Free Influencer Marketing Series
Success! Enjoy the series Part 1: How an agency took a brand from 0 to $1MM in 4 months using influencers & ads
Free Influencer Marketing Series
Success! Enjoy the series Part 1: How an agency took a brand from 0 to $1MM in 4 months using influencers & ads
Need an alternative to Later's influencer marketing platform, known as Later Influence? Let us help.
Later is best known for its social media management tools. However, in 2024, Later introduced Later Influence formerly known as Mavrck.
We’ll break down the features of Later Influence, pros and cons, and compare it to top influencer marketing platforms.
Let's find an influencer marketing tool for you.
MightyScout: Specializes in influencer tracking and content capture, and accurate analytics and reports for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Aspire: Provides a full-featured platform with a creator marketplace of 1M creators across the major social platforms and a searchable database of 500K. Offers do-it-yourself or done-for-you services.
Influencity: Offers a global solution for influencer marketing campaigns.
CreatorIQ: Offers AI-driven influencer marketing features, with a focus on discovery and campaign management.
Traackr: Known for its global database of influencers and building authentic relationships at scale.
GRIN: Designed for big-budget e-commerce brands. Best with “paid influencers.”
HypeAuditor: Provides a range of features to find and analyze influencers, invite and contract with them, manage campaigns, track some activity, and report on performance.
Later Influence is an all-in-one influencer marketing platform. It offers influencer discovery and vetting, bulk influencer outreach, campaign management workflows, influencer CRM, tracking, affiliate, and influencer payment features. Users praise its ease of use and customer support.
Based on the relatively small size of its database and tracking limitations, brands with smaller campaigns are the best fit.
Discovery: Later Influence offers two methods of discovering influencers: a searchable database of 10M and recruitment of your customers as influencers. While 10M is a small database size compared to competitors, it can be a fit for smaller campaigns and non-niche influencers.
Customer support: Users are highly satisfied with the customer support and appreciate the regular check-ins.
End-to-end features: Later Influence provides features through the full influencer marketing life cycle from discovering influencers through reporting of results.
Tracking: Later Influence's limitations with tracking influencers and capturing content cannot be overlooked if YouTube, TikTok, product seeding, gifting and events are important to your influencer marketing strategy.
Later Influence does not automate tracking for YouTube Videos and Shorts. Its TikTok tracking requires some manual work. Later Influence can track “most” influencer content for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. But most of its competitors can do better in this regard.
Filtering: Some users report the filtering and sorting capabilities of Later's influencer database are limited compared to competitors. Between filtering limitations and small size of its influencer database, Later Influencer may not be a good fit for brands needing niche influencers.
Influencer quality: Some users mention influencers ghosting after receiving product gifts and high fraud counts for some influencers. Between ghosting and tracking issues, Later is questionable for unpaid influencer programs like seeding and gifting.
Mixed reviews on usability: Some users find the platform easy to use. Others find it challenging.
Pricing: Later Influence is not public about pricing. A demo is required.
MightyScout, a cost-effective influencer marketing platform, is best known for its tracking, analytics and reporting. MightyScout reliably tracks the content most other platforms cannot (i.e., Stories, product seeding, product gifting, and influencer events).
MightyScout does not require a long-term contract and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
MightyScout is best for brands and agencies that need reliable tracking and automated reporting. MightyScout tracks all influencer content, even the challenging ones––Stories, product seeding, gifting and influencer event content––saving you time and helping you justify your budget and even ask for more!
With affordable pricing, MightyScout can be an add-on to your tech stack for specialized tracking, analytics, and reporting.
Ease of use: Users see value quickly from MightyScout with its easy to learn and super intuitive interface.
Content tracking: MightyScout tracks and notifies you when your influencers create new content that mentions your brand(s). It even auto-captures content including the most difficult to track Stories, seeding and gifting content reliably.
Efficiency and time savings: Multiple users here and here report cost savings from automating the management and tracking of influencers.
Multi-brand/agency features: Unique features for agencies make working with multiple brands easier.
Accurate reporting: Accurate reports start with accurate tracking. MightyScout’s comprehensive tracking abilities ensure you’re accounting for all of the content you produce for your brand/client. Automated tracking and reports help you show the value in minutes.
