Two Good Agencies.
Different in the Right Ways.
ALINE is a Spartanburg-based marketing and web design agency founded in 2011. They offer web design, brand development, SEO, digital advertising, social media, email marketing, and recruitment marketing, serving businesses and nonprofits in Upstate SC.
This comparison exists to help you decide. We'll tell you what they do well, where we differ, and which option is likely the better fit for your situation. We'd rather you make the right choice — even if that's not us.
What They Offer
Recruitment marketing
ALINE offers a specific recruitment marketing practice — helping employers attract employees through targeted campaigns. If hiring is your primary marketing priority, that's a service they've built around.
Nonprofit and community focus
ALINE works with Spartanburg nonprofits and community organizations. If nonprofit-sector experience is a priority, they have examples to point to in the local market.
Where Sidestreet Is Different
Broadcast-trained video production and photography in-house
ALINE's services cover web design, brand development, and digital marketing — but they don't offer in-house video production or commercial photography. Sidestreet handles broadcast-quality video production, commercial photography, drone aerial, and podcast production alongside marketing. For businesses where visual content is a core deliverable — not an add-on — working with Sidestreet means one team handles everything without routing production to a separate vendor.
PR and crisis communications
ALINE doesn't offer PR or crisis communications services. Sidestreet operates a dedicated communications practice — media relations, crisis preparedness, earned media strategy, executive communications — backed by a broadcast journalism background. For Spartanburg businesses facing public-facing communications challenges, or wanting to build proactive media presence in the local market, that capability is meaningfully different and genuinely uncommon in an agency this close to home.
Political campaign experience
Sidestreet has direct experience running digital strategy, earned media, and communications for political and advocacy campaigns in South Carolina — including a Spartanburg County Sheriff campaign that called its race before 7pm on election night with a 75-point margin. ALINE doesn't serve the political or advocacy category. For candidates, issue campaigns, or organizations navigating politically-charged community situations, Sidestreet's campaign experience is a practical differentiator.
Church media as a full practice
Sidestreet operates a dedicated church media practice — live streaming infrastructure, AV consulting, worship technology, social media, and production for faith communities. ALINE serves nonprofits broadly but doesn't specialize in faith sector technology and communications. For Spartanburg-area churches, Sidestreet is purpose-built for the work in a way that a general digital agency isn't.
How to Decide
ALINE Marketing is probably the right choice if: recruitment marketing is a primary need, or you're a nonprofit looking for a Spartanburg agency with similar-sector experience.
Sidestreet is probably the right choice if: you need video production or photography alongside marketing, want PR or crisis communications capability, are running a political or advocacy campaign, are a faith community, or need broadcast-quality communications work rather than digital-first marketing.
If you're genuinely unsure, talk to both of us before committing. Any agency worth working with will give you a straight answer about whether they're the right fit — and so will we.