7 Top Meltwater Alternatives & Competitors (2024)
Meltwater is a social listening and consumer intelligence tool for B2C and B2B brands.
It’s a helpful service used by marketing, public relations, and sales teams—but there are some great alternatives available on the market today.
In this guide, we're taking a closer look at seven of the best Meltwater competitors to consider right now.
1. Brand24: Best For Reputation Management
Brand24 is a brand monitoring solution that helps you keep an eye on changing consumer and media sentiment.
When using Brand24, you'll be able to:
- Scan social media platforms for your brand name and up to 12 keywords in 108 languages
- Research the popularity of an influencer or media source
- Engage in online conversations about your company
- Conduct ongoing consumer sentiment analysis
Brand24's AI-powered platform includes several filtering options to help users narrow down the results it provides, too. This way, you can create notifications for impactful brand mentions without getting overwhelmed by data.
How Much Does Brand24 Cost?
Brand24 plans start at $99 per month ($79 per month if billed annually) for a single user.
Brand24 vs. Meltwater: At A Glance
| Brand24 | Meltwater | |
| Starting price | $99 per month ($79 per month, billed annually) | Custom quotes |
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| Useful for | Marketing teams | Marketing, PR, and sales teams |
2. Critical Mention: Best For Media Monitoring
Critical Mention is a media intelligence platform. It helps brands track public relations efforts across several different sources.
If Meltwater’s media monitoring features are interesting to you, Critical Mention is worth a closer look.
You can use the platform to:
- Conduct real-time scans for brand mentions across 2,500+ international media outlets
- Analyze the sentiment of those brand mentions
- Track specific keywords that are important to your company
- Assess the value of earned media coverage, press releases, and other publicity
- Compare media data side-by-side with information from your Google Analytics account
- Find contact information for journalists and bloggers
Interestingly, Critical Mention also scans paywalled content for your brand name. If you’re mentioned in a gated industry whitepaper, for example, they’ll catch it.
How Much Does Critical Mention Cost?
Critical Mention plans are customizable based on each user's requirements. You’ll need to get in touch with the company for a price quote.
Critical Mention vs. Meltwater: At a Glance
| Critical Mention | Meltwater | |
| Starting price | Custom quotes | Custom quotes |
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| Useful for | Marketing and PR teams | Marketing, PR, and sales teams |
3. Exploding Topics: Best For Trend Research
Exploding Topics is a trend tracking tool that lets you easily see the most popular topics in 30+ industries.
It's a good choice for anyone who wants Meltwater's trend research capabilities, but doesn't need all of the social media features that go along with it.
We use a mix of AI technology and human data expertise to source and evaluate trend data from conversations happening all over the internet—on blogs, in the news, via forums, and more.
Our users can then leverage this data to:
- Establish benchmarks based on competitors’ popularity
- Monitor fluctuating interest levels in a brand or service
- Review historical trend data going back 15 years
- Track the price of trending e-commerce products
- Effectively compete against startups and industry leaders
- Plan new marketing and advertising campaigns
- Better understand—and deliver on—what target audiences want
We update our database daily, too, so you're always getting the most up-to-date information about the important trends in your industry.
How Much Does Exploding Topics Cost?
There's no cost to begin exploring the Exploding Topics database right now—simply start by searching for a term on our homepage.
To benefit from everything that Exploding Topics has to offer, you'll want to select one of our paid Pro plans.
All plans unlock full access to our database, and offer a variety of other features as well depending on plan type. These features include:
- A searchable trend library
- Expert trend reports
- The meta trends analysis tool
- A trending products database
- A trending startups database
- The Exploding Topics API
Exploding Topics Pro plans begin at just $39 per month (billed annually), and you can start with a seven-day trial for only $1.
Exploding Topics vs. Meltwater: At a Glance
| Exploding Topics | Meltwater | |
| Starting price | $39 per month, billed annually | Custom quotes |
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| Useful for | Marketing, PR, sales, and product teams; large and small businesses | Marketing, PR, and sales teams |
4. Sprinklr: Best For Social Media Management
Sprinklr is a comprehensive online listening and social media management platform.
You can use the tool to help your company:
- Improve its overall share of voice in key industry conversations
- Conduct competitor and consumer intelligence research
- Monitor media coverage
- Publish content to 30+ social media channels
- Analyze the sentiment of customer reviews
- Report on key marketing and social media analytics
Many Meltwater alternatives focus on what’s happening outside of your company—but Sprinklr looks inward, too.
