Meltwater Reviews: What 2,000+ Reviews Reveal About the Tool

Founded in 2001, Meltwater is one of the oldest social media solutions on the market today. While it’s popular with enterprise users seeking a scalable platform, however, it isn’t the best option for every team or use case.

If you’re considering Meltwater for social media or media monitoring needs, check the reviews first. Reading about actual users’ experience with the software, customer support, and sales process may influence your decision.

No time to read all 2,000+ Meltwater reviews? In this article, we analyze reviews of Meltwater and highlight the biggest pros and cons—so you can see what users like and what made them consider another solution.

We also look at how user ratings of Meltwater and Agorapulse compare. To try our social media publishing, engagement, listening, and reporting solution, sign up for a free trial of Agorapulse and test it with your team for 30 days.

Quick Overview of Meltwater Ratings and Reviews

Here’s how Meltwater rates across four major B2B software review sites:

• G2: 4.0 out of 5 stars (2,130+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.0 out of 5 stars (90+ reviews)
• TrustRadius: 6.9 out of 10 stars (165+ reviews)
• Gartner Peer Insights: 3.9 out of 5 stars (20+ reviews)

G2 also places Meltwater in the leader quadrant of the G2 Grid for both social media management and social media listening in 2024. This designation means the platform has both a high market presence and high user satisfaction.

However, the other software review sites haven’t recognized Meltwater until recently. Capterra included the platform on its social media marketing, social media monitoring, and competitive intelligence Shortlists in 2023. And TrustRadius gave the platform its Most Loved award back in 2022.

What Positive Reviews Say About Meltwater

From its user interface (UI) to its social listening and media monitoring capabilities, Meltwater users have a number of good things to say about the software platform. First, let’s look at some of the most common positive comments.

Great user interface

Overall, users find the platform easy to use and simple to navigate. Meltwater reviews frequently call out the platform’s great UI and user-friendly features.

As this G2 reviewer explains, Meltwater’s user-friendly setup makes the software easy for the entire team to use.

“I love the user-friendly database of the platform. All of my team members with a range of expertise and skillsets can use it easily.”

Along the same lines, this four-star Gartner Peer Insights review states, “I think the interface is clean and easy to understand.”

Solid social listening features

Meltwater has some social media and media monitoring capabilities. Its social listening features frequently appear in positive reviews.

This G2 reviewer explains how the software helps them analyze and connect with their audience. “Meltwater helps us listen to our audiences and engage existing and new audiences with our content. The search functionality is second to none.”

This Capterra reviewer shares a similar sentiment. The user switched from Talkwalker due to Meltwater’s “deep analytics” and ability to filter listening results by location, vertical, and other elements.

Powerful media monitoring capabilities

In addition to listening for mentions and keywords across social media networks, Meltwater also monitors websites as well as online and print media sources. Users frequently compliment the platform’s media intelligence tools.

For example, this G2 reviewer shares that Meltwater offers “comprehensive coverage across online and print media” and acts as a “powerful analytic tool to slice up and interpret data.”

As this TrustRadius reviewer explains, “We chose Meltwater because we can create actual queries and search on forums, which many other platforms lack. We found that other services tend to focus only on social media.”

Helpful AI integrations

The right AI capabilities can completely transform a social media manager’s workflow. Meltwater reviewers have plenty of positive things to say about the platform’s AI-powered tools and integrations.

As this G2 reviewer shares, Meltwater’s AI integrations help the software platform stay ahead of the curve. “What I like best about Meltwater is that the product not only has many industry-leading features, but that it is future-focused, utilizing tools like AI—that are changing almost daily—to give users a huge leg up.”

This G2 reviewer applauds the platform for “remaining cutting edge with AI integrations.” And this G2 reviewer appreciates Meltwater’s “visualization of data and use of AI for data analysis.”

What Critical Reviews of Meltwater Reveal

Not every review of Meltwater is positive. And many of the good reviews mention negative elements that might give you pause. Next, let’s look at some of the critical elements that often appear in Meltwater reviews.

Slow channel adoption

Although Meltwater is relatively quick to implement AI tools, it’s much slower to incorporate new social media channels or support their full range of publishing features.

As this G2 reviewer explains, Meltwater is “very slow to implement new platforms and media, like TikTok and any picture/video/sound-based content.”

Even when the platform does add new capabilities, you can’t expect them to be included in your current plan. As the same reviewer states, “Every new market comes at an additional price.”

