Brandwatch

Pros: What I liked most about Brandwatch was the Security, Analytics and Reporting capabilities, along with the strong data coverage and customizable reports.

Cons: What I liked the least about Brandwatch was the Bugs and Issues. At the beginning of the year, I had some problems with bugs when uploading data to the platform, and when there were updates to the Dashboard layout, I felt like things became a bit unstable at first.

Pros: Brandwatch brings analytics and reporting together in one place, making it genuinely easy to use. Having everything in a single platform saves time and removes the hassle of jumping between tools — it just works.

Cons: If I had to name one downside, it would be the cost. Brandwatch sits at the premium end of the market, and for smaller teams or organisations with tighter budgets, that price point can be a real barrier. That said, I want to be clear — I don't think the cost is unjustified. The platform delivers.

Pros: I enjoyed the vast amount of data that Brandwatch provided. The easy downloadable graphs made my research very easy. The customer support was also very helpful when I had issues.

Cons: There was not much about Brandwatch that I did not like. I wish the data extended further back for certain searches.

Pros: The reporting function and using labels to make data valuable. The approvals process works well for our team with one person reviewing and publishing.

Cons: The inability to make alt text mandatory when scheduling a post. Linked In sentiment not being included when exporting engage reports.

Pros: I enjoyed the benchmark function of Brandwatch, it was easy to read and understand when doing a competitor analysis. The publish function was also very straight forward and easy to use.

Cons: Social media reporting in measure was a bit of a struggle with limitations on what you could report on vs. only in-platform.

Pros: It’s a pretty solid tool, especially when it comes to analysis and the volume of data it can handle. The dashboards are really helpful, and support is usually responsive. It also has a strong cost-benefit for us, and the fact that it’s aligned with data protection standards like LGPD brings a lot of security, it’s even helped us move forward and close deals. There are still some usability hiccups and cases where manual adjustments are needed. Pros: strong data volume, fast insights powered by AI, good cost-benefit, data security/compliance, and flexibility to work across different clients.

Cons: Some usability friction in more complex analyses, reliance on manual tweaks at times, and limited coverage in certain data sources.

Pros: The dashboard templates were a genuine highlight. Brandwatch offers a wide range of pre-built components that made it relatively fast to set up a functional dashboard and start visualizing data. The sheer variety of chart types and layouts available meant that for most of our research questions, there was a component that could do the job. The Categories feature was particularly valuable — it allowed us to structure what was otherwise a tangled web of conversation topics into clean, analyzable segments. For a project dealing with five distinct conversation topic areas across three species, this feature alone saved significant time and brought a level of clarity to the data that would have been very difficult to achieve manually. Brandwatch's AI summarization tool, Iris, was also useful when working through large volumes of mentions. Being able to quickly surface key themes from bulk data helped us move faster during the analysis phase and gave us a starting point for deeper qualitative investigation.

Cons: $8d

Pros: I love the AI-generated themes + narratives for the mentions. It really helps organize the mentions for the period into distinct categories.

Cons: Less flexibility around the reporting period parameters. Sometimes I want to look at a specific timeframe, and it won't let me.

Pros: Strong data coverage across social, news, and forums. Flexible query builder, customisable dashboards, and excellent historical data. Reporting and export features work well for sharing insights across teams.

Cons: AI capabilities feel underdeveloped compared to where the market is heading - Brandwatch still relies heavily on manual setup and analysis. Sentiment analysis can also be inconsistent, especially for non-English content.

Pros: The variety of graphs I can build, it's flexibility and ability to customize, its comprehensive data.

Cons: Sentiment analysis remains an issue - they tell me they're working on it but I haven't seen anything yet that suggests they've found a solution - which is actually bizarre, because it seems like integrating an LLM should be an easy way to solve it, and Iris is already part of the tool.

Pros: Brandwatch is an awesome social media management tool, especially when it comes to reporting and posting. Reporting is fantastic as you can see all your social media performance in one place with clear dashboards, making it easy to track engagement, reach, and overall results without pulling data manually. The reports are also customisable, so you can quickly create insights that are useful for your team or stakeholders.

Cons: Some downsides to Brandwatch is the social media channels can occasionally disconnect, which can interrupt posting or data collection. It’s also difficult to organise reports into folders (event or stakeholder), making things harder to manage at scale.

Pros: What I liked most about Brandwatch was the depth and flexibility of its social listening capabilities. It provides a really comprehensive view of conversations across multiple platforms, which makes it easy to track brand sentiment, emerging trends, and audience behaviour in real time. The ability to build custom queries and dashboards is a major strength, allowing you to tailor insights specifically to your campaigns or reporting needs. I also found the visualisation tools useful for presenting data in a clear and engaging way, especially when sharing insights with stakeholders who may not be as data-savvy. Overall, it feels like a powerful, all-in-one tool for understanding digital conversations at scale.

