15 best Hootsuite alternatives for social media management
Social media has become an integral way for businesses to connect with their customers, engage their target audience, and stay top-of-mind for prospects. But anyone who has spent time managing social media can attest that it’s a very time-consuming part of doing business today.
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Between creating unique, engaging posts for different platforms and responding to questions and comments, social media management can quickly become a full-time job. As a marketing agency, you should give yourself a way to efficiently manage your client’s social profiles, implement social strategies to boost their business, and save time— and that’s exactly what these Hootsuite alternatives are designed to help with.
What is Hootsuite?
Hootsuite, founded in 2008, is a social media management platform that streamlines the process of monitoring, scheduling, and analyzing social media content across different social channels.
Well-known as one of the earlier major platforms in the social media management space, it includes a comprehensive dashboard that allows businesses to interact with their audiences, manage campaigns, and track performance from one central location. Its features and integrations make it a full-featured solution for businesses managing multiple social media accounts.
Main features of Hootsuite
Hootsuite’s features are designed to help businesses get more out of their social media management efforts in less time. Here’s what you can expect in terms of features if you sign up for Hootsuite:
- Publishing and scheduling posts: Plan content across platforms in advance for consistent audience engagement.
- Engaging customers: Unified inbox for all networks facilitates customer interaction. Alerts and auto-replies enhance responsiveness.
- Analytics: Tools offer insights into post performance and overall strategy effectiveness. For example, you can track reach, profile visits, post engagement, and more.
- OwlyWriter AI: Save time on caption writing and generating post ideas with AI-powered writing assistance.
- Advertising features: Streamline ad creation and optimization on popular platforms from your Hootsuite dashboard.
- Activity monitoring: Monitor brand mentions and competition on social platforms for timely responses. With these tools, it’s easier to promptly respond to both positive and negative sentiments, which is an important component of using social media for reputation management.
- Integrations: Integrate with third-party applications like Google Analytics, Mailchimp and Salesforce, extending Hootsuite's capabilities.
Hootsuite cost
Hootsuite has several pricing tiers:
Professional
- $99 per month
- Includes 1 user and up to 10 social accounts
- Free 30-day trial available
Team
- $249 per month
- Includes 3 users and up to 20 social accounts
- Includes roles and permissions and the ability to assign posts to users
- Free 30-day trial available
Business
- $739 per month
- Includes 5 users and up to 35 social accounts
- Includes additional features such as saved auto-replies and approval workflows
- First tier to include Hootsuite customer support
Enterprise Custom
- Contact Hootsuite for pricing
- Includes social ads management
- Includes more robust reporting
Why should you explore Hootsuite alternatives?
Social media has given businesses of all sizes an unprecedented ability to connect with audiences and have meaningful two-way conversations that bolster loyalty, drive sales, and put brands in control of their online reputation.
Social media management platforms like these Hootsuite competitors can help you do just that for your clients, without many of the drawbacks of Hootsuite itself. Here’s why you should take the time to get familiar with alternatives to Hootsuite:
More efficient use of time
Social media management can be a time-consuming task. Creating posts, publishing them manually, monitoring engagement across platforms, and responding to comments all require significant effort. These alternatives to Hootsuite simplify these tasks, freeing up valuable time.
Improved consistency across platforms
Different social media channels may have their own culture, but a brand should still have a consistent message and voice across the board. A social media management platform makes it easier to maintain a consistent brand voice across all profiles, while accommodating the specifics of each platform. This consistency is key to building a strong, recognizable brand identity online.
Better decision-making with data
The best Hootsuite alternatives come with analytics tools that make it easier to peek under the hood of your social media campaigns to see what’s working and what isn’t. These tools provide valuable insights into the audience's behavior and preferences, and the performance of your posts. This data can guide your content strategy and help you make informed decisions to improve the impact of your social media marketing.
Improved customer engagement
Engaging with your audience on social media can help build strong relationships and foster a sense of community. However, manually tracking and responding to all comments and messages can be overwhelming. Many Hootsuite competitors streamline this process, ensuring no interaction is missed and improving response times.
Do more with integrations
Many alternatives to Hootsuite can integrate with other tools your clients may use, like CRM systems, email marketing software, or analytics tools. These integrations can make your workflow smoother and more efficient since you can manage multiple aspects of your business from one place.