Irrelevant social listening data

Meltwater’s biggest selling points are its social and media intelligence tools. However, many users report issues with the data that these tools provide.

For example, this G2 reviewer reports that the platform has created more work for their team. “We have had many issues with incorrect search results showing up which haven’t been relevant. These incorrect items have caused a lot of additional work in house when it’s come to reporting.”

On a similar note, this G2 reviewer notes that with Meltwater’s listening tools, “sometimes you get a lot of noise in the mix.”

Lengthy data processing delays

With social media monitoring, time is of the essence. After all, your team needs to be able to respond quickly when activity spikes or a crisis appears. However, Meltwater’s data delays may make rapid responses impossible.

As this G2 reviewer explains, “The data delay should be improved. Currently, I understand that there’s a 2 hour delay and that’s a setback, especially for trend monitoring.”

Steep learning curve

While Meltwater users applaud the platform’s user-friendly dashboards, many also mention the steep learning curve. For many users, getting used to the platform and onboarding team members can be a heavy lift.

For example, setting up social listening or media monitoring searches often requires substantial work. Many require knowledge of Boolean operators, which this G2 reviewer indicates comes with a learning curve.

Plus, the process of setting up searches isn’t particularly quick or intuitive. As this G2 reviewer explains, “I wish that there was a way to get more specific and targeted searches without having to go through all of the manual search steps. I want that to be more streamlined.”

As this G2 reviewer shares, “It’s a HUGE product and is overwhelming to get started. We have a small team and find it difficult to carve out time to really spend in the software. The team has been useful but it still seems that we’ve barely scratched the surface.”

Unreliable customer support

Since the platform can be challenging to learn, you might expect Meltwater to have a highly regarded support team. However, many users lament the company’s support quality.

In some cases, users have to jump through hoops before speaking with a member of the support team. For example, this G2 reviewer dislikes “the new AI chatbot. I just want to speak to a human right away.”

After a frustrating offboarding experience, this Capterra reviewer sums up their experience with the platform as follows: “disappointing tool, more disappointing support and client success.”

High prices

As a software platform designed for enterprise users, Meltwater is far from the most affordable option in its category. For many potential customers, the platform’s capabilities don’t justify the cost.

The Capterra reviewer above reports, “As a product/platform, Meltwater was an overpriced, worse alternative to Google alerts and provided no semblance of quality monitoring results for our organization.” Along the same lines, this Gartner Peer Insights reviewer states, “The price point was not worth the features they offered.”

If your company needs to revisit software subscriptions due to strategic changes or budget cuts, you could be out of luck as a Meltwater customer. As this G2 reviewer explains, “This is an incredibly expensive platform, and it is simply not worth the price […] They locked our company into a contract for the entirety of the 2024 year when we tried to cancel months before the subscription was even set to renew. This has cut our marketing budget off at the knees, which is hugely negatively impacting our marketing function for the 2024 year.”

The more capabilities you need, the higher the cost of Meltwater climbs. This G2 reviewer’s biggest dislike is “the cost per key term to listen. We would love to follow more key terms but at the cost, we are unable to.”

And this Capterra reviewer notes that the platform can be pricey depending on the tools you need to access and the number of user seats you need.

How much does Meltwater cost, anyway? The software platform has three plans: Essentials, Suite, and Enterprise. But because all plans are customized to meet users’ needs, the company doesn’t publish any pricing information publicly.

However, our Meltwater pricing analysis found that the platform costs more than $1,000 per month for relatively basic capabilities. Our team received a quote of $15,000 per year for social media management and listening, including capacity for 16 social profiles and four users.

Have a smaller budget or want more bang for your buck?

Below, we’ll compare the price of Meltwater to the cost of an Agorapulse subscription.

Aggressive sales tactics

If you’re on the fence about Meltwater, you may feel pressure to make a decision quickly—even if it isn’t in your best interest. Many customers have reported that Meltwater’s sales team can be surprisingly aggressive.

Several users candidly weigh in on the topic in this Reddit conversation.

One Reddit user states, “Meltwater’s hyper-aggressive sales team put me off of signing with them forever. Maybe it’s just my org/industry, but quite honestly, Google Alerts (loaded with the right keywords) have been a great solution for us. And they’re free.”

Another Reddit user replies, “You are not missing anything. IMO, Meltwater is a great UX populated with trash data and sold by the most aggressive sales team.”

This TrustRadius reviewer shares a similar experience. “While the tool itself is fine, I think the company’s business practices are problematic. In my experience, sales reps will push you into signing multi-year agreements to avoid steep year over year price increases […] there is no flexibility to terminate early if your circumstances change or you are dissatisfied with their service.”

