Last Updated: November 6th, 2024

What Is brandwatch? 

Owned by Cision, Brandwatch was founded in 2007 by Giles Palmer. The product was created for tracking social media mentions and social advertising impact but today, we can see much more on this platform. In 2017, they started focusing on social after acquiring Buzzsumo which is an influencer discovery tool.

Currently, Brandwatch has over 1,000 employees in more than 15 locations and is one of the known influencer marketing platforms. They offer various services to help brands run effective collaborations, manage their online presence, and boost brand awareness. The platform claims to provide a database of more than 30M influencers across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Brandwatch Review: Pricing & Features + Best Alternative


Are you thinking about using Brandwatch to find influencers in your niche? In this guide, we will check the platform’s features, read Brandwatch reviews, and at the end, introduce you to some alternatives to this platform. 

Brandwatch Features

Since 2017, Brandwatch has been focused on helping brands manage their social media channels. Here are the features it offers.

1. Consumer Intelligence

If you want to know what online users share about your brand, the Brandwatch social listening tool can help you understand your consumers, brand, and market. This tool will collect posts, comments, reviews, and conversations related to you. Then you can categorize these data, know your target market, and use the Brandwatch AI tool to analyze these data. 

2. Social Media Management

Brandwatch provides social media management services to help you manage your Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter inbox in one place. 

Create a custom calendar for the days you want to upload content and automate it. You can set who needs to approve each piece of content before sharing it on each channel as well. The tool tracks your audience insights and measures your performance by comparing it with your top competitors. 

3. Influencer Marketing

On Brandwatch, you have access to a database of more than 30M creators across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. 

You can find influencers’ contact details on Brandwatch, store contracts, make payments, and monitor the results. With filters such as interests, brand affinities, prior brand work, credibility, etc, you can find the most related creators to work with. After running campaigns, you will automatically receive reports on campaign impressions, viewership, engagement, and more.

Brandwatch Pricing

Unfortunately, Brandwatch doesn’t provide visible pricing on its package. You need to schedule a free demo with their team and ask for the package that suits your needs. However, on TrustRadius, customers have reported that the subscription packages start from $800.

If you want to save your time and money, we have a better alternative to Brandwatch: Ainfluencer.

You can easily join Ainfluencer for free and search for influencers, create unlimited campaigns, and send as many invitations as you like. 

As you can see, there is no need to contact anyone or pay for a subscription. Everything is in your hand.

Brandwatch Review: What Do Customers Say?

Now it’s time to read their customer reviews to find out about the efficiency of Brandwatch services. 

  • On Trustradius, there are more than 150 reviews of Brandwatch with an 8.3 rating score. 
  • Most of the customers are happy with the campaign management and social listening tools. 
  • According to customer reviews on TrustRadius, the pricing is high for many users and you can find better alternatives with reasonable pricing. Also, the analytics dashboard is basic and doesn’t provide helpful information, 
  • On G2, Brandwatch has more than 600 reviews and a 4.4 rating score out of 5. 
  • While TikTok is one of the major social media platforms, it’s not easy to find TiikTok influencers to work with on Brandwatch. It also doesn’t allow you to search by keywords to find creators in your industry. 
  • According to customer reviews, it’s easy to set influencer campaigns and monitor them on this platform. However, the automation services don’t work perfectly. 

Brandwatch Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Supporting multiple social media channels.
  • Easy to use.
  • Supporting 13 different languages.

Cons

  • Brandwatch doesn’t provide any information about their pricing on their website. 
  • There is no free version or trial. 
  • Filtering options are limited. 
  • The subscription cost can be a lot for many businesses.

Well, you may need an alternative!

The Best Brandwatch Alternative: Ainfluencer

As we saw, Brandwatch has a great database of influencers across major platforms but lots of brands can’t afford that price. Instead, you can try similar platforms such as Ainfluencer. Ainfluencer is a free influencer marketing platform that connects brands and influencers in a safe interface. 

On this platform, you can search among more than 500,000 active influencers using different filtering criteria such as engagement metrics, language, location, budget, etc. With the help of an AI-powered search tool, Ainfluencer will suggest a list of the most related influencers in a couple of seconds. 

You can tap on their profiles to view their engagement metrics, latest account insights, and previous collaborations with similar brands. As a brand, you don’t have to pay any additional fee to the platform and you only need to set the collaboration cost with the influencer. Ainfluencer ensures you receive the results you want and you will be fully refunded in case of any problems. 

So if you are ready to run safe and effective influencer marketing campaigns on Instagram and TikTok, sign up on Ainfluencer for free now!

Brandwatch vs. Ainfluencer

Features Brandwatch Ainfluencer
Database of Influencers 30M +2M
Filtering Keyword Search AI-powered search engine/
More than 20 filters
Pricing Options N/A Free
Influencer Search
Platforms Instagram, TikTok,
YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter
Instagram, Tiktok
Number of Invitations N/A Unlimited
Number of Campaigns N/A Unlimited
Campaign Management
Detailed Insights

Other Brandwatch Alternatives

If you like to try other Brandwatch alternatives, here are some of the influencer marketing tools to try. However, none of them is free and they don’t provide free trials!

1. Grin

In 2014, Grin was founded by Brandon Brown to help brands and agencies find collaboration partners and enhance their marketing. This platform provides tools for creator search, influencer analysis, content management, reporting, and relationship management. Unfortunately, Grin doesn’t provide any free plans and tools. The pricing is not transparent and you need to reach out to the company to know about the cost.

Read Grin Review.

2. Captiv8

If you like to manage partnerships and payments on the same platform you use to find influencers, Captiv8 is another available option. This platform offers tools to collect influencer insights, discover the ones that match your targeting criteria, run campaigns, and measure performance.

Captiv8 also provides some tools for affiliate marketing to create your storefront, measure creator ROI and sales, run TikTok shop partnerships, etc. The packages on Captiv8 are customizable and you can add features you want to your plan. However, the platform doesn’t provide any information about the cost of each feature.

Read Captiv8 Review.

3. Inbeat

Founded by David Morneau in 2019, Inbeat is another alternative to Brandwatch. This influencer marketing platform provides tools to search for influencers across Instagram and TikTok using different filters, find creators similar to the ones you have already worked with, and check their engagement rate and the number of fake followers. So basically Inbeat only allows you to only discover influencers and the cost of service is from $200 to $1000.

Read Inbeat Review.

Conclusion

Brandwatch offers effective tools for social media management, influencer marketing, and consumer intelligence. However, the platform lacks transparent pricing and a full database of TikTok influencers, which makes it not the best option. While it has received positive reviews for its campaign management and social listening features, some users have found the subscription cost high and the analytics dashboard basic.

For businesses looking for a better Brandwatch competitor with a user-friendly interface and reasonable pricing, Ainfluencer is a great option.  Ainfluencer helps brands connect with relevant influencers on Instagram and TikTok for free and run safe collaborations. 

FAQs

While this platform doesn’t provide visible pricing on its website, we can check the reviews on Trustradius to find out how much it costs. Based on the customers’ reviews, the packages start from $800.

Unfortunately, Brandwatch doesn’t provide free service or a trial. You must schedule a demo with their team members and ask for a custom plan. But if you are looking for a free alternative, Ainfluencer is a great choice. On Ainfluencer you can search through more than 500,000 influencers and run safe collaborations.