Meltwater Pricing: Is It Worth the Cost?

Choosing a social media tool is often more difficult than you’d think. You want to be sure that you pick the right tool for your company’s needs. So it only makes sense to see what all your options are.

But these days, there are just so many options. And the slight variations between each tool can make finding the best one a time-consuming and tedious task.

What’s worse, is that half of the time you can’t get any pricing details without being forced into booking a call or demo.

In fact, I’d be willing to bet that this very situation is what brought you here–instead of the Meltwater website–in the first place. Because if you did visit the Meltwater website, you probably already found their prices were noticeably absent from their “pricing page.” That means the only way to get any sort of exact pricing information about Meltwater is to book a call with a member of their sales team.

But maybe you aren’t ready to do that. Maybe you just want to know if the price of Meltwater is even within your budget before jumping on a sales call.

Well, you are in luck! I am going to break down what you need to know about Meltwater pricing in this post so you don’t have to do that. Plus, we’ll take a look at the features of Meltwater, and see what real user reviews have to say about the tool. So you can determine if the cost of Meltwater is really worth it.

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What Is Meltwater?

Meltwater is a media intelligence and social analytics company that provides solutions for public relations, marketers and other communications professionals. Originally founded back in 2001 as a news clipping service, Meltwater has grown significantly, primarily through strategic acquisitions of other companies, which has allowed them to expand their product offerings quite a bit.

The Meltwater software suite of today includes the following core products:

• Media intelligence
• Media relations
• Social listening and analytics
• Social media management
• Consumer intelligence
• Influencer marketing
• Data and API integration

Now, if you are curious what the price of this “software suite” is you’ll have a hard time finding out.

For starters, as I mentioned, there are no prices to be found anywhere on the Meltwater pricing page.

In fact, the only info on the Meltwater pricing page simply notes that they have four different plans to choose from: Essentials, Advanced, Enterprise, and Suite. The description of each plan doesn’t really provide you with any useful information either. It just says things like “best-in-class useful integrated solutions.”

What I first found in my online searches is that it’s very difficult to find straight-up information about Meltwater pricing. It’s not on their company page nor is it available via public forums, such as G2.

In fact, the only information regarding Meltwater pricing seems to be from comments by actual users:

So, after this frustrating experience I did two things:
1. I turned to the Internet to see what I could find about the price of Meltwater.
2. I (begrudgingly) booked a call with a Meltwater sales representative.

Here’s what I managed to find out about Meltwater pricing.

TL;DR

• The Meltwater price and packages are all custom. Be prepared to sit through several sales calls if you want to get a straight answer or a quote.
• Some users on Reddit mention that there is flexibility for you to negotiate the price you are quoted to something more reasonable. This info is also aligned with what I experienced when talking to the sales rep. When she gave me a ballpark figure, I said it was out of my budget. And she mentioned that they might be able to find a way to adjust things slightly.
• The number she quoted me, by the way, was $15,000. And no, that’s not a typo. This was for 4 user accounts and a total of 16 social media profiles and ONLY included the social media management and social listening packages – nothing else.

Meltwater users complain about the pricing as well. Dozens of G2 reviews from real Meltwater users seem to indicate that the cost of Meltwater just isn’t worth it.

More notable quotes from real user reviews found on G2 about Meltwater:

“Not Worth the Price”

The user review below says, “It’s an incredibly expensive platform, and it is simply not worth the price.” They also state at the end of the review, “Meltwater hasn’t actually solved any of our problems or provided any benefits to our company.”

“Declining customer service”

In another G2 review, the reviewer notes Meltwater’s poor, declining customer service, and recounts the frustrating experience they had when trying to cancel their contract.

Complaints about their customer service and sales practices seem to be common among G2 reviewers, with several citing that the customer service has declined and would often take weeks to resolve issues.

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Additionally, reviewers found that while the platform did have a lot of features, the social media management aspect of the tool was “unreliable” and they would often experienced glitches that went unresolved.

“Lacks focus”

 

What Users Like About Meltwater

The social media management platform itself does have some pretty useful features, though many of them are more geared towards PR and corporate communication professionals, rather than social media marketers.

Some of these features include things like:

• Media and contact database of journalists and influencers for outreach
• Access to a lot of data from across nearly every channel, including traditional print and broadcast media, for better consumer and sales intelligence
• Boolean search tools for highly specialized listening queries

I’s not a bad platform. It’s just not for everyone.

Who Is Meltwater Ideal for?

That being said, Meltwater could still potentially be a good fit for you if:

• You are an enterprise company that needs to track media mentions across not only social media but also traditional news outlets as well.
• You don’t care about the price and don’t mind needing to purchase frequent add-ons to get access to features
• You are really into using Boolean search.

If that doesn’t sound like you, you might want to consider something else for your social media management tool.

When Meltwater May Not Be for You

Also, keep in mind that Meltwater probably isn’t an ideal solution for people who:

• Need to assign different roles and publishing permissions to different users
• Need to publish Youtube shorts or FB Reels
• Need a tool with Instagram grid view
• Need something user-friendly and intuitive

Ultimately, the best choice depends on your unique business needs and budget. But if you want a solution that actually does have those features, my suggestion would be to check out Agorapulse.

Agorapulse: A Meltwater Alternative

You’re on the Agorapulse blog, so, yes, we’re going to be a little biased. But with reason! Not only does it have many of the same social media management features available in Meltwater, it also has some that you won’t find in Meltwater that are particularly useful for agencies and multi-location businesses.

Things like:

• Approval workflows
• Bulk publishing
• Shared content calendars
• Roles and permissions to assign tasks
• Instagram product tagging

But the best part is that you will be paying a far more reasonable price. You can get access to all of our time-saving features and so much more for just $119/month per user, when paying annually. That works out to just $1,428 a year, a far cry from the tens of thousands you’d be paying for Meltwater.

Plus, Agorapulse is intuitive and easy to understand, so you can jump into things right away with no trouble. (And if you do ever run into issues, our world class support team is available 24/7 to help you).

Basically, Agorapulse will give you more value, save you more time, and save you more money. Think it sounds too good to be true? See for yourself! Grab your trial for free – no card needed.