Agorapulse vs Sprout Social: Which Social Media Management Solution Should You Choose?

With so many options available, choosing the best social media management platform can seem like an impossible task. But whichever social media management platform you pick, it must be able to:

• Create value by saving your team time and making your job(s) easier
• Help track social media performance and optimize your strategy
• Prove social media ROI and guide data-driven decisions
• Be easy to implement and use daily
• Provide you with helpful, efficient support whenever you need it.

I’ve spent the last month trawling through G2 reviews and digging into the Agorapulse vs Sprout Social social media management tools to see which one does the above the better.  This is what I found.

TL;DR

• On internationally recognized review site G2, reviewers gave Agorapulse 4.5 out of 5 stars for its product features, ease of use, and quality of support. Sprout Social also scored 4.5.
• When comparing the quality of ongoing customer help and support, independent G2 reviewers gave Agorapulse 9.2 and Sprout Social just 8.7.
• 86% of social media marketers would recommend Agorapulse to another social media marketer, whereas only 80% would recommend Sprout Social.

Agorapulse vs Sprout Social Overview

Below are some quick-fire facts about both platforms before we get into the juicy stuff.

Fun facts about Agorapulse

• Agorapulse is based in Paris, France, and a has a globally distributed team of +150 people.
• The social media management platform is used by over 31,000 marketers globally. Featured customers include organizations like the Louvre, tech companies like Deliveroo, colleges like Vanderbilt University, and agencies like Elevate Online.
• At least 86% of Agorapulse users would recommend Agorapulse to another social media marketer.

Fun facts about Sprout Social

• Sprout Social has offices in three locations: two in the USA and one in Dublin, Ireland. The company has a team of 1,000-plus people.
• Sprout Social is used by over 30,000 customers.
• About 80% of Sprout Social users would recommend the platform to another social media marketer.

Sprout Social Pricing Revealed!

Agorapulse vs Sprout Social: Which Will Save Me Time and Make My Job Easier?

To save you time and to make your job easier, you need a social media management tool with a core set of features to handle those manual, time-consuming, and mundane tasks. Tasks like creating and posting content on different networks, replying to messages or comments from across your various platforms, and sending work for internal or external approval, to name a few.

In other words, you need a social media management tool that has a top-notch set of publishing, inbox, and approval-workflow features.

So, how do Agorapulse and Sprout Social stack up in terms of publishing and engagement? Both platforms have the following publishing and engagement capabilities:

• Post social media content instantly or schedule content to publish at a future time.
• Create content for multiple social media profiles at the same time.
• Configure content queues that automatically publish content at set times.
• Get ideas for social media captions from an AI-powered writing assistant.
• Bulk upload content to schedule social media posts more efficiently.
• Add publishing labels to make reporting and analysis easier.
• Send posts to colleagues for approval prior to publishing.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean the two platforms are equal. In fact, G2 ranks Agorapulse first in each area. (Note that the ratings for Content Calendar are the same, but Sprout Social has more responses in this area.)

So, what’s different exactly? Let’s compare Agorapulse vs Sprout Social side by side.

Social media publishing

In theory, cross-posting to multiple social media profiles at once should save you time. But if your social media tool doesn’t allow for any customization, it could waste (rather than save) time.

Sprout Social does have a custom variable tool that can dynamically insert different URLs and locations into posts for certain profiles. However, the platform doesn’t support one-off edits to social media posts. As a result, each post uses the same copy, creative, and timing across profiles.

In contrast, Agorapulse gives you the option to reuse these elements across each profile. Yet you can always modify the post for each profile or network. You can also set a different time for each post to go live, so you can reach each audience when they’re most likely to engage.

Threads and first comments

When a single post isn’t enough to get your message across, you need a social media tool that can publish threads or first comments automatically. Sprout Social only supports first comments for Instagram, while Agorapulse offers this feature for several social networks.

With Agorapulse, you can add a first comment to any Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn post. This feature gives you the option to add calls-to-action (CTAs) or URLs that you’d prefer to keep out of your posts.

Agorapulse also supports X (Twitter) threads. Whether you want to break down a blog post, quote a series of experts, or share a longer story, you can map it out all at once in Agorapulse’s publishing composer—and then publish the entire thread at once.

AI writing assistant

If you need a hand fine-tuning your social media content, both platforms can help. Agorapulse and Sprout Social both offer AI-powered writing tools that can improve or enhance your social media copy. Yet one is more advanced than the other.

Sprout Social’s AI assistant has two options. It can either apply one of three tones (confident, friendly, or professional) to your copy or give you three alternative copy ideas using unspecified tones.

