Aspire

Last Updated: August 27th, 2024

What Is Aspire?

In 2013, AspireIQ was founded by Anand Kishore, Eric Lam, Shuhan Bao, and Suhaas Prasad as an influencer marketing platform that helps brands build influential communities of influencers, ambassadors, affiliates, customers, and more. The company was first named Revfluence, which was rebranded to AspireIQ in 2018.

The company continually improved its platform, enhancing features like influencer discovery, campaign management tools, and analytics capabilities. AspireIQ shifted its focus towards enabling brands to build and manage large-scale communities of influencers for ongoing content creation and marketing efforts, moving beyond one-off campaign management

This company is headquartered in San Francisco and has 3 additional offices in New York and Denver with over 150 employees. Till today, AspireIQ has helped over 600 customers and has paid more than $150M to creators. While the platform claims to provide some helpful features, it’s essential to check AspireIQ reviews and tools together to make a better decision. 

Aspire Review: Pricing & Features + Best Alternative

In addition to its features and online reviews, we will introduce you to Ainfluencer which is the perfect alternative to Aspire.

Ainfluencer is a free influencer marketing platform designed to connect brands with influencers to create, manage, and optimize collaborations. It functions as a marketplace where brands can search for influencers, run campaigns, and achieve marketing goals without the traditional complexities of influencer outreach.

Now let’s get into Aspire. Shall we?

Aspire Features

To make an informed decision about whether an influencer marketing platform aligns with your business objectives, it’s essential to have a thorough understanding of Aspire’s features and offerings.

Aspire (formerly AspireIQ) claims to offer various features, including:

1. Influencer Search

This feature allows you to connect with influencers from various social media platforms, such as Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Meta (formerly Facebook), and YouTube. You can use filters, such as location, industry, engagement metrics, audience demographics, hashtags, and keywords to search and find the creators you want. 

Next, view each creator’s profile to check their engagement rate, audience demographics, and more to ensure they are the right match for your campaigns. 

AspireIQ influencer search

Keep in mind that relying on the data provided by the platform may lead to misleading decisions, as it might not always reflect an influencer’s true impact or audience engagement.

However, platforms like Ainfluencer provide enough data about each creator to help you know how they perform. On the creators’ profiles on Ainfluencer, you can see influencer ratings, past collaborations, engagement metrics, and the latest insights.

2. Creator Marketplace

Instead of manually searching for influencer matches, you can create your campaign and wait for influencers to apply for it. Using Aspire Creator Marketplace tool, you can receive applications from potential influencers without being worried about fees or commissions

3. Campaign Management

This feature helps track influencer campaign progress, showing which phase influencers are in and offering automated email reminders for various campaign steps. You can also use this Aspire tool to automatically send products, track shipments, and approve influencer content before going live. 

aspire campaign management tool

4. Relationships Management

This feature enables users to centralize communication across teams. It offers integration with Outlook or Gmail to ensure visibility for influencer updates, even when team members are unavailable.

aspireiq review relationship management tool

You can also use the Aspire relationship management tool to automate some steps of your campaign such as sending contracts or product fulfillment. 

5. Content Management

As mentioned above, you can preview every influencer-generated content and approve or reject it before going live. With the Aspire content management tool, find out which campaign or UGC post is performing great and run ads through that influencer’s account to boost your reach. 

6. Sales Generation

AspireIQ claims to support influencer-related sales activities through affiliate links and promo codes, allowing you to track earnings from sales.

7. Measurement & Reporting

It offers comprehensive measurement and tracking features, including Campaign Analytics to assess ROI and influencer performance.

AspireIQ Pricing

AspireIQ’s pricing is not very flexible, and you are required to commit for a whole year. They offer three service options:

  • Starter: This is for small brands starting with influencer marketing. You get limited access to features and support.
  • Pro: For bigger influencer programs. It offers more collaborators and unlimited access to features.
  • Premium: Aimed at companies with multiple teams. It has the highest collaborator limit and full access to features.

AspireIQ’s pricing model presents several notable drawbacks. Firstly, their Starter plan limits users to just 100 active collaborators, which could pose a significant challenge for larger influencer marketing campaigns. This restriction may hinder the scalability and reach of such initiatives.

Secondly, within the Starter plan, there is limited access to branded creator content, capped at only 20 pieces. This limitation can prove to be a significant impediment to content marketing efforts, potentially hampering the variety and frequency of content creation.

Moreover, AspireIQ’s lack of transparent pricing is another significant concern. Potential customers are required to contact the sales team for pricing details, which can be frustrating for those who prefer upfront and easily accessible pricing information.

Aspire Reviews: What Do Customers Say?

Want to understand how a service is working? There’s no better way than checking out what their customers say. Let’s dive into some of the Aspire reviews together.

