Hootsuite is a pioneer in meeting all social media-related needs of any business. However, there are many Hootsuite alternatives with similar if not better features that come at an unbelievable price range.
Let’s dig further as to why these alternatives are worth considering.
Hootsuite is a leader, but its pricing is nothing short of aspirational. This makes using Hootsuite for small businesses, agencies, or solo entrepreneurs somewhat impossible.
Just like leaders have many competitors, Hootsuite has many alternatives. These alternatives provide similar features for managing all your social media requirements but at a much more affordable price, leveling the playing field for all marketers.
Keep reading as we’ll explore some of the best Hootsuite alternatives for those ready to expand their social media management skills.
Key Points
- Hootsuite is a social media management tool with features to help plan, schedule, and syndicate social posts.
- When evaluating social media management tools, focus on the quality of customer support, innovation, and the ability to prove ROI through robust analytics and reporting features.
- Hootsuite is a well-established leader in social media management. However, its high pricing makes it less accessible for small businesses, agencies, or solo entrepreneurs.
- Social Champ, SocialBu, and Later offer free plans with limited features suitable for small businesses or individuals starting with social media management.
Why Should You Consider a Hootsuite Alternative?
Sure, Hootsuite may have been great, but several reasons could tell it’s time to bid farewell and say hello to another platform.
Look for something sleeker, shinier, and smoother than Hootsuite’s interface. Or you may crave a social media management tool that offers more advanced analytics because who doesn’t want to know precisely how many people laughed at their latest meme?
If you’re craving more detailed insights into who’s amused by your content (and who’s just scrolling past without so much as a chuckle), it’s time to upgrade to a social media management tool that gives you the lowdown on every LOL and ROFL.
Also Read: SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING: Best Practices & Tools
You know that sinking feeling when you’re stuck in social media limbo and desperately need help, but Hootsuite’s customer support is MIA? Yeah, I’ve been there too. If you’re tired of waiting for help that never comes, switch to a platform that cares about your social media woes.
Let’s not forget about the ever-elusive “user-friendliness” factor. If you’ve ever found yourself wrestling with Hootsuite’s features, it might be time to bail ship and seek refuge in the arms of a more intuitive platform.
With so many Hootsuite alternatives for small businesses, large enterprises, and individuals, you can find a social media management tool as user-friendly as a porcupine in a balloon factory.
Areas to Focus on When Comparing Tools and Hootsuite Alternatives
Social teams should regularly evaluate whether their current tools are performing well or if it’s time to try something new. A social media team can only be as agile as its tech stack enables.
Whether you’re curious about Hootsuite alternatives or want to see what other platforms offer before deciding, comparing what they offer is always beneficial.
Here are some key areas to look for when researching new tools for your team.
#1. Quality Customer Support
Customer support is everything. And it’s two-fold for social media tools—on the one hand, you need a tool that enables you to enact timely quality support. On the other hand, your team needs to receive quality customer support.
Consider whether they have readily available customer service to help your team when sourcing a tool. You need to be able to get help quickly to ensure your tool never slows you down.
According to the Index, 58% of marketing teams say they either share social customer care with their customer service team or own it, but sometimes customer service steps in. This means you need a tool that enables collaboration between your teams—ideally with AI capabilities to speed things up, too.
#2. Strong Innovation
Marketers move at the speed of society. And tools must also follow this fast pace to help teams do their best work.
However, making these changes and evolving to keep pace with the digital space takes time. The tools that will most benefit marketing teams are those that prioritize innovation by constantly looking for ways to enhance their roadmap and evolve.
#3. Proven ROI
Proving social media ROI is a crucial success indicator that social teams must demonstrate, but it is also the most difficult.
A robust social media analytics and reporting tool enables social teams to demonstrate and prove ROI and understand the full impact of their efforts. This means offering different kinds of reports that span channels, individual post breakdowns, and paid vs. organic metrics.
A robust reporting tool enables you to demonstrate ROI to leadership and other teams. Your platform should have sharable reports for stakeholders and clear, easy-to-understand data visualizations like charts and graphs.
Consider using our comprehensive social media strategy template to streamline your efforts and maximize your chosen tool. This template will help you efficiently plan, execute, and evaluate your social media campaigns.
Lamphills Social Media Strategy Template
Best Hootsuite Alternatives
Now, let’s dive into the bone of contention about this guide.
Something happened to me some years back. I once relied so much on Hootsuite for my social media management activities but found it increasingly cumbersome. I always need help to complete tasks. But then I Switched to Sendible, which transformed my workflow. Its intuitive interface made scheduling posts effortless, and the analytics offered more profound insights into my audience. I also explored Sprout Social, which impressed me with its robust reporting features and responsive customer support. These two Hootsuite alternatives saved me time and enhanced my social media strategy, making my transition from Hootsuite a game-changer.
Keep reading as I explain more of these alternatives in more detail.
#1. Sendible
Sendible is the best alternative to Hootsuite for most users, I am a witness to that. It offers all the same features, including social media scheduling, monitoring, replying, and analytics, but at a fraction of the cost. And it has a better UI to boot.
Let’s face it: The big problem with Hootsuite is the price. Not only is the starting price four times higher than that of Sendible, but you also get less for your money.
For example, on Hootsuite, you can only set up approval workflows (a pretty essential feature for teams of any size) on the top-tier Enterprise plan, which costs thousands of dollars monthly.
In contrast, Sendible includes approval workflows in its Team plan, which is just $89 monthly.
Likewise, you can only add 5 team members and connect 50 social accounts in Hootsuite’s Enterprise plan.
However, Sendible’s White Label+ plan (which is much cheaper) allows you to connect 100 team members and 300 social profiles. That’s significantly better value.
Of course, it’s not just about cost. I also prefer Sendible’s user interface, particularly its social media calendar. Scheduling posts and tweaking them for different social media networks is a breeze.
Sendible also comes with a shared content library—something that’s missing from Hootsuite—to make it easier for you to collaborate with your team. You can store visuals, hashtags, etc., and reuse them in your posts.
But above all, I prefer most of all about Sendible because it lets you set up client dashboards. Clients can log in to their dashboard to connect to their socials and preview and approve content. Again, this is something you can’t do on Hootsuite.
Key features:
- Publishing
- Collaboration
- Content curation
- Engaging & replying
- Analytics
- White labeling.
Pricing: Plans start from $29/month, save 15% with yearly billing. Get started with a 14-day free trial.
#2. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a pricey Hootsuite alternative with some top-of-the-line features.
Like Hootsuite, Sprout Social caters to larger businesses and enterprises, and that’s reflected in both its features and pricing.
On the surface, Sprout Social is more expensive than Hootsuite as its starting price is higher. However, you must consider adding unlimited social profiles to Sprout Social’s Professional plan.
In contrast, Hootsuite’s Team plan (similar to ballpark pricing) only allows you to add 20 social accounts, and its Enterprise plan (much more expensive) only allows you to add 50. When you factor that in, Sprout Social offers much better value for money for large teams with dozens of users.
Both platforms offer all the social media management tools you need for scheduling/publishing content, managing engagement, analytics, reporting, social listening, etc.
Plus, Sprout Social also has some extra features you don’t get on Hootsuite, like social CRM that provides information on all your social media customers, a bot builder that lets you create your own branded chatbots, and some of the best social media automation tools on the market.
There are still a few things that Hootsuite does better than Sprout Social, though. For example, I prefer Hootsuite’s best time to post recommendations. It tells you the optimal publishing time for maximum reach, awareness, engagement, or traffic.
In contrast, Sprout’s ‘best time to post’ recommendations are more generic. They’re not personalized for different goals.
Key features:
- Publishing
- Engagement
- Analytics
- Listening
- Influencer marketing.
Pricing: With annual billing, plans start from $249/month and save up to 25%. Get started with a 30-day free trial.
#3. Buffer
Buffer has been around nearly as long as Hootsuite. While Buffer won’t have as many features as Hootsuite or Sprout Social, it’s well-suited to creators, individuals, entrepreneurs, and small businesses.
It offers a simplified publishing calendar and core team collaboration features, like post reviews and account management. In its analytics, it also provides your best days, types of content, and posting frequency to power more innovative publishing.
Like many social media management platforms, Buffer has an AI Assistant feature that helps you brainstorm, repurpose, and tailor posts to publish across platforms. It will also provide suggestions for posts from long-form content. What makes it unique is that, as of the writing of this article, Buffer offers their AI Assistant to all new users, including those on the Free plan. While Hootsuite is currently free of charge to its users, that offer is for a limited time while OwlyWriter AI is in beta.
Pricing: Buffer offers Free and paid plans starting at $6/month, which is highly affordable when billed monthly.
#4. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is an end-to-end social media management platform with features that cover inbox and publishing, a unified social inbox, reporting, monitoring, and team collaboration needs.
It supports publishing and scheduling on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Google My Business, and TikTok. Its intuitive, clean publishing calendar reflects its high “Ease of Use” ranking on G2. Communication features enable smooth, real-time collaboration with shared notes, tracked action items, and visibility into who is communicating what.
Agorapulse’s calendar offers other staple features, including UTMs and an AI assistant. However, one unique feature is its grid layout feature to preview upcoming Instagram posts, making Agorapulse an exciting option if you prioritize Instagram.
Pricing: When billed monthly, the standard plan is $69/mo, the Professional plan is $99/mo, the Advanced plan is $149/mo, and there is a Custom plan.
#5. Oktopost
Oktopost touts itself as a tool best suited for B2B companies looking for a complete social engagement suite.
The platform emphasizes campaign management in its calendar, with every cross-channel post published categorized with a specific campaign. The calendar is visually appealing and has color-coding and drag-and-drop functionality for quick adjustments.
Like other platforms, it offers an asset library, UTM tagging, and team collaboration functionality, such as revision history. Additionally, Oktopost emphasizes its brand safety features. Their “banned keywords” function ensures everyone adheres to brand voice and company standards.
Pricing: Custom pricing based on customer needs.
Free Hootsuite Alternatives
Free tools, including Buffer, will always be the most budget-friendly option. However, free tools also have more limited features and options—like limited profiles or no analytics options.
But if you’re looking for free Hootsuite alternatives, here are a few tools to consider.
#6. Social Champ
Social Champ is a complete social media management platform that provides a calendar, publishing capabilities, analytics, and an inbox solution.
Its free plan enables one user to connect up to three social accounts and have 15 scheduled posts active in their queue. While you have access to sentiment analysis, you can only use their AI Imaginator and AI content wizard tools three times in total.
Social Champ’s free plan offers a robust lineup of content suggestions, GIFs for content, and reports. However, your reports only gather data from two weeks ago.
This is a solid option if you want to try Social Champ or have a handful of social accounts.
#7. SocialBu
SocialBu is an all-in-one social media management solution specifically geared towards small businesses. It launched in 2018 and is a newer tool.
SocialBu’s free plan lets you connect to two profiles: Facebook, X, or Mastadon. You can publish up to 40 static posts monthly, surface hashtag suggestions, design with Canva, and discover content within the platform. However, note: This tool doesn’t offer an inbox in the Free plan.
#8. Later
Later is one of the top alternatives to Hootsuite. This advanced social media management tool offers a free and paid plan.
With most other Social Media Management tools, you’ll see a generalization in their features and platforms as they pitch themselves as all-in-ones. Like Instagram, Later’s priority has also been the visual aspect of social media. It competes with Hootsuite based on ease of use rather than the number of features by offering a seamless and intuitive interface. For Instagram specifically, Later provides unique features such as Story Scheduling via Instagram’s API (no chance of TOS Violation), Trackable Links, and detailed analytics like reach, completion rate, comment count, etc.
These insights are created explicitly according to each brand’s following as location data is used to pinpoint the time zones of your audience and then output a ‘best time to post, instead of just showing generic ones. For Integration, Smart Scheduling shows you the best times to post with Drag-and-drop enabled on a visual Instagram planner layout. Later can even find user-generated content to post, allowing you to see both content and the best timings to post on a single page, offering an unparalleled experience. And this is why Later is considered one of the top Hootsuite alternatives.
Supported Platforms
- X
- TikTok
Starting Price: $16.67 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
#9. SocialPilot
Competitive pricing, unique automation features, and an uncluttered interface make SocialPilot special. Because Hootsuite doesn’t have a Social Media Calendar and SocialPilot does, this gives you the immediate advantage of being able to easily drag-and-drop content, organize it at any frequency, and even see which posts are performing best, so they can be termed ‘evergreen content’- prime for repetition.
This Editorial Calendar shows you the schedule for content across any filter level: monthly, weekly, daily, or across all accounts vs specific ones. This level of customizable focus allows you to take a macro and micro view of what’s happening across all accounts and campaigns, not bogging you down in clutter.
Supported Platforms
- YouTube
- X
- Google My Business
Starting Price: $25.50 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
#10. Crowdfire
Crowdfire is another free, powerful alternative to Hootsuite. Businesses and individuals worldwide use this superb social media management tool to drive social media engagement and growth. It is a beautiful tool that helps you schedule and discover content for social media. In addition, you can easily manage all your social accounts from one place.
Keep an eye out for updates from your website, blog, or online shops, and design quick, beautiful posts for every update to share on all your social profiles easily. Crowdfire heavily focuses on its core social management function, emphasizing scheduling content across your social channels at the most suitable times. You can also get competitor analysis through this tool. Overall, it is an easy-to-use yet powerful tool, making Crowdfire one of the best Hootsuite alternatives.
Supported Platforms
YouTube
X
WordPress.
