Adobe Social vs. Sprout Social

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Social
Score 8.0 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
Sprout Social
Score 8.6 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…
$199,249
per user/per month
Pricing
Adobe SocialSprout 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
Adobe SocialSprout 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
Adobe SocialSprout Social
Features
Adobe SocialSprout Social
Listening/monitoring
Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.4
Ratings
4% below category average
Sprout Social
7.6
Ratings
2% below category average
Boolean keyword searches7.50 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Filtering out noise/spam7.50 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Sentiment analysis7.50 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Broad channel coverage7.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Publishing
Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.4
Ratings
8% below category average
Sprout Social
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Content planning and scheduling7.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Audience targeting7.50 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Content optimization7.50 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Workflow management7.50 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Engagement
Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.7
Ratings
3% below category average
Sprout Social
8.0
Ratings
1% above category average
Automated routing and prioritization7.50 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Customer interaction histories8.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Bulk actions7.50 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Marketing
Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
8.0
Ratings
3% above category average
Sprout Social
7.2
Ratings
7% below category average
Lead generation8.00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Content marketing8.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Paid media management8.00 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions8.00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Channel coverage/integration
Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.9
Ratings
6% below category average
Sprout Social
8.7
Ratings
3% above category average
Twitter8.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Facebook8.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
LinkedIn7.50 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Google+7.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Instagram8.50 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Pinterest8.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
YouTube8.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Reporting/analytics
Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.8
Ratings
1% below category average
Sprout Social
8.7
Ratings
10% above category average
Campaign success analytics8.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Real-time tracking7.50 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Competitor analysis8.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Account management
Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Social
7.3
Ratings
9% below category average
Sprout Social
7.9
Ratings
1% below category average
Role-based user permissions & privileges7.50 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Mobile access7.00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
User Ratings
Adobe SocialSprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.4
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
7.0
(0 ratings)
7.7
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
4.4
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe SocialSprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
For intricate, complex organizations who dynamically fuse social and digital - Adobe Social is great. A methodical approach to social and its integration to other aspects of the company is needed. Furthermore, there must be buy in for many departments and the aptitude in those departments to learn how to use the tool - and then actually do it. There are many hurdles for most companies. It is NOT a tool for fast-paced social brands who want to react and measure in real time.
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Sprout is well suited for a social media manager juggling a wide roster of clients. Sprout allows you to schedule weeks or even months' worth of social posts across all different platforms. It is extremely reliable for scheduling posts; I never have to worry if a post gets up the way I intended to get it up. It is also great for reporting key analytics to clients. I do wish there were more analytics at times, but for high-level data, it does the job.
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Pros
  • Provide extensive Social Media listening so we can evaluate new ways we can enhance our card member experience and constantly evaluate the needs of our card members.
  • Provides detailed and in depth analytics so we can make smarter Social Media decisions.
  • Allows us to provide content across multiple Social Media platforms.
  • Provides sentiment of engagement
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  • 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.
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Cons
  • Editing a scheduled post is problematic in terms of content or just date/time
  • Reliability: I have experienced various glitches. Yesterday it would not let me attach a link to a post.
  • Ability to tag a Facebook page and other missing functionality.
  • Instagram.
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  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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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).
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Usability
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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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.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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
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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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.
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Online Training
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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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
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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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
I don't really use many types of Adobe products however I used photoshop in the past and in terms of similarities they don't have much since it is for different purposes. The one thing they are great at is functionality. Many features and ways to finish the job effectively but overall great!
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When scouting different social media management platforms, Sprout Social stood out as the best choice despite other companies offering competitive features and lower rates. Some key factors solidified our decision to stay with Sprout Social. One major drawback we noticed with ione of the competitors was that their Advocacy extension operated under a completely different website name, making the experience kind of disjointed and confusing. Also, unlike Sprout Social’s 24-hour (or less) response time, another competitor’s customer service was based overseas, which limited our ability to resolve issues efficiently I assume. The combination of Sprout Social’s integration and support pretty much made it the clear winner for our needs.
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Return on Investment
  • 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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  • 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.
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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.