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
Are you looking at Upfluence alternatives? Let us help. It’s not easy to figure out what each influencer marketing platform does. And even harder to figure out what they don’t do.
We’ll unpack some popular alternatives to Upfluence and share the pros and cons of each.
While Upfluence is loved by its users for influencer discovery, it has some limitations. And like all tools, it’s not for everyone. Is there a better platform for you?
MightyScout: Specializes in comprehensive tracking and accurate analytics for Instagram and TikTok.
Aspire: Provides a full-featured platform with a creator marketplace of 1M across the major social platforms. Offers “done for you” services too.
Influencity: Finds influencers for your global marketing campaigns.
CreatorIQ: Offers AI-driven influencer marketing features, with a focus on discovery and campaign management.
Traackr: Builds authentic relationships at scale with a global database. Specializes in beauty brands.
GRIN: Supports 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.
Upfluence is an influencer marketing platform beloved by its users for strong searching and filtering of its influencer database. Upfluence offers a range of features to support influencer marketers from influencer discovery, automated outreach, CRM, tracking and reporting. Finding influencers is Upfluence’s strength.
Upfluence is best for small brands that work with a limited number of influencers due to its small database. Its agency services can be helpful for brands with limited expertise or limited manpower.
Robust search capabilities: Upfluence offers advanced search functionality, allowing brands to find influencers using precise criteria across multiple social platforms.
Influencer analytics: Upfluence provides detailed analytics that help brands analyze influencers for selection.
Agency services: If your team needs extra help to run campaigns, Upfluence offers done-for-you services. Your team can be hands on, or hands off.
Affiliate marketing features: Upfluence has strong capabilities for finding and managing influencer affiliates, creating affiliate links, paying influencers, and reporting on affiliates. Plus, users report it’s easy to show the ROI of affiliate campaigns. Upfluence integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce and Amazon Attribution.
Outreach from your email: Upfluence enables you to outreach from your own email (e.g., Outlook, Gmail)
Blogger discovery: If blog content or reviews are an important part of your influencer marketing strategy, Upfluence has a search feature for finding bloggers.
Limited tracking: Upfluence does not track nano-influencers and has limitations for reliably tracking product seeding, gifting or influencer events content.
Learning curve: Some users find Upfluence complex and challenging to use, particularly for those new to influencer marketing.
Cost: While it provides extensive features, Upfluence can be expensive, particularly for small businesses or startups. The pricing might not be as transparent or accessible for smaller or midsize companies looking to start or grow influencer marketing without a significant budget.
Limited database: Upfluence’s influencer database is relatively small compared to the competition but influencers are pre-approved. The small number may not be a fit for brands that need niche influencers or who plan to scale up to a large number of influencers.
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 long-term contracts. It offers a 30-day money back guarantee. Affordable pricing makes MightyScout attractive, even as an add-on to your influencer tech stack.
MightyScout is best for brands and agencies that need reliable influencer tracking, content capture, automated analysis and custom reporting. What this means is no missed content, easily see which influencers haven't posted by the deadline, quickly analyze content, report in minutes, and build a content pipeline for your ads.
Small and mid-size brands use MightyScout to eliminate spreadsheets, streamline workflows, and for tracking, analytics and reporting. Larger brands and agencies often add MightyScout to their influencer marketing tech stack for the tracking and content capture abilities other platforms don’t have.
Content tracking and capture: MightyScout tracks and captures Stories 24/7 so your team doesn’t have to be online on the weekends to screenshot content.
Reliable content tracking: If you are not tracking and capturing all the content your influencers produce, MightyScout can solve that. Capturing all content provides your performance marketing team with a content pipeline and helps justify your budget.
Reporting: Instead of spending hours or days creating a report, MightyScout does it in minutes. Your time is better spent elsewhere, like using all the report insights to optimize performance.
Ease of use: Users see value quickly from MightyScout with its easy to learn and intuitive interface.
Discovery: Social listening helps identify die-hard fans. The look alike feature finds more influencers like the ones you love.
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 make working with multiple brands easier and more affordable.
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.
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 Upfluence that should be considered for users needing accurate reporting, analytics, multi-account management, and tracking capabilities without the high cost. Here’s where MightyScout is different:
Content tracking and analytics
MightyScout tracks nano-influencers, product gifting, seeding and influencer events content. Upfluence does not track nano influencers and has limitations for gifting, seeding and events.