Streamlined sending of product gifts: Ship, gift and track products shipped in minutes. Get products to influencers without worrying about inventory and going to a shipping service.
No automated influencer payments: You can log your payments in MightyScout but you pay influencers manually (e.g., via Venmo or Paypal).
No whitelisting or Spark integrations: If you use whitelisting or Spark ads, you’ll need to do it directly through the social media platform, not through MightyScout.
No outreach function: MightyScout does not currently offer a mass email outreach feature.
No campaign briefs: You'll need to link to an external document to provide campaign briefs.
Limited e-commerce integration support: MightyScout supports Shopify and WooCommerce only.
MightyScout is a great alternative to Later Influence that should be considered for users needing accurate reporting, analytics, multi-account management (agencies/holding/enterprise), and reliable tracking capabilities without the high cost. Here’s where MightyScout is different:
Focus on content tracking and analytics
Since MightyScout isn’t an all-in-one platform, it can better focus on and provide best-in-class content tracking of all influencer content versus Later Influence, which is more of an all-in-one without a core strength.
User-friendly interface
MightyScout’s user interface is intuitive, making it easy to learn and use. This is especially helpful when brands and agencies have multiple users or frequent new users. MightyScout users get up to speed and see value quickly.
Accurate reporting
Later Influence tracks “most” of the content, and automation is lacking. With MightyScout you get reliable and automated tracking to save time and prove the value of your influencer marketing programs and budget.
Aspire is best for large-budget brands that use United States-based influencers for paid and affiliate influencer marketing. Also a fit for brands that need agency services.
Influencer discovery: Aspire offers multiple ways to find influencers including: a searchable database of 500k influencers, a creator marketplace to publish campaign briefs and let influencers apply, and image recognition AI to find creators with your desired aesthetic. Users report high satisfaction with Aspire’s discovery functionality.
Campaign management: Aspire automates creator outreach, statuses, content approvals, and creator payments within the platform. Aspire tracks most content with automation.
Agency services: Aspire offers a “done for you” service for customers that need additional support.
Broad social media platform coverage: Aspire supports Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Pinterest, a broad range of social media platforms compared to competitors.
High price: The price may be out of range for some brands. No trial is offered and a long-term commitment is required.
Tracking limitations: Aspire has some challenges tracking influencers and capturing content for product seeding, gifting, and influencer events.
Services: Aspire offers agency services making it an attractive option for brands that need extra help. Later Influence does not offer agency services.
Tracking: Both Aspire and Later Influence have limitations with the influencers and content that can be automatically tracked and captured.
Discovery: Aspire’s influencer database has 500K creators and its Creator Marketplace has 1M creators compared to the Later Influence creator database of 10M.
Pricing: Aspire’s monthly price is $2499 per Capterra, but we don’t know what tier that is for. Later does not share pricing publicly.
Long-term contract: Users report a long-term contract requirement for Aspire. Later Influence works on a subscription basis, but we do not know the length of subscription required.
Influencity is best for brands that need influencer discovery and influencer vetting features, but are not focused on accurate influencer tracking, automated content collection, analytics and accurate reporting capabilities.
Influencity’s database is also a fit for brands that need global influencers or for users that need discovery capabilities without a long-term commitment.
Discovery: Strong influencer search filtering capabilities for 170M influencers on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Good option for finding global influencers.
Affordable entry-level price: Influencity offers affordable entry-level price points.
Trial: Allows a 7-day free trial.
Customer satisfaction: Influencity customers are highly satisfied.
Tracking functions are limited: Influencity does not offer automated influencer tracking or content capture. Users must add the URL of an influencer's content to the Influencity platform for performance data to be populated. This leaves users with some heavy duty lifting to find out if influencers shared content or not, met deadlines or not, and to collect content.
Limited e-commerce integrations: Influencity integrates with Shopify but does not have the ability to pull in revenue data associated with influencers.
Affiliate payments: Influencity does not make payments to affiliate influencers.
Limitations of basic plan: At the lowest of three pricing plans, currently $168 per month, there are limitations: you do not get access to a dedicated success manager, you can only create one list, you can analyze up to 30 influencer profiles per month, and you cannot download reports of creator profiles.
No campaign scheduling: Influencity does not allow you to schedule campaigns from within the platform.