15 Top Hootsuite alternatives to have on your radar
1. Vendasta
Vendasta’s Social Marketing is a robust, full-featured social marketing tool that puts everything you and your client’s need to run a revenue-boosting social strategy under one roof. Here’s what you can expect from this Hootsuite competitor:
- Post once, publish to many: Create a post and simultaneously publish it across multiple social media platforms. Streamline content sharing, save time, and ensure consistent messaging across all channels.
- Audience growth tools: Social Marketing offers ready-to-post content and post scheduling tools to help you maintain a steady stream of engaging content, encouraging more audience growth with less effort.
- Rich analytics reporting: With Social Marketing’s comprehensive analytics reports, you can gain a deep understanding of your audience's behavior and preferences. These insights empower data-driven decision-making to enhance your social media strategy and get better results over time.
- Lead search tools: Find new customers with Social Marketing's Twitter lead search. Identify and engage with potential leads on your social channels right when they’re most likely to be interested in your offering.
- All-in-one dashboard: Manage questions and comments and posts across your social profiles from a single, unified dashboard. By centralizing these interactions, you can improve response times and ensures no engagement is overlooked.
- Clickable.bio: Turn your client’s Instagram into a storefront with Clickable.bio. This feature allows you to link products directly from Instagram posts, reducing friction for customers. The result? A beefier bottom line.
- Social posting with dynamic fields: Social Marketing's dynamic fields allow for easy multi-location posting, solving a major pain-point of multi-location businesses.
- RSS feed for post ideas: Generate content ideas and keep your finger on the pulse with Social Marketing’s built-in RSS feed feature. Choose any topic you're interested in, and receive a constant stream of related content to inspire your social posts.
- Link Tracking: Monitor the performance of your shared links to see which platforms drive the most traffic and better tailor content to each platform’s audience. More clicked links mean more opportunities for conversions.
- Hands-off social media management: By using Vendasta’s white-label social media experts, the sky’s the limit in terms of how many social media management services you sell. Scale effortlessly by leaving fulfillment to pros working under your agency’s banner.
Price
Your agency price for Social Marketing depends on which Vendasta tier you sign up for. A free tier is available, and more favorable pricing is available at higher tiers. Contact Vendasta for more information about pricing.
2. CoSchedule
This Hootsuite alternative includes a range of content calendar tools that can help social media teams work more effectively together. While it doesn’t include Instagram post scheduling functionality, it offers a fair suite of social media management tools and features. Some tools include automatic notifications to keep teams on top of their social media plans, campaign analysis and management tools, and a range of third-party integrations that can help your team get more utility out of the platform.
CoSchedule can also be used to publish targeted content on Facebook and LinkedIn, and to write better headlines and copy thanks to the built-in AI-powered content suggestions.
Price
- Free marketing calendar: Free, limited functionality
- Pro marketing calendar: $29/month billed annually, or $39 per month billed monthly
- Marketing suite: Contact CoSchedule for a demo and pricing
3. Hopper HQ
Hopper HQ includes an all-in-one easy to use interface for content planning, scheduling, and performance tracking across social media profiles. It supports posting to a number of key platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin, and Twitter.
Users will appreciate the ability to schedule a variety of post types to Instagram, including reels and carousels, and the built-in team collaboration tools. Apps for iOS and Android devices for this Hootsuite competitor make it easier to manage content on the go.
Price
- Hopper HQ: $19/month, 1 user limit
- Pro: $39/month, unlimited users and additional features
4. Statusbrew
This alternative to Hootsuite helps marketers stay on top of customer engagement with a social inbox that unifies conversations from disparate platforms into one place. Statusbrew also features tools to schedule and publish content on different profiles, including the ability to set up permissions for different people on your team for better collaboration.
Then, once posts are live, this Hootsuite competitor can be used to gain real-time insights and analytics through the Social Listening interface. Finally, the ability to create UTM links makes it easier to track the performance of specific campaigns, giving marketers better insights into what’s working and what isn’t.
Price
- Lite: $69/month billed annually or $89/month billed monthly
- Standard: $129/month billed annually or $179/month billed monthly
- Premium: $229/month billed annually or $299/month billed monthly
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
5. SocialPilot
SocialPilot is a complete social media management tool that provides features for streamlined content planning, scheduling, and analysis. It supports Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Business Profile, making it easy to maintain a consistent presence across all of your clients’ social media profiles.
