Sprout Social vs Khoros: The best tool for your brand in 2025
Written by Ronnie Gomez
Published on June 27, 2025
Reading time 14 minutes
Table of Contents
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.
As the landscape continues to evolve, so do the platforms themselves. In early 2025, IgniteTech acquired Khoros, signaling a potential shift in the platform’s focus and capabilities as it becomes part of a broader portfolio of software solutions. With change on the horizon, it’s more important than ever to evaluate your options based on the latest data and real customer experiences.
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.
7 Khoros competitors you need to know
When evaluating social media management solutions, it’s helpful to understand the broader landscape before zeroing in on a head-to-head comparison. While Khoros is a longstanding player in the space, it’s far from the only option. Below, we’ve outlined seven notable Khoros competitors to consider.
1. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a powerful, all-in-one platform that helps brands drive real business impact through social. With intuitive publishing workflows, AI-assisted engagement tools and unified reporting dashboards, Sprout empowers teams to execute smarter, more strategic campaigns across channels.
It’s built to scale with your organization, whether you’re a lean team or part of a global enterprise. Robust features like social listening, employee advocacy and influencer marketing make Sprout an ideal choice for brands that see social not just as a channel, but as a core part of their marketing, customer care and business intelligence strategies.
2. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is a straightforward social media management tool known for its clean interface and responsive customer support. It includes essential features like post scheduling, comment moderation and performance reporting.
Its simple setup and clear pricing make it a solid option for agencies and small teams that want to manage social without unnecessary complexity. While it may not offer advanced capabilities like social listening or in-depth analytics, it covers the basics well for organizations with focused needs.
3. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a more recognizable Khoros competitor, offering tools for scheduling, monitoring and basic reporting. It supports a wide range of networks and is often used by teams managing high volumes of content across multiple profiles.
However, some users report challenges with its user interface and scalability. While it remains a staple for many social media managers, teams looking for deeper insights or more robust collaboration features may want to explore alternative platforms.
4. Meltwater
Meltwater combines social media management with media intelligence and PR tracking. It’s designed for brands that want a centralized view of their earned, owned and social media presence.
As a Khoros competitor, The platform’s strength lies in its monitoring and analytics capabilities, particularly for reputation management and competitive benchmarking. That said, its social media publishing and engagement tools may not be as fully developed as those offered by dedicated social platforms.
5. Oktopost
Oktopost is a Khoros competitor built specifically for B2B organizations with long sales cycles and multi-touch attribution needs. Its features prioritize demand generation, CRM alignment and lead tracking across social campaigns.
It also offers advocacy tools that help companies amplify their reach through employee networks. For marketing teams focused on driving pipeline and measuring ROI across channels, Oktopost offers a focused, B2B-first approach to social media management.
6. Zoho Social
Zoho Social is part of the larger Zoho ecosystem and offers affordable, no-frills tools for publishing, monitoring and reporting. It’s often favored by small businesses, freelancers and teams already using Zoho’s CRM or marketing products.
While it lacks some of the advanced capabilities found in enterprise platforms, it delivers good value for its price. This makes it a viable Khoros competitor for organizations looking to get started with social without overextending their budget.
7. Sprinklr
Sprinklr is a customer experience management platform with capabilities spanning social, advertising, customer service and more. Its social media management tools are part of a broader solution aimed at the enterprise market.
With high configurability and integrations across departments, Sprinklr is built for large, global organizations. However, its complexity and implementation requirements can be a barrier for lean teams or those looking for faster time-to-value.
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 trusted by more than 30,000 brands worldwide to streamline publishing, engagement and insights at scale.
In 2024, Sprout was named the #1 Best Software Product in G2’s Best Software Awards—a standout distinction across all categories and industries. In 2025, Sprout continued its nine-year streak of recognition by earning placements in seven major categories, including:
- Global Software Companies
- Best Software Product
- Best Product for Marketing and Digital Advertising
- Highest Satisfaction Products
Sprout also consistently appears as a Leader across G2’s quarterly Grid® Reports, ranking above competitors like Khoros on key measures like ease of use, customer satisfaction and ROI.
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 continuously launch product updates across our engagement, publishing, analytics, listening and customer care solutions. 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 AI
At Sprout, AI isn’t a future initiative—it’s already built into the core of our platform. Our AI Assist features, powered by a combination of proprietary machine learning and OpenAI’s GPT technology, help customers streamline publishing, accelerate response times, surface key insights and reduce manual effort. Whether it’s writing smarter captions, identifying trends faster or managing high volumes of engagement, Sprout’s AI tools are designed to scale impact without adding complexity.
These capabilities stand in contrast to frustrations voiced by Khoros users in verified G2 reviews, particularly around the pace of innovation. Customers frequently cite delays in core feature development across publishing and reporting, which can lead to workflow redundancies and slower time to insight.
AI is just one part of our ongoing investment in innovation. From social management to listening, analytics, customer care, influencer marketing and employee advocacy, we continue to evolve every aspect of our platform to meet the growing needs of modern teams.
Recent acquisitions, like Repustate and Tagger, have further expanded our capabilities in sentiment analysis and influencer marketing. And unlike platforms that take a fragmented approach, we fully integrate these technologies to create a seamless, unified experience for our users.
Sprout invests in customer care functionality
All social engagement is customer care, and 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: ROI
Given the macroeconomic climate, it’s more important than ever that social media marketers are well equipped to show the value of social media and how their teams are driving bottom line impact and ROI.
The ROI of social media for business is multifaceted, but it does not need to be unwieldy. The right platform should help you zero in on how your efforts drive business impact, so you can make more informed decisions faster.
