Last Updated: June 11th, 2024
What Is IZEA?
As one of the first influencer marketing platforms on the internet, IZEA calls itself a powerhouse for influencer marketing. This platform connects brands with influencers and creators in different niches for social media marketing efforts.
Here is a quick overview of this platform:
- In 2006, IZEA started its work as one of the first steps in influencer marketing under a different name ‘PayPerPost’, which focus was on connecting bloggers to brands that want their names to appear on search results.
- Today, with the rise of social media platforms, IZEA’s main focus is on major social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
- They claim that IZEA has more than 650,000 influencers and creators for brand collaborations.
- Moreover, the platform tries to provide its users with blog writers who can help brands with their blog marketing.
Although IZEA has its pros such as a large pool of creators across major social media platforms, it also has its cons. So, in this IZEA review, we’ll be examining all aspects of this influencer marketplace including IZEA features, pros, cons, pricing, and customer reviews.
Plus, we’ll introduce the best IZEA alternatives in case you find them not suitable for your brand.
One of the best free alternatives you can try is Ainfluencer, which has a database of more than 5M on Instagram, YoTube, and TikTok, as well as advanced search filters for better finding the right influencers.
IZEA Review: Pricing & Features + Best Alternatives
In this IZEA review, we are going to check its features and pricing together, read customers’ feedback, and introduce you to a better alternative.
So, let’s explore IZEA features to see how it works.
IZEA Features
Let’s start with IZEA features and check what it offers.
1. Influencer Marketplace
As we previously mentioned, IZEA’s main purpose and feature is to be a middleman between the brands and creators. On the platform’s dashboard, you can search and find influencers based on different criteria.
After finding your desired influencers, you can read a description of the influencer’s background, social media platforms, expertise, and the kind of content they can provide.
You can also find some general information about the influencer’s social media accounts such as their followers, engagement rate, and average engagement per post. Moreover, you can see how much the influencer charges for marketing collaboration and how long it would take for them to deliver your wishes.
You can also message the influencer and ask them your questions or negotiate the terms before starting the collaboration.
How to Find Influencers on IZEA?
Finding the right creators on IZEA is simple and smart. You just need to take the following steps to find creators for your campaigns:
- Start with Search or Discover: Use the search bar or the AI-powered Discover tab to find influencers by keyword, niche, or platform like Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube.
- Apply Smart Filters: Narrow results using filters like:
- Platform, Follower Count, Location
- Engagement Rate, Audience Demographics
- Niche Tags (e.g., beauty, tech, fitness)
- Special traits (language, pets, kids, etc.)
- Review Listings and Profiles: See influencer cards with follower stats, pricing, and niche tags.
- Send Offers and Collaborate: Contact influencers directly, negotiate terms, and approve content using the Content Review tool.
2. Search Filters
Before finding an influencer you need to use IZEA’s search tool to find them. On their search tool, you can filter influencers based on:
- Standard Filters: Refine creators by location, engagement rate, industry/niche, and more. You can also filter by platform, content type, audience demographics, language, and other tags to zero in on your ideal creator profile.
- Advanced Discover: The enhanced Discover feature offers an AI-powered visual search and platform-specific filters. Marketers can even upload an image or specify a social network to find creators with matching content or audiences.
However, you should know that influencers in this marketplace are categorized in only six different niches which are too broad.
For a precise and more efficient search, the categories need to be broken down into smaller subcategories so businesses can find the right influencers for collaboration. However, there are only six categories available which include: lifestyle, fashion, beauty, entertainment, family, and travel.
3. Managed Services
If you don’t have much time to manage your social media accounts and run campaigns, IZEA ‘Managed Service’ can help you.
This plan connects you to a dedicated account manager who will help you with running your campaigns, planning a winning growth strategy, and everything that can help your business grow.
4. IZEA Flex
If you want all the creator marketplace features plus some advanced tools to monitor the latest trends in your niche and check how your competitors are performing, IZEA Flex is what you need. This feature provides all the tools to find and collaborate with influencers as well as:
- Link tracking tools to measure the success of your campaigns,
- Trend discover tools,
- ContentMine with the help of AI helps content creation much easier,
- And many other tools for signing contracts, scheduling your social media content, analyzing your performance, etc.
5. Campaign Budget Safeguards
The Campaign Safeguards feature lets you set and lock budgets at the campaign level, then automatically tracks all costs (creator fees, paid media, labor, etc.) to prevent overspending. Flex alerts you if a campaign is in danger of exceeding its budget, giving teams full financial control.
