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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.
Grin recently dropped creator discovery altogether, and replaced it with Curated Lists which means Grin can send you a small number of prospects to work with, at a limited frequency.
Being unable to run your own searches sucks anyway, but even if the creators were perfect, the scale is still hugely limiting. You'll need a separate influencer search tools for running higher volumes of influencer searches with varied criteria.
Also in Grin, you can't analyze Instagram influencers, unless the creator has logged into the platform & authenticated -- a huge time sink and friction point.
As well as having to authenticate influencers to analyze their profiles, it's also required for monitoring.
You can't keep track of partner content without authentication.
That adds an extra task onto every partnership, and it's just annoying for the creator's experience.
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.
Grin's 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.
Best for: B2C e-commerce stores & apps who want to find, analyze, and monitor influencers at any scale
Free trial: 14 days. Try for free.
Starting price: $99/month (paid annually), or $120/month (paid monthly).
Modash’s influencer marketing platform helps you discover, analyze, and monitor influencers. Its enormous database of over 250M+ 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.
Modash can do influencer monitoring / content collection automatically, without authentication! It automates the process, meaning you don’t need to manually check and screenshot influencer content.
You can specify the creators you want to track, and a method to determine which posts you want to collect (e.g. tags, hashtags, keywords in posts). The creator doesn't have to do anything.
See more: Modash vs Grin
Modash pricing is based on monthly usage. Plans start from $99/month (paid annually), or $120/month (paid monthly). View pricing here, or sign up for a free trial (no credit card needed).
Best for: Medium to large eCommerce businesses
Free trial: No
Starting price: On request
Later Influence is an influencer marketing platform that simplifies managing influencer campaigns. It provides an extensive database of over 10 million creators, making it easy to find the perfect match for your brand.
The platform streamlines the outreach process, allowing you to manage communications, send offers, and coordinate with influencers all in one place.
Additionally, Later Influence automates influencer recruitment by enabling you to customize message templates and pre-schedule outreach.
Handling payments is also easy with Later Influence, as it offers a simple way to manage invoices and transactions, so you can focus on building relationships.
Later Influence's pricing isn't publicly available. You can schedule demo with them.
Best for: Brands of all sizes looking for a powerful analytics tool for content marketing.
Free trial: Yes, 7 days
Starting price: Starting from $199/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.
Another feature I like about BuzzSumo is its Chrome extension. It'ss a useful tool for link building, analyzing social media performance, and tracking more than 40 marketing metrics, all in one place.
BuzzSumo pricing starts from $199/month.
Best for: Creating an affiliate program
Free trial: Demo available
Starting price: On request
Impact.com is a partnership management platform designed to help businesses discover, recruit, and scale their creator and influencer marketing programs. By joining its Marketplace, brands can collaborate with over 80,000 vetted creators.
The platform enables direct communication with creators, allowing brands to contact them or receive proposals from those interested in their campaigns.
Impact.com also streamlines the process by automating task reminders and deliverables, storing and sharing content, and staying in touch with creators.
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 is an influencer marketing platform that uses AI to uncover deeper insights within content, examining aspects such as images, mentions, locations, and even emojis. It also verifies the authenticity of influencers and assigns each one an “Integrity Quotient” to indicate the quality of their audience.
After refining your search, you can invite influencers to join your network. From there, CreatorIQ handles all the contractual details, streamlining the process. As you build your private marketplace, influencers can log in to see what’s available, with no competition from others.
CreatorIQ's pricing is only available on request.
Best for: Medium to large brands looking for an influencer marketing tool with trends data
Free trial: No
Starting price: On request
HypeAuditor offers a comprehensive suite of tools for influencer marketing. It allows you to search through over 36 million influencer accounts across major social platforms, using more than 35 metrics. You can create and manage partnerships, analyze influencer profiles—including checking for fake followers—and gain a clear view of your campaign's performance with detailed 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 also has a strong fraud detection system. It uses machine learning to identify low-quality followers by checking more than 53 patterns. By looking at factors like how fast followers are gained, total follower count, and how genuine the engagement is, it gives you an accurate analysis to help decide if an influencer's audience is made up of real people or bots.
