On the surface, Agorapulse and Sprout Social seem to cover the same use cases. But under the hood, there are glaring differences that make them suitable for different audiences.
Different plan tiers, and are added users or channels extra?
Channels, features, content types supported.
True auto-posting? Visual planning & more.
Reply and manage user engagement across channels.
How useful are the insights and reporting?
Agorapulse is best for teams that want to track & attribute the ROI of their social media marketing across many accounts. I see Sprout Social as a conversation management & social media exploration tool, used by marketers who want to create or refine social media strategies through Social Listening and data curation. Finally, Sked Social is best for teams and agencies of all sizes that want powerful-yet-affordable scheduling features.
Sked was launched in 2014 by a team of Australian social media consultants that got tired of being asked, “Why can’t I do X with Instagram?”.
So they created an Instagram-first social media management platform: Sked Social. Since then it has become a powerful social media management tool, with features like post queues, cross-channel posting, social Inbox, product & user tagging, adding locations and first comments, grid planning, story posting, and link stickers. Sked also allows powerful analytics that track engagement by the hour, hashtag performance, IG story analytics, and competitor tracking.
What's special about Sked is that it's the only tool where you get unlimited users for a flat-price.
Which makes Sked the perfect blend of affordability and functionality. Great for teams of any size that need a powerful scheduling tool with support for the latest Instagram features.
Agorapulse was founded in 2011 by Emeric Ernoult and Benoit Hediard with the vision to provide Facebook marketers with the tools to understand the effects of their social media campaigns.
Since then, Agora evolved into a leading social media management software. Enabling managers to manage all social media messages, schedule & publish content across channels, identify key influencers, reply to every DM and comment, and track their ROI - all in one easy-to-use dashboard.
It’s a perfect tool for users that need an intuitive overview of multiple social media accounts and want to track the ROI of their social media efforts.
Sprout was founded in 2010 on the premise that social media would change the way the world communicates and how a business operates.
And they hit the mark — today, Sprout Social is a leading social media marketing tool with over 30,000 customers. They’ve created a powerful suite of deep listening and social media analytics, inbox management, customer support, CRM, and advocacy solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to grow their social media presence, connect with their customers, and drive their business forward.
Sprout is one of the most powerful tools on the market for social listening, inbox managing, and managing hundreds of social accounts. But the steep price makes it hard to excuse for almost any other use case.
Both Agora and Sprout charge per user, which quickly balloons their subscription.
Sked Social already supports unlimited users on the intermediate plan.
This is huge. Nearly all startups and companies have more than one user managing social media profiles—even solopreneurs have their VAs—which makes Sked by far the most affordable social media management tool.
Sprout and Agora have a lot of functionalities locked on the intermediate plan, while Sked enables pretty much almost all features right from the start.
The only difference between Sked’s intermediate and advanced plans are approvals workflow and customer success features, such as phone support and one-on-one training.
Sked Social. With its unlimited users and affordable entry plans, it's best for small to mid-sized businesses, agencies, and large social media teams alike.
Sked is the only platform to deliver Instagram Threads scheduling, though with notification-based publishing.
With notification-based publishing, you can schedule content like on any other channel, and when the time comes, you get notified through the phone app. Clicking on the notification downloads the prepared content and opens Threads. Then you can create the post and publish it manually.
Sked Social, because it supports auto-posting on all major platforms — LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram - and you can schedule your Threads for a more cohesive Instagram strategy.
All three tools let you publish, schedule, and queue posts.
But...
Creating posts with Sprout is annoying: you have to navigate through two confusing menus to get to the content calendar.
Meanwhile, Sked and Agorapulse make it easy to start publishing.
Different channels allow different caption lengths or media.
For example, while captions over 280 characters are fine on Facebook, they won't fit on Twitter.
Both Sked Social and Agora let you write a common caption for all channels, and then optimize it for each channel separately. But Sprout doesn’t allow that in its composer, so personalizing posts for different platforms is time-consuming.