Starting Price: $7.48 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
Hootsuite Alternatives for Social Media Analytics
Brands’ use of social media analytics is expanding beyond the marketing team. According to The Sprout Social Index™, 76% of marketers agree that their team’s insights inform other departments.
Here are some Hootsuite alternatives worth looking into for their analytics and reports.
#11. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is one of the more specialized Hootsuite alternatives on this list. It’s meant to analyze competitor content and discover content and influencers, emphasizing journalists.
BuzzSumo can ID the most shared content and its performance for competitor analysis by network and format. Their Facebook Page Analyzer helps you benchmark and compare up to 10 Facebook pages for content engagement. If YouTube is your focus, BuzzSumo’s video marketing feature helps analyze and optimize your videos, surface popular video content by topic, ID gaps on competitor channels, and more.
BuzzSumo also has a robust influencer marketing tool. Focusing on Instagram, X, and the web, this tool helps you uncover influencers and creators who post about topics relevant to your brand.
Pricing: When billed monthly vs. annually, BuzzSumo offers a Content Creation plan at $199/mo, a PR & Comms plan at $299/mo, a Suite at $499/mo, and an Enterprise at $999/mo.
#12. Rival IQ
If you’re looking for Hootsuite alternatives solely offering analytics, Rival IQ is hyper-focused on analytics and reporting. It’s reports and analytics tools include solutions for competitive analysis, social post analysis, social media audit tools that you can compare directly to competitor performance, hashtag analytics, and social listening solutions.
Their tools can surface phrases and topics that drive social engagement in your content, helping you optimize it. The post-type analysis feature lets you see engagements by different media and posts. Custom dashboards or templates help you present your data how you want.
Pricing: They do offer a free analytics plan. They also provide a Drive plan at $239/mo for their monthly billed plans, Engage at $349/mo, and Engage Pro at $559/mo.
#13. HubSpot
While other platforms on this list are social-specific, HubSpot is a “customer platform” that connects marketing, sales, content, and customer service teams and efforts.
HubSpot enables you to see marketing, sales, and service data in one place, breaking down silos with out-of-the-box social reports and analytics. HubSpot’s reports give you a holistic view of how your platforms and campaigns perform.
HubSpot’s ability to integrate with your CRM helps you see your social media efforts in the context of your more significant business by tracking leads, new customers, and website traffic—a metric 60% of mid-management social media pros track regularly, according to the Index.
Pricing: Their Marketing Hub pricing is broken down by team size.
#14. Sprinklr
Sprinklr is a customer experience management tool for large companies and enterprises. Its marketing Analytics feature gathers data across 30+ digital channels. Those insights are added to a dynamic, AI-powered dashboard that unifies your cross-channel data and makes it visible to everyone.
Marketing Analytics enables you to look at campaigns, marketing insights, and general trends in one source of truth, breaking down silos and streamlining data. These reports can be customized to reflect content performance, for example, to understand better what performs well.
Pricing: You can only request a customized quote.
#15. eClincher
eClincher is another Hootsuite alternative. Its unique features include auto-posting, advanced publishing, recycled content, content curation, and analytics reporting. This tool can effortlessly schedule your posts on various social platforms, profiles, and pages. The unified social inbox is also of immense help. It offers a visual calendar that helps you easily plan, create, and schedule content.
After scheduling your content, you can publish it with smart queues. This will save you time and boost your social media engagement. You can also bulk upload and schedule media files from an Excel or CSV file. With this tool, you can also monitor what’s happening on social media using keywords and hashtags.
Eclincher’s user-friendly platform helps businesses grow their audiences and manage their brand reputation on multiple social networks, from posts to results. This makes eClincher one of the best Hootsuite alternatives.
Supported Platforms
- X
- YouTube
- TikTok
Starting Price: $59 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
Is There Still a Free Hootsuite?
No, Hootsuite has yet to offer a free version as of March 31, 2023.
While Hootsuite is a robust social media management tool, its starting price of $99/month (for one user and three social media accounts) prompts many creators and small businesses to explore a better alternative.
What Makes a Social Media Management Tool a Suitable Alternative to Hootsuite in 2024?
In 2024, social media management tools are expected to offer more advanced features, sleeker interfaces, and better integration options than ever before. As Hootsuite users seek alternatives, they’re looking for platforms that provide enhanced analytics, user-friendly interfaces, and seamless integration with other tools and platforms.
Bottom Line
So, the above tools are our top picks for the best Hootsuite alternatives this year—but which one should you choose?
It depends on what you’re looking for. You’ll need to weigh factors like features, pricing, supported social networks, ease of use, etc. Most of the Hootsuite alternatives in this list offer free trials, so you can always try a few out before picking your favorite.
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