What Sprout Social Employee Advocacy is today
Sprout Social Employee Advocacy is a module that lets a company put content in front of its own staff so they can share it on their personal social accounts. Sprout's product page frames the job as “Empower employees to quickly and easily share content, then measure how much you save in ad spend”. Admins build a library from links, images, video or an RSS feed and attach pre-approved copy; employees follow the topics relevant to their role, pick something, and post it from the desktop or mobile app.
That model is worth naming plainly, because it is the fork in this whole category. Sprout's advocacy product is built around distribution of content the company wrote. Employees choose from a curated feed and share with copy that has already been approved. It is an efficient way to move one message through many accounts, and for a large communications team that is exactly the point.
The commercial shape matters just as much. Advocacy is not included in a Sprout subscription. Sprout's pricing page lists Employee Advocacy as an add-on and states that it is “Available on Standard plan and up”. So there are two purchases here, not one: the platform, then the module.
What happened to Bambu by Sprout Social
If you are reading older articles, you will find this product called Bambu. Bambu was renamed, not discontinued. Sprout's own customer communication says it directly: “Bambu by Sprout Social will become Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social on Oct. 3, 2022”. That document is the FAQ Sprout sent to existing Bambu customers before the switch, and it even includes the email template it wrote for admins to forward to their teams.
This is worth sourcing carefully, because most pages that mention the rename cite another blog rather than Sprout. Two further pieces of evidence confirm it, and both can be re-checked in seconds. The old product domain, getbambu.com, now returns a permanent redirect to Sprout's Employee Advocacy page. And Sprout's own editorial refers to “one of the best employee advocacy tools (previously called Bambu)”.
The practical details, for anyone still holding old links or documentation: account URLs on app.getbambu.com were redirected to advocacy.sproutsocial.com, custom domains moved from [name].getbambu.com to [name].advocacy.sproutsocial.com with the old address redirecting for about six months, product emails moved to the sproutsocial.com domain, and the mobile app was renamed to Advocacy by Sprout Social. Sprout also used the rebrand to tie the two products together, adding the ability to create LinkedIn advocacy posts from inside Sprout rather than switching between platforms.
So this is not a story about a tool being wound down. It is a rename plus a deeper integration into the parent platform, and the integration is the part that changes the buying decision: the more advocacy becomes a feature of the suite, the more buying it means buying the suite. If you are researching a tool that genuinely went away, LinkedIn's own advocacy features are the real example, and we cover what replaced LinkedIn's discontinued advocacy tool separately.
What it costs to get to the advocacy conversation
Sprout publishes its base plans and does not publish a price for the advocacy add-on. Both halves of that sentence matter when you are budgeting.
The published half: Sprout's pricing page lists its plans billed per seat per month, with Standard at $199 per seat per month. Since the add-on is available on Standard and up, Standard is the floor. The unpublished half: the add-on itself carries no figure anywhere on that page, and the call to action is to schedule a demo. Sprout also states no seat minimum and no contract term for it.
Put together, the honest summary is this. The cheapest published number that gets you to the advocacy conversation is $199 per seat per month, and it is not the number you will pay. That is the defining property of add-on pricing: the advertised figure is never the full figure, because you are pricing a stack rather than a product. Three managing seats on Standard is $597 per month before anyone has quoted you the advocacy module.
Authira is built the other way round on purpose. It is € 299 per month, flat, with 5 seats included and € 49 per extra seat, billed monthly. A ten-person team pays € 544, and you can read that before you speak to anyone. For how the rest of the market prices this, including the figures reported for vendors who publish nothing, the nine-vendor price breakdown is the page that maintains them.
Sprout Social Employee Advocacy vs Authira at a glance
| Sprout Social Employee Advocacy | Authira | |
|---|---|---|
| Product category | Add-on module on a social media management platform | Focused LinkedIn employee advocacy tool |
| What you license | A Sprout base plan (“Available on Standard plan and up”) plus the add-on | Authira on its own. There is nothing underneath it |
| Published pricing | Base plans from $199 per seat per month at Standard; the add-on itself is not priced publicly | € 299/month flat, published in full (€ 49 per extra seat) |
| Contract | Base plans billed per seat, monthly or annual. Sprout publishes no terms for the add-on | Monthly, cancel anytime |
| Best-fit team | Organisations already running Sprout for brand social | B2B knowledge-worker teams of 3–30 |
| Content model | Admin-curated feed with “pre-approved message ideas” employees share | AI drafts in each employee's own voice |
| Approval model | Content approved centrally before it reaches employees | No approval queue. Brand rules are applied inside the draft and each person publishes their own post |
| Networks | Part of Sprout's multi-network platform | LinkedIn only |
| Languages | Employees can “use Advocacy in their preferred language” | 5 for post drafting: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian |
| ROI reporting | Platform analytics, framed as measuring “how much you save in ad spend” | Live Earned Media Value in euros, board-ready |
Every Sprout claim above comes from Sprout's own pages, last verified August 11, 2026. No review-platform or third-party figure is used. Sprout Social and Bambu are trademarks of their respective owners; Authira is not affiliated with or endorsed by Sprout Social.