6. Content-Only Campaigns
A new offer type, Content Only, lets creators submit assets without requiring them to post on social channels. You can also add custom form fields to content request forms, so influencers provide all the specific information or files you need (e.g., tracking URLs or product links) when they deliver content.
7. Additional Tools
In 2024, IZEA added several powerful new features:
- iOS App (Mar 2024): A fully mobile-optimized IZEA Marketplace app lets marketers and creators manage Casting Calls, listings, and campaign offers on the go.
- FormAI Integration: The platform now includes IZEA’s FormAI suite of AI content tools. Creators can generate visuals (using models like Quadra, Astra, Lumo) and text content directly in the marketplace, including background removal and even an AI voice tool.
- Campaign View: A new dashboard gives creators a unified view of all IZEA Flex campaigns and offers they’ve been invited to. This Campaign View lets creators track, submit, and communicate about campaign deliverables in one place
IZEA Pricing
IZEA offers two main types of plans:
IZEA Managed Services
This option is ideal for brands that want a fully hands-off experience. IZEA’s team handles everything from influencer strategy and recruitment to campaign management and reporting. IZEA pricing for managed services is custom and depends on the campaign size and goals.
You need to schedule a meeting with the IZEA team if you’d like to know how much it’s going to cost. However, you’d better know that it’s not going to be cost-effective for most businesses.
IZEA Creator Marketplace
The marketplace is also available for content creators so they can find and collaborate with brands. However, their free plan is the most basic and if you are serious about being a content creator IZEA is not going to be free for you. Here is how much IZEA costs for influencers and creators:
For Creators:
- Free: 200 AI credits, 3 casting call pitches, 17.5% fee, 45-day payout.
- Pro ($9/month or $6/yearly): 5,000 AI credits, unlimited pitches, analytics, 10% fee, 30-day payout.
- AI ($23/month): 15,000 AI credits + Pro features.
- AI+ ($47/month): 35,000 AI credits + Pro features.
For Marketers:
- Marketer Pro ($129/month or $99/yearly): 60,000 AI credits, unlimited casting calls, influencer search, analytics, and priority support.
Is IZEA Worth the Price?
Whether IZEA is worth the price depends on your brand’s needs and budget.
It offers great tools, which might be good for medium-to-large businesses seeking comprehensive influencer marketing solutions. However, smaller businesses may find the cost high compared to alternatives like Ainfluencer, which offers the same features at zero cost.
But don’t worry, because at the beginning we mentioned that there are IZEA alternatives that are both free and easy to use. Ainfluencer is a DIY influencer marketing platform that helps you find, negotiate, and collaborate with influencers in your niche with a few clicks.
IZEA Reviews: What Real Users Say About IZEA
One of the best ways to find out if IZEA is legit and how it claims is by reading customers’ reviews. Let’s see what people say about IZEA on their online reviews:
According to customer reviews, working with the campaign management tool takes work, especially if you want to run multiple campaigns.
Another problem with IZEA is that there are many spam accounts signed up as influencers. So you might get scammed after paying them. For example, look at this review which also mentions the influencers’ profiles are mostly spammy.
What Are IZEA Pros & Cons?
Here’s a list of advantages and disadvantages of using IZEA:
IZEA Pros
- Built-in AI tools (FormAI)
- IZZY AI assistant
- Content review system
- Free plan
- Flexible pricing tiers
IZEA Cons
- Limited niche categories( Only six main categories)
- Spammy creator profiles.
- High managed service cost
- Steep learning curve
- Slow payout for free users
Ainfluncer: Best IZEA Alternative
One of the main problems with IZEA is that there are only six categories of creators. So if you are looking for fitness influencers, art influencers, etc, you can’t find anything.
Furthermore, the pricing plans are not affordable to some startups and small businesses. So, you may look for one of IZEA alternatives.
That’s why we want to introduce you to a better alternative that is completely free.
Ainfluencer is a 100% free end-to-end influencer marketing platform focused on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
In the marketplace, brands can discover influencers by niche, country, gender, audience language, hashtags, and many other criteria to invite for collaborations.
No matter what niche and industry you are in, you can find the right creators on Ainfluencer for your marketing campaigns.
Ainfluencer has a list of over 5M influencers on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Influencers with followers ranging from 5000 to 10 million are collaborating with brands in different niches on the platform. So if you are looking for influencers across various niches, sign up on Ainfluencer for free now.
