Professionals have time and again been looking for Meltwater alternatives despite its broad adoption. It’s not about finding a cheaper social media monitoring tool, but about whether your business needs are evolving beyond what they reliably deliver. Meltwater has served as a social-first marketing and consumer intelligence platform since 2001. But let’s face it, the $15,000 yearly price tag might make you want to explore other options.
The truth is - Meltwater users often face challenges with immediate accuracy. They struggle with difficult navigation and simple customization options. We researched the best Meltwater competitors that pack similar or better features at a friendlier price point. Brand24 stands out by tracking over 25 million online sources. It provides budget-friendly social listening without the complexity you'll find in enterprise solutions like Meltwater.
This piece helps you find the right tool - whether you need free Meltwater alternatives or want better features from your media monitoring solution. We'll show you seven better options, including market leaders like Sprinklr. Sprinklr earned its spot as a Leader in the 2024 Forrester Wave™ for Social Suites. You'll discover everything needed to pick the perfect Meltwater replacement that matches your needs.
SurveySparrow
Image Source: SurveySparrow
Looking for meltwater alternatives that combine survey tools with strong media monitoring? SurveySparrow stands out by bringing together classic monitoring tools and innovative feedback features.
SurveySparrow platform overview
SurveySparrow is a complete platform that blends social listening with robust survey tools. The system works both as a feedback collector and reputation manager. Its value comes from combining these separate functions into one dashboard. The platform tracks mentions on social media channels and shows up-to-the-minute data about your brand's online presence.
On top of that, it turns customer feedback into useful tasks through advanced ticket management. This blend of monitoring and action creates a continuous workflow from detection to resolution. Teams focused on better customer experience through quick service improvements find this especially valuable.
SurveySparrow standout features
The platform's AI-powered sentiment analysis shines through its knack to spot subtle tones, understand sarcasm, and interpret emojis. This tech reveals not just customer comments but their genuine feelings about your brand.
The proactive crisis detection alerts you about negative trends before they become major issues. You get custom alerts through email or Slack about possible reputation threats, letting you intervene quickly.
The ticket management system turns critical feedback into tasks by:
- Sending feedback to the right team members
- Making priority tickets based on sentiment or topic
- Following resolution from start to finish
CogniVue, an AI-driven text analytics tool, is another impressive feature. It provides deeper insights through root cause analytics and spots hidden patterns in customer reviews. This advanced tool finds mechanisms that might not be obvious at first glance.
SurveySparrow user feedback
SurveySparrow gets high marks from users with 4.4 out of 5 stars from 121 reviews. The ratings show strong user satisfaction - 70 five-star and 39 four-star reviews.
Users love the platform's customer support. One reviewer said: "The customer support by survey sparrow is excellent. If anyone is looking for best review platform truly i will recommend SurveySparrow for them to experience the best".
Some users mention drawbacks about the platform's interface. A reviewer noted: "Inability to move through the visual view of the survey without going from start to finish to see edits". A few users talked about slow customer service response times, though these comments are rare.
SurveySparrow pricing details
SurveySparrow has flexible pricing that starts at $19 per month with yearly billing. Here's the pricing breakdown:
- Basic Plan: $19/month (yearly billing) with 5,000 responses and 1 user
- Essentials Plan: $49/month with 15,000 responses
- Business Plan: $99/month with 100,000 responses and 3 users
- CX Basic Plan: $199/month with 100,000 responses
Want to see how SurveySparrow can improve your media monitoring and feedback collection? Try their 14-day free trial to test everything before picking a plan. The platform's mix of monitoring tools and survey features makes it a solid alternative to traditional meltwater media monitoring tools.
Sprinklr
Image Source: Sprinklr
Looking for a reliable social media management solution among meltwater alternatives? Sprinklr stands out as a detailed AI-powered Customer Experience Management (CXM) platform. The world's most valuable brands trust Sprinklr - 9 out of 10 use it.
Sprinklr platform overview
Sprinklr unifies your teams, tools, and customer touchpoints on a single platform that boosts productivity by up to 40%. Your customer-facing teams can deliver consistent experiences without juggling multiple tools, thanks to better context and collaboration.