When Sprout Social is the better choice
Plenty of the time, and the clearest case is the simplest one: you already pay for Sprout Social. If your team runs brand social from Sprout today, the advocacy add-on is an incremental line item on a contract you have already justified, and it lands inside a tool your marketing team already knows. Nothing on this page beats that convenience.
It is also the better choice if LinkedIn is not the whole story. Authira is LinkedIn only. If advocacy for you means Instagram, Facebook and X as well, a multi-network platform is doing a job a LinkedIn tool cannot. The same applies if you want one vendor and one invoice covering brand publishing, social listening, inbox management and advocacy rather than assembling that from parts.
And it is the better choice if you genuinely need central approval. Sprout's model is an admin-curated library of “pre-approved message ideas”, so the copy an employee posts has been signed off before they see it. Authira has no approval workflow and no admin visibility into drafts: our brand guardrails work inside the draft rather than as a review queue. That is a deliberate design choice for small teams, and it is the wrong one for a regulated communications function that must record a sign-off. If that is you, buy the suite.
Where Authira sits
Full disclosure: Authira is our product, so read this section knowing that. Here is what it is, stated as plainly as we can.
Authira does one job. It helps a B2B team of roughly 3 to 30 people write and publish LinkedIn posts in each person's own voice. The AI drafts from the employee's own ideas and voice profile rather than handing them company copy to reshare, your brand rules are applied to every draft and blacklisted words are flagged before publishing, and the dashboard reports Earned Media Value in euros so the program has a number a finance team recognises. The price is published, flat, and billed monthly.
What it is not, so nobody buys it expecting otherwise. There is no approval workflow and no admin visibility into anyone's drafts. There is no live LinkedIn connection: Authira never touches an employee's account, which also means no scheduling and no auto-posting, and each person publishes their finished post themselves. The analytics dashboard is fed by each member's own manual export upload rather than a live API sync. And it is LinkedIn only. A communications team that needs sign-off recorded, multi-network publishing, or an admin-curated content library should choose a suite, and Sprout is a reasonable one.
If you want the wider category rather than this head-to-head, the full market roundup sorts nine tools by product type and by the team sizes each vendor will sell to, and compare Authira with each tool individually from the comparison hub.
Sprout Social Employee Advocacy alternative: FAQ
What happened to Bambu by Sprout Social?
It was renamed, not discontinued. Sprout Social's own customer communication states that “Bambu by Sprout Social will become Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social on Oct. 3, 2022,” and the product is still sold today under that name. The old getbambu.com domain now redirects permanently to Sprout's Employee Advocacy page, account URLs moved from app.getbambu.com to advocacy.sproutsocial.com, and the mobile app was renamed to Advocacy by Sprout Social. The rebrand also added the ability to write LinkedIn advocacy posts inside Sprout itself.
Is Employee Advocacy included in Sprout Social?
No. Sprout's pricing page lists Employee Advocacy as a separate add-on and states that it is “Available on Standard plan and up.” It is not part of any base plan, so a Sprout subscription on its own does not give you the advocacy product. Sprout does not publish a price for the add-on and points you to a demo instead.
How much does Sprout Social Employee Advocacy cost?
Sprout does not publish a price for it. What its pricing page does publish is the gate: the add-on is available on the Standard plan and up, and Standard is listed at $199 per seat per month. So the cheapest published number that gets you to the advocacy conversation is $199 per seat per month, and that number does not include the add-on itself. Sprout states no seat minimum and no contract term for the add-on anywhere on that page.
Can you buy Sprout Social Employee Advocacy on its own?
Not according to Sprout's pricing page, which presents Employee Advocacy as an add-on available on the Standard plan and up rather than as a standalone product. That is the practical difference between an add-on and a dedicated tool: you license the platform first, then the module. If advocacy is the only job you need done, you are paying for a social media management platform to reach it.
What is the best Sprout Social Employee Advocacy alternative for a small team?
It depends on what you are replacing. If you need multi-network social media management as well as advocacy, the closer substitutes are other broad platforms such as Hootsuite or Oktopost, because you are really replacing the suite. If the actual job is getting a 3–30-person B2B team posting on LinkedIn in their own voice, a focused advocacy tool such as Authira does that without a platform licence underneath it: a flat € 299 per month with 5 seats included, published in full and billed monthly.
How is Authira different from Sprout Social?
Scope and model. Sprout Social is a multi-network social media management platform, and advocacy is an add-on module on top of it, priced by seat after a demo. Authira does one job: it helps a small B2B team write and publish LinkedIn posts in each person's own voice, applies your brand rules to every draft and flags blacklisted words before publishing, and reports the result as Earned Media Value in euros. Authira publishes a flat € 299 monthly price and bills month to month. It is also narrower on purpose: LinkedIn only, no approval queue, and no connection to anyone's LinkedIn account.
Is Authira affiliated with Sprout Social?
No affiliation, no partnership, no endorsement. Authira is an independent product, and we name Sprout Social purely to compare the two. Every claim on this page comes from Sprout's own pages, checked in August 2026 and linked inline. Sprout Social and Bambu are trademarks of their respective owners.