Agorapulse’s AI writing assistant gives you the option to choose from seven tones to make your social media posts sound just right. Whether or not you apply one of these tones, you can use the AI writing assistant to shorten or expand your copy.

URL tracking tool

Both Agorapulse and Sprout Social support URL tracking. With this feature, you can add UTM codes to the URLs you post to social media for easier campaign tracking and marketing attribution. However, one platform’s URL tracking tool is easier to use than the other.

Sprout Social has a link shortener shortcut. But if you activate it from the publishing composer, you’ll end up generating a generic Bit.ly link. To create a custom link, you have to open up the platform’s publishing settings and configure the URL parameters there.

Agorapulse’s URL tracking tool is much more streamlined. You can configure link tracking directly from the publishing composer, where you have the option to use Bit.ly or Agorapulse’s native Pulse.ly tool. You can also UTM codes without shortening the link to display your website domain while still enabling campaign tracking.

Approval workflows

If you’re creating social media content for your own business or creator profiles, you may be able to publish posts without further input. But if you’re working with an in-house team or external clients, there’s a good chance you’ll need approval before posts go live.

Sprout Social has workflows, which let you create multi-step approval processes. While this approach can be helpful for more complex workflows, it’s less ideal for efficiency. Every request requires an established workflow, so you can’t send a post for ad hoc approval.

There’s another catch with Sprout Social’s approval feature. While it supports external approvals, this option is available only with the platform’s top-tier plan—which will cost you at least $499 per month.

In contrast, Agorapulse lets you seek the right combination of internal, external, or both types of approval for any post. In the publishing composer, you can assign posts for approval and add a note to provide context or clarify a deadline.

Agorapulse’s external approval feature is also limited to the platform’s top-tier plan. However, monthly pricing for this plan starts at $79 per month, making it significantly more affordable compared to Sprout Social.

It’s no surprise that G2 reviewers give Agorapulse’s approval workflows an 8.5 (out of 10), while Sprout Social’s feature gets an 8.2.

“The upsides of using Agorapulse are plentiful. Its intuitive interface is user-friendly, making it accessible even for those new to social media marketing. Its team collaboration and approval workflow tools simplify teamwork, making it an excellent choice for agencies.” – Small Business, G2

Social media content calendar

Once you’ve scheduled content, you need an easy way to review your calendar. While both Agorapulse and Sprout Social have content calendars, one is more user-friendly than the other.

Sprout Social’s content calendar shows the number of posts scheduled for each social network. To see which profile(s) you’ve scheduled content for, you have to open the calendar object—which requires an extra click that can slow down your review process.

Agorapulse’s content calendar displays the entire month on a single screen, so you can quickly see an overview. The calendar also displays the network, the profile icon, and a short snippet of each post so you don’t necessarily have to click to see more.

Social inbox

When your brand’s social media content generates engagement, you need an easy and efficient way to manage comments and messages. One of the platforms is likely to save you much more time than the other.

Agorapulse’s social inbox separates engagement by profile. You can reply to comments or messages directly from the platform and even create a bank of saved replies that you can use to respond quickly. Agorapulse also offers labels and bookmarks for better organization and assignments for specialized responses.

Agorapulse also keeps a record of all the interactions you’ve had with followers and clients. You can view a complete history of your engagement and add notes about the relationship to share with your team.

On the surface, Sprout Social’s inbox appears similar. It has tags and options to share messages with your team for further review or next steps.

But compared to Agorapulse, Sprout Social has an inbox that’s much more difficult to organize. By default, all engagement from all profiles appear in a single inbox. In addition to messages and comments, keyword searches land in the same inbox, making it tough to prioritize responses.

While Agorapulse’s inbox automatically creates conversation threads, Sprout Social’s doesn’t. As a result, it can end up wasting your team’s time.

“DMs create a new thread for every reply the customer sends. This requires agents to being required to tag, respond and close out each thread, rather than having the efficiency of executing this in one conversation.” – Customer Service, G2

Agorapulse’s user-friendly inbox gets an 8.9 rating from G2 reviewers, while Sprout Social’s gets an 8.2.

“I love Agorapulse! It’s made scheduling content SO much easier for my team and me. Everything is super organized. We love the inbox as a way for us to all tackle what’s coming in. I’ve been using it for nearly 3 years and just love it.” – Small Business, G2

Social listening

For social media managers, social listening is a critical capability—and an essential tool. However, only one of these social media management platforms includes listening in standard plans.