Sprinklr's unified platform offers four AI-powered product suites:
- Sprinklr Service: Strengthens customer service teams across social, digital, and voice channels
- Sprinklr Social: Manages engagement across 30+ digital and social channels
- Sprinklr Insights: Reveals live consumer, product, and market insights
- Sprinklr Marketing: Arranges on-brand global marketing campaigns
Unlike scattered meltwater media monitoring tools, Sprinklr combines listening with publishing and engagement. Teams can monitor brand mentions and manage social presence without platform switching, creating a smooth workflow from insights to action.
Sprinklr standout features
Sprinklr's Unified-CXM solution distinguishes it from other meltwater competitors. The platform lets you handle customer interactions across all channels from one dashboard. Teams can understand customers, answer queries, and solve problems quickly.
Sprinklr's advanced AI delivers remarkable results:
- Industry-leading accuracy: Reaches 90%+ accuracy with specialized AI models
- Smart Alerts: Tracks conversations and sends instant notifications about anomalies
- Visual Insights: Spots logo usage in user-generated content and visuals
- Sprinklr Digital Twin: Uses generative AI across your front-office with autonomous AI versions of your brand and teams
Media Monitoring & Analytics (part of Sprinklr Insights) follows trends, measures competition, and tracks top journalists across traditional news and digital media. AI-based crisis detection helps protect your brand's reputation proactively.
PR teams can use the Journalist & Publication discovery module to find influencers and analyze profiles deeply. This feature helps them create targeted outreach lists for email or social media contact.
Sprinklr user feedback
Sprinklr maintains a strong 4.5-star rating from users. Many praise its dashboards and analytics as "very easy to setup, share & filter".
Users appreciate Sprinklr's "stable connection in network integrations, speed in sending publications, complete analysis and live statistics". The platform excels at helping teams "manage social networks simultaneously" across LinkedIn, Instagram, and other channels.
Some users point out that costs can be "prohibitive and additional features all have costs". The mobile app lacks full desktop functionality, according to other feedback.
Sprinklr pricing details
Sprinklr's pricing tiers fit different business needs:
- Sprinklr Service: Starts at $249 per user per month
- Sprinklr Social: Starts at $299 per user per month
Enterprise clients receive custom pricing based on their needs. While Sprinklr doesn't offer a free plan, its unified approach often provides better value than separate solutions like the meltwater platform.
Microsoft's case study proves this value. They replaced multiple tools with Sprinklr and now respond to customers 30% faster while maintaining 95% AI accuracy. Microsoft manages 80 different brands and 1,800 social accounts simultaneously through the platform.
Brandwatch
Image Source: Brandwatch
Looking for a solid meltwater alternative that delivers powerful social listening? Brandwatch gathers social media data since 2007 and offers one of the most detailed consumer intelligence platforms today.
Brandwatch platform overview
Brandwatch serves as a sophisticated social media analytics tool that watches billions of online conversations across blogs, news sites, forums, and social networks. The platform's database pulls from over 100 million online sources and adds more than half a billion new public posts daily. Their massive archive holds 1.2 trillion documents with historical data going back to 2008.
Cision's acquisition of Brandwatch in 2021 led to a merger with Falcon.io that created a unified communications platform. This union expanded Brandwatch beyond social listening to detailed social media management tools. The platform now delivers several distinct products: Consumer Intelligence, Social Media Management, and Influencer Marketing.
Brandwatch stands apart from other meltwater competitors through its proprietary web crawler technology that scans over 80 million pages daily. The platform's search index technology makes this big content searchable by keywords.
Brandwatch standout features
The Listen feature helps teams spot unusual trends in their data. Your team gets automatic alerts about negative comments and can act quickly during emerging crises. This crisis management tool helps businesses be proactive by catching early warning signs before situations worsen.
