Product Comparison: Vista Social vs. Sprout Social

As a social media manager you have many choices when it comes to a social media management platform. Picking the best social media management platform is a time consuming challenge as all platform come with lots and lots of features, they look quite different and all claim to be awesome. If you are a user of Sprout Social social media management platform, Vista Social is not just a great Sprout Social alternative but is also a more powerful one while costing a fraction of what Sprout Social will cost you.

We’ve decided to create a series of articles that compare Vista Social to all leading social media management solution and do so objectively. You may have read similar articles comparing social media management platforms and it is often easy to tell that the objectivity is questionable in most of them. To be objective we have spent significant amount of time digging into Sprout Social. One of our reviewers even went as far as paying for Sprout Social for a few weeks to give it a thorough spin.

Sprout Social is one of the top social media platforms that social media managers use on a daily basis. Founded in 2010, Sprout Social has significant adoption. If, however, you dig a little deeper you will quickly realize the following: Sprout Social is super complicated and expensive. In this article we compare Vista Social to Sprout Social and not only make a case for Vista Social as a Sprout Social alternative but we will make a very strong case that switching to Vista Social from Sprout Social is a no brainer.

As we compare Vista Social and Sprout Social we will do so by focusing on the following:

• Supported social networks.
• Scheduling features as this is the most important aspect of any social media management platform.
• Inbox and ability to respond/engage with followers.
• Reports and analytics – types of available reports, ability to customize and automate them.
• Pricing. We will break down the true cost of ownership for both platform.

Before we get started we should say that Vista Social and Sprout Social do indeed have many features in common: both platforms allow users to schedule content, respond to conversations from inbox and run reports. In this article, however, our focus is on important features that social media manager can’t really do their job well that are offered by Vista Social and not available in Sprout Social.

Account setup

Vista Social	Sprout Social
Free account offers 3 social profiles, 1 user and all features	No free accounts
No credit card required for paid plan trial	Credit card is required to try paid plans

Supported networks

Vista Social and Sprout Social offer support for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter. Vista Social however goes a few steps further by also supporting:

Network	Vista Social	Sprout Social
Facebook groups	Yes	No
LinkedIn Personal	Yes	No
Reddit	Yes	No
TikTok	Yes	No
YouTube	Yes	No

Content scheduling

Vista Social and Sprout Social offer lots of options to schedule content to multiple social profiles. The few key advantage of Vista Social that we have listed below can generally be summarized as follows: Vista Social offers more through, more detailed support for various network features (i.e. organic targeting, tagging of users in photos, etc), more power features like bulk publisher and support for more platforms to publish to (i.e.Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, etc)

	Vista Social	Sprout Social
Post previews for each profile	Yes	No
Instagram grid preview	Yes	No
Tagging of users in photos	Yes	No
Organic post targeting	Yes	No
Post first comment and like	Yes	No
Bulk schedule with rss and csv	Yes	No
Smart auto publishing	Yes	No
Post queues	Yes	No
Post labels	Yes	No
Hashtag templates	Yes	No

Reporting and analytics

Analytics and reporting is not a side bar in Vista Social, it is the endgame! All plans that we offer has access to all reporting features that is easy to follow, easy to understand and easy to present. All Vista Social users have unlimited reports, ability to customize and automate report delivery. This is in sharp contrast to Sprout Social that offers very limited reporting to lower paying customers and limited flexibility when it comes to customizing the reports.

	Vista Social	Sprout Social
Save customize reports	Yes	No
Include cover letters	Yes	No
White label	Yes	No
Unlimited reports	Yes	No

Inbox

Both Vista Social and Sprout Social offer an inbox feature that enables users to respond to incoming messages across social profiles. There are several features that Vista Social offers that will take you beyond Sprout Social.

	Vista Social	Sprout Social
Instagram messages	Yes	No
YouTube comments	Yes	No
Internal notes	Yes	No
Assign messages	Yes	No
Engagement options	Yes	No

Review management

Both Vista Social and Sprout Social offer review management. Vista Social support reviews across wider range of review platforms.

	Vista Social	Sprout Social
Facebook reviews	Yes	Yes
Google business	Yes	Yes
Opentable reviews	Yes	No
Yelp reviews	Yes	No
TripAdvisor reviews	Yes	No
Trustpilot reviews	Yes	No

Pricing

Vista Social offers many features beyond Sprout Social offering to give your brand or agency the ability to scale your work and achieve even higher results.  As you are looking for a Sprout Social alternative it is also important to realize that Vista Social will cost a fraction of what Sprout Social will cost you.

Understanding the ACTUAL cost of a social media management platform can be confusing. Vista Social makes it super simple by having 1 (yes ONE) plan. Other tools offer a multitude of plans that differ in price and features.

We’ve decided to showcase the cost difference between Vista Social and Sprout Social by creating a few example scenarios of what your team may need.

These pricing examples are created using Vista Social pricing and Sprout Social pricing page that you can visit as well.

Just you, managing 3 profiles or less?

Vista Social is free with all of its features!
Sprout will run you $89/month (no competitor reports, no approval workflows, no media library)

Just you, managing 5 social profiles?

Vista Social will cost you just $15/month with all features.
Sprout Social will run you $89/month (no competitor reports, no approval workflows, no media library)

Team of 3, managing 10 profiles?

Vista Social will cost you just $30/month with all features.
Sprout Social will run you $507/month (no media library)

Team of 5, managing 10 profiles?

Vista Social will cost you just $60/month with all features.
Sprout Social will run you $845/month (no media library)

Larger team and more than 10 profiles?

With Vista Social your price is always simple – $3/month per social profile for all features. It does not matter how many team members or clients you have.

With Sprout Social it will be a minimum of $169 per user with additional costs as you go beyond 10 social profiles. Easily taking your budget into thousands of dollars every mont.

Social media management should not be expensive

Social media management platforms should not be as expensive as they have become. We think that such high prices are a result of few tools dominating the market with no new tools being built. These older tools also try to lock users into long term contracts and misleading them on features by charges for countless addons.

We made it our mission to keep our product inexpensive and pricing simple. This is why Vista Social offers 2 plans: free plan for those just getting started on social media and a paid plan for social media managers that have are needing social media management to manage social for their brands or clients.

Vista Social pricing is simple and commitment free: you pay on the basis of how many profiles you manage. That’s it. You get all the features and it does not matter how many team members you have. 

There are no gotchas, no add-ons, no ‘premium’ services. Both plans that we offer have the same features.

All of our users have the same, fanatical, 24/7 customer service with limitless ability to always get on a screen sharing session with our support team.

Why Vista Social?

Vista Social is not just a tool that does scheduling really well, or reporting or listening. Our mission to have every feature that a social media manager needs to be effective. In our relentless pursuit of becoming better and better we will continue to add to our already obvious advantage over our competitors both in terms of features and pricing. Not only is Vista Social a great Sprout Social alternative, I think putting the two products in the same category will not do justice to all the features Vista Social offers to its customers and the amount of care we take of our users and their feedback.

Vista Social is a Sprout Social alternative

We hope that you are already seeing that while Vista Social is a great Sprout Social alternative it is by far a more powerful, more modern and more affordable tool.

If you found that Vista Social is a great alternative to Sprout Social – getting started is very simple. Head over to our home page and click on ‘Get Started Now’.

Not ready to switch yet?

We get it, these decisions are not that simple. If you like, we can schedule a screens sharing session with you and your team. Please pick the time that works for you from our calendar.