Brightlocal Pricing Plans: Is Its Pricing and Plans Worth The Value?

Are you wondering if BrightLocal is a worthy investment? You’re in the right place.

BrightLocal offers a host of features, such as review management, local search marketing, and citation building. However, users often take note of its steep learning curve, hidden costs, and limited flexibility.

This is a deep dive into BrightLocal pricing plans for small businesses, agencies, and enterprises. Do BrightLocal pricing options fit into your budget? Let’s find out.

Quick Overview of BrightLocal Pricing

BrightLocal pricing plan offers three tiers: Track, Manage, and Grow. Each plan’s monthly cost varies based on the number of active locations you want to manage. Here’s its pricing at a glance:

BrightLocal’s cost structure, while complex, offers flexibility for businesses of different scales and with varying needs. With the three-tiered plan, namely Track, Manage, and Grow, you can choose a tier with the features you want and land at a price point per the number of locations your business has.

However, if your main requirement is getting the full online reputation management tools without shelling out extra dollars, then there’s a catch. BrightLocal’s beginner and mid-tier plan, namely Track and Manage, lacks review management features. You cannot monitor, collect, or showcase reviews with its cheapest plans.

The bifurcation of pricing based on the number of active locations also makes the calculation of total expenses a bit complicated and heavy on the pocket.

Here’s a complete look into BrightLocal’s best-suited plans for businesses of different sizes:

BrightLocal Pricing: In-depth Breakdown

BrightLocal offers a wealth of features at different price points for businesses of all sizes. Here’s a deep dive into BrightLocal’s plans for small businesses, multi-location businesses, agencies, non-profits, and enterprises.

1. Small Businesses

Suitable BrightLocal plan for small businesses:

Essential features:

Additional Feature:

BrightLocal’s Track plan is a great buy for small businesses with limited operations and local SEO goals. It allows you to monitor local search results and track local rankings in organic search, including Google Local Pack. The plan also comes with Google Analytics Integration, which enables tracking and reporting of website traffic and conversion metrics.

Missing Features:

BrightLocal’s Track plan does not include review management, which is an essential feature for collecting, monitoring, and showcasing customer reviews. Businesses that want to consider it for review support may need to explore higher-tier plans.

This plan also does not include Active Sync, a feature that lets you merge data across major online platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Apple. Without Active Sync, you can’t handle multiple locations or be alerted for any unauthorized edits on your page.

Additionally, Citation Builder is available as a pay-as-you-go add-on but is not included by default. While the Track plan provides a cost-effective entry point for review management, BrightLocal’s incremental pricing and pay-as-you-go citations can be cumbersome for some customers.

2. Multi-Location Businesses

Suitable BrightLocal plan for multi-location businesses:

Essential features:

The Manage plan builds on the Track plan with additional features like Active Sync and GBP Post Scheduler. This plan is best for growing businesses with multiple locations, offering comprehensive local review management efforts and the ability to manage Google listings through a single dashboard.

Missing Features:

While the Manage plan improves upon the Track plan, the absence of Review Management tools in lower-tier plans is a significant limitation for agencies and businesses focusing on reputation management.

The steep price increase to $99/month for 6-10 locations, especially without including review management, might deter multi-location businesses on a budget as well.

3. Agencies and Consultants

Suitable BrightLocal plan for agencies and consultants:

Essential features:

The Grow plan is ideal for expanding businesses with more than 50 locations. It includes the full suite of BrightLocal’s features, including tools for Review Management, making it a comprehensive solution for reputation management and local SEO.

Missing Features

This plan comes with the entire stack of features that BrightLocal has to offer. Apart from the pay-as-you-go Citation Builder that is priced at $2/citation, you get all the features at the Grow plan’s starting price. As the price climbs up with more added locations, the final billing can get a bit expensive for expanding businesses.

4. Non-Profits

Suitable BrightLocal plan for non-profits:

Essential features (Manage Plan):

BrightLocal’s Track plan is suitable for budding nonprofits to establish local credibility, while the Manage plan is better for established organizations seeking more advanced features like Active Sync and GBP Post Scheduler.

Missing Features:

Although the Manage plan offers valuable features, the absence of Review Management tools limits its effectiveness for nonprofits focusing on reputation building.

5. Enterprises

Suitable BrightLocal plan for enterprises:

Essential features:

The Grow plan is well-suited for enterprises needing robust tools for managing review management and online presence across numerous locations. With its complete feature set, including review management and active sync, enterprises can maintain a consistent and professional digital footprint at scale.

While the Grow plan offers an extensive suite of tools, the reliance on pay-as-you-go Citation Builder services and potentially high costs for managing multiple locations might be a concern for budget-conscious enterprises.

Alternative to BrightLocal

SocialPilot Reviews stands out as a robust alternative to BrightLocal, especially for businesses seeking a cost-effective and feature-rich platform that accommodates their needs without burning a hole in their budget.

SocialPilot Reviews’ pricing is structured to accommodate various business needs. At $30/month ($25.50/month, billed annually), it offers a centralized review management dashboard to create one-time/ongoing review request campaigns via SMS and email.