Sprout leads Khoros in time to ROI
Based on G2 review data collected as of June 9th, 2025, 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: Publishing and engagement
Publishing and engagement are the foundation of any successful social strategy. A strong social media management platform should centralize workflows across networks, enabling teams to work efficiently and stay aligned.
Scalable publishing and engagement capabilities help social teams move faster, stay consistent and focus more energy on strategic initiatives—not manual tasks.
Customers favor Sprout’s content calendar
According to G2, customers prefer Sprout’s content calendar—rating it a 9.0 compared to Khoros’ 8.3. That margin reflects more than just aesthetics; it speaks to real differences in usability, flexibility and collaboration.
Sprout’s calendar acts as a single source of truth for your social strategy. You can compose and schedule multiple social posts across different profiles and networks simultaneously. Plus, you can use Sprout’s AI-powered Optimal Send Times™ tool to ensure every post goes live when your audience is most likely to see it.
Sprout’s AI upgrades supercharge content creation
Sprout’s Generate by AI Assist makes content creation faster, smarter and more accessible. Whether you’re drafting on-brand post copy from scratch, generating alt text for images or adding subtitles to videos, AI Assist helps bring your ideas across the finish line.
These tools enhance your social strategy with intelligent recommendations and compelling, channel-ready content—powered by Sprout’s integrated AI and automation.
Sprout Social vs Khoros: Social listening
Today’s consumers are more connected than ever before. Conversations that shape a brand’s reputation now happen in real time, across every corner of the internet.
For modern brands, keeping pace means more than just monitoring mentions. It requires the ability to analyze trends, surface insights and act on emerging opportunities before the competition does. That’s where social listening comes in. Done right, it’s not just a reputation safeguard—it’s a strategic edge.
Sprout makes social listening both powerful and intuitive
When it comes to social listening, Sprout stands out. G2 reviewers rate Sprout’s listening tools an 8.1, compared to Khoros’s 7.1—underscoring the difference in both functionality and user experience. Sprout customers consistently highlight how easy it is to build advanced, multi-layered social listening queries—no Boolean logic necessary.
To help teams get up and running fast, Sprout also offers pre-built Listening Topic templates tailored to common use cases like brand health, competitive analysis, campaign tracking and event monitoring. Once a listening topic is live, Analyze by AI Assist makes it even easier to uncover actionable insights. This tool surfaces trending phrases, hashtags, emojis and keywords, so you can quickly understand what’s gaining traction within your audience and why.
Together, these tools reduce the time spent digging through data and increase your ability to take meaningful action. Whether you’re identifying whitespace in the market or protecting your brand from risk, Sprout’s listening tools give you the clarity and speed you need to stay ahead.
Sprout Social vs. Khoros: Social media analytics
Robust social media analytics are essential for understanding performance and proving the value of your work. It’s not enough to simply track likes and comments—your analytics platform should help you turn raw data into a clear, compelling story that resonates with stakeholders across the business.
Turn noise into insights with Sprout’s analytics
If you need powerful, cross-channel reporting, Sprout’s analytics tools make the choice clear. Whether you want to dive into the performance of a single profile, compare metrics across networks or track the ROI of an influencer campaign, Sprout brings all your data into one place.
Monitor impressions on Facebook, YouTube views, Instagram follower growth, LinkedIn engagement, TikTok trends, Threads performance and more—without switching tools or building reports from scratch. You can even tag posts to track campaign results and filter to see only the data that matters most to your team.
When it’s time to share results, Sprout’s presentation-ready reports help you communicate value with ease. From high-level summaries to deep dives by platform, format or team, your reports are designed to be both comprehensive and easy to digest. And for brands with active customer care programs, Sprout offers dedicated Inbox Team Activity and Case Management reports to track volume, responsiveness and team performance—all essential for demonstrating service impact across social.
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: 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 altogether. 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.
How to evaluate Khoros competitors
The best software decisions start with a clear understanding of your internal needs. Before diving into feature comparisons, take the time to assess how your team works today—and where you want to grow. This will help you choose a platform that fits your current workflows and sets you up for future success.
Here are a few key questions to guide your evaluation:
- Who needs access to the platform? Identify which team members need a seat in the tool and what roles they’ll play—publishing, engagement, reporting, etc.
- What does your workflow look like? Map out how content gets created, approved and published across channels.
- What data matters most? Determine the metrics you need to track and how you plan to report on performance.
- How do you collaborate across teams? Consider whether your platform should support cross-functional work with PR, customer care, or paid media teams.
- What challenges are you trying to solve? Pinpoint current pain points—like limited automation, lack of visibility or disconnected tools.
- Where do you see your team in 12–24 months? Make sure your next platform can scale with you as you grow or take on new responsibilities.
Want a deeper dive into what to look for in a new platform? Download our free buyer’s guide to social media management platforms to walk through the process step by step.
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.
Note: All comparative claims and customer feedback about Sprout Social and Khoros in this article are based on verified reviews published on G2 (www.g2.com) as of June 9th, 2025. Data points, user sentiment, and product rankings may evolve over time. Claims regarding Sprout Social’s capabilities or Khoros’ limitations are supported by third-party reviews or publicly available sources and should be interpreted in that context.
Sprout Social vs Khoros: FAQs
What is the difference between Khoros and Sprout Social?
Khoros and Sprout Social are both social media management platforms designed to help brands manage publishing, engagement, and analytics. Sprout’s platform is designed to scale with teams of all sizes and includes intuitive tools for publishing, engagement, listening and reporting all in one place. Khoros, now part of IgniteTech, is undergoing shifts in product focus that may influence its roadmap and long-term capabilities. G2 reviewers consistently rate Sprout highly for usability and automation, making it a strong option for teams seeking scalable, AI-powered tools.
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.
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