See also: alternatives to Hypeauditor.
Hypeauditor’s pricing is available on request.
Best for: Small brands looking for basic search and influencer campaign management + large brands looking for improved analytics.
Free trial: No
Starting price: On request
Meltwater is a media intelligence platform that provides various tools to help businesses monitor and manage their brand presence.
It offers media monitoring to keep track of how your brand is mentioned online, media relations to connect with key journalists, and social listening to explore insights and trends.
With its social media management features, you can engage directly with customers, while consumer intelligence tools help you better understand your audience.
Meltwater also supports influencer marketing to expand your brand's reach and sales intelligence to boost revenue.
Meltwater's pricing isn't publicly available.
Best for: Small businesses looking for more personalized influencer marketing
Free trial: No
Starting price: $600/month
Influence.co is a social media platform designed specifically for influencers, brands, and creators to connect and collaborate. It serves as a community where influencers can showcase their work, build their professional profile, and find brand partnerships.
Brands can use the platform to search for influencers that align with their marketing goals, review profiles, and manage collaborations.
Influence.co also provides tools for creating campaigns, tracking performance, and engaging with a community of marketers and content creators to exchange insights and best practices.
Influence.co's pricing starts from $600/month.
Best for: Large beauty brands looking for an all-in-one influencer marketing platform
Free trial: No
Starting price: Starts from $20,000/year
Traackr is a data-driven influencer marketing platform focused on building and managing influencer relationships. It features an Influencer Market Benchmark, allowing you to assess the performance of your influencers and overall social media presence while comparing it to your competitors.
Traackr provides a Brand Vitality Score for competitors, which is calculated based on social KPIs and audience quality—the higher the score, the stronger the brand's performance.
The platform also offers thorough discovery and campaign management tools. Its database isn't opt-in for influencers; instead, an algorithm collects all relevant data. You can also manually add influencers not currently in the database, and Traackr will locate their details for you.
Traackr's pricing starts from $20,000/year and goes up to $55,000/year if you need more users.
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.
Best for: Small businesses looking to increase word-of-mouth marketing
Free trial: No, but a free plan is available
Starting price: $49/month
Shoutcart is not a platform like Grin, but rather an influencer marketplace. Influencers advertise their services along with their pricing, and marketers can browse by category, price, and number of followers until they find a profile they like.
You can filter followers by language, country, age, and gender and select influencers that match your target audience. You can also track your campaign and see which influencer brings the most ROI.
While Shoutcart is simple, fast, and easy, it has some drawbacks. Buying a one-time shoutout from an influencer who simultaneously promotes several other brands isn't an effective marketing strategy.
While you can select influencers based on your budget, a marketplace-based model has a limited database of influencers who register on the platform themselves. So, Shoutcart houses influencers aggressively monetizing their audience — leading you to miss out on untapped creators with highly engaged audiences.
See also: alternatives to Shoutcart.
Shoutcart offers a free plan with limited features, but you need at least $100 in your account before you try engaging influencers. Paid plans start from $49/month and go up to $99/month.
Best for: Large brands looking for an all-in-one influencer marketing solution with a hands-off approach.
Free trial: Yes
Starting price: Based on your needs
Upfluence runs on an influencer marketing platform model, providing professional services (but it is in no way mandatory) and a built-in platform to run your influencer campaigns.
If you're looking for a more hands-off approach to your influencer marketing campaigns, Upfluence is the tool for you. A dedicated team of experts will run end-to-end campaigns for you, but this has a few cons:
As an influencer marketing platform, Upfluence provides tools for discovery, relationship management, outreach, monitoring, and analytics. You can build custom workflows, generate individual affiliate links, issue custom coupon codes, and manage product seeding.
Upfluence also simplifies influencer payment by sending payment requests to collect invoices and tax documents. You can integrate with most tools like HubSpot, Shopify, Stripe, and Mailchimp.
See also: alternatives to Upfluence.
See also: Grin vs. Upfluence
While there are three plans, Upfluence doesn't provide transparent pricing.