Agora and Sprout can auto-publish IG stories but limited to only single image or video story posts. And you can’t auto-post stories with add-ons like link stickers.
For advanced Instagram auto-posting, they let you prepare a post, send a notification when the time comes, and you have to publish it manually in real time. Not helpful if you're scheduling something at 4 AM or managing many client accounts.
Their excuse is that it's impossible to automate advanced IG stories because their API doesn’t allow it...
But this is where Sked Social shines.
It’s the only social media tool on the market that runs on actual phones. There's a wall of phones in Sked's office, that they use to log into your account and publish just like you would — by pressing buttons. Don’t worry, this is all done by software, so your account is as safe as on any other platform.
That's how Sked can go around API limitations and let you use the full power of Instagram.
Sked Social. The scheduling is fast and intuitive with cross-channel posting support. It's especially powerful for Instagram-first companies because it supports advanced Instagram auto-publishing, including multi-content story auto-posting and link stickers.
Sked lets you prioritize conversations, assign them to team members, and reply to comments & DMs.
It's extremely intuitive: simply select the accounts you want to work on (1) and reply or leave internal comments (2). You can also set up templates for FAQs, which appear right above the message box, and see a bit of intel on the customer you're talking with (3).
If you get tagged or mentioned in posts, they’ll appear here too and you can save the content straight to your library as user generated content.
Agora does the same things as Sked but includes DMs and comments on all connected social channels.
Sprout lets you do everything Agora and Sked can do, but it also lets you filter data and customize views to make better sense of conversations — at a huge scale.
Its UI is less intuitive, but that’s because of the plethora of tools at your disposal. It’s a tool made for large-scale collaboration.
Sprout Social, because it gives you the tools to handle any amount of conversations across all social channels.
If you’re looking for insightful reports about your social media marketing—without having to set up anything yourself—Sked has you covered.
From basic metrics such as post engagement to hashtag performance, demographics, and even competitor tracking… All reports are set up and ready for use. All of this is packaged in a clean UI that’s easy to navigate and understand, and you can zoom your data out to a 2-year window.
Agora has everything you need for performance reporting, but the tool works differently than Sked. You can check the overview for each channel by default, but if you want detailed analytics or aggregate reports, you'll have to create your own.
Agora’s defining feature is the ROI tracker.
It automates link tracking and purchase attribution on social media, and makes all data available in one place, enabling you to track ROI of your campaigns and promotional content.
With Sprout, you get the same features as Sked and Agora: essential reporting, paid campaign performance, competitor comparisons, and even internal team performance.
But Sprout’s defining feature is a powerful social media monitoring functionality: social listening.
You can set up topics to monitor across all major social networks and gain insights into what the web is talking about as a whole.
For each topic, you can look into the performance over time, track social conversations across platforms and forums, monitor demographic data and sentiment, and even track messages from key influencers in real time.
This is an extremely useful feature if you’re running large-scale social marketing campaigns because it can inform your entire approach.
Sprout Social, on top of its powerful social listening feature, it has everything Sked’s and Agora’s analytics tools have.
Agorapulse is best for analytics, Sprout Social for listening, and Sked Social is best for agencies and teams of all sizes.
Each tool is similar in terms of use case and functionality, but the pricing and analytics make them suited for different audiences.
Non-IG-focused businesses and influencer brands that need social media ROI tracking.
You want to track the ROI of your social media efforts
You're a company that doesn’t focus heavily on Instagram
You're just getting started and want a free tool to play around with
Enterprises with teams that manage a huge amount of accounts or ad spend.
You need detailed social insights into what people are talking about
You have 1-3 people managing over 300 social accounts
You’re not bothered by the tool’s steep price
Agencies and brands of any size. IG-focused eCom companies.
You’re an Instagram-focused business or eCom store
You want to reduce costs and stay lean with an affordable-yet-powerful social tool
You’re a brand or agency that need flexibility in working with any number of internal and external people
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