Piano Amplifier vs. Sprout Social

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Piano Amplifier
Score 5.6 out of 10
N/A
A solution to amplify content with AI-powered social publishing. Used to grow and engage an audience through real-time data and machine-learning optimization, guiding users to content, and to just the right place in the social conversation. Socialflow was acquired by Piano in 2022, and is now a Piano solution.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
Piano AmplifierSprout 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
Piano AmplifierSprout 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
Piano AmplifierSprout Social
Features
Piano AmplifierSprout Social
Listening/monitoring
Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Piano Amplifier
5.0
Ratings
43% below category average
Sprout Social
7.7
Ratings
0% below category average
Boolean keyword searches5.10 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Filtering out noise/spam4.60 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Sentiment analysis5.10 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Broad channel coverage5.10 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Publishing
Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Piano Amplifier
5.1
Ratings
45% below category average
Sprout Social
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Content planning and scheduling5.10 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Audience targeting5.10 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Content optimization5.10 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Workflow management5.10 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Engagement
Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
Piano Amplifier
5.0
Ratings
45% below category average
Sprout Social
8.0
Ratings
1% above category average
Automated routing and prioritization5.10 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Customer interaction histories4.60 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Bulk actions5.10 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Marketing
Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Piano Amplifier
5.1
Ratings
41% below category average
Sprout Social
7.2
Ratings
7% below category average
Lead generation5.10 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Content marketing5.10 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Paid media management5.10 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions5.10 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Channel coverage/integration
Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
Piano Amplifier
5.7
Ratings
39% below category average
Sprout Social
8.7
Ratings
3% above category average
Twitter5.10 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Facebook5.10 Ratings9.20 Ratings
LinkedIn5.10 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Google+9.00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Instagram5.10 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Pinterest5.10 Ratings8.60 Ratings
YouTube5.10 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Reporting/analytics
Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
Piano Amplifier
5.1
Ratings
43% below category average
Sprout Social
8.7
Ratings
10% above category average
Campaign success analytics5.10 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Real-time tracking5.10 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Competitor analysis5.10 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Account management
Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
Piano Amplifier
7.1
Ratings
12% below category average
Sprout Social
7.9
Ratings
1% below category average
Role-based user permissions & privileges7.10 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Mobile access7.10 Ratings7.80 Ratings
User Ratings
Piano AmplifierSprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
5.6
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Usability
5.1
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.6
(0 ratings)
4.4
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(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
Piano AmplifierSprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
SocialFlow is good on paper but in my personal experience it is clunky, doesn’t do what you want it to, and their support team doesn’t take your issues seriously. I wouldn’t recommend this if you work on tight timeframes as it has a scattergun approach to posting on Facebook. I would like to think that my experiences are due to me not having thorough training, but I am not sure if this is the case.
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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
  • Unique algorithm does not just 'time' posts, it helps determine the optimal time for posts to be distributed. Its why all the major publishers like NYT, WSJ, Conde Nast, Mashable, etc. use SocialFlow to distribute its social content.
  • Dashboard gives insight into which posts perform best.
  • It's streamlined and simple and not overly or unnecessarily feature-laden.
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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
  • Per-client customizations to differentiate themselves from competitors
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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
Big bang for buck. My clients like the results and the insights.
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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
I give this rating as an outcome to understand competitor social strategy to improve strategic positioning. Drive improvement by benchmarking and serving to compete on content Identify trends, topics/themes, potential threats, etc. Improve campaigns by measuring and comparing audience reach, Interaction, etc. Measure engagement rate to analyze audience association.​ What themes/topics are generating higher engagement Insights to assist marketing teams in planning future campaigns
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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
I give this rating as overall support for Social footprint analysis to identify and benchmark the competitor's social presence. Extraction of retrospective data from identified social channels. Complex query building with defined subsets of keywords to gauge social buzz. Analysis of historic datasets with a detailed classification that offered insights into the marketing efforts and messaging patterns.
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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
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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
SocialFlow stacks up against others by : 1. Event registrations, participation and promotions, companies highlighting their sessions, speakers, and delegations of different countries drove the event-specific volumes 2. Using Twitter as the primary platform and mainly constituted mentions around registrations, participations, promotions of sessions/panels, and opinions on the same 3. Discussions around the event’s annual themes, the new ‘Davos Manifesto’ and posts expressing delight for being invited, participation confirmations, and comments on different sessions/panel promotions drove the positive coverage 4. During-Event and Post-Event periods saw companies shift their focus to highlight sessions and panel discussions aligned more toward business-driven themes
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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
  • It doesn’t post what we expect.
  • It posts things over and over again.
  • It’s not reliable for forward Planning.
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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.