  • On G2, Aspire has a 4.6 rating score among more than 110 reviews.
  • There are lots of reports from satisfied customers who used this tool to find influencers.
  • One of the main problems with this tool is limited filtering options. So it’s not easy to find the right match that fits your needs.
Aspire review
  • According to Aspire reviews, the support team is available 24*7 and can help customers in case of any problems.
  • While the managing features are great for running multiple campaigns, the cost of service can be high for many brands. 
aspire review

Another problem with   AspireIQ is that it doesn’t do a good job of making sure influencers and brands stick to their agreements. This means brands can’t rely on influencers to do their part.

Here’s one of Aspire’s user reviews in this regard:

According to the other clients, AspireIQ is not a suitable option for those who want to save money. Plus, when you compared it to other options, AspireIQ didn’t perform as well.

Aspireiq review

You might think we’re exaggerating, but we’re not! Here’s another review of AspireIQ’s pricing:

aspirereview

By now, If you’re having doubts about trusting your money with this platform, it might be a good idea to explore a suitable alternative to AspireIQ.

Aspire Pros and Cons

Now that you’ve read Aspire reviews, let’s summarize the benefits and drawbacks of this service. 

Pros

  • User-friendly interface
  • Supporting multiple social media platforms
  • Available support team

Cons

  • Limited filtering criteria
  • High pricing
  • Transparent pricing
  • System bugs and glitches

Ainfluencer: The Best Aspire Alternative

While Aspire provides some helpful features to identify social media influencers across different channels, the pricing can be high for many business owners. But don’t worry! Ainfluencer provides the same and even better features for free!

Ainfluencer is a free and end-to-end influencer marketing platform focused on Instagram and TikTok. It provides a database of over 2M active creators who have at least 5k followers and high engagement rates. You can use an AI-powered search engine and more than 20 filters to find creators in your industry.

By checking their profile on Ainfluencer, you can access their latest account insights, past collaborations, engagement metrics, and collaboration costs. As a brand, you don’t need to pay additional fees for the platform, and you can use all the features for free.

To ensure you are running safe collaborations, Ainfluencer will keep your money in its trusted escrow system before delivering it to influencers. Once you receive the results you want, influencers can get their money. So if you are ready to run safe and effective influencer-based campaigns for free, give Ainfluencer a try now. 

AspireIQ vs. Ainfluencer

Features Aspire Ainfluencer
Database of Influencers 6M +2M
Filtering Keyword filtering AI-powered search engine/
More than 20 filters
Pricing Options On Request Free
Influencer Search
Platforms Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube & Facebook Instagram & TikTok
Number of Invitations N/A Unlimited
Number of Campaigns N/A Unlimited
Campaign Management
Detailed Insights

Other Aspire Alternatives

If you are looking for similar influencer marketing platforms that can connect you with social media influencers, here are some other Aspire alternatives to try. 

1. Grin

One of the Aspire alternatives that allows unlimited influencer discovery search is Grin. This platform provides a database of over 38M influencers across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. However, Grin doesn’t provide visible pricing and you need to request a demo for your customized package. 

Read Grin Reviews.

2. Modash

If you like to access influencers’ contact info, Modash is one of the Aspire alternatives that can help you. This influencer marketing platform provides a massive database of over 250M Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube creators. You can contact them inside the app or find their emails with this tool and reach out to them by yourself. 

Read Modash Reviews.

3. Traackr

Unlike Aspire, Traackr provides lots of advanced filtering criteria to find the right collaboration match among more than 4M influencers. However, the cost of their service can be high since it starts from $20,000 annually.

Read Traackr Reviews. 

Conclusion

 

AspireIQ claims to be a top influencer marketing platform, providing various features to help brands work and manage their relationships with influencers, ambassadors, affiliates, and customers. Although AspireIQ offers valuable features such as campaign management, relationship management, and content management, it has some drawbacks, such as limited filtering options and high pricing. 

If you are looking for alternatives to AspireIQ, Ainfluencer is what you need. Using this tool, you can discover Instagram and TikTok creators for free and run effective campaigns.

FAQs

Aspire, formerly known as AspireIQ, is a tool that helps online stores connect with important people like influencers, ambassadors, partners, and customers who can influence others. Brands using Aspire can find trustworthy partners, simplify relationship management, expand their programs, and measure their impact on their business.

AspireIQ has faced issues with customer service and dealing with concerns. There have been reports of influencer scams on their platform, and they claim they can’t effectively monitor them.

Yes, you can. AspireIQ allows you to save high-performing influencer content to a favorites list for future use. This content can be valuable for increasing engagement in Facebook ads.

AspireIQ finds influencers through its Influencer Search Engine. This tool allows brands to connect with multiple creators simultaneously by sending personalized emails inviting them to participate in campaigns.