10+ Best Hootsuite Alternatives for 2022

Best Hootsuite Alternative: If you’re thinking being a Social media manager is absolutely cool, then you’re getting it wrong. Being a Social Media Manager requires much more than managing social media platforms. Scheduling the posts, supervising the designs, dealing with client queries, handling the crisis, and much more. This is where the importance of social media management tools can be observed. 

Hootsuite covers all the responsibilities of a social media manager and helps to organize the works in a much better way. In this article, we will learn about What Hootsuite is, how it works, it’s advantages, disadvantages and some alternatives of Hootsuite for 2021. 

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite can be regarded as the digital representation of a social media manager. Any aspect that a social media manager covers, Hootsuite is a social media management platform for that. Let’s take a look at its pros:

Social media monitoring: This platform allows you to monitor multiple social media accounts. Monitoring as in? You can check the followers, likes, interactions, communications and keep up-to-date information like a media manager. 

Scheduling posts: As a social media manager, scheduling posts is a tough job. Timing of your scheduled posts is more important because you need to know when your audience will be online so that they can see your posts.

Hootsuite allows you to schedule your posts for later for multiple social media accounts on different platforms. 

Social media analytics: Hootsuite comes with an inbuilt social media analytics function. You’ll be able to take a look at your brand’s performance over a time period and compare it to the previous performance once you are signed in. Increased no of followers, boosted engagements and increased interactions, you can check it all. 

Team management and collaboration: Hootsuite comes with an inbox from which you can send messages to your team members and mention them on different media platforms.

You can assign messages to each team member so that no queries go unattended. This feature is very important for a team handling multiple queries at the same time. 

Customer service: Using the inbox feature, the team members will be able to view and respond to customer queries and attend to any complaint. This app is the key to respond promptly to customer queries without getting lost. 

So, this is what Hootsuite does for you if you are thinking about an all-in-one application to have better management over social media platforms for your business. 

Now, to some of the users, Hootsuite is the ultimate tool for social media management. However, like every other great application, it also has its disadvantages. You need to consider that before starting to use Hootsuite. Let’s take a look at the cons: 

Price: This is the biggest disadvantage of Hootsuite. It is expensive. Of course, it has a free plan but that is limited to 30 days and it allows only 3 social channels, 30 scheduled posts, and 1 user.

It has a professional plan which is the cheapest. It costs $25 per month and allows only one user. It has no team user facility.

Out-of-date and clustered dashboard: You can not sort which mention from your client or team you have dealt with. You can not archive, mark or sort which is read and which one is not. You need to have a $1548 per year plan to do that. This is sometimes overwhelming. The multi-column layout is too cluttered.

Same UI: In Spite of having the kind of funding that makes a great application, reviews say that the application is old-fashioned, buggy. Apart from a mini layout and font change, there hasn’t been many changes over the years.

No pause button for bulk scheduled posts: Sometimes we need a pause button in our lives. Suppose it is just a normal day and you have scheduled your posts just like any other day. Suddenly a big event happens and you have to pause your scheduled posts or else it may look inappropriate.

You can’t pause already scheduled posts in Hootsuite. You can download your posts to a CSV file and delete the scheduled posts and upload all of those later. But, isn’t it too much of a hassle? A pause button would’ve been nicer.

1. Editing previews: It is nice to see a preview of the posts before you post those. However, you can’t edit previews in Hootsuite.
2. Moving drafts from scheduled posts: You have created a post and drafted it. Once you schedule it, you can’t move it back to draft if you change your mind. The only option is to delete the scheduled post.
3. Media library: Hootsuite has a media library of free images. However, you can use that for a $249 per month enterprise plan.

So, with every perk comes predicaments. Hootsuite also happens to have some drawbacks that have allowed other alternatives to come into the picture.

Here are some applications that are giving tough competition to Hootsuite in 2021 and some of these are really great alternatives for the aforesaid.

Some of these applications are free and some of them are charged after the trial period. If you are one of them who, for one reason or another is looking for an alternative to Hootsuite, then let us take you through the introduction of such applications. We have compared the features and the prices so that you can understand what you are signing up for:

 Agorapulse

Agorapulse is suited for businesses that handle lots of customers. It offers a simple CRM that manages and tracks your customers. 

Best for: Large teams, Customer support, large business, enterprise, content marketing, agencies. 

Features: Agorapulse comes with features quite similar to Hootsuite. 

• It has a unified inbox
• You can set data for all the contacts
• Ad comment management
• You can upload posts in a bulk
• You can schedule posts
• You can share the calendar with clients
• It has team collaboration tools 
• It comes with customized inbox filters
• It includes a chrome extension
• It has mobile apps
• You can go through the analytics and reports for your brands
• You can go through search result data of your brands

Price: Agorapulse offers a 28 days free trial. The package break-down is given below.