Benefits of using SocialPilot include bulk scheduling, social media analytics, and team collaboration tools, facilitating efficient workflows for teams of all sizes. This Hootsuite alternative also offers client management features which can be used by agencies or businesses looking to manage multiple client accounts at once.
Price
- Professional: $25.50/month billed annually or $30/month billed monthly
- Small team: $42.50/month billed annually or $50/month billed monthly
- Agency: $85/month billed annually or $100/month billed monthly
- Agency+: $170/month billed annually or $200/month billed monthly
6. Zoho Social
Zoho’s alternative to Hootsuite is a feature-rich and comparatively budget-friendly option. Key features of Zoho Social include:
- Multichannel scheduling: Plan and post content across various platforms, and use Zoho’s SmartQ prediction tech to identify the most impactful time to post.
- Social listening dashboard: Track engagement, interactions, mentions, and reviews from one place.
- Performance analytics: Gain insights from detailed social media performance reports, and improve your campaigns over time.
- Team collaboration tools: Set up roles for team members, collaborate with clients, and improve team workflows and efficiency.
Price
- Standard: $10/month billed annually or $15/month billed monthly
- Professional: $30/month billed annually or $40/month billed monthly
- Premium: $40/month billed annually or $65/month billed monthly
- Agency: $230/month billed annually or $320/month billed monthly
- Agency+: $330/month billed annually or $460/month billed monthly
Add-ons for more users or brands can also be added to all but the Standard plan.
7. Agorapulse
This alternative to Hootsuite facilitates comprehensive content scheduling, monitoring, and reporting. The Agorapulse suite of business-friendly features includes a social inbox that unifies conversations from different platforms, posting compatibility with TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and more, social media monitoring tools, and built-in analtyics to gauge the success of social media strategies.
Price
- Standard: $49/month billed annually or $69/month billed monthly
- Professional: $79/month billed annually or $99/month billed monthly
- Advanced: $119/month billed annually or $149/month billed monthly
- Custom: Contact Agorapulse for a custom quotation
8. NapoleanCat
NapoleonCat includes a full sutie of tools geared toward social media marketers. These include a social inbox, where messages from many platforms can be consolidated for easier management. Publishing capabilities enable users to plan an schedule their content on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Google My Business. There are also a range of built-in sales and marketing automations to improve workflows and save time, and detailed reporting to keep an eye on performance.
Price
Pricing starts at $32/month when billed annually for one user with 4 social profiles, and scales up according to the number of users and profiles. Custom plans start at $465/month.
9. Emplifi
Emplifi is a Hootsuite alternative that makes use of the latest AI technology to deliver its features:
- Easy-to-use interface: Allows research, scheduling, and publishing to major social media platforms.
- AI integrations: Uses GPT-3 to enhance publishing efficiency.
- Analytics and insights in real-time: Make faster decisions by seeing the performance of posts in real-time.
- UGC tools: Capture more UGC and post it to build more brand trust and foster a sense of authenticity.
Price
Contact Emplifi for pricing.
10. Buffer
Buffer is a well-known platform for social media scheduling, supporting a wide range of social platforms. It provides users with comprehensive analytics, convenient engagement tools, team collaboration features, AI-assistance for writing better captions, and a built-in tool for creating custom landing pages.
Price
- Free: Free for up to 3 channels, with limited features
- Essentials: $5/month per channel billed annually or $6/month per chanel billed monthly
- Team: $10/month per channel billed annually or $12/month per chanel billed monthly
- Agency: $100/month for up to 10 channels billed annually or $120/month for up to 10 channels billed monthly
11. MavSocial
This Hootsuite competitor offers everything you expect form a social media management platform, including post scheduling, a single inbox for comments and replies from different platforms, built-in social listening, and rich analytics. MavSocial also makes it easier to manage your asset library thanks to AI image recognition.
Price
- Pro: $65/month billed annually or $78/month billed monthly
- Business: $208/month per channel billed annually or $249/month per chanel billed monthly
- Enterprise: Starting at $499/month
12. MeetEdgar
This Hootsuite alternative focuses on helping businesses schedule their evergreen content automatically. Rather than manually planning out your social feed, you can import your content into MeetEdgar, categorize it, and it will automatically suggest and schedule content. Once approved, it automatically posts to your social profiles.