Ainfluencer Features
- Smart Filters: Brands can narrow down their search for influencers using a great set of filters such as the size of influencers, their platform, gender, country, and more than 20 criteria.
- Influencer Invits: Brands can send invitations to all influencers for free. You have no limit in terms of discovering and evaluating the influencers in your niche and sending invites.
- Chat: Both brands and Influencers sides can use the built-in chat Inbox within the marketplace to receive offers, negotiate them, make payments, and discuss any matters around their collaborations.
- Campaigns: Brands can create a campaign in a few simple steps and launch their presence and quest for influencers and their criteria in the Ainfluencer marketplace.
Other IZEA Alternatives
Although we believe Ainfluencer is the best alternative for IZEA, it’s not the only alternative. You can also consider other choices for influencer marketing. Let’s discuss each one of them briefly:
1. Grin
Since 2014 Grin has started its platform for influencer marketing. They try to provide their user with features for content management, creator search, and relationship management. It provides deep CRM tools and eCommerce integrations for enterprise-level brands, which IZEA lacks.
One thing that users find frustrating about Grin is that the platform is not transparent about the prices of their packages. You need to book a meeting with their sales team and provide them with your marketing plans to know how much it’s going to cost.
So, if you are a small- to mid-size business or at the trial-and-error stage, Grin may not be the best option for you.
Read Grin Review
2. Influence.co
Another IZEA competitor with similar features is Influence.co. The platform also tries to connect brands with verified influencers and provide its users with influencer discovery tools as well as campaign management features.
Although Influence.co also has a free plan, we can’t consider it a free influencer marketplace like Ainfluencer because the free plan is so limited that you can’t get anything useful out of it, which leaves you with no choice but to subscribe to their premium plans.
Read Influence.co Review
3. Upfluence
This IZEA alternative has a larger database access and deeper analytics for influencer selection, especially at scale.
Upfluence also has advanced search filters, which make finding the influencers much simpler. And there is an AI mailing assistant on Upfluence that can make hiring influencers easier.
However, the bad news is that they don’t offer any free trial, so you can analyze the return on investment. And their contracts are not as transparent as they might claim so you may need to pay for their services more than you intended. According to customers’ reviews of Upfluence, this has happened several times before.
Read Upfluence Review
4. Heepsy
Heepsy is an influencer search and analytics platform that gives brands access to millions of influencers across Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch. It’s designed for marketers who need quick, reliable data without high entry costs.
Heepsy is considered one of the IZEA alternatives due to offering more clear and public pricing, unlike IZEA’s higher and more complex structure.
Read Heepsy Review
5. Creator.co
This IZEA alternative is a fully automated influencer marketing platform that helps brands plan, launch, and manage campaigns with minimal manual effort.
Unlike IZEA, which requires step-by-step involvement, Creator.co handles outreach, onboarding, fulfillment, and reporting automatically. It’s a deal for small teams or solo marketers who don’t have time to manage multiple creators manually.
Read Creator.co review
Ps: If you’re still in doubt as to which platform to go for, watch the following video to get a better picture of IZEA alternatives:
Conclusion
Finding influencers to collaborate with is not difficult anymore; Influencer marketing platforms such as IZEA have made it easy to find creators in your niche using targeting filters. However, IZEA reviews highlight that it comes with some cons, such as high pricing, spam accounts, etc.
In this article, we took a look at IZEA features, pricing, and reviews. After that, we introduced you to a better IZEA alternative, Ainfluencer. With Ainfluencer, you can find your best influencer match for free and run multiple campaigns.
FAQs
IZEA is a marketing technology company that provides professional services and tools to help brands and businesses find and collaborate with influencers and run social media campaigns. Also, you can automate your social media accounts, monitor your competitors, and access deep analytics.
This platform provides two different services, IZEA and IZEA Flex. The IZEA service costs from $9 to $129 per month while the Flext services are priced at $150 to $600 per month. There is also a free tool that allows you to search for creators and view their profiles.
Ted Murphy is a serial entrepreneur who has founded six companies since 1994 and is the Founder, CEO, and Chairman of IZEA.
If you want to use the IZEA marketplace to connect with your niche influencers, the app itself is completely safe and secure. However, you need to be careful about spammers and check creators’ profiles before any payments.
Partially. IZEA offers free and low-cost plans for smaller teams, but many powerful features (like AI tools and full analytics) require a paid subscription. For completely free tools, platforms like Ainfluencer may be more startup-friendly.