Agorapulse includes social listening with mid-tier plans, which start at $119 per month. Using this feature, you can listen for hashtags on Instagram and YouTube. As a result, you can find posts about competitors, influencers, or your industry and join relevant conversations.

In contrast, Sprout Social doesn’t include social listening with any plans. Instead, it’s a separate add-on that will cost you $299 per month per search. If you need to follow a few topics or users, your listening program could get expensive quickly.

“Pricing for various features is a bit steep, including premium analytics, listening, and employee advocacy. This also applies to profile and user limits. Marketing teams will need to budget a hefty amount to get the full power of Sprout Social, especially when it comes to working across teams.” – Mid-Market, G2

From brand monitoring and keyword tracking to trend analysis and influencer identification, G2 reviewers rank Agorapulse and Sprout Social are split in almost all social listening categories.

Agorapulse vs Sprout Social: Which Tracks Performance and Social Media ROI the Best?

Proving social media ROI is a must in this line of work.

Whether it’s for internal stakeholders or external clients, you need to know that the content you’re posting is hitting the right audience, triggering the right engagement, and delivering the right results.

You need your social media management tool to collect the right data automatically and generate insightful reports. That way you can analyze and compare performance, make improvements to your content strategy, and demonstrate ROI.

Once again, Agorapulse comes out on top. From report exporting to customization to scaling, G2 reviewers rank Agorapulse ahead of Sprout Social.

Standard and custom social media reports

It’s true that Sprout Social has a relatively robust selection of standard reports. The platform has over a dozen preset reports that display data on social profiles, content, campaigns, and even competitors.

Yet none of Sprout Social’s plans allow for custom reports. Instead, custom reports are only available with the platform’s advanced analytics add-on, which will cost you an extra $799 per month.

In contrast, Agorapulse offers a more streamlined set of standard reports. For all supported networks, you can access reports on audience growth, engagement, content, campaigns, and community management.

With Agorapulse’s Power Reports feature, you can create customized reports for clients and campaigns. This feature is included in the platform’s top-tier plan, so there’s no need to budget for an add-on.

ROI reports

But the biggest difference between the two social media management tools is that Agorapulse has a social media ROI feature. Once you connect your Google Analytics account to Agorapulse, the platform automatically tracks the traffic, conversions, and revenue that come from social media.

If you’re accustomed to digging through Google Analytics data to calculate social media ROI, this feature is a gamechanger and a timesaver. Using these ROI reports, you can see which channels, profiles, and campaigns drive the most website traffic and conversions, including leads and transactions.

Agorapulse’s social ROI tool reports on the value that each social media post creates so you can see exactly what’s driving results for your brand. Using UTM parameters, this tool can even track ROI from comments and messages—so you know where to invest the most time and resources.

Agorapulse vs Sprout Social: Which Is Easiest to Use and Set Up?

How many times have you tried a new tool that promised to save you time, money, and effort, only to find it impossible to use because it was over-complicated, difficult to set up, and hard to navigate.

A few?

You shouldn’t have to dedicate loads of time, learning how to use a tool supposedly designed to help you work more efficiently.
Investing in a social media management tool that’s easy to set up and even easier to use is a no-brainer.

This is why Agorapulse wins this race. You only have to look at the scores to see that:

But scores aside, let’s see exactly why Agorapulse is the best tool for ease of setup and ease of use.

Agorapulse has a simpler interface. The platform has a clean, uncluttered, and intuitive interface that makes finding your way around the platform feel natural from the word “go.”

“If you are looking for an easy and simple tool that will make your social media management more productive, Agorapulse is the way … It’s really simple and practical to use.” – Social Media Manager, G2

Every feature is where you’d expect it to be and works exactly how you’d expect it to work. There’s no need to navigate through multiple layers of menus to find what you need.

Sprout Social, by comparison, feels clunkier and busier. Different menus display on the left and right side of the dashboard, and features aren’t always easy to find. For example, features like the social calendar are hidden within the publishing menu, which took me a while to work out.

There are just so many different areas to navigate through. I also found that some of the icons—such as the listening features—aren’t part of the standard feature set, making the navigation experience confusing and frustrating at times.

Even basic setup tasks like adding social profiles and keeping them connected can be challenging with Sprout Social.

“Connecting social media profiles to Sprout can sometimes be a cumbersome process, probably by fault of Meta. I’d LOVE more support throughout this connection process, maybe your support team could even do it for us. Or troubleshooting assistance for common issues could streamline the initial setup.” – Entertainment, G2

In contrast, Agorapulse makes it easier to add all your social media networks to your account. You can add as many profiles as you like during the setup process, and you’ll get a notification well in advance before the profile’s access token expires.

