Sprout Social Pricing Secrets: What They Don't Tell You

Feb 10, 2024 7 min read

First and foremost, it was price. It was ridiculously expensive. And quite honestly, I wouldn't have had such an issue with the cost if I would have found anything unique from their platform. But I really didn't find anything, except maybe one or two features. We had some posts that weren't going through. The connection of the networks wasn't as strong as they suggested that it would be.

These were the exact words of a prospect we recently spoke to who was looking for a switch from Sprout.

But they are not the only ones. If you open Sprout's customer reviews on G2 and Capterra, you will find that they are filled with dissatisfied customers. People have been asking their community for better Sprout Social alternatives at a more competitive price point.

While we are one of the closest competitors to Sprout, we won’t cook up a scenario just to make you feel that we are superior to them. Our aim with this article is to dissect the limitations of using Sprout hidden inside their Plan Details page so that you sidestep hidden costs and ensure your social media budget is spent wisely.

Sprout’s per-user pricing makes it prohibitively expensive for large teams

Sprout Social is packed with great social media management features for businesses and large enterprises. It helps you manage multiple social media accounts from a single intuitive interface. However, their per-user pricing makes using the app very costly for large teams.

Notice that Sprout Social doesn’t have a team plan. Instead, you pay per user per month.

Sprout Social Pricing

  1. Under their Standard plan, you need to pay $249 per month for just 1 user and 5 social profiles. You will have to shell out an extra $199 per month for every additional user.
  2. If you don't want a cap on social profiles to manage and need more advanced features, the Professional plan charges $399 per user per month, with additional user seats at $299 per month.
  3. For the most expensive set of features, the Advanced plan is priced at $499 per user per month and $349 per month for every additional user to be added to the plan.

You might expect some discount when you pay for the entire year in advance. But surprisingly, Sprout Social does not offer annual plans. Most social media management tools offer at least a 5% discount on their annual plan. Statusbrew also discounts you by 20% when you pay a year in advance.

Let’s also address that their entry price is $249 per user per month, which is quite a leap for small businesses and individuals.

Now, when the cost per user is already so high, this would make your team pay in tens of thousands every year just to manage a few social profiles with a total audience size of 200k and 500k under the Standard and Professional plans, respectively.

To put in numbers, it will cost $10,152 per year for a small team of 4 people to use Sprout Social’s entry plan. If they were to be on the Professional plan, it would cost $15,552 per year.

Sprout Social’s Pricing Plans are capped by the Audience size of profiles

You read that right. Sprout also puts a cap on the audience (fans & followers) size of social profiles to manage. So if the total audience across all the social profiles you wish to manage with Sprout exceeds 200k and is under 500k, then you need to opt for the Professional plan. For no limitations on the audience size of social profiles, you will compulsorily have to opt for the Advanced plan ($499 per user per month).

Sprout Social Pricing

Social listening, Premium Analytics & Employee Advocacy as an add-on

More than 82% of businesses view social listening as an important planning element in 2024.

But Sprout Social only provides listening on Twitter, and that too in its Professional plan, which is priced at $399 per user per month. Now, in your Professional plan, you can only set up small Twitter searches for 10 keywords and for 20 keywords in the Advanced plan (priced at $499 per user per month).

Sprout Social Pricing

Sprout Social makes you subscribe to the Advanced Listening add-on if you need access to advanced listening.

To use enhanced features—Report Builder, Tableau BI Connector, and Analytics API—you must be prepared to invest in extra add-ons beyond Sprout's standard pricing.

Sprout Social Pricing

Sprout Social also does not reveal the pricing of any add-on.

Sprout Social Pricing

Statusbrew provides tailored Twitter search capabilities within its Premium and Enterprise plans.

With the Premium plan, you can track up to 1000 tweets per month. For an additional $50, you can track 1000 more tweets per month.

The Enterprise plan offers customized solutions tailored to fit your specific needs for Twitter keyword tracking and analysis.

You can also monitor up to 30 Instagram hashtags every month, which is the limit set from Instagram’s end. We also provide you the ability to create custom reports on both these plans.

Sprout Social provides competitor reporting, team activity reports, tag reports, and white-label reports in their Professional & Advanced plan.

Sprout Social Pricing

But Statusbrew provides these reports in the Premium plan ($229 per month for 8 users & 15 social profiles). You can access the Tag Reports even in our Standard plan ($129 per month for 5 users & 10 social profiles).

Bugs in the platform & slow customer service despite paying a hefty price

You will think that with an expensive monthly price, you should receive a stellar support experience, and the platform will run smoothly. But that's not the case. Many customers have reported slow response time to their open tickets, which becomes frustrating when dealing with urgent issues.

Some of the most common bugs users have been facing in Sprout in recent times include:

  • There's a significant delay in the approval process from the time a post is submitted for approval to when it actually gets approved, which is almost 30 minutes.
  • There are difficulties associated with creating clickable links within Instagram stories.
  • There are reported problems with mobile notifications not functioning properly.
  • Users encounter issues when attempting to post the same content across multiple brand profiles.

Sprout Social Pricing

A customer review of Sprout Social on Capterra.

On the other hand, Statusbrew offers immediate approvals, reliable mobile notifications, unified multi-brand posting, and responsive and helpful customer service, all at a much more affordable price point.

And our customer reviews speak for itself:

Make the switch to Statusbrew today and experience a smooth, efficient, and bug-free workflow!

Sprout Social lacks agency-specific features

Sprout is not an agency-friendly platform at all.

Firstly, its per-user pricing makes the pricing very expensive for any growing agency working with multiple team members and clients.

The pricing plan you choose is also capped by the total audience size of all client’s social profiles you wish to manage. Statusbrew doesn’t add a limit based on the audience size of connected profiles.

Statusbrew allows you to create and share live report links with your clients without the need for client onboarding or incurring additional costs for user seats on the platform.

 Statusbrew live report links

Moreover, sharing performance reports regularly with your clients is crucial for client satisfaction as an agency. While Sprout Social offers scheduled report delivery as part of their Advanced plan (at $499 per user per month), Statusbrew offers this feature across all subscription plans.

In fact, Statusbrew is designed for growing agencies. You don’t pay us a hefty subscription fee at the start; rather, you pay as your agency grows at $49 per month per client.

Here’s what makes Statusbrew the perfect social management platform for agencies:

  • Keep data secure and organized with dedicated workspaces for each client.
  • Coordinate and collaborate with clients easily on shareable calendars.
  • Pay only for the clients you manage, with a single affordable price per client.
  • Set custom approval workflow because every client is different.

So, with Statusbrew, you focus on delivering results to your clients while we take care of managing platforms.

A more affordable alternative to Sprout Social!

In the past 1 year, many businesses have switched gears from Sprout Social to various other social media tools for a variety of reasons (the central one being their higher-than-average price point).

Fortunately, you have not just a budget-friendly but also a quite competitive option in terms of feature offering to Sprout Social here. We have helped countless businesses find success with our social media management solution. Why not explore what we can offer and see if we might be a perfect fit for you?

Statusbrew is an all in one social media management tool that supports Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, and even Google My Business.


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Rushali Das

Rushali is a content writer at Statusbrew. She is fond of writing content that compels people to slow down and look more closely to discover the unknown stories.

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