Discovery: Influencity has 170M influencers in its database and Later has 10M.
Content tracking: While both Later Influence and Influencity have limitations with their automated tracking, Later Influence has more tracking automation than Influencity.
Contract length: Influencity does not require a long-term contract. Later Influence does not publicly state length of contract, but we know a subscription is required.
Pricing: Influencity spells out pricing at each tier and exactly what you get. Later influence requires a demo to get pricing.
CreatorIQ (CIQ) is a premium-priced platform for large enterprises. It includes a full range of features for influencer marketing, including: discovery, campaign management, influencer payments, and custom reporting.
Customer support: This high-touch and attentive service provider gets high support ratings from its customers.
Strong integrations: CIQ supports 7 social media platforms and marketing and advertising tools. Only one e-commerce integration is specifically mentioned on the website: Shopify.
Private influencer marketplace: With CreatorIQ, you can create a private marketplace of influencers through your brand’s portal.
Discovery: CIQ’s database of 20M+ influencers is small compared to some competitors' databases.
Tracking limitations: CreatorIQ does have some tracking challenges with influencer seeding, gifting and events content.
High price: The price is steep at $36k/year per Capterra.
No trial: CreatorIQ does not offer a free trial and requires a long-term contract.
Number of influencers: CIQ reports having 20M+ creators in its database. Later is reported to have 10M creators in its database.
Influencer vetting: Both offer audience insights to help vet and select influencers.
Outreach and relationship management: Both platforms offer bulk influencer outreach and influencer relationship management features.
Tracking: Both platforms have the same limitations with tracking influencers for product seeding, gifting, and influencer events. Additionally, Later Influence does not track YouTube Videos or Shorts.
E-commerce integrations: Later Influence and CIQ both report an integration with Shopify.
Custom reports: Later Influence and CIQ both offer custom reporting.
Large, enterprise brands with a big budget for influencer marketing. Notably, Traackr has deep experience with beauty brands.
Full-featured: Traackr is a feature-rich platform with discovery, influencer audience evaluation, bulk influencer outreach, influencer relationship management, campaign management, content tracking, and custom reporting options.
Tracking: Traackr can track most influencers and capture most content but for some influencers the content can be delayed.
Payments: Traackr enables payments to influencers through the platform.
Affiliate support: Traackr has features to help you manage and track affiliate influencers.
E-commerce support: Traackr integrates with Shopify.
Team orientation: Traackr makes it easy for team members to work together.
Pricing: Traackr’s pricing starts at $20k/year for small teams and a long-term commitment is required.
Ease of use: Users report the platform is difficult to learn and use.
Discovery: The database of only 13M influencers is relatively small compared to some competitors’ databases.
Discovery: Both platforms have relatively small influencer databases for discovery. This can be a limitation for brands with large campaigns, a need for niche influencers, or big influencer marketing growth goals.
Tracking: Traackr has the stronger tracking features. Later Influence does not automate the tracking of YouTube Videos and Shorts, has limitations with tracking TikTok videos, as well as product seeding, gifting and events content.
Purchase risk: Traackr requires a long-term commitment and offers a free trial. Later Influence requires a subscription of unknown length and does not offer a free trial.
Pricing: Traackr minimum price starts at $20k per year. Later Influence does not publicly share pricing.
GRIN is best for large-budget DTC brands who want an all-in-one solution for paid collaborations, and who need a Shopify integration.
Scalability: GRIN helps brands scale their influencer marketing efforts. If manual processes are the limitation to growing your influencer marketing program, a tool like this helps you work with more influencers without hiring more staff.
Comprehensive features: GRIN features span nearly all phases of influencer management from discovery to final reporting.
Excellent customer support: GRIN users gush about their customer support.
Influencer payments: Organizing and making influencer payments through GRIN helps users to keep all payments in one place.
Integration with Shopify: Many customers mention the seamless integration with Shopify through GRIN as a strength.
Outreach and communication with Influencers: GRIN users appreciate the ability to set up communication sequences with influencers including integrated Gmail inboxes, and the organization provided through the influencer relationship management features.
Discovery features concerns: Some customers are not impressed with GRIN’s discovery features. Customer satisfaction has declined since late 2022.
Tracking: Some users report challenges with accurate tracking of content produced via affiliates and product seeding campaigns.