“The implementation is also extremely simple: I’ve worked with other SMMS in the past that almost require a team for setup and configuration – to be fair, they are more configurable and complex in structure, but the beauty of Agorapulse is the simplicity. It’s super easy to add profiles, configure user access, or set up inbox automation rules. Overall: super painless admin and configuration.” – Social Media Manager for a Mid-Market Business, G2

If you manage social media for a small or medium business, you’re unlikely to have trouble configuring Agorapulse. With the enterprise plan, you get a dedicated account manager and one-on-one training to simplify setup and implementation.

Sign up for a FREE trial of Agorapulse!

Agorapulse vs Sprout Social: Which Gives Me Quality Support When I Need It?

Again, with the scores on the doors, we can clearly see that Agorapulse has done it again. Agorapulse takes the prize for offering the best level of customer service and support when compared to Sprout Social.

Why?

There are a couple reasons.

First, Agorapulse has better self-help options. With Agorapulse, you get to choose what type of self-help you want by selecting an option from a simple drop-down menu. So, instead of having to read an article about setting up multiple profiles, you can opt to watch a video instead.

Plus, all the materials you access open up within the dashboard. You can stay within the platform at all times making the process of getting help quick, easy, and simple. (A recurring theme with this platform.)

If you need help from Agorapulse support, you can easily contact the team via email. With mid-tier plans and above, you can also access chat support. No matter which method you use, you can connect with Agorapulse support 24/7.

With Sprout Social, you may have to wait a while to resolve issues. While the platform does offer chat and phone support, it’s only available 24/5. In other words, any issue that arises over the weekend will have to wait until Monday for a resolution.

G2 reviewers give Agorapulse support a 9.2. In contrast, Sprout Social support gets an 8.7.

“Lastly, I must commend the Agorapulse support team. They are quick, efficient, and always willing to help, ensuring that any hiccup (which are far and few) is resolved promptly.” – Small Business, G2

“Agorapulse’s dedication to customer support is also commendable, providing prompt assistance whenever needed. Overall, Agorapulse has become an indispensable asset in efficiently managing and growing our online community.” – Digital Manager, G2

When you read reviews like this, from real, active Agorapulse users, it’s easy to see why people score Agorapulse and their customer service highly.

And especially when you compare them to some of these recent reviews from Sprout Social users:

“Their support process has been a pain point for me as well, because whenever pages or platforms disconnect it is like this whole big thing to try to get them working again. It has not been as stable to use and we ended up going to another software for more stability. As far as implementation, the trainer they gave us did not know how to answer our questions about how to actually use the product and they did not initially set us up correctly.” – Non-Profit Organization Manager, G2

“Their contracts for businesses, outrageously expensive, no ongoing support from their team.” – Small Business, G2

Agorapulse vs Sprout Social: Which Is More Cost-Effective?

It depends. To compare the costs of the two platforms, consider the size of your team, the number of social media profiles you need to manage, and the features you need to do your job.

Between the two platforms, Agorapulse has a much lower starting price. Agorapulse has a free plan that supports up to three social profiles and 10 scheduled posts. Sprout Social has no free plan.

For paid plans, both platforms have user-based pricing. Agorapulse’s plans start at $99 per user per month ($79 per user per month when paid annually). Sprout Social’s plans start at $249 per month for the first user and $199 per month for each additional user. Sprout Social doesn’t list annual pricing publicly.

While Sprout Social’s most basic plan includes five social profiles, its mid-tier and top-tier plans include unlimited social profiles. In contrast, Agorapulse’s paid plans all support 10 social profiles, with the option to add extras for $15 each per month ($10 each per month when paid annually).

Don’t forget to consider features. Aside from extra social profiles, Agorapulse features are baked into paid plans—with no need for expensive add-ons. In contrast, you’ll have to pay hundreds of dollars each month for Sprout Social add-ons like advanced analytics or social listening.

So how do they measure up? For a complete side-by-side comparison, take a look at our research on Sprout Social pricing.

Agorapulse vs Sprout Social: Which Is Better?

As we established at the beginning, you need a social media management platform that will:

• Save you time and make your job easier
• Help you track performance, make improvements, and prove social ROI
• Make it easy to use daily
• Provide you with quality help and support whenever you need it

With G2 reviewers giving Agorapulse an overall score of 4.5 out of 5 stars, and Sprout Social only 4.4, I think it’s clear which social media management platform is better.

When we broke this overall score down and looked at how good their product features were, how easy they were to use, and how helpful their support was, Agorapulse came out on top every single time.