How Meltwater Compares to Agorapulse

Curious how Meltwater compares to other social media management and social listening tools? Let’s compare Meltwater and Agorapulse ratings side by side.

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Ease of use

Meltwater customers frequently highlight the platform’s user-friendly UI. But as this G2 comparison between Agorapulse and Meltwater shows, users overwhelmingly consider our platform easier to use.

Agorapulse earns a 9.1 out of 10 for ease of use, ease of setup, and ease of admin. Meltwater scores at least one full point lower in each area, earning a 7.9 for ease of use, a 7.8 for ease of setup, and an 8.1 for ease of admin.

This Capterra comparison between the two software platforms shows similar results. Users give Agorapulse 4.6 out of 5 stars for ease of use, while Meltwater earns just 3.9 stars. Plus, Agorapulse gets 4.3 stars for functionality, while Meltwater earns just 4.0 stars.

Customization and scalability

You might assume Meltwater would rate higher for customization and scalability. After all, it’s designed to meet enterprise users’ unique needs and fit their large teams.

However, as this Gartner Peer Insights comparison shows, Agorapulse takes top billing in both areas. Our platform earns a 4.1 for scalability and a 4.3 for customization.

Agorapulse’s subscription plans work just as well for one-person social media marketing teams as they do for global teams and large agencies. In addition to a completely custom plan for enterprise users, we offer plans that you can adjust as necessary to accommodate more users, social profiles, listening searches, and more.

Customer support

Since users tend to complain about Meltwater’s customer support, it isn’t surprising to see that Agorapulse ranks higher for support quality on G2 and Capterra. G2 reviewers give Agorapulse a 9.2 and Meltwater an 8.5.

Capterra reviewers give Agorapulse a 4.7 for customer support, while Meltwater earns a mere 3.6.

Social media management features

Social media management is just one of Meltwater’s capabilities. But the ratings on G2 don’t inspire much confidence in this feature set. Agorapulse easily outranks Meltwater in areas like social publishing, social analytics, and social engagement.

Meltwater isn’t the only platform we outperform. See why reviewers consider Agorapulse the best social media management tool compared to Meltwater, Hootsuite, Brandwatch, Sprout Social, and Sprinklr.

Social media listening features

While Meltwater is known as a social listening tool, Agorapulse outranks it in a few key areas on G2, including brand monitoring and social measurement. Plus, Agorapulse ranks a tenth of a point or less behind Meltwater in areas like keyword tracking and trend analysis.

Collaboration capabilities

For social media teams, collaboration is key. Your team likely needs to set up approval processes for social media posts, assign inbox items, and share calendars and reports seamlessly.

Although Meltwater is an enterprise tool that theoretically should support collaboration, it ranks way behind Agorapulse in every area. G2 reviewers prefer Agorapulse for our shared social inbox, approval workflows, content library, and other collaborative tools.

Business partnership

Ultimately, G2 reviewers prefer our platform’s product direction. Agorapulse earns a 9.1 in this area, while Meltwaters only gets a 7.9.

Plus, G2 reviwers consider Agorapulse to be a better business partner. Our platform earns a 9.1, while Meltwater gets an 8.3.

Value for money

Above, we covered the cost of a Meltwater subscription for 16 social profiles and four users (over $1,000 per month). In comparison, an Agorapulse subscription with the same capabilities would start at $576 per month (with annual billing), or about half the cost of Meltwater.

Unlike Meltwater, we publish pricing for all our standard plans. We price our Custom plan, which includes unlimited social profiles, shared calendars, and a dedicated account manager, based on your needs.

It’s easy to see why users across all software review sites rate Agorapulse higher than Meltwater for value. Capterra reviewers give Agorapulse 4.4 stars for value for money, while Meltwater gets a mere 3.4 stars.

TrustRadius reviewers share a similar sentiment. An impressive 94% of Agorapulse users think our platform delivers good value for the price, while only 63% of Meltwater users make the same claim.

Wrapping Up Our Analysis of Meltwater Reviews

Between its simple UI, its AI integrations, and its powerful social listening and media monitoring features, Meltwater garners many positive reviews. However, Agorapulse outranks it in terms of value, usability, support quality, and scalability—not to mention social media management and listening features.

Ready to see why Agorapulse outperforms Meltwater across all major software review sites? Sign up for a free trial of Agorapulse and test our social media management solution at no cost for 30 days.