How Herald compares

Most tools charge for every seat and every profile, then leave a person to read every message. Herald charges for the work it does, and does it: it reads everything, drafts in each brand’s voice, sends the safe replies and brings the hard ones to people.

$396.17
a month for a multi-brand team: Herald with every feature, plus Buffer for publishing. The other inboxes compared charge a median of $735.
333 hours
of people’s time back each month, even with a person approving every reply.
$21,665
saved each month after Herald’s price.

What a month costs

A multi-brand team: 8 brands, 24 accounts, 5 people, 15,000 messages a month

Buffer
$147
Herald
$249.17
Statusbrew
$364
Herald + Buffer
$396.17
NapoleonCat
$429
Agorapulse
$735
HubSpot
$890
Sprout Social
$1,495
Hootsuite
$1,995

List prices billed annually, per month, at each tool’s cheapest plan whose inbox fits the team. Herald counts only the messages it drafts, sends or moderates; here we assume 50% of what arrives. Reading and sorting the rest is free. Herald does not publish posts, so the Herald + Buffer bar adds Buffer’s plan for publishing.

What the same work costs in people’s time

Answering every message that needs it, properly and in each brand’s voice, takes people’s time. Here is what that time costs a US employer, and what is left for people to do when Herald reads, sorts and drafts.

What the same work costs in people’s time
What the same work costs in people’s time	A few brands	A multi-brand team	A large publisher
Messages a month	3,000	15,000	60,000
People’s time without Herald	102 hours · 1 full-time person	510 hours · 4.9 full-time people	2,042 hours · 19.8 full-time people
What that time costs	$6,713	$33,567	$134,270
People’s time with Herald	35 hours · 0.3 full-time people	177 hours · 1.7 full-time people	709 hours · 6.9 full-time people
That time, plus Herald’s price	$2,397	$11,902	$47,194
Saved each month	$4,316 · 67 hours	$21,665 · 333 hours	$87,076 · 1,333 hours

Keeping just one seat covered around the clock takes about 6 full-time people, $40,695 a month. Herald reads and drafts at any hour.

Most brands do not do all of this today: they answer a small share of messages, hours later. These figures price doing the job properly. Your pay, mix of messages and handling times will differ.

How we worked it out

A person in-house costs a US employer about $39.13 a paid hour, with benefits, taxes, supervision and tools. About 60% of that hour goes on messages once holidays, sickness, training and quiet spells are taken out, so an hour of handling costs $65.76.

We assume 50% of messages need an action, as in Herald’s prices above; the rest only need reading and sorting. 10% of the messages that need action are escalated to people without a draft, and we count them at the full time a person takes alone.

Each message	Share	A person alone	A person with Herald
Read and sort one that needs nothing	50% of all messages	20 seconds	Nobody: Herald reads and labels it
Hide spam or abuse	20% of those needing action	30 seconds	10 seconds: Check what a rule hid
Answer a public comment	50% of those needing action	2.5 minutes	45 seconds: Approve or edit the draft
Answer a DM conversation	30% of those needing action	8 minutes	2.5 minutes: Approve or edit each draft

Sources, checked on 25 October 2026

What each inbox does

KeyIncludedPartlyTop tier or add-onComing soonNot offered

What each inbox does
What each inbox does	Herald	Sprout Social	Hootsuite	HubSpot	Agorapulse	NapoleonCat	Statusbrew	Buffer
How it is priced	Per message handled	Per seat	Per seat	Seats and contacts	Per seat, plus profiles	Bundles of profiles and seats	Per seat, plus profiles	Per channel
A multi-brand team, a month	$249.17With Buffer for publishing: $396.17	$1,495Rules, sentiment and AI on Advanced at $399 a seat.	$1,995Assigning messages starts on Advanced.	$890Plus onboarding: $3,000 on Professional, $7,000 on Enterprise.	$73510 profiles included, then $10 each. Workspaces need the Custom plan.	$429Self-serve tops out at 60 profiles.	$364AI capped by monthly credits; the large team would be quoted Enterprise.	$147Comments only: no DMs in its inbox.
Comments and DMs in one inbox	Included	Included	Included	PartlyInstagram DMs only	Included	Included	Included	PartlyComments only
YouTube comments	Coming soon	Included	PartlyThrough streams	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included
Assign to teammates	Included	IncludedCases, from Standard	Top tier or add-onAdvanced	Not offered	IncludedFrom Professional	Included	Top tier or add-onPremium	Not offered
AI reads and labels every message	IncludedEvery message, with why	Top tier or add-onAdvanced	PartlyRouting classifiers	PartlyPositive or negative only	PartlySentiment shown on Advanced	IncludedSpam, hate and sentiment tags	Top tier or add-onSentiment on Premium	Not offered
AI drafts replies in each brand’s voice	IncludedFrom each brand’s facts and examples	Top tier or add-onAdvanced; rewrites a person’s draft	Top tier or add-onSmart replies from Professional	IncludedReply recommendations	Top tier or add-onCustom plan only	PartlySuggestions, comments only	Top tier or add-onPremium, by credit	PartlySuggestions, one at a time
Sends safe replies on its own, by your rules	IncludedOff until you have seen the evidence	Top tier or add-onDM chatbots on Advanced	Top tier or add-onKeyword auto-responses from Professional	Not offered	Not offered	PartlyTemplate replies by rule	Top tier or add-onAI replies in rules on Premium	Not offered
Hides spam and abuse automatically	Included	Top tier or add-onAdvanced	Not offered	Not offered	PartlyOne rule per profile	Included	IncludedFrom Standard	Not offered
Brings possible crises to people at once	IncludedNever answered automatically	Top tier or add-onKeyword and sentiment alerts on Advanced	Not offered	Not offered	Not offered	PartlyForwards critical messages	PartlyAlerts by rule	Not offered
No per-seat fees	IncludedUnlimited on every plan	Not offered	Not offered	Not offered	Not offered	Not offered	Not offered	IncludedTeam plan
No per-brand or per-account fees	IncludedUnlimited on every plan	IncludedUnlimited profiles from Professional	IncludedUnlimited accounts from Professional	Top tier or add-onBrands add-on on Enterprise	Not offered	Not offered	Not offered	Not offered
Audit log	IncludedNothing in it can change	IncludedFrom Standard	Not offeredNot listed	PartlyAccount activity history	Not offeredNot listed	Not offeredNot listed	Top tier or add-onEnterprise	Not offeredNot listed
Schedules and publishes posts	Not offeredWorks alongside your publishing tool	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included