Cons: One of the main drawbacks of Brandwatch is that it can feel quite complex and overwhelming, especially for new users. The learning curve is fairly steep, particularly when it comes to building accurate queries and filtering out irrelevant data. Without proper onboarding or experience, it is easy to miss key insights or misinterpret the data. Additionally, the platform can sometimes surface a lot of noise, requiring manual refinement to ensure the results are actually useful. Performance can also be inconsistent at times, with slower load speeds when working with large datasets. While it is a powerful tool, it often requires significant time investment to use it effectively.

Pros: I find Brandwatch fairly easy to use and appreciate its segmentation capabilities. It's easy to apply segmentations in dashboards and see them in widgets to compare different topics, which is really helpful, especially for crisis monitoring. It's also easy to share dashboards with internal teams and clients, and is the go-to tool to use when sharing these internally as they are easy to navigate.

Cons: I feel like the user interface could use an upgrade, issues with loading sometimes and live dashboard links. I prefer other platforms for in-depth topic analysis and monitoring.

Pros: Amount of sources and effectiveness in monitoring several channels/topics, thus getting relevant and helpful outputs.

Cons: Might be a bit confusing given all the modules available. Some confusion as well with Listen/consumer research modes.

Pros: The UI! It's such a simple platform to use, allowing you to breakdown data so much with a few clicks. There is also so much customisation you can do to any query through the dashboards, tags, custom data, or any of the other features.

Cons: Its platform coverage - wider access to Instagram out side of just public posts, or individual pages would go a long way as the social conversation shifts away from X with recent changes to the platform. Also, any inclusion of TikTok would make this platform leaps and bounds better than any competition.

Pros: Brandwatch has a lot of customization options, making the tool fairly flexible across a variety of use cases. Our customer service rep has always been responsive and willing to help tackle issues.

Cons: Customization comes at the cost of complexity. This is not a tool I feel could be effectively leveraged by a non-technical persona.

Pros: What I liked most about Brandwatch was how much time it saved me when tracking conversations online. It pulls data from different platforms into one place, so I didn’t have to jump between multiple tools. I also found the dashboards really useful for spotting trends, checking sentiment, and creating reports quickly. Once you get used to it, it becomes a reliable tool for understanding what people are saying about your brand and competitors.

Cons: What I liked least was that it can feel overwhelming at first, especially if you’re new to social listening tools. There’s a learning curve when it comes to setting up queries and getting the most accurate results. Some reports also need manual adjustments

Pros: It has very good coverage of text-based channels and I like that it has contracts in place with them

Cons: The UX is still very clunky and non-intuitive. I feel like they've overcomplicated the process (queries, dashboards, add widgets etc) but the 'quick' version lacks depth to the extent that it is never worth the time saved, to choose this option. The coverage of video content is poor.

Pros: Brandwatch provides data about social media profiles that enables me to give accurate reports to my clients. The ability to customize the reports to my needs.

Cons: I dislike the onboarding process, it felt like the sales person made the sale, and then disappeared when I needed assistance.

Pros: Brandwatch used to be a solid analytics & social listening tool. The dashboard was well-structured, reporting was comprehensive, & sentiment analysis was useful. It offered valuable insights into brand perception, competitor monitoring, & market trends. At its core, Brandwatch is a powerful tool, but no level of analytics justifies the kind of predatory business practices I’ve now experienced.

Cons: Deceptive renewal tactics & a customer-unfriendly approach. Brandwatch quietly slipped an auto-renewal clause into what was a manual renewal agreement, locking us into another contract cycle without explicit consent. Previously, contract renewals were handled with an account manager reaching out—but now? No heads-up, no automated reminder, just a silent renewal & a big invoice. When challenged, they deflected with "standard practice" excuses, despite past renewals being explicitly manual. If a company relies on fine print trickery rather than product value to retain customers, it speaks volumes.

Pros: It's a handy tool with very strong social media monitoring and analytics capabilities

Cons: advanced features necessitates some time to learn, else it's perfect

Pros: We love all the integration with the different platforms we use but especially WhatsApp.

Cons: There was nothing wrong with Brandwatch for us. It was just a little more then we needed. We are a small business and don't need so much power.

Pros: Brandwatch is a piece of cake to set up reports and keep an eye on social media conversations.

Cons: Can be a bit of a pain in the neck to use and takes a while to get the hang of, especially for beginners.