Syften

What is Syften

Syften is a specialized software tool designed for live keyword alert monitoring across various online communities. Its main purpose is to help businesses, developers, and individuals track mentions of their brand, products, competitors, or any specific topic in real-time. The platform scans popular forums and social networks like Reddit, Hacker News, X (formerly Twitter), Indie Hackers, and Slack, among others. When a keyword is mentioned, Syften sends an alert, allowing users to engage in conversations promptly. This is useful for lead generation, customer support, and brand reputation management. The company has been operating since 2019 and is based in Kraków, Poland, focusing on providing a simple, effective monitoring service without the complexity of large enterprise solutions.

Syften Features

Syften provides a focused set of features for effective community monitoring.

• Extensive Community Monitoring: Tracks conversations across a wide range of platforms, including Reddit, Hacker News, X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Indie Hackers, Slack, Quora, Stack Overflow, YouTube, and GitHub. This allows users to be present where their target audience is active.
• Real-Time Alerts: Delivers notifications with minimal delay, aiming for under one minute for platforms like Reddit. This enables users to respond to mentions and join discussions as they happen.
• Advanced Filtering: Users can create precise search queries, known as filters, to narrow down results. It supports operators like NOT to exclude irrelevant terms and site: to specify certain subreddits or websites, ensuring high-quality alerts.
• Email and Slack Notifications: Alerts can be delivered directly to your email inbox as a daily digest or sent in real-time to a designated Slack channel. The Slack integration helps teams collaborate on responses.
• Webhook Support: For advanced automation, Syften offers webhooks. This allows users to connect Syften with other applications like Zapier to create custom workflows, such as adding leads to a CRM or creating support tickets automatically.
• AI Post-Processing: Higher-tier plans include AI processing to further refine alerts and filter out more noise, improving the relevance of the notifications you receive.
• Historical Data Access: Upon signing up, users get immediate access to mentions from the past 60 days, providing instant insights into recent conversations.

Syften Pricing Plans

Syften offers several pricing tiers to fit different needs, from individuals to larger teams.

• Entry Plan: This plan is designed for individuals or small businesses that need to monitor a few key terms, such as their product name. It includes a limited number of filters.
• Standard Plan: Aimed at growing businesses, this plan offers a significantly higher number of filters. It also includes key integrations like Slack for team-based workflows. Monitoring for platforms like X and YouTube may be included or available as add-ons.
• Syften PRO Plan: This is the most comprehensive plan for power users and marketing teams. It provides a large number of filters and includes all features, such as Quora monitoring, AI post-processing for better alert quality, and webhooks for advanced automation.
• Tailor Made Plan: For enterprises with specific requirements, Syften offers custom solutions. This can include integrating Syften's data into a company's product or providing specialized data feeds for marketing teams.

Syften Free Plan

Syften does not offer a permanent free plan. However, it provides a 14-day free trial of its Syften PRO plan. This trial gives new users full access to all features, including 100 filters, Slack integration, and webhooks. A credit card is not required to start the trial, making it easy to test the service without commitment.

How to use Syften

Getting started with Syften is a straightforward process.

1. Sign Up: Begin by signing up for the 14-day free trial on the Syften website. No credit card is needed.
2. Create Filters: A filter is a search query. Create your first filter to monitor a keyword. For example, you can monitor your brand name (myproduct.com), a competitor (competitor_brand), or a problem your product solves ("how to create invoices" site:reddit.com).
3. Refine Your Queries: Use advanced operators to reduce noise. For instance, mybrand NOT lang:es will exclude mentions in Spanish.
4. Set Up Notifications: Choose how you want to receive alerts. You can get a daily email summary or connect your Slack account for real-time notifications in a specific channel.
5. Monitor and Engage: Review the alerts as they come in. Click the links to go directly to the conversation and engage with potential customers, answer questions, or thank users for mentioning your product.
6. Automate Workflows (Optional): On the PRO plan, use webhooks with a service like Zapier to automate tasks. For example, you can automatically send mentions containing "looking for a tool" to your sales team's CRM.

Pros and Cons of Syften

Pros

• Excellent Niche Community Coverage: Syften excels at monitoring developer and entrepreneur communities like Reddit, Hacker News, and Indie Hackers, which many larger tools overlook.
• High-Quality, Low-Noise Alerts: The powerful filtering system allows users to get highly relevant mentions, saving time.
• Simple and Focused: The tool does one thing—community monitoring—and does it very well, without unnecessary features.
• Real-Time Speed: Alerts are delivered very quickly, enabling timely engagement.
• Integrations for Workflows: Slack and webhook support allow for easy integration into a team's existing processes.

Cons

• Limited Mainstream Social Media: It does not monitor major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.
• Filter-Based Pricing: The number of keywords and queries you can track is limited by your plan's filter count.
• Basic User Interface: The interface is functional and clean but lacks the polished design and advanced analytics dashboards of more expensive enterprise tools.

Syften integrations

Syften focuses on integrations that support real-time workflows and team collaboration.

• Slack: You can send alerts directly to a Slack channel. This is useful for teams to quickly see and assign mentions for response.
• Webhooks: Syften provides webhook support, which allows it to connect to thousands of other applications through middleware services like Zapier, Make, or Pabbly Connect. This enables custom automations, such as creating Trello cards, adding leads to a HubSpot CRM, or sending custom email notifications.

Syften Alternatives

• Google Alerts: A free tool that monitors the web for keywords. It is good for general web mentions but is often delayed and misses most content from forums and social communities, making it less reliable for real-time engagement.
• Mention: A more comprehensive social listening platform designed for larger businesses. It offers sentiment analysis, influencer tracking, and broader social media coverage but comes at a higher price point.
• Awario: Similar to Mention, Awario provides social listening, brand monitoring, and lead generation features. It covers more mainstream social networks and is geared towards marketing agencies and brands.
• Brand24: An enterprise-grade monitoring tool that provides detailed analytics, mention sentiment, and influence scores. It is more suitable for large-scale brand management than for direct community engagement.
• F5Bot: A simpler, free alternative that sends email alerts for keyword mentions on Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobste.rs. It lacks the advanced filtering and integrations of Syften.

Syften API

Syften provides API access primarily through webhooks. On the Syften PRO plan, you can configure a webhook URL for any of your filters. When a new mention is found that matches your filter, Syften will send a POST request with the data in JSON format to your specified URL. This allows developers to build custom integrations and process the data in real-time.

To use it, you would typically set up an endpoint on your server to receive this data. Here is a conceptual example of the JSON payload you might receive:

{
  "id": "12345",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/xyz/what_is_the_best_tool_for_project_management/",
  "title": "What is the best tool for project management?",
  "content": "I am looking for a tool like MyProduct.com but with more features.",
  "source": "Reddit",
  "author": "user123",
  "created_at": "2023-10-27T10:00:00Z"
}

For more direct API access or custom data solutions, Syften offers a "Tailor made" plan where you can work directly with their team to build a solution for your needs.

Syften Affiliate program

Yes, Syften offers an affiliate program for users who want to promote the service. Partners can earn a commission for referring new paying customers. The program offers a 30% recurring commission on all payments made by a referred customer for the first 12 months of their subscription. Payments to affiliates are made via PayPal. To join, you can sign up on the affiliate page on the Syften website. Once registered, you will receive a unique referral link to share with your audience.