Online presence has become a crucial asset for any company to grow in a competitive market.
Your business needs to be where your customers are. You must stay close to the ground and engage quickly with users, to grow a positive online reputation.

But with more and more channels, from social media platforms to online communities, it can quickly become time consuming to monitor mentions of your brand and check every source.

You need a platform that does all the monitoring for you, and keeps you updated on new conversations about your company. So that you can focus your marketing on engaging with your customers and creating good content.
To help you choose the right tool, we tested and compared 2 great tools including the best Mention alternative this year:

buska.io vs mention.com

So let’s dive in and see how they can help you :

How to signup

• buska offers a very simple and quick onboarding (under 2 minutes).
  When you sign up, you are asked to type the first keyword you want to monitor and get instant access to the latest mentions. 

• Mention’ s experience starts with many different screens

  • asking about your personal information (mandatory)

    • what you want to do with the tool

    • the keyword you want to monitor

    • the sources you want to track

    • the countries and languages

    • the social pages you want to check

    • the review websites to monitor

    • the name of your alert

Conclusion :

if you want to monitor your company and start listening rightaway, buska’s onboarding experience is suited for you.
if you have a very specific research to do, targeting a precise social page or language, and feel buska is not the best Mention alternative, then you can try it again and compare.

What sources are monitored

Both tools monitor social media and the internet to find your keywords. Sources available will vary depending on the plan you choose.

🔍 On buska , you get access to :

• Linkedin

  • Facebook (Pro Plan)

  • Twitter

  • Youtube,

  • TikTok (Pro Plan)

  • Pinterest

  • Instagram

  • Reddit

  • Quora

  • Medium

  • Google Search

  • Google News

  • File Search (Ultimate plan)

Mention only gives access to Tiktok, Youtube, Pinterest for the highest tiered plan, upon request.
You can also get an extra add-on to monitor US Radios and Channels upon request.
You can define specific social pages or websites to monitor.

🔍 buska is the only tool that monitors also :

• Quora

  • Medium

  • IndieHackers

  • File Search (mentions of your brand in publicly shared documents)

Conclusion :

• If you are looking for an extensive monitoring of your brand cross platforms, buska will provide more sources.

  • If you want to target mentions on specific social pages, mention.com gives you the option to do so.

How to get notified

Both tools let you setup notifications to be alerted when a new mention of you keywords pops up online.

🔍 buska allows you to easily setup notifications via :

• email

  • browser

  • slack

  • discord

  • whatsapp (soon)

Just turn toggles on and connect your accounts, and you are set.
You’ll receive alerts (weekly, daily, instant – depending on your plan) when it finds new mentions.

Mention allows you to define notifications via :

• email

  • in app

  • browser

  • slack

You can setup spike notifications and select different sets and types of notification messages.

Conclusion :

🔍 buska notifications are easier to setup and offer more channels.
While ✩ mention.com allows you to define spike alerts and fine tune notifications

What other social listening features they offer :

• Sentiment Analysis :
  both tools give you access to sentiment analysis, to know how people « feel » about your brand

  
  

• Team Management :
  🔍 buska and ✩ mention .com let you add members to your team and define management roles

  buska allows you to even create multiple teams in the ultimate plan
  mention. com lets you define workspaces upon request

  
  

• Social Publishing :
  you can post on social medias within ✩ mention. com.
  🔍 buska will include social engagement features soon
  

• Reports :
  Both tools give you access to visual stats
  Mention.com allows you to create complex and very detailed reports.

How social listening looks

The tools show very different designs :

🔍 buska opted for a sleak minimalist design, focused on showing the mentions of the brand.
– The Dashboard shows you the Key metrics and latest mentions.
– The Feed shows all the mentions you have. You can filter by source, language, or sentiment.

The design of its competitor is much more « conservative »; using the classic codes of B2B SaaS design, with very functional screens and many tabs, lists.

In terms of Design and user Interface, Buska is way beyond with its minimalist yet very functional design, and therefore appears as the best Mention alternative this year !

How much do the social listening tools cost ?

🔍 buska targets startups, entrepreneurs and small businesses and aims for a self serve approach. It offers 2 plans :

• Free Trial – 7 days to test the features of the Pro Plan.

• Pro Plan – with 3 keywords. It adds Facebook, Tiktok as sources, and gives more notification options and Sentiment analysis

• Ultimate Plan – with 10 Keyword, adding File Search, Team Management and more features.

The prices are aligned with the capabilities and needs of the target audience : from the Solo Founder to the fast growing Company.

Mention. com pricing model is more expensive, with a starting Solo plan ($49 / month) that is 5 times more expensive than buska’s Pro Plan.
Their higher tier plan « Pro Plus » that doesn’t include (TikTok, Youtube, Pinterest) is 50% more costly than buska’s ultimate plan

The pricing is more complex, as it is based on a number of keywords AND volume of mentions each month. All plans do include the social publishing feature.

For the pricing and affordability, buska remains the best Mention alternative.

Which social listening tool to choose ?

We have seen that 🔍 buska and Mention have different approaches and target different audiences:

• buska is tailored for Small & Medium businesses and growing startups,

  • its competitor is more suited for midcaps and Corporate companies with large marketing analysts teams

If you are looking for a social listening tool for your company or want to track your competition easily, with a friendly experience. And get the best money to value tool to stay updated on your mentions and engage quickly with your audience, buska is clearly the way to go.

if you have very targeted research needs and you are looking for extensive reportings, with a budget for marketing data research, then ✩Mention can be a good option.