Long-term contract required with no free trial: Some customers report being stuck in a long-term contract with GRIN that they want to end.
Learning curve: Some users report GRIN has a learning curve, especially for those new to influencer marketing platforms. Features and analytics can be overwhelming, requiring time to figure out and use effectively.
Limited integrations: While GRIN offers integrations with major e-commerce platforms, users report the integration options are limited compared to other influencer marketing platforms.
Discovery: Later Influence offers the stronger influencer discovery features. Many GRIN users are not satisfied with the new discovery features (since late 2022).
Tracking: Both Later Influence and GRIN have limitations with influencer content tracking. Later Influence cannot automate the tracking of YouTube Videos and Shorts and has limitations with TikTok tracking. GRIN users report accuracy issues with its affiliate and product seeding content.
Purchase risk: Capterra reports GRIN's starting rate at $999/month. GRIN requires a long-term commitment and does not allow a trial. Later Influence does not share pricing or contract commitments publicly.
User reviews: GRIN customers are impressed by what happens after influencers are selected: the outreach and campaign management features and by the customer service. Later Influence users praise its customer service, the wide range of features, and report it’s a good value.
HypeAuditor is best for small to midsize brands who need a discovery tool above all else, but who will also benefit from the additional features built into the price. For brands that need to track Stories, HypeAuditor is not a fit.
Influencer discovery: Users love the searchable database of 154M creators for finding talent.
Influencer analysis: HypeAuditor features like Audience Overlap, Quality Score, and Audience Authenticity help you evaluate influencers.
Shopify integration: Shopify users benefit from the integration with HypeAuditor which allows you to track influencer conversions and access sales data. (Tip: Not all influencer platforms with a Shopify integration have access to sales data.)
Campaign organization: Store your contracts and pay influencers all from one platform.
Tracking: HypeAuditor does not track Stories, a huge red flag for conversion-focused brands.
No commission payments: HypeAuditor does not offer commission payment functionality.
Small TikTok database: Multiple users reported the number of TikTok influencers in the database is too small.
Not team-friendly: Lack of multi-user functionality prevents team members from seeing what other team members have done.
Pricing: While initial pricing appears to be low, multiple users report the price is high as you scale, compared to competitors.
Discovery: HypeAuditor’s database of 154M is much larger than the Later Influence database. Importing an existing list of influencers will be far easier with HypeAuditor than Later Influence.
Content tracking: Both platforms have influencer tracking limitations, which usually also means they can't auto-capture the content.
HypeAuditor does not track influencers' Stories.
Whereas Later Influence does not track influencers' YouTube Videos and Shorts, and also has automation limitations with TikTok.
Affiliate marketing: Later Influence has features and integrations to support all stages of affiliate marketing. HypeAuditor does not.
Purchase risk: HypeAuditor does not require a long-term agreement. Later Influence does not publicly share pricing or contract lengths.
Customer reviews: Overall, HypeAuditor users praise its influencer analytics and ease of use. Some mention billing issues and lack of support for TikTok and Twitter. Later Influence users appreciate the range of features, the customer service, and report it’s a good value.
Selecting an influencer platform requires homework. No two are alike. Even if you have an unlimited budget, don’t assume the higher-priced platforms have what you need.
We’ve laid out five steps to help you make the best decision.
Identify objectives:
Identify your unique requirements:
What is/are the most important pains for you to solve:
The above baseline information will help determine what features and capabilities are essential, and which you’ll have to evaluate more closely such as:
User interface/ease of use:
Customer support and resources:
Transparent pricing:
Scalability:
Customer feedback:
Success stories:
In an industry with no one-size-fits-all solution, it’s important to identify your pain points and requirements and match them with the tool (or tools) that best meet your needs.
If your strategy includes product gifting or seeding campaigns, you’ll need a strong campaign management and tracking tool. One that alerts you when an influencer has posted and pulls in data and content for you automatically.
You won't find a stronger tool for tracking influencers or auto-capturing influencer content than MightyScout.
You can finally get rid of spreadsheets. You can collect all the influencer content without having to screenshot Stories on the weekend. You can use the content to fuel your ads. And, finally have a reliable model to grow your brand or agency–without needing additional staff.
Try MightyScout for free today. Or, schedule a call now to see how it works.