Prices and features as each vendor published them on its own site on 25 October 2026, in US dollars before tax. Plans change; tell us if something here is out of date. Product names are trademarks of their owners.

What answering well is worth

Answering every comment and DM quickly, in each brand’s own voice, is what people expect and what few teams can staff. Here is what published research says it is worth, worded no stronger than the research.

People expect an answer within hours, and most brands never give one

Herald reads each message as it arrives and, where a reply is wanted, has a draft ready before anyone opens it. When you turn on automatic replies, it answers the safe ones at any hour, inside your quiet hours and caps.

55%
of consumers expect a brand to answer a DM within six hours: 32% within the hour and 23% within six.
Emplifi Social Pulse, 2025Industry survey. Nearly 1,000 US consumers.
11.5 hours
was how long brands took on average to answer a Facebook comment in June 2026; an Instagram comment took 9.75 hours.
Emplifi, 2026Platform data. Emplifi’s benchmark of brands across industries.
7%
was brands’ daily response rate to social messages and comments in 2024, down from 8% in 2023.
Sprout Social Content Benchmarks, 2025Platform data. Sprout Social’s analysis of brands on its platform.
74%
of customer-service DMs to airlines on Facebook, Instagram and X went unanswered in the first half of 2025, and airlines are among the best at answering.
Emplifi, 2025Platform data. 38 airline brands, more than 400,000 interactions.

An answer keeps the sale

Questions about products, orders and prices have a drafted answer within minutes, while the buyer is still deciding, and Herald hides spam and abuse under your posts by your rules.

73%
of social media users say they would buy from a competitor if a brand does not respond to them.
Sprout Social Index, 2025Industry survey. 4,044 consumers in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
+16%
more registrations per ad click (1.67% to 1.94%) once harmful comments under the ad were hidden and the rest were answered around the clock.
Harvard Business School working paper, 2026Working paper. A before-and-after field study of one ad, run with a comment-management company; not yet peer-reviewed.

Being answered is what people remember

Every brand answers everyone it should, not just the people someone had time for. Herald leaves alone the comments aimed at other commenters.

51%
of consumers say the most memorable thing a brand can do on social media is reply to them.
Sprout Social Index, 2023Industry survey. 1,817 consumers in the US and UK.
+12%
more reviews, and ratings up 0.12 stars, for hotels that began answering their reviews, mostly because fewer unfounded complaints followed.
Marketing Science, 2017Peer-reviewed study. Hotels on TripAdvisor compared with Expedia, where hotels rarely reply.

Replies in the brand’s own voice keep the conversation going

Each draft is written from that brand’s voice, facts and kept examples, never a template, and passes 9 checks before anyone sees it.

+21%
more engagement on Instagram posts where the account replied to comments (Threads +42%, LinkedIn +30%, Facebook +9%). A correlation, not proof of cause.
Buffer, 2025Platform data. More than 700,000 Instagram posts; about 2 million posts across six networks.
Unique
replies, rather than repeated ones, improved both the number and the tone of later comments on retailers’ Facebook pages.
MIS Quarterly, 2024Peer-reviewed study. 37 US retailers, 10,312 posts, more than a million comments.

Trouble reaches a person while it is small

Possible crises go straight to people and are never answered automatically; crises, escalations and failed replies rise to the top of the inbox, and every action is on the record.

Silence
was the worst response to a building pile-on, and the posts likely to start one can be spotted automatically.
Journal of Marketing, 2019Peer-reviewed study. 472,995 negative posts in 89 brand communities of S&P 500 companies.
Negative
comments under an ad lowered how people felt about the brand and whether they would buy.
American Academy of Advertising, 2026Research study. An experiment with 503 people.

Your people do the work only people can do

Herald does the reading, sorting and first drafts, and hides the abuse before anyone has to read it, so people spend their day on the conversations that need judgment.

+14%
more issues resolved per hour by support agents given an AI assistant (+34% for newer agents), with happier customers and staff who stayed longer.
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2025Peer-reviewed study. 5,179 support agents at one company.
46%
of social media professionals report burnout or its early signs, and nearly half have considered quitting.
Metricool, 2026Industry survey. Nearly 1,000 social media professionals.
24 min
of moderating uncivil comments left people more emotionally exhausted and less satisfied with the job, in a randomised experiment.
Center for Media Engagement, 2019Research study. 747 people.

Surveys measure what people say, not what they did; each figure says what kind of evidence it is and links to its source. Checked on 25 October 2026.

See Herald’s plans

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