The platform makes it easy to turn your entire team into an army of brand amplifiers. Select plans include an advocacy center, where you can:
- Collect social post content and ideas from team members
- Create an approved feed of content for colleagues to share with their own social networks
- Track internal engagement and reward active contributors
Sprinklr also lets you pull in data from customer service chats and calls. This could help you further optimize and enhance marketing efforts.
How Much Does Sprinklr Cost?
Access to Sprinklr’s social media monitoring tools starts at $299 per month, billed annually.
If you’re only interested in the ability to analyze internal customer experience data, you can get access to those features for $249 per month (also billed annually).
Sprinklr vs. Meltwater: At a Glance
| Sprinklr | Meltwater | |
| Starting price | $249 per month, billed annually | Custom quotes |
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| Useful for | Marketing, PR, and customer service teams | Marketing, PR, and sales teams |
5. Talkwalker: Best For Customer Insights
Talkwalker is a robust consumer intelligence platform. It allows users to monitor brand sentiment through online listening and direct customer communications.
When using Talkwalker, it’s possible to:
- Evaluate what others are saying about your brand online
- Monitor product or company reviews
- Track media mentions (including print and broadcast channels)
- Evaluate metrics collected through customer surveys
- Assess the content and sentiment of customer support interactions
Talkwalker is similar to Brand24 in that it supports over 187 languages. This makes it another solid choice for international brands.
How Much Does Talkwalker cost?
There are four Talkwalker plans to choose from, but the company doesn’t publish its pricing online. You’ll need to get in touch with their sales team to schedule a demo and get a price quote.
Talkwalker vs. Meltwater: At a Glance
| Talkwalker | Meltwater | |
| Starting price | Custom quotes | Custom quotes |
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| Useful for | Marketing, PR, and customer service teams | Marketing, PR, and sales teams |
6. Brandwatch: Best For Influencer Marketing
Brandwatch is a multichannel social media marketing platform.
You can use Brandwatch's social media management tools to:
- Schedule posts
- Launch paid advertising and data-driven marketing campaigns
- Monitor brand mentions across social media and the news
- Respond to social media messages in a unified inbox
The Brandwatch platform is also great for finding influencers to work with. The tool makes it simple to browse over 30 million influencer profiles and see information like location, total follower count, and engagement rate.
Once you find influencers that look like a good fit, you can log your communication with them right in Brandwatch—including uploading contracts and payment details.
How Much Does Brandwatch Cost?
Brandwatch prices are only available through a custom quoting process. You’ll need to get in touch with the company to discuss your options.
Brandwatch vs. Meltwater: At a Glance
| Brandwatch | Meltwater | |
| Starting price | Custom quotes | Custom quotes |
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| Useful for | Marketing teams | Marketing, PR, and sales teams |
7. Zoominfo: Best For Sales Intelligence
Zoominfo is a sales engagement and prospecting tool for B2B brands.
If you like Meltwater's contact database, then Zoominfo might be a great alternative.
With a Zoominfo account, you can:
- Find B2B customer contact data
- Build a pipeline of leads
- Analyze and streamline communications with prospects
- Build outreach automations
- See contacts’ job and title updates
- Estimate a lead's potential responsiveness
There are some marketing features available in Zoominfo as well—though it's not as robust as Meltwater. You can use it to:
- Run digital ad campaigns
- Track website visitors
- Collect first-party data through online forms
- Connect with prospects through website chat features
How Much Does Zoominfo Cost?
Zoominfo separates their sales and marketing tools into different plans. Pricing isn’t public, so you’ll need to get in touch with a company rep for a quote.
You can also opt to provide your business contacts’ information and email signatures to Zoominfo in exchange for limited access to the platform.
Zoominfo vs. Meltwater: At a Glance
| Zoominfo | Meltwater | |
| Starting price | Custom quotes | Custom quotes |
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| Useful for | Sales teams at large or small businesses | Marketing, PR, and sales teams |
Conclusion
For an all-in-one solution for social listening and marketing, Talkwalker, Sprinklr, and Brand24 are some of the best alternatives to Meltwater.
If you don’t need a full suite of social media tools, though, it’s worth evaluating other competitors that offer a more specialized feature set.
From Exploding Topics for in-depth trend analysis to Critical Mention for media monitoring, finding just the right intelligence tools for your workflow can help you improve profits, market share, and overall brand sentiment.
