Sprout Social vs Khoros: The best tool for your brand in 2024

A social media management platform is no small investment. The right choice can streamline operations, increase productivity and provide your business with access to unparalleled consumer insights. The wrong choice, on the other hand, can create inefficiencies and expenses.

Thankfully, this isn’t a decision you need to make alone. Every day, millions of people turn to customer reviews to get the inside scoop on vendors and platforms, and social media management tools are no different.

In this article, we’ll compare Sprout Social vs. Khoros using input from the people who matter the most—customers. The comparison data in this article is based on authenticated user reviews from G2, the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplace.

• Sprout vs. Khoros: Overview
• Sprout Social vs Khoros: Innovation and business strength
• Sprout Social vs Khoros: Customer support
• Sprout Social vs Khoros: ROI
• Sprout Social vs Khoros: Ease of doing business
• Sprout Social vs Khoros: Partnership and reliability

Sprout vs. Khoros: Overview

To kick off our Sprout Social vs. Khoros comparison, let’s lay some groundwork. Here’s a brief primer on each platform and their respective user bases.

Who is Sprout Social for?

Founded in 2010, Sprout Social is a global leader in social media management and analytics software. Our intuitive, cloud-based platform is a standout across software categories. In fact, Sprout was named #1 Best Software Product by G2’s 2024 Software Awards. That’s the number one spot when compared across products in every software category, not just social media management platforms.

The accolades don’t stop there. Sprout has maintained its status as a G2 Enterprise Leader every quarter since 2018. We consistently rank above our competitors, including Khoros.

On top of that, G2’s 2024 Winter Reports recognized Sprout as a leader in 150 categories spanning all business segments, from small business to mid-market and enterprise, and across all regions including EMEA, APAC and the Middle East. Brands of all sizes and industries rely on Sprout to accelerate business impact through social.

Who is Khoros for?

Khoros was introduced in 2019 following the merger of two acquisitions by Vista Equity Partners—Spredfast and Lithium.

Like Sprout, Khoros offers tools to support social media management, community management and customer service. However, customer feedback suggests they falter when it comes to user experience. Speed, in both product innovation and data processing, is a common pain point found throughout G2 reviews.

Sprout Social vs Khoros: Innovation and business strength

The social media landscape is fast-paced, unpredictable and expansive. Staying ahead of the curve means committing to continuous innovation.

To innovate with your business strategy, you need a platform that innovates right along with you. Your software partner should listen and learn from your pain points and feedback, and translate those learnings into meaningful updates that help your brand stand out from the crowd.

Sprout leads Khoros in product direction

To fully trust a social partner one must have confidence in the decisions its development team makes. The direction of a product can make or break your experience with a vendor, underscoring the importance of working with a team that actively addresses emerging challenges to cater to your evolving needs.

Sprout moves at the speed of social. As a leader in social-first innovation, we launched more than 160 updates across our engagement, publishing, analytics, listening and customer care solutions in 2023 alone. This work ensures brands get constant innovation, uncompromised value and enterprise-level power from the platform. When it comes to feature updates and product roadmap, G2 reviewers prefer Sprout’s product direction over Khoros’.

Sprout continues to invest in R&D

Sprout invests extensively in research and development across all aspects of our platform—that includes social management, listening and analytics, customer care, influencer marketing and employee advocacy. With Sprout, you get superior functionalities across the board, without compromising in any area.

G2 reviews of Khoros often express frustration with the speed at which the company delivers on essential social media offerings such as Publishing and Reporting. Users find these tools “limiting”, resulting in workflow redundancies and prolonged time to insights.

In contrast, Sprout is investing in cutting-edge AI technology, combining the power of Sprout’s proprietary machine learning and deep automation capabilities with OpenAI’s GPT model. Our AI Assist features are seamlessly integrated into our publishing, engagement and listening solutions, empowering customers to work smarter and achieve greater impact.

Over the past year, we’ve strategically acquired companies like Repustate and Tagger to enhance our customers’ ability to drive deeper insights from social media and expand their brand presence. We never simply tack on or silo an acquired company. Instead, we thoughtfully weave them into the customer experience to ensure seamless delivery of service.

Sprout invests in customer care functionality

Every social interaction has the potential to become a competitive advantage. With customer service expectations higher than ever, care leaders must innovate to delight customers and resolve issues quickly. That’s where Social Customer Care by Sprout Social comes in.

Our robust Case Management solution sets teams up to provide faster, more efficient support. It streamlines the handling of incoming messages across networks, integrations, geographies and languages so your service agents can provide better service in less time. Pair that with AI-powered automation taking manual work off your teams’ plates, and they can spend time doing what matters most—building relationships with customers.

Sprout also integrates with Salesforce Service Cloud to drive a true 360-degree understanding of your customers. This integration pulls together conversations across Sprout and Salesforce Service Cloud, so agents have the context needed to effectively create more personalized care experiences.

We wish we’d switched from Social Studio to Sprout Social sooner to handle our customer support. The implementation support was top-notch—the Sprout team made the process a breeze.

Jessie Koenig
Revenue Systems Administrator, Hudl

Sprout Social vs Khoros: Customer support

Sprout delivers unparalleled partnership and support in the industry. Our dedicated customer success and support teams share a deep understanding of sociall, providing exceptional service through various channels including phone, email, video or self-serve. We promise fast and effective assistance and we deliver—our response times average under three minutes for phone and chat support.

Additionally, we offer tailored onboarding, strategic education, guidance from premier success experts and Professional Services consultants, certifications, access to a learning portal and membership in our community, the Arboretum. These resources are designed to support customers at every stage of their journey with Sprout.

Khoros’ customer support offerings

Submitting a customer support request to Khoros’ starts with submitting a case through their Case Portal—they don’t offer phone support. Users are required to self-assess the severity of their issue and escalate it if their SLA is missed or if they do not receive a response.

Sprout Social vs Khoros: ROI

It shouldn’t take long for your social media management tool to demonstrate the value and impact of your social media efforts. The sooner you witness the payoff from your initial investment, the better positioned your organization will be for future success.

Sprout leads Khoros in time to ROI

Based on G2 review data collected as of September 20, 2023, 44% of Sprout Social customers report seeing ROI within six months or less**. In contrast, Khoros customers typically don’t begin to see ROI until after the seven-month mark, with only 27% achieving ROI within seven to twelve months.

This lag in time to ROI may be due to what G2 reviewers describe as a steep learning curve on Khoros’ social media analytics tools. Customers often mention that the platform is “slow” and “hard to pull data from” when discussing Khoros’ custom reporting tools.

In comparison, Sprout’s analytics tools provide users with an extensive analysis of their brand’s social media presence in seconds. Reports are easy to build and easy to understand, so teams can focus on using that social data and industry insights to design more effective campaigns.

Sprout Social vs Khoros: Ease of doing business

You might spend months evaluating a software purchase, but if the people who use it every day don’t like it, they’ll find ways to use it less or avoid using it all together. Your social media management solution should improve your existing workflows, without months of onboarding and training.

Ease of use

At Sprout, we prioritize the end-user experience, intentionally designing our platform to simplify operations. G2 reviewers praise our “incredibly clean user interface”, highlighting how it enhances their ability to create meaningful customer experiences and drive acquisition, retention and expansion more effectively.

Ease of setup

We get teams up and running in minutes—it’s no wonder our time to ROI is so fast. Nearly half (46%) of Sprout users go live within a day, and 39% go live in less than a month**. Our intuitive platform makes it so you start seeing value as soon as you connect your accounts, which can be done during a 30-day free trial.

Ease of admin

It’s rare to find a free, self-guided trial for an enterprise-grade product like Sprout. We can offer it because our platform enables users to manage workflows independently, with ease. System administrators can establish user permissions and set rules of engagement in just a few clicks—no phone calls or support requests required.

On top of that, our platform is built on a single code base and protected by a dedicated, in-house security team. We monitor 24/7/365 for security and operational events to ensure your data is always secure.

“Myself along with others on our team love the user interface and how many different use cases there are depending on your role. Reporting is extremely robust and you can find information very quickly. It was easy to implement as well, most of our environment was built on during our free trial. Our team uses it every day and if we have any questions that come up, we can get answers quickly from our success manager or the support icon in the platform.”

– Shane W., Enterprise

Sprout Social vs Khoros: Partnership and reliability

When signing a vendor contract, you’re committing to more than just the product—it’s also about the team behind it. They become an extension of your own team, and their reliability and accessibility can significantly influence your strategy moving forward.

Sprout’s approach to business partnerships and platform reliability

When it comes to reliability, Sprout comes out on top against Khoros. According to G2 reviews, the Khoros platform often lags and is “quite susceptible to glitches”. In contrast, Sprout’s engineering team strives for a 99.99% uptime to minimize service impacts at all costs, planned or unplanned.

We do this work because we are dedicated to being the most innovative platform in the social media management space. We’re constantly releasing updates across our product to ensure our customers have access to cutting edge tools that push their strategy further. When you partner with us, you’re partnering with a team that stays ahead of the social industry so you don’t have to.

So what’s best for your brand Sprout Social or Khoros?

The data and reviews speak for themselves. Sprout is an industry leader, trusted by social teams of all sizes across industries. We’re constantly innovating to remain leaders in our space, so that customers can be leaders in theirs.

Experience the difference firsthand by signing up for a free 30-day trial today. Connect your profiles, invite your team and see how Sprout helps you drive impact from social media, faster, today.

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Sprout Social vs Khoros: FAQs

Which platform is better: Sprout Social or Khoros?

Sprout Social outperforms Khoros in reliability, user-friendliness, customer support, speed and time to ROI. It’s the best choice for businesses looking to accelerate business impact through social.

Does Sprout Social offer a free trial?

Yes! Our intuitive platform is designed for immediate adoption, so we encourage all users to try before they buy. Sign up for a free 30-day trial of Sprout Social to see how your team can benefit from a powerful social media management solution today.

How can I learn more about Sprout for my business needs?

Sign up for a free demo of Sprout Social for a more consultative look at how our platform can help you connect with your audience at scale. Our team of experts will listen to your strategic and operational pain points to deliver a tailored demonstration so you can hit the ground running with Sprout.