SocialPilot Reviews surpasses competitors with its multi-brand and multi-location support, and its bulk contact upload feature simplifies data handling, integrations with hundreds of CRMs via Zapier, and automated workflow.

These features, paired with its stable pricing structure and user-friendly interface, make SocialPilot Reviews a standout choice for small and mid-sized businesses aiming to build their online reputation.

SocialPilot Reviews Vs. BrightLocal

	SocialPilot Reviews	BrightLocal
Pricing	Starts at $25/Month	Starts at $39/Month
Best for	Marketing Agencies, SMBs, Multi-Location Brands	Mid Size and Small Businesses,
Ease of Use		/td>
Support
Review Management
Review Collection
Review Monitoring
Share Reviews on Social Media
Review Response
Manage Multiple Review Sites
Automated AI Review Response
Automated Email and SMS Campaigns
Email Campaign Metrics
Text Campaign Metrics
Support
Chat
Email
Training
Setup
Dedicated Account Manager
Social Media Management
Scheduling
Analytics
Social Inbox
Collaboration

When it comes to BrightLocal’s pricing plans, there are a couple of things that you must keep in mind:

• None of BrightLocals’ plans include Citation Builder, an essential review management system and reputation management tool that helps businesses get listed correctly on websites and directories like Google, Yelp, etc. Putting it in a pay-as-you-go category increases the chances of surprise billings and added costs that are untenable for most businesses. 
• BrightLocal’s cheapest plan starts at $39/month, which might feel steep for small businesses, start-ups, and new brick-and-mortar stores that are just getting started. 
• The cost per location for smaller businesses can feel disproportionately high, especially when the Track plan starts at $39/month for one location but lacks essential features for scaling.
• For businesses managing 41-50 locations, the Grow plan costs $449/month, which may be prohibitively expensive compared to alternatives offering similar features at lower rates.
• The Manage plan adds only incremental features like Active Sync and GBP Scheduler but still lacks Review Management, making it a less appealing choice for businesses looking for comprehensive online reputation management.
•  The pricing structure increases steeply as the number of locations grows, with the Track plan ranging from $39/month for one location to $249/month for 41-50 locations, making it challenging for businesses to predict costs as they expand.
• Moving from the Track to the Manage plan increases costs from $39/month to $49/month for one location and from $79/month to $99/month for 6-10 locations, which can strain budgets for small businesses.

Overall, while BrightLocal offers a comprehensive range of features that are aimed at improving Google reviews and reputation management, its escalating location-based pricing structure is a turn-off.

Businesses seeking cost-effective, scalable, and feature-rich online reputation management tools may find it a barrier to entry compared to more affordable and inclusive alternatives.

On further working with the tool and crowdsourcing the reviews, we found similar responses from several users who expressed dissatisfaction with the tool.

Verified User in Marketing and Advertising

Poor support. Keep avoiding issues and no response to support tickets from 10 days ago. Started a $300 citation campaign and nothing was happening. Contacted support (got a response woo hoo) and they farm it out to the Philippines. Get a response from them saying sorry it “fell through the cracks” and then I have activity but the citations are requested are replaced with less authority citations because they cant complete it for whatever reason.

Verified G2 Review

Verified User

BrightLocal’s pricing varies based on the number of locations, with different rates for each tier. This makes it challenging for businesses to calculate their costs quickly and may discourage potential customers. SocialPilot Reviews stands out as the leading BrightLocal alternative due to its single-tier pricing structure and free plan.

Apart from its affordability, the platform also offers a full-stack of features, responsive customer support, and an easy-to-use interface. For instance, one user noted, “It is extremely easy to set up all of the users and the teams can start posting right away! The interface is very intuitive with everything you need at your fingertips.”

Verified G2 Review

Here’s what SocialPilot offers:

• Get started with SocialPilot Reviews at no cost and unlock all essential features with its 14-day free trial; no credit card is needed.
• Manage multiple businesses effortlessly with no cap on brands and scalable location management.
• Monitor, respond to, and manage reviews from all platforms in one unified dashboard.
• Generate smart, context-aware replies to reviews with AI.
• Launch personalized review request campaigns via email and SMS to new and repeat customers.
• Keep campaigns running with automated reminders to increase chances of getting reviews. 
• Filter out reviews rated 3 stars or below to a separate channel, and get in direct touch with dissatisfied customers.
• Upload contacts instantly through CSV uploads and CRM integrations, and never worry about storage limits with unlimited contact uploads.
• Connect with top platforms like Google Business, Facebook, and Zapier, and create custom APIs to fit unique business needs and workflows.

Final Verdict

When it comes to SocialPilot vs. BrightLocal, SocialPilot Reviews stands out as the superior option for businesses looking for a budget-friendly, scalable, and feature-rich online review management platform.

While BrightLocal focuses mainly on review management and local SEO, SocialPilot Reviews combines review management with advanced social media management features, including AI-driven responses, automated campaigns, and social media publishing.

Its simple pricing structure, integration with Google and Facebook, and robust collaboration tools make it an all-in-one solution for agencies and businesses aiming to boost their online visibility while staying within budget.