In our search for a replacement for Agora Pulse (agorapulse.com), we found Status Brew (statusbrew.com), which offers content scheduling. I want to leave Agora because of its instability and willingness to use its customer base as lab rats. Part of why we stay is because the social media they schedule has of late not been a major source of traffic, which I think I have a plan to fix. After Agora’s last major update, they wanted my feedback after the fact, at some point, I am going to publish in detail why I do not recommend them. While my focus is on restoring Pinterest traffic (every day, I see an increase in traffic as every minor fix has an impact), I also want to restore Facebook traffic, which led to me looking at Status Brew. We were considering the Plus plan, starting out monthly, and if we liked things, we would move on to the annual. Luckily, they offered a free trial, so we only lost time—as if I had much to spare.
Before we tried scheduling content through Status Brew, we had a moderator test and gave her opinions.
No Option to Filter All Hidden Comments Automatically: Users need to manually label comments for filtering, as there is no automatic filter for hidden comments.
Creating and Editing Top Comments: Only the user who creates the post can add a top comment, and it cannot be edited or added after the article is published.
Mentioning Commenters in Replies: Users need to manually toggle the name of the commenter when replying; otherwise, the commenter’s name will not appear in the reply.
Bulk Delete Comments: I have found the bulk delete option, but it only works if you click “all” in a certain post. This will give you the bulk delete option, but not in the inbox itself. The inbox does not offer bulk delete or bulk hide options.
Here are the thoughts from my business partner:
After evaluating Statusbrew as an alternative to Agorapulse, I encountered numerous issues that led me to question its viability as a robust social media management tool.
The platform is visually appealing with a sleek app and web interface, but it suffers from critical functional flaws. The app requires manual refreshing to update content, a significant setback for users needing real-time updates. The web version, although stylish, experiences similar performance issues, frequently buggy and unreliable.
Data integration, particularly through Excel, is misleadingly promoted. The actual process is cumbersome, failing to match the ease and efficiency promised by Statusbrew. This misalignment extends to the rules system designed for keyword filtering. It’s overly sensitive, identifying strings of characters rather than whole words, which results in legitimate comments being incorrectly flagged or deleted.
Support response times are inconsistent, ranging from immediate to non-existent, complicating timely management of social media tasks.
Given these experiences, I cannot recommend Statusbrew. While it appears promising on the surface, the underlying issues with functionality, customer support, and data privacy are too significant to overlook.
Another major headache with Statusbrew involved the FAQs and support process, particularly concerning data import and the rules system for filtering content. Whenever I encountered issues, the initial direction was to consult the FAQ section. However, the advice provided there often proved ineffective, leading to further complications rather than solutions.
Take the Excel import functionality, for example. Statusbrew provides a template and instructions in their FAQ section that are supposed to streamline the import process. However, when I used their exact template, the import failed. Reaching out to support, I was instructed to abandon the official guidelines in favor of a custom, unorthodox method that involved compiling all data into a single column. This approach was not only counterintuitive but also prone to errors, drastically increasing the potential for mistakes during data entry. Typically, social media scheduling tools use multiple columns for different elements like URLs, images, and intro texts, which keeps the data organized and manageable. The workaround provided by Statusbrew felt messy and inefficient, a stark contrast to the structured formats I’ve experienced with other systems.
The rules system was similarly frustrating. Designed to automate actions based on specific keywords, it instead caused significant disruptions. For instance, if we set a rule to exclude the word “he,” it indiscriminately blocked any word containing “he,” such as “the” or “there.” When this issue was raised with support, the solution they offered was another workaround that involved adding spaces and modifying the rule configuration in ways that were not mentioned in the FAQs. Even then, the rules remained unreliable.
These experiences highlighted a recurring theme with Statusbrew: a gap between what’s advertised and the reality of the platform’s functionality. The advertised advanced rules and straightforward data import processes are in practice, glitchy and poorly implemented. This disconnect not only undermines the usability of the tool but also erodes trust in the support system, which too often resorts to patchwork solutions rather than genuine, lasting fixes.
The array of minor but persistent issues with Statusbrew further compounded my frustrations. A notable example was the integration with Google Drive. When attempting to connect Google Drive to Statusbrew, an error popped up stating that the publisher was not verified. This is a basic security step that reassures users about the safety and legitimacy of the connection, but Statusbrew had overlooked it.
When I raised this issue with their support, their response was dismissive. They advised me to ignore the warning and proceed by clicking on “advanced” to bypass the alert. This casual approach to what I considered a significant security concern was alarming. I stressed the importance of having their Google Drive integration verified by Google to eliminate such warnings and ensure a smoother, more secure user experience. However, the support team downplayed the issue, suggesting it wasn’t a major concern.
This interaction was emblematic of a broader pattern with Statusbrew: the reliance on workarounds rather than actual solutions. Time and again, when faced with functionality problems or glitches, the response wasn’t to fix the underlying issue but to offer a temporary bypass. This approach not only fails to address the root of the problem but also leaves users navigating a maze of stopgaps, which can be both time-consuming and ineffective.
Such practices reflect a mindset within the company that prioritizes quick fixes over thorough, long-term solutions. For users seeking a reliable and professional tool, this can be a major deterrent, as it undermines confidence in the product and the company’s commitment to quality and user security.
Despite the challenges I faced with Statusbrew during the nine-day trial, there’s potential for the platform if significant changes are made. If Statusbrew can address the current glitches, adopt a more transparent approach, and shift their support mindset to be truly customer-focused, it could transform into a reliable tool worthy of long-term commitment. A year might be enough time for the company to make these critical adjustments. If they can bridge the gap between their current state and the level of functionality and support that users expect, Statusbrew could indeed emerge as a serious competitor in the social media management space. For now, I recommend checking back in a year to see if these improvements have been realized, making the platform more robust and user-friendly.
When I asked for his thoughts, I hoped for a paragraph or two. But it really is a post on its own. I was unaware that the moderation issues were worse than I thought.
As for my own thoughts on Status Brew:
They had categories, which have become a necessity in our line of business. However, the categories are not specific to the site/social media platform. This could lead to a wrong selection since content times are different. An accident could lead to posting too soon after another scheduled post, which Facebook does not like.
With new content, I generally schedule drafts as they are published. Doing this with Status Brew led to a few problems. Notable, it messes up the featured image with Facebook if the link has not completed publishing. With Agora, it gives an error message until it is published. Status Brew tries to debug through Facebook when you try to schedule, whereas Agora only debugs once it sees an active link. I had to go to Facebook’s debugger to scrap it again and fix it.
The other problem with drafts is that you must reselect site/social media + queue every time you do a draft. I usually publish and schedule new content twice a day. For some sites, it might only be one piece, for which this would be fine. But it can be as many as 4 – 8 per day for others. I wish it stuck to the settings until I changed them, which is how Agora works (one of the few pluses).
While it would force a change of habits, I was still willing to move forward with this company.
We were willing to overlook everything above but encountered a big hurdle when loading content in bulk. Most companies require a CSV file. with a general format of URL, text, and date/time (if you don’t have a queue set). From the surface, it looked the same for Status Brew.
Status Brew has the date and text. But, for the URL, that option is only for media. I would later find their solution was to put it to put the text and link in the same column, with the URL under the text, which would lead to a lot of work on my end since those are two different columns. I am sure I could have found a solution to do that. I put in a ticket, letting them know this was the final hurdle to us signing up. But, it took them two days to tell me this, and as it turns out, I was not the priority.
Status Brew wanted all staff working on Reddit Listening and not support.
Side note: he would provide a solution after an hour after responding to my employee.
This was a deal breaker for me, and I was no longer interested in moving forward. However, if I had known about the moderation issues, I would not have even tried the bulk uploads. But it seems there is too much priority on adding new features and not ensuring that existing ones work. I get that, at the time, I was on a trial and not a paying customer (I was very close). But, having all teams on deck to test a new feature is concerning. Funny enough, they did not contact me until two hours after my employee had contacted them. Never mind, my response waited longer than my employee’s. But before support contacted me, we had already removed our social media accounts. Another negative to note, despite the chat showing that responses would be sent to my email, that never happened. So, I would not know they had responded unless I was logged in. Also, it is important to note that support is only active during the day in India. This is ok if you get high traffic periods during their active hours, but not so much where I am should something go wrong.
As I logged back into Status Brew today to get some details to finish this article, the tech who had worked on my issue noticed me logging back in and asked if his solution worked and if he could help with anything else. So, clearly, they had no clue we disconnected everything. There are just two days left on the trial. I will update this post if there are any details of note.
There is a positive aspect to all of this. If you read earlier, I fired some people. So, I had to take on their responsibility until I get my business back in order.. The one thing I can thank Status Brew for is their FAQ, which is not great to search. Let me know if I need to set UTF-8 as the default character encoding for Windows. But they did not tell me how to do that. I have been editing after bulk scheduling for the last few months. So, they saved me some time there.
My search to find a replacement for Agora Pulse continues.