Sprout Social approval workflow: alternatives compared

According to Sprout's support article, Message Approval Workflows are available on the Professional and Advanced plans, and only users with the Administration Permissions Company permission can create them. A workflow is a named list of steps; each step names its approvers and whether Any or All of them must sign off. Users with Full Publishing permission can optionally be allowed to skip steps.

To submit, an author chooses a workflow in Compose and submits the post. Approvers are notified by email and in-app. Users with the Needs Approval permission must submit; users with Publish permission may. Approvers find pending posts under Publishing, in a Needs Approval view, where they can approve, reject, edit or comment.

Two behaviours worth knowing: if a submitted post is not approved before its scheduled time, it is not published and stays in Needs Approval; and posts left in the approval workflow for 90 days without a decision are automatically rejected.

External approvers, people without a Sprout account, are documented as an Advanced-plan feature, with up to three per workflow. You add their email to a step; Link Sharing must be enabled first. They receive a batched email (about five minutes after posts are assigned) leading to a consolidated stream where they can approve, reject or comment, and see a network preview.

"Not stated" means the vendor page we read did not say, not that the feature is absent. The detail behind each row:

Approvals are usually sold as part of a plan tier, and the pricing unit matters more than the headline number. Sprout charges per seat per month on annual billing, so each teammate who approves adds a seat; its external approvers do not. Hootsuite also charges per user. Buffer charges per channel, so approvals scale with the number of accounts you connect. SkedCast prices by connected accounts and includes a stated number of seats per plan rather than charging per approver; see SkedCast pricing and the full Sprout Social comparison.

For a small agency, the practical question is: who needs to approve, and are they a paid seat? If clients approve, prefer a tool where they do not consume a seat or need an account.

For agencies and teams whose clients sign off on posts, SkedCast: approval chains of up to six stages per client, client sign-off through a signed link with no account or seat, an approval step on every plan, and pricing by connected account with seats included. Its inbox handles comments, messages, mentions and Google reviews; it does not do social listening, so a team that needs listening alongside approvals is the case for Sprout’s wider suite and its per-seat price.

Whichever you pick, test it with a real post: submit it, reject it once with a note, approve it as the client, and check it publishes on time. The social media approval workflow guide covers how to design the stages.

Last reviewed 2026-09-23. Every statement about another vendor's product was read from the vendor's own page listed here on that date, and every statement about SkedCast was checked against the product's code and docs. Vendors change plans and features without notice, so confirm on their page before you buy.