User-friendliness
MightyScout’s user interface is intuitive, making it easy to learn and use. MightyScout users get up to speed quickly compared to Upfluence with its steep learning curve and complexity.
Affiliate support
Upfluence offers more support features and e-commerce integrations for affiliate marketing than MightyScout.
Discovery
MightyScout and Upfluence discovery features are different. MightyScout offers a look alike feature to find more influencers like the ones you already love, and social listening to find customers and fans who are already organically posting about your brand. Whereas Upfluence offers a relatively small but searchable database of influencers. Both tools offer features to help analyze an influencer’s previous performance, audience fit, and audience credibility.
Aspire is best for large-budget brands that use U.S.-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 search engine of 500k influencer profiles, a Creator Marketplace of 1M, 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.
Agency services: Aspire offers “done for you” services for customers that need additional support.
Social media platforms: 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 is not a good fit if product seeding, gifting or influencer events content are important to your influencer marketing strategy.
Tracking: Both have similar tracking limitations for "unpaid" influencers for product seeding, gifting and events content. Additionally, Upfluence cannot track nano influencers.
Services: Aspire offers agency services. Upfluencer does not offer agency services.
Discovery: Aspire’s creator marketplace has 1M creators and a search engine for 500K creators, compared to Upfluence's pre-approved creator database of 4M.
Pricing: Aspire’s price is $2499/month per Capterra, but we don’t know what tier that is for. Upfluence is reported to start at $500 per month. Pricing is not shared publicly by either.
Long-term contract: Both require a long-term contract. Aspire does not offer a trial. Upfluence does offer a trial with some restrictions.
Influencity is best for brands that need influencer discovery and influencer vetting features, but do not need automated tracking, automated content collection, and analytics capabilities. Influencity’s database is also a fit for brands that need global influencers.
Discovery: Strong influencer search and filtering of its database of 170M influencers on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. A good option for finding global influencers.
Affordable entry-level price: Offers affordable entry level price points.
Trial: Allows a 7-day free trial.
Customer satisfaction: Influencity customers are highly satisfied.
No automated content tracking and capture: Influencity does not automate the tracking and capture of content. You must add the URL of your content to Influencity for the data to be pulled in.
Limited e-commerce integrations: Influencity integrates with Shopify but cannot pull in or report on revenue attributed to influencer campaigns.
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 and Upfluence has 4M in their searchable creator databases.
Content tracking: Upfluence, despite its tracking limitations, has the stronger tracking features.
With Influencity, customers must do the heavy lifting to find the content or ask influencers to send their content, and then enter the URL into Influencity for data to be pulled into the platform. This is a big ask for brands/agencies.
Contract length: Influencity does not require a long-term contract and does offer a free trial. Upfluence requires a long-term contract and does offer a trial period with restrictions.
Transparent pricing: Influencity spells out pricing at each tier and exactly what you get. Upfluence 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 numerous e-commerce, and marketing and advertising tools.
Private influencer marketplace: With CreatorIQ, you can create a private marketplace of influencers through your brand’s portal.
Discovery: CIQ’s private network of 15M influencers is on the smaller side compared to some competitors.
High price: The price is steep at $36k/year per Capterra.
Tracking limitations: CreatorIQ has tracking and content collection limitations for product seeding, gifting or influencers events.
No trial: CreatorIQ does not offer a free trial and requires a long-term contract, making it a higher-risk purchase.
Social platforms: CIQ and Upfluence both support 7 social media platforms.
Number of influencers: CIQ has 15M creators in its database. Upfluence is reported to have 4M.
Influencer vetting: CIQ offers influencer audience insights and demographics. Upfluence only offers demographics, not audience insights.
Tracking limitations: CreatorIQ and Upfluence both have similar tracking limitations. However Upfluence also cannot track nano influencers.
Integrations: Upfluence integrates with Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and BigCommerce. CIQ reports an integration with Shopify. CIQ may have more integrations that are not shown on its website.
Large, enterprise brands with a large budget for influencer marketing software. Traackr has deep experience with beauty brands.
Full-featured: Traackr is a feature-rich platform with discovery, influencer audience evaluation, relationship management, campaign management, and custom reporting options.
Tracking: Traackr has strong capabilities. However some users report tracking delays.
Social media platforms supported: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Snapchat.