Brandwatch's Consumer Research delivers impressive capabilities:
- Multi-language support with sentiment analysis in 44 languages
- Image recognition that detects objects, actions, scenes, and logos
- Unlimited search queries with 48 different boolean operators
- Automatic identification of key topics using natural language processing
The platform excels at trend spotting beyond simple monitoring. Analysts can identify and understand emerging patterns easily. The Social Panel feature studies audiences as groups to find similarities—or works backward to discover people matching specific attributes you define.
Brandwatch user feedback
The platform earns high marks from users with 4.2 out of 5 stars based on 236 reviews. Users love its resilient features, real-time monitoring, customizable dashboards, and sentiment analysis.
One reviewer shared, "Brandwatch is a simple tool that is easy to learn and understand. Without any rigorous training, the team can learn to use it and interpret the results in an efficient manner". Another user noted, "I've invited quite a few of my colleagues to try Brandwatch, and all of them were able to use its features with no assistance".
All the same, some users point out that learning takes time due to the platform's detailed nature. Others mention that smaller businesses might find the cost challenging, suggesting it works better for enterprises with substantial social media needs.
Brandwatch pricing details
Brandwatch's pricing varies based on your needs. The platform offers two main pricing editions from $800 to $3,000 monthly. The Pro plan starts at $800 monthly and comes with 10,000 mentions. The Enterprise plan begins at $3,000 monthly with unlimited mentions or queries.
Unlike some free meltwater alternatives, Brandwatch doesn't offer a free version. Enterprise users who need detailed social listening capabilities often find the investment worthwhile through practical insights and crisis prevention.
The pricing structure shows that Brandwatch targets large organizations with substantial social media monitoring needs rather than small businesses with tight budgets. One reviewer stated, "It is a very costly tool", suggesting companies should assess their needs carefully before investing.
Dash Hudson
Image Source: Newswire.ca
Looking for a visual-first meltwater alternative that can predict how your content will perform? Dash Hudson has created an AI-powered social media management solution that leading brands trust to lift their visual marketing game.
Dash Hudson platform overview
Dash Hudson works as a detailed social marketing platform that helps brands build better connections through photos and videos on major social channels. The platform brings together data from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms to show how you stack up against competitors.
This tool stands out from other meltwater competitors because of its visual marketing focus. Dash Hudson helps boost brand visibility with strong analytics and detailed reports. The platform serves businesses of all sizes in fashion and marketing sectors. Teams can use its workflow tools to handle and track content performance, which helps brands make their social media strategies better and grow online.
Dash Hudson standout features
Vision AI technology makes this platform different from the meltwater platform. This unique AI solution can:
- Tell you how photos and videos will perform before you post them
- Spot visual trends in your industry
- Group content by how it looks
- Find similar content using visual search
The platform also gives you detailed social listening tools to track keywords and find important conversations about your brand. You can see how your industry performs on social media through competitive insights, which helps you spot content that beats the competition.
Dash Hudson's LikeShop feature lets e-commerce brands link multiple products from one post. You can highlight campaigns with banners to get more subscribers. The platform also lets you create custom dashboards to track paid and organic social channels across brands.
Dash Hudson user feedback
Users love Dash Hudson's accessible interface and detailed analytics. The platform's way of showing complex data gets special praise because it "allows marketers to comprehend social insights faster than typical reporting".
A social media manager shared: "Being able to track the effectiveness of each video versus only the engagement rate is extremely useful and is a good way of benchmarking videos". Users also like the clean visual layout that's "particularly intuitive for team communication".
The platform gets good reviews overall. Some users want more features like A/B testing to "allow users to automate posts to get maximum reach". Others would like better information about audience demographics.
Dash Hudson pricing details
You can choose from four pricing tiers, and each comes with a 14-day free trial:
- Grow: $499/month with unlimited users and 1 social set per brand
- Engage: $899/month, adds community management and content library features
- Advance: $1,599/month, includes Vision AI and competitor insights
- Enterprise: Starts at $2,999/month with multi-brand features and unlimited historical data
Premium add-ons like Social Listening, Premium Analytics, and Creator Management are available for specific needs. Most buyers spend about $36,000 yearly, and customers save 15% on average.
