Use

Sprout Social is an advanced social media management software with lots of features that can overwhelm a beginner. To avoid this potential problem, the app has been designed well to make it easy to learn and use.

When you sign up, you’ll be taken through a short process of creating your account. After this, you’ll be prompted to add your first social network or profile.

After connecting to the network, your profile will be added and you’ll be taken to your dashboard.

The user interface is divided into sections while the menu is layered according to the available sub-features. For instance, when you click the publishing menu icon, it opens a list of sub-menus. These cover the names of the main features, ensuring optimal screen usage.

The settings page is designed in the same way, with settings categorized on the left side like a menu and the different options on the right side.

From here, you can change anything including some of the options you would normally set when customizing features such as the Sprout Queue.

In general, despite the detailed nature of social media management and the advanced functionality offered by Sprout, you won’t struggle to find your way around the app.

But in case you need help, different customer support options are available.

Customer Support

Even though Sprout Social is user-friendly, you’ll still need customer support if you’re to make the most of this tool.

Fortunately, Sprout’s customer support is one of the best in the market. The only downside is that it’s not available during weekends.

Here are the various ways you can get help and contact support when in need.

• Chat, email, and phone support: You can chat with Sprout support staff from within the app, open tickets, or call to speak with a customer support representative.
• Learning portal: You can take a step-by-step learning approach by visiting the learning portal to watch recorded webinars and take courses.
• Online community: The online community called The Arboretum is where you can engage with other users to ask and answer questions, share ideas, and discuss topics of interest.
• Other resources: Sprout Social has many other resources to help you get started and maximize the use of this app. These include guides, help center articles, and templates.

Pros and Cons

To help you quickly decide whether Sprout is the right social media management tool for you, here are its pros and cons.

Sprout Social Pros

• User-friendly: From setting up and connecting multiple social accounts to publishing posts, Sprout Social is easy to use. The user interface is intuitive enough for you to find your way around, making it easy to publish posts and track your performance.
• Built-in collaboration features: Sprout Social makes it easy to work with your team. You can create workflows, give approvals, and add notes to your calendar. Moreover, you can share your content calendar with clients to get their views and approvals where necessary.
• Reliable customer support: When in need of support, the first place you may want to check is the ‘Help Center’. Here you’ll find articles and guides with answers to your questions. There’s also an FAQ page, a ‘Resources’ page, an online community, live chat, and phone support.
• Includes artificial intelligence and automation tools: With automation, Sprout Social takes care of tedious tasks and lets you focus on what matters most. For a performance boost, you can leverage the AI-powered tools to get content suggestions and identify the best time to post.
• Built-in asset library: Sprout has an integrated asset library that can help you improve the content creation process of your team. Since this is a shared resource, you can add your approved brand assets to the library for all your team members to access.
• Premium Analytics: With the ability to build custom reports that include metrics relevant to specific stakeholders, reporting on performance and ROI is easy. With Premium Analytics, you can build reports using interactive charts, date range comparisons, and advanced filters.

Sprout Social Cons

• Very expensive: Sprout Social is an expensive tool. The entry-level plan costs $249 per month, with $199 per month for each additional user. This can add up to a significant amount when working with a big team.
• Support is only available on weekdays: While the company provides lots of support options, if you need help over the weekend, you’ll have to depend on the published resources.
• The social listening tool is a paid add-on: Some social media management tools offer social listening features as a basic. With Sprout Social making it a paid add-on, it might feel like you’re being shortchanged, not to mention the obvious extra cost.

FAQ

Sprout Social Alternatives

As you consider using Sprout Social, it’s important to find out what the competition is offering. Here’s a summary of some popular Sprout Social alternatives you can check out.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a well-known Sprout Social alternative that is very competitively priced.

In terms of features, Hootsuite is comparable to Sprout Social and is loved by small businesses because of its balance of functionality and affordability. The most note-worthy features of this tool are brand monitoring, sentiment analysis, and campaign planning.

Hootsuite has three paid plans. The Professional plan costs $99 per month, the Team plan costs $249 per month, and the Enterprise plan offers custom pricing.

You can test Hootsuite for free for 30 days.

Buffer

Buffer is a very affordable social media management tool. In addition to integrating with the major social media platforms, Buffer also integrates with Mastodon.

With Buffer, you can create new posts using an AI assistant, schedule them, analyze performance, and review historical social data. You can also manage social media teams with custom permissions and integrate the app with third-party tools such as Mailchimp, IFTTT, and Zapier.

Buffer has a free plan that lets you connect up to 3 social media channels. Its paid plans start from $6 per month per channel, giving you access to multiple channels and more advanced features.

Zoho Social

If there’s one thing Zoho Social is known for, it is affordability. Its entry-level plan costs just $10 per month.

Although Zoho Social has most of the features you’ll get in Sprout Social, the functionality is not as advanced.

This social media management app outperforms Sprout Social in several areas including ease of use, shared inbox, and brand monitoring. It’s also a solid alternative for keyword tracking and trend analysis.

Zoho Social has a very limited free plan. But with a full-featured premium plan that costs just $37.5 per month, you probably won’t need the free plan.

Statusbrew

Statusbrew is a close match to Sprout Social in terms of features. It also enjoys a good reputation among its customers, with the majority citing a good user experience.

With Statusbrew, you can connect multiple social media accounts, as well as Apple App Store and Google Play Store for app review notifications. You can also customize reports with 230+ metrics and automate comment moderation based on keywords and sentiment.

Plans range from $69 per month to $229 per month, with the option of custom pricing on the Enterprise plan.

Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a flexible social media management app that’s great for teams.

With Agorapulse, you can create social media posts, publish or schedule them, engage through a social inbox, and track performance using visual reports.

Compared to Sprout Social, Agorapulse has an edge in customer support, collaboration features, and reports, with an option of getting white-label reports. Agorapulse also has a free plan that lets you connect 3 social media accounts.

Its paid plans are Standard ($49 per user/month), Professional ($79 per user/month), and Advanced ($119 per user/month). A custom plan based on your needs is also available.

Bottomline: Is Sprout Social Worth It?

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management tool that stands out for its advanced features. While the cost can be a dealbreaker for some, if you’re managing busy social media accounts, this software is worth checking out.

Considering that Sprout offers very detailed analytics and AI-powered automation, this app can help marketers improve productivity and prove the ROI of their investment.

If you’re running or plan to run influencer marketing campaigns, then you have another reason to try this social media management tool. With Sprout Social, you’ll get access to vetted influencers and manage every aspect of the partnership from the same app.

Explore Further

• Best Social Media Scheduling Tools
• Best Online Reputation Management Software
• Best Marketing Automation Software
• Social Media Marketing Statistics

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