Payments: Traackr enables payments to influencers through the platform.
Affiliate support: Traackr has features to help you manage and track affiliate influencers.
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 hard to learn and hard to use.
Discovery: The database of only 13M influencers is relatively small compared to competitors’ databases.
E-commerce support: Traackr integrates only with Shopify.
Discovery: Both platforms have relatively small influencer databases for discovery.
Tracking: Traackr has the stronger tracking features with its abilities to track unpaid influencers and nano-influencers that Upfluence cannot.
Purchase risk: Both platforms require a long term commitment. Upfluence does not offer a free trial. Traackr does offer a free trial.
Pricing: Traackr minimum price starts at $20k per year, a significant difference compared to Upfluence, reported to start at $500 per month.
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 a limitation to growing your influencer marketing program, a tool like this helps you work with more influencers without hiring more staff.
Comprehensive features: GRIN offers features for 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 is a helpful feature that allows GRIN users to keep all payments in one place.
Integration with Shopify: Many customers mention the seamless integration with Shopify 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 newer (post 2022) discovery feature replacements. Many reviews were positive for discovery until new discovery features were introduced.
Tracking limitations: GRIN is not a fit if product seeding, gifting and influencer events content are important for you to track with automation. Some users report challenges with accurate tracking of content for influencer affiliate 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 their integration options are limited compared to other influencer marketing platforms.
Discovery: Upfluence offers the stronger influencer discovery features. Whereas GRIN users are not satisfied with their discovery features after the changes made since late 2022.
Tracking: Both Upfluence and GRIN have similar tracking limitations. Additionally, Upfluence cannot track nano influencers.
Purchase risk: Both Upfluence and GRIN require a long-term commitment, do not allow a trial, and are not transparent with pricing. (To reduce risk, read reviews, and more importantly, speak with current and past customers to do your due diligence.)
User reviews: Upfluence customers are impressed with the influencer discovery, influencer analysis, outreach and affiliate features. GRIN customers are most satisfied with influencer outreach, influencer management, and campaign management features.
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: After filtering the database for influencers, HypeAuditor has features to help you analyze each influencer: Audience Overlap, Quality Score, and Audience Authenticity features.
Shopify integration: Shopify users benefit from the integration which allows them to track influencer conversions and access sales data.
Campaign organization: Store your contracts and pay influencers all from one platform.
Tracking: HypeAuditor does not track Stories, a potential deal breaker 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 was too small.
Team functionality lacking: Lack of multi-user functionality prevents team members from seeing what other team members have done.
Price is high: While initial pricing appears to be low, multiple users report the price as high, as you scale, compared to competitors.
Discovery: HypeAuditor’s database of 154M is much larger than Upfluence’s database. Importing an existing list of influencers will be easier with HypeAuditor, than with Upfluence. HypeAuditor’s influencer analytics tools help to vet influencers.
Content tracking: HypeAuditor does not track Stories while Upfluence does. Upfluence cannot track nano-influencers. Both have limitations for tracking unpaid influencers (e.g., seeding, gifting, events) reliably.
Affiliate marketing: Upfluence has features and integrations to support all stages of affiliate marketing. HypeAuditor does not.
Ease of use: Multiple Upfluence users find the platform difficult to learn and use. HypeAuditor users are generally satisfied with ease of use.
Purchase risk: HypeAuditor with its monthly purchase option has the lower purchase risk. Upfluence requires a long-term contract without a trial.
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.
Upfluence users praise its influencer database and integration features. Although some noted difficulties with the platform’s cancellation process and customer support.
Selecting an influencer platform requires homework. 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:
Your goals and requirements 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 biggest pain points and requirements and match them with the tool (or tools) that best meet your needs.
If your strategy includes nano-influencers, Stories, product gifting, seeding, or events, you’ll need a strong tracking tool. Tracking when each influencer has shared content––or not––and pulling in data and content for you saves you from asking creators if they've posted and it eliminates the two-way burden of asking creators to send you their content.
Not all tracking and monitoring tools are the same. There isn't a stronger tracking tool on the market than MightyScout.
So you can get rid of spreadsheets. You can collect all the influencer content without having to screenshot stories on the weekend or ask influencers to send their content. You can automatically capture and use the content to fuel your ads. And, you will finally have a reliable influencer model to grow your brand or agency–without needing additional staff.
Get started for free. Or, schedule a call now to see how it works.