Dash Hudson costs more than some free meltwater alternatives. Many users find the price worth it because of its AI-powered visual tools and complete social media management features.
Quid
Image Source: Quid
Looking for an AI-powered meltwater alternative that gives you advanced market intelligence? Quid turns billions of data points into applicable information for brands that focus on measurable outcomes.
Quid platform overview
Quid works as a smart intelligence platform that uses AI, analytics, and outcome engineering to keep businesses ahead of consumer trends. The platform excels at finding data correlations and turning them into contextual insights that arrange technology with customer needs. The platform processes a massive amount of data. It collects over 250 million posts daily and has access to 400 billion historical posts.
Unlike other meltwater competitors, Quid runs like a technology-driven factory. It turns raw materials—social and market data from hundreds of thousands of sources—into business outcomes you can act on. You'll get detailed coverage through Quid News. It connects to over 90,000 sources in 96 languages and processes 3-5 million articles daily from 226 countries.
Big brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Walmart use Quid to make evidence-based decisions quickly and effectively. This shows how well the platform handles enterprise-level needs with sophisticated market intelligence.
Quid standout features
Quid stands apart from the meltwater platform with its custom-engineered models built just for your initiatives. You get contextual insights that drive measurable outcomes instead of generic data. The platform added "Q" recently—an AI agent that works through prompts on custom models built for your environment. It helps business users quickly find insights they can use.
Quid's advanced capabilities include:
- Real-time crisis detection that filters social, search, and news data to spot what matters before it affects your business
- Visual mapping that turns thousands of news stories into accessible visualizations showing how various media narratives connect
- Enterprise integrations that plug insights directly into your existing tools, from merchandising to campaign management
- Predictive analytics that forecast consumer behavior and market trends before traditional metrics catch up
Media companies can learn about consumer insights from social, search, and reviews to spot rising storylines and formats before they appear in viewership or ratings.
Quid user feedback
Quid's users give it high marks. The platform earned 4.6 out of 5 stars based on 43 reviews. G2 reports include over 305 reviews from companies of all sizes and industries.
Users love Quid's accessible interface. A research analyst said: "I loved the capabilities to easily guide through the platform without being a boolean pro. Their Audience 3D tool is also amazing for segmentation (but can get pricey)". Another reviewer praised the platform's data access: "The amount of data they access is impressive, but more impressive is the level of service they provide to their clients".
In stark comparison to this, some users mention issues with Quid's pricing structure. They note that "everything is a separate service" and point out that some modeling/AI features included in other tools cost extra.
Quid pricing details
Among meltwater alternatives, Quid fits squarely in the enterprise pricing tier. The platform costs about $23,000 per year, making it an investment rather than a casual purchase. Users give Quid's value for money 4.0 out of 5, which suggests the return on investment makes sense for many users.
A Chief Merchandising Officer at a top retailer shared: "Thanks to Quid, our team quickly capitalizes on new trends, ensuring our products meet customer needs. We've seen a 25% improvement in sell-through rates and fewer stockouts". An SVP of Brand Strategy reported a 30% boost in brand perception after using Quid's proactive monitoring approach.
Brand24
Image Source: Brand24
Looking for meltwater alternatives with excellent social listening capabilities? Brand24 emerges as a complete media monitoring tool that tracks over 25 million online sources live.
Brand24 platform overview
Brand24 works as your round-the-clock monitoring assistant and scans the internet for mentions of your brand, competitors, or industry. The platform tracks social media platforms, news sites, blogs, videos, forums, podcasts, reviews, and more. Brand24's strength lies in its live monitoring - you get instant notifications about mentions containing your keywords once your project setup is done.
The platform serves organizations of all sizes across 154 countries, with over 4,000 brands worldwide trusting its services. Brand24 has processed over 25 billion mentions in its decade-plus market presence, showing its resilient capacity to handle massive data volumes.
Brand24 standout features
Brand24's AI-powered capabilities set it apart from other meltwater competitors:
- Advanced sentiment analysis in 108 languages that segments mentions as positive, negative, or neutral
- Real-time alerts through Storm Alerts notify you about sudden metric changes
- Context of Discussion visualization turns numerous mentions into a practical word cloud
- Customizable reports transform data into automated PDF reports, Excel files, and infographics
The platform excels at reputation management and helps prevent PR crises. Brand24's dedicated Comparison tab makes competitor tracking and market research simple.
Brand24 user feedback
Brand24 receives exceptional ratings with scores of 4.8 on G2 and 4.75 on Trustpilot. Users praise Brand24's accessible interface, giving it 9.2 for "Ease of Use" while Meltwater scores 7.9.
As one web analyst noted: "Among many pros, I love most its analytics features and customer support. You can literally ask for anything about web monitoring, and they do that for you".
Brand24 pricing details
Brand24's four customizable pricing plans include:
- Individual: $149/month (originally $199) to track small brands
- Team: $249/month (originally $299) for startups and small businesses
- Pro: $299/month (originally $399) for growing businesses
- Business: $499/month (originally $599) for enterprise businesses
Brand24 offers affordable solutions compared to meltwater pricing and provides a 14-day free trial without credit card requirements. This makes it perfect for businesses that need powerful social listening without enterprise-level costs.
Mention
Image Source: www.mentionlytics.com
Affordable meltwater alternative that's simple to use? Mention comes into play with powerful social listening and brand monitoring at a reasonable price.
Mention platform overview
Mention is a detailed monitoring tool that analyzes online conversations from over 1 billion sources immediately. The Paris-based platform has served businesses in more than 125 countries since 2012. Their system tracks brand mentions, monitors competitors, and analyzes market trends. The platform has showed its reach by delivering 12 billion mentions to over 750,000 customers.
Mention stands apart from other meltwater competitors by gathering relevant insights through keyword-based and page-based monitoring alerts. These alerts come with valuable indicators like influence and sentiment.
Mention standout features
The platform organizes its capabilities into three main functions:
- Monitor: Tracks mentions from blogs, news sites, forums, and social media with immediate alerts about brand sentiment changes
- Analyze: Creates auto-updating reports and dashboards with detailed analytics about reach, volume, sentiment, location, and emotion
- Review monitoring: Collects feedback from more than 75+ review sites including Google, Facebook, Trustpilot, and Amazon
Users value Mention's advanced Boolean search capabilities. The system lets them set up precise monitoring with operators like "AND," "NOT," and "OR".
Mention user feedback
The platform scores an impressive 4.7 out of 5 stars from 290 reviews. Mention outperforms the meltwater platform in ease of use with an 8.8 score compared to Meltwater's 7.9.
A customer shared: "Mention is a vital tool that shapes our offerings and pricing. I call it indispensable for running my business".
Mention pricing details
The platform offers four straightforward pricing tiers:
- Solo: $49/month with 2 simple alerts and 5,000 mentions
- Pro: $83/month with 5 simple alerts and 10,000 mentions
- ProPlus: $149/month with 7 alerts and 20,000 mentions
- Company: $499/month with 10+ alerts and 100,000+ mentions
Mention stands out among free meltwater alternatives by offering a 14-day free trial.
CisionOne
Image Source: Cision
Looking for meltwater alternatives that offer detailed media intelligence at the enterprise level? CisionOne brings PR and communications professionals an AI-powered platform built just for them.
CisionOne platform overview
CisionOne serves as a fully integrated media monitoring and outreach solution that reshapes the scene for communications professionals. The platform made its UK debut in 2023 and expanded to the US and other global markets in 2024. This all-in-one solution merges monitoring, measurement, and analysis capabilities. CisionOne stands out from other meltwater competitors with its exclusive access to premium paywalled content from The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, and The New York Times.
The platform keeps track of all major channels - print, online, TV, radio, social media, podcasts, and magazines. Its coverage extends to more than 100 million sources in 190 countries using 96 languages.
CisionOne standout features
CisionOne comes packed with powerful features:
- AI Assistant and Intelligent Features: The platform added AI capabilities that automate routine tasks and provide immediate insights
- Brand Risk Score: The system spots potentially harmful media content instantly
- Media Database: Users can tap into over 850,000 journalists, outlets, and opportunities, plus 1 billion social media influencer profiles
- Detailed Monitoring: The system tracks paywalled online publications, TV, radio, podcasts, and reviews. It monitors more than 70 million new customer reviews monthly
CisionOne's React Score helps spot harmful mentions right away. Its individual-specific pitch writing tool lets you create compelling pitches quickly with data-backed suggestions for optimal delivery times.
CisionOne user feedback
Users share mixed experiences with CisionOne. Some praise how the platform "easily allows me to reach journalists that matter for my clients" and value "how I can see the effectiveness of each pitch or release".
The platform faces its share of criticism. Reddit users describe it as "incredibly buggy" with slow reporting features and problematic contact search functionality. A user shared details about a "frankly embarrassing Zoom" session where their account representative had trouble with simple contact searches.
CisionOne pricing details
Cision pricing structures lack transparency. CisionOne's annual subscriptions start at $10,000. Most users pay between $12,000-$15,000 yearly, though costs can reach $30,000 based on feature selection and user seats. Unlike some free meltwater alternatives, CisionOne doesn't offer monthly plans or clear pricing tiers.
Comparison at a glance
| Platform | Starting Price | Key Features | User Rating | Notable Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SurveySparrow | $19/month | • AI-powered sentiment analysis • Proactive crisis detection • Ticket management system • CogniVue text analytics | 4.4/5 (121 reviews) | Survey capabilities work alongside media monitoring |
| Sprinklr | $249/user/month | • Unified-CXM platform • Smart Alerts • Visual Insights • Digital Twin AI | 4.5/5 | Verticalized models deliver 90%+ AI accuracy |
| Brandwatch | $800/month | • Multi-language support (44 languages) • Image recognition • Unlimited search queries • Trend spotting | 4.2/5 (236 reviews) | Tracks 100M+ online sources with 1.2T document archive |
| Dash Hudson | $499/month | • Vision AI technology • Visual trend prediction • Social listening • LikeShop e-commerce features | Not specified | AI predicts visual content performance |
| Quid | $23,000/year | • Custom AI models • Immediate crisis detection • Visual mapping • Predictive analytics | 4.6/5 (43 reviews) | Daily processing of 250M posts with 400B historical posts |
| Brand24 | $149/month | • Sentiment analysis in 108 languages • Storm Alerts • Context of Discussion • Customizable reports | 4.8/5 on G2 | Tracks 25M+ online sources immediately |
| Mention | $49/month | • Immediate monitoring • Auto-updating reports • Review monitoring • Boolean search | 4.7/5 (290 reviews) | Analyzes 1B+ sources immediately |
| CisionOne | $10,000/year | • AI Assistant • Brand Risk Score • Media Database • React Score | Mixed reviews | Provides access to 850,000+ media contacts and paywalled content |
Conclusion
To choose the right media monitoring tool completely depends on your goals– be it because of tighter budgets, advanced AI or even simpler workflows. We’ve given you seven solid alternatives that match or exceed its features at better prices.
These alternatives come with their own powerful features. SurveySparrow blends feedback collection with monitoring tools, while Sprinklr delivers a unified CXM platform with 90%+ AI accuracy. Brandwatch leads with its massive 1.2 trillion document data archive. Dash Hudson shines through its AI-powered visual content prediction system.
Your specific needs should guide the final choice. Dash Hudson works best for advanced visual analytics needs. Quid and Sprinklr excel at crisis management. Teams with tight budgets will find great value in Mention and SurveySparrow.
The best monitoring tool matches your business goals, technical needs, and budget. Most platforms offer free trials - use them to test their features directly. If you want something that combines social media monitoring with powerful feedback collection, SurveySparrow is a smart pick; with sentiment tools in an all intuitive dashboard that just makes it more than just a listening tool. Your perfect Meltwater alternative exists, ready to deliver better value while keeping you current with online brand conversations.
