Social Listening is now a crucial asset for any company to grow in a competitive market.
You need to be present where your customers are. You must stay close to the ground and engage quickly with users, to build a strong online reputation.
But it can quickly become time consuming to monitor mentions of your brand on all the platforms that are now available, from social media to online communities, and check every source.
You need a tool that can handle all the monitoring for you, and keep you updated on new conversations as they happen. A tool to lift that weight for you, so that you can focus on engaging with your customers and prospects.
To help you choose the right tool, we regularly test and benchmark the different tools available.
Today, we will analyze buska as the Best social listening alternative to Awario  :

buska.io vs Awario

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

How to Signup ?

• buska offers a 7 day trial with 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 you get instant access to the latest mentions.
  The UI is intuitive and there is no need for detailed tutorials or guided onboarding

Awario also offers a 7-day trial to test its services. Note that during free trial you have very limited features available (no twitter mentions, no sentiment analysis…)
You sign up with your email and awario generates a password for you.
Once sign up is done, user arrives on the dashboard. You then create your first alert, and must choose between two options : Standard & boolean.
Boolean search appears complex and technical. It is not user friendly for unexperienced users.

Standard search requires user to fill in many information : keywords, exclusions, languages, sources, locations… Luckily, there is a tutorial video.

Conclusion :

Both tools offer a free trial. Buska is easier to setup. On Awario, the keyword setup requires technical knowledge of boolean logic, or extensive information. You can get targeted results but with quite a learning curve.
– if you want a very simple onboarding and quick access to mentions of your brand, buska is the best social listening alternative to Awario’s onboarding experience.
– if you like technical and complex settings and are not in a hurry to begin, you can opt for Awario. 😉

What sources are monitored

The tools both monitor different platforms.

🔍 With buska , you get access to :

• Linkedin

  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Youtube,

  • TikTok

  • Pinterest

  • Instagram

  • Reddit

  • Quora

  • Medium

  • Google Search

  • Google News

  • File Search (Ultimate plan)

  • IndieHackers
    and more…

Awario offers less options. The number of sources available to monitor is limited :

• Reddit

• Youtube

• News/Blog

• Web

• Facebook

• Instagram

• Twitter

Awario is the only tool that monitors Vimeo though.
Note that mentions from Facebook and Instagram require user to connect their account.

How to get notified

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

buska lets 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.

Awario allows you to receive reports and alerts for new notifications :

• via Email

• via Slack

You can specify if you want to receive alerts Daily or Weekly. There are no real time notifications.

Conclusion :

buska offers more options and « plug’N’play » solutions for notifications.
You can receive alerts on many different communication channels.
Awario lets you setup email notifications and an option to receive alerts on Slack. 

What other features they offer :

Sentiment Analysis :
Both Tools allow you to track sentiment analysisThis lets you understand at a glance how the audience feels about your brand.

Analytics :
Both tools give you access to visual stats of key Metrics
Buska offers more insights and visual charts of the social listening activity on the dashboard.
Awario and buska let users export PDF reports.

Topics Cloud

Awario shows most used topics, in a word cloud.

Document Search :
Buska lets you search for mentions of your brand or keywords in any publicly shared document.
It can be a pdf Report or Study, a Competition Analysis table, a Top list image where your brand is quoted….

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.

Buska also sends designed emails when there are new notifications of mentions of the brand.

Awario’s design is much more « traditional » and flat. It displays a list of mentions with a split screen to show the detail of mentions.
The tool has a dedicated Reports/analytics screen.

How much does it cost ?

🔍 buska targets startups, entrepreneurs and small businesses and aims for a self serve approach. It offers 3 plans :

• Free Trial – 7 days to test all 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 budget and needs of the target audience : from the Solo Founder to the fast growing Scale up and Growth teams.

Awario prices much more expensively and clearly targeted at Enterprise clients :

The lowest tier plan « Starter » plan starts at $49 / month.
it includes 1 user only and 3 keywords. 
It has a limit of 30 000 mentions/month
In comparison, buska’s pro plan allows for 3 users and 3 keywords, and unlimited mentions.

buska’s Pro Plan is 5 times less expensive than Awario with more social listening capabilities.

Awario’s plans go up to $399 / month for the Enterprise plan with 100 topics to monitor
For $149/month, the « Pro » Plan gives you access to 15 keywords and 10 users, like buska’s Ultimate plan.

Which tool to choose ?

We have seen that 🔍 buska appears to be the best social listening alternative to Awario in 2024 .
The tools target different audiences:

buska is a dedicated Social Listening tool, tailored for SMBs and Scale-ups.
It tracks numerous resources, and offers dedicated social listening features like sentiment analysis and real time notifications.

Awario doesn’t track mentions on Linkedin and is limited in sources. It relies heavily on reporting, with a dedicated section. Its pricing makes it more suited for midcaps and Enterprise companies.

If you are looking for a powerful social listening tool for your company and get the best money to value tool, buska is clearly the way to go.

if you want a mention reporting tool with a budget over $150 / month, and don’t really care for extensive social listening, then Awario can be a good option.