Price
- Eddie: $24.91/month billed annually or $29.99/month billed monthly
- Edgar: $41.58/month billed annually or $49.99/month billed monthly
13. Loomly
This alternative to Hootsuite supports content creation through automatic post ideas, team collaboration and approval workflows, post scheduling, and a multi-platform inbox. Loomly also provides users with post optimization tips, advanced analytics, and a content library to manage assets, making it a comprehensive tool for businesses managing multiple social media accounts.
Price
- Base: $35/month billed annually or $26/month billed monthly
- Standard: $59/month billed annually or $79/month billed monthly
- Advanced: $129/month billed annually or $172/month billed monthly
- Premium: $269/month billed annually or $359/month billed monthly
- Enterprise: Custom
14. Sendible
Sendible includes an agency-friendly dashboard geared toward managing multiple clients at once. It can be used to schedule posts, engage with audiences, and generate analytics. Integrations with Canva, Giphy, and other design platforms offer opportunities for enhanced content customization.
Price
- Creator: $25/month billed annually or $29/month billed monthly
- Traction: $76/month billed annually or $89/month billed monthly
- Scale: $170/month billed annually or $199/month billed monthly
15. eClincher
eClincher integrates a variety of features including content creation and scheduling, social monitoring, and detailed analytics. Its ability to streamline social media tasks, combined with its robust customer engagement tools, make it useful for businesses and agencies looking to enhance their online presence.
Price
- Basic: $65/month billed monthly, 10% off if billed annually
- Premier: $175/month billed monthly, 10% off if billed annually
- Agency: $425/month billed monthly, 10% off if billed annually
How to choose the best Hootsuite alternatives for your business
Choosing the best alternative to Hootsuite for your agency hinges on a few important considerations. Keep these in mind as you test out different platforms.
The price is right
Consider the cost of the platform and whether it fits in your agency’s budget, but keep in mind the balance between the cost and value. Some platforms may offer more advanced features that justify a higher price point.
Industry fit
Different industries have unique social media requirements. Make sure the platform you choose caters to your industry-specific needs, like ecommerce integrations for retail businesses and platform support for the social media platforms most relevant to your client’s industry.
Special requirements
Do you require robust analytics, bulk scheduling, or advanced customer engagement tools? Make sure the platform you pick aligns with these needs and can help you achieve your social media goals.
Scalability
Consider the Hootsuite alternative’s ability to grow with your business. As your client list expands and you sell more social media packages, you may require more advanced features or the ability to manage more accounts. Pick a platform that provides a long-term solution for your social media management needs.
Other tips for evaluating an alternative to Hootsuite
Not sure how to narrow your choice of Hootsuite competitors down? Use these variables to evaluate your options:
- Check the features: Assess the tool's features against your requirements.
- Take it for a test drive: Consider the platform's user interface and ease of use, ideally with a free trial.
- Look into integrations: Check if it integrates with your existing tools.
- Evaluate support channels: Check the quality of customer support.
- See what others have to say: Read user reviews and ratings.
The bottom line: Why users are interested in Hootsuite alternatives
Hootsuite may have some great features, but with so many excellent Hootsuite alternatives, it’s hard to ignore the platform’s shortcomings:
1. Prohibitive pricing
Hootsuite's pricing leans quite a bit pricier than other platforms, which can be prohibitive for some agencies. Plus, why pay more when you can get the same features for less?
2. Not beginner-friendly
Some users find Hootsuite to take some time to get familiar with, so people who want to jump right in and start seeing results might get frustrated.
3. No support at lower tiers
Support is an absolute must when it comes to delivering services for your clients, so the lack of support in lower pricing tiers makes Hootsuite a no-go for many.
4. No collaboration tools for lower tiers
Team collaboration features are only available on pricier plans, pushing clients to pay more than necessary just to access this functionality.
Frequently asked questions
Are there any free alternatives to Hootsuite?
Yes, there are several free alternatives to Hootsuite. For example, Buffer and CoSchedule offer free versions of their platforms, although with limited features compared to their premium plans.
Can Hootsuite alternatives integrate with other marketing tools?
Yes, many Hootsuite alternatives offer integrations with various marketing tools. For example, Vendasta’s Social Marketing integrates with PixaBay, Google Analytics, and other tools to facilitate easier social media management.