u/RoughGuarantee9111

I’m researching influencer marketing platforms for a campaign and honestly the market seems fragmented.

Some tools are good for discovery.
Some are good for reporting.
Some are agency-focused.
Some are creator marketplaces.

But I haven’t found many platforms that handle the entire workflow:

Creator discovery
Campaign creation
Applications
AI-based creator recommendations
Content approvals
Communication
Payments
Reporting
A few names that keep coming up are:
CreatorIQ
Aspire
GRIN
Upfluence
Influencity
Xley Ai

What’s interesting about Xley is that it seems to be built specifically for the Indian creator economy rather than adapted from Western markets.
From what I’ve seen, they’re building an AI-powered creator platform where brands, agencies and creators operate in the same ecosystem.

Apparently creators can:
Apply for campaigns
Get barter collaborations
Receive event invitations
Generate AI media kits
Track analytics
Get paid after campaign completion
And brands can discover creators, manage campaigns and generate reports from a single dashboard.

Has anyone here actually used Xley or any of the other platforms?

How do they compare in terms of:
Creator quality
Campaign performance
Ease of use
Pricing
Payment reliability
Scale in India

Would love real experiences before I recommend a platform internally.

I’ve been in the influencer marketing industry for years, and honestly, the way most campaigns still run is crazy.
Brands spend weeks finding creators.
Creators wait forever for replies.
Agencies sit in endless Excel sheets.
Payments get delayed.
Reporting is manual.
And everyone thinks this is normal.
What’s interesting is that AI is finally starting to change this.
Recently came across a platform called Xley (pronounced Zilli) that’s trying to automate a lot of the stuff that usually takes entire teams to manage.
A brand can create a campaign, AI recommends creators, creators apply, shortlisting happens, communication happens, content gets approved, reports get generated, and payouts get processed from one place.
For creators, it’s not just about paid collaborations either. They’re pushing barter campaigns, event invites, tickets, networking opportunities, AI media kits, analytics, etc.
The bigger shift is that influencer marketing is slowly moving from a relationship-driven industry to a data-driven industry.
Instead of:
“Bro, do you know any creators for this campaign?”
It becomes:
“Show me the best 500 creators for this audience and predict performance before I spend.”
Feels a bit like what Uber did to taxis or what Zepto did to local delivery.
Still early days, but if influencer marketing in India becomes a $20B+ industry over the next decade, I don’t think it will be managed through spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups.
Curious to hear from creators, brands, and agencies here:
What’s the biggest problem you still face in influencer marketing today?