Buffer: Hootsuite Alternative

It is a slick tool and cheaper than Hootsuite. It beats Hootsuite in the case of customer support. If you are a start-up then Buffer is a good alternative for you. 

Best for: Startups, business, individuals, small business and agencies

Features: Buffer is the best Hootsuite alternative found till now

• This application is best for content creation
• You can schedule posts
• You can set reminders
• You can check analytics for your brands 
• You can schedule social media posts
• White-label reports
• Set demographics for audiences
• Tailored posts
• Shop grids
• Scheduling recommendations 
• Mobile application

Price: Buffer offers 14 days free trial. The package breakdown is given below. Buffer Publish has 4 plans.

Socialpilot

Socialpilot is three times cheaper than Hootsuite as its plans are much more pocket friendly. 

Best for: Digital marketing, content marketing, small startups, individuals, small teams, small business.

Features:

• Social media posts scheduling
• Bulk scheduling for posts
• You can curate contents
• You can customize contents for social media platforms
• Social inbox
• Social media calendar
• Canva design tool
• RSS feeds
• Team collaboration and management
• Client management 
• Analytics for social media platforms
• Mobile application

Price: Socialpilot offers 14 days free trial

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is built for businesses and teams that manage thousands of flowers or customers from a single inbox. Arguably it has a better CRM than Hootsuite.

Interesting Read: 12 Best Sprout Social Alternatives for 2021

Best for: Startups, Large businesses, Marketing teams, Enterprise, Customer support, Higher education, Large non-profits.

Features:

• Smart inbox
• Scheduling and publishing post tools
• Social media marketing tools
• Team collaboration
• Analytics for social media accounts
• Competitor analytics
• Social CRM
• Paid and organic campaigns 
• Onboarding toolset
• URL shortener
• Mobile application
• Team management

Price: Sprout social offers 30 days of a free trial

eClincher

eClincher has an advanced social media management tool. It gives you more advanced insights. It is much cheaper than Hootsuite and budget-friendly. 

Best for: SMBs, social media marketing, individuals, startups, team collaboration, e-commerce. 

Features: 

• Unified social inbox
• RSS feeds
• Posts scheduling and publishing tools
• URL shortener
• Canva integration
• Social media monitoring tools
• Media library
• Analytics for social media accounts
• Google analytics support
• Shuffle and copy-paste
• Curating contents
• Mobile application
• Chrome extension

Price: Eclincher offers 14 days free trial.

Sendible

As per user reviews, Sendible meets the business expectation much better than Hootsuite. The primary criteria being that it is much cheaper than Hootsuite. For ongoing product service, Sendible is a better option too. 

Best for: SMBs, startups, individuals, small businesses, agencies

Features

• Built-in analytics for social media platforms
• Automate social media presence
• Content promotion calendar
• Scheduling posts
• Recycling of contents
• Brand monitoring built-in
• Dashboard for publishing tasks

Price: Sendible offers a 30 days free trial plan. You can get unlimited scheduling for 12 social media accounts for $29 per month.

SocialReport

SocialReport offers a lot of analytical and management features that Hootsuite lacks and is also cheaper than Hootsuite. 

Best for: Agencies and marketing teams

Features:

• Post scheduling
• Brand tracking
• Social media monitoring
• Content management
• Report and analytics
• Team collaboration
• Automated publishing
• Multi-account management
• Customer support and engagement

Price: SocialReport offers a 30-days free trial. The pricing starts at $49 per month.

Zoho Social

“Easy to use and overall very flexible”, that is the most popular review for Zoho social. It also comes with lots of features at a lower price than Hootsuite. 

Best for: Individuals, Startups, Small businesses, Agencies, Digital marketing

Features:

• Publishing calendars 
• Content queues
• Bulk schedule
• Listening dashboard
• In-line DMs
• Real-time engagement tools
• Team collaboration tools
• Analytics
• Custom reports
• Chrome extension
• Mobile apps  
• Pricing

Price:

A brand is one social media profile that can be used across all of Zoho Social’s 7 supported social media channels. EG: 1 brand = 7 social media accounts

Post Planner

Again it comes to the price aspect when you want to compare Hootsuite to Post planner. This application gives almost all the features that Hootsuite has at a much lower price.

Best for: Individuals, Small teams, Startups, SMEs, Non-profits, Grassroot organizations

Features:

• Hashtag and RSS monitoring
• Content performance predictor
• Automated publishing calendar
• Post optimization for different social platforms
• