11 Grin Alternatives For Cost-Effective Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing tools
9 min
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June 10, 2022
During your search for an influencer marketing platform, you'll inevitably come across Grin.co, a well established tool with $100M+ in funding, and an advertising budget to match.
You may also find, however, that it's not quite perfect for you. Whether that be due to price, features, customer support, or any other reason.
If you're considering switching from Grin, or simply shopping around to see what's out there, you're in the right place.
Grin certainly has some advantages. It's built for large e-commerce teams, and has lots of great features & integrations for speeding up common workflows like product seeding.
That said, it has some drawbacks too -- which is why you're here.
A washer dryer combo sounds amazing. Two machines in one. When you buy it though, you realize it's slightly worse at washing than a washing machine, and slightly worse at drying than a dryer. It's kinda the same thing here. Grin has a ton of features, but frankly, not all of them are very good. If you comb through some of their G2 reviews, you'll get an idea.
For example, the affiliate management tool isn't as good as dedicated affiliate software. Affiliates can't see their sales numbers, or where they come from. Grin’s payment feature is also slow and cumbersome, and users complain about having to click into each campaign to pay each influencer one by one. There’s also no way to make a recurring payment.
Sometimes it's better to do fewer things really well.
Grins large feature set comes with a large price tag to match. Pricing is not transparent, but various sources including Capterra suggest prices starts from around $25,000 per year. If you're working with more than 100 influencers, that price will quickly climb too.
Perhaps worthwhile for some who use all the features comprehensively, but the price immediately rules out Grin for small & medium teams on a budget of <$2k/month for software.
This one is pretty straight forward. Not only is it expensive, but you have to commit straight away to long contracts. There's no way to grab a free trial, and you can't even pay to pilot for a couple of months either.
Grin’s discovery tool lists around 38M influencers. That sounds good, but in reality, you're missing a lot of prospective influencers. Once you choose a platform, then narrow down to your niche, then narrow down to a follower range & a location -- you're not going to get too many good results. After a while, you'll start seeing the same creators over and over. There are other platforms out there offering a much larger database, at a lower cost.
Best for: B2C e-commerce stores & apps who want to find, analyze, and monitor influencers at any scale
Free trial: 14 days without restrictions. Try for free.
Starting price: $99/month
Modash’s influencer marketing platform helps you discover, analyze, and monitor influencers. Its enormous database of over 200M+ influencers lets you search Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube by filtering creators. There are filters for things like:
If you already have some successful partnerships, Modash has a lookalike tool to help you find more similar creators too.
Once you’ve got a shortlist, Modash can help you vet your creators based on quantitative metrics (e.g. engagement rate, fake followers, growth rate) or qualitative factors, such as checking their recent posts for quality & relevance. You can also get a detailed breakdown of their audience's locations & demographics to make sure that creator is reaching your target market.
Influencer monitoring automates the process, meaning you don’t need to manually check and screenshot influencer content. Modash tracks and collects content and gives you an overview, so that way you’ll know what works and what doesn’t.
Modash pricing is based on monthly usage. Plans start from $99/month (paid annually), or $109/month (paid monthly). View pricing here, or sign up for a free trial (no credit card needed).
Best for: Capturing inbound interest in your affiliate program
Free trial: No free trial, but there is a limited free version
Starting price: From $50/month
Using Dovetale starts with creating an application page. This is so that potential influencers can sign up to work with you. There is a Discovery tool with precise search filters as well, but it’s always nice to have the talent come to you. The application page includes a customized survey for potential creators to help you get a sense of what they already know about your brand.
Dovetale integrates with Shopify so that once you start working with influencers, they can choose which of your products they’d like to feature. Affiliate sales can easily be tracked by both sides and when you’re ready to pay your influencers, you can do so directly to their PayPal account. Other features include campaign management and reporting.
Dovetale’s pricing starts from a free version (with limitations in the features) with the idea that users will grow and eventually subscribe. Pricing starts from $50/month for three users and five influencers, then goes up from there.
Best for: Large e-commerce brands wanting to leverage automation as much as possible
Free trial: Demo available
Starting price: On request
Mavrck is a little different from the other platforms. Instead of influencer discovery, you can find influencers among your existing customers. Mavrck has almost managed to automate the entire process, all you have to do is fill in the blanks of your campaign. Influencer recruitment works in two ways, they can either sign up using their Facebook profile or sign up as an ambassador; either way, the platform gains access to their social data and measures metrics based on this, so you can see how influential they may be. Other features include automated Relationship Management, Incentive Management, Content Syndication, and Measurement and Performance Optimization.
Mavrck is sold as a subscription and pricing is customized based on your needs.
Best for: Brands of all sizes looking for a powerful analytics tool for content marketing.
Free trial: Yes, 30 days
Starting price: From $99/month
BuzzSumo puts more emphasis on content marketing over influencer marketing, meaning you won’t find all of the advanced features like fake follower checks that other platforms offer. It does help you with strong research and analytics tools. You start by searching for content that is relevant to your brand, or that of your competitors. Once you’ve got a list of relevant content, the platform begins its analysis to let you know what works and what doesn’t. BuzzSumo shows you average engagements to compare with your content, as well as over time to help you identify trends. It shows which channels performed the best and so much more. You can also set up a keyword alert to not miss out on potential inspiration.
Subscriptions start from $99/month, with a slight discount for paying annually. There’s also a free plan but with limited features.
Best for: Creating an affiliate program
Free trial: Demo available
Starting price: On request
Impact is all about partnerships. They help you build and manage your influencer relationships, from contracts to payments. You can search for influencers by category, location, competitor, and content, and Impact’s AI will make recommendations based on your search as well. Payout flexibility lets you commission influencers based on how they place on the conversion path or other parameters you can set. Their Cross-device tracking feature lets you see a detailed picture of the customer’s journey and true conversion rates.
Pricing is available on request.
Best for: Large agencies and brands looking for an all-in-one solution.
Free trial: No
Starting price: On request
CreatorIQ’s AI-powered discovery tool takes a deep dive into less visible parts of content, like the image itself, mentions, location, and even emojis. It also verifies the authenticity and assigns each influencer an “Integrity Quotient” which lets you know how real their audience is. Once you’ve narrowed down your search, you can invite influencers to join your network. From there, CreatorIQ takes over to get all of the contractual stuff out of the way. And as you build your private marketplace, influencers log onto your platform to see what’s on offer. There’s no competition here, influencers are ready to work with you. And you can imagine that the reporting tool is just as useful, allowing you to filter and sort the data as you like.
Pricing and packages are available on request.
Best for: Medium to large brands looking for an influencer marketing tool with trends data
Free trial: A free plan lets you use basic features, but data is limited.
Starting price: $399/month
Hypeauditor offers almost all of the tools you need for influencer marketing. Starting from discovery you’ll be able to search over 36 million influencer accounts over all of the main social platforms using more than 35 metrics. You can create and manage your partnerships, analyze potential influencer accounts, including fake follower checks, and get a clear view of your campaign success with reporting. While you can’t run your affiliate marketing through Hypeauditor, you can integrate your metrics. Other features include audience analysis, in particular Audience Reachability, which shows influencer followers who follow less than 1500 accounts. Brand Safety ensures that your content will never be placed beside inappropriate content.
Hypeauditor’s packages start from $399/month, but then you need to contact them for pricing for Pro add-ons.
Best for: Small brands looking for basic search and influencer campaign management + large brands looking for improved analytics.
Free trial: Klear can be used free of charge, but with limited features
Starting price: On request
Klear offers an easy-on-the-eyes and responsive platform making it easy to jump right in and begin your influencer marketing. The monitoring tool is worth mentioning as it’s both a social listening and analytics tool. It monitors mentions and hashtags and teaches the AI to understand your brand. This in return gives you very relevant results during discovery. You can filter your searches by accounts that are actively talking about you, along with plenty of other useful data for gathering excellent insight into the type of content you should be creating.
Klear can be used free of charge, but with limited features.
Best for: Searching & recruiting bloggers for an influencer/affiliate program
Free trial: Yes, 7 days
Starting price: $179/month
GroupHigh’s large blogger index gives you contact information, reach metrics and an overview of the content, all in one place. You can search for influencers by niche topic and then narrow down the search by location, reach, and presence on social media. Plus you can import your existing marketing relationships to GroupHigh’s platform. Using over 50 metrics, GroupHigh vets influencers for brand fit. Its CRM lets you contact via email and Twitter, and track all communication in your network. In the end, you’ll get a full report on ROI with an engagement summary.
GroupHigh offers a 7-day free trial, after which it costs $179/month.
Best for: Large beauty brands looking for an all-in-one influencer marketing platform
Free trial: No
Starting price: On request
This data-driven influencer marketing platform is all about influencer relationships. Their Influencer Market Benchmark lets you look at how your influencers are performing as well as your overall social media presence and compares it to your competitors. Traackr assigns a Brand Vitality Score to competitors, which is based on social KPIs and overall audience quality, in other words, the higher the score, the better the brand is doing. Other features include discovery and campaign management, which you can be sure are as thorough as everything else on the platform. The database isn’t opt-in for influencers, but there is an algorithm that gathers all relevant data. You can also manually add influencers who are not in the database and Traackr will find all their details for you.
Pricing is available upon request, but subscriptions are sold on an annual or multiyear basis.
Best for: Large businesses looking for an all-in-one platform with creator listening
Free trial: No
Starting price: On request
Tagger offers many data-driven features. With a database of both influencer and brand profiles, Tagger’s social listening helps you gain valuable insights into audience authenticity, conversation and so on. You can compare influencer audiences with brand audiences to find overlap and ultimately find influencers that would suit your brand and reach your target audience. Learn about influencer audiences to find lookalikes. And Tagger also makes it easy to communicate with influencers through personalized emails from your own domain.
Once your campaigns are up and running, you can track their status and progress. Every bit of content, including stories, is compiled to give you an overview and point for comparison of engagement, ROI, conversions, audience data, as well as influencer performance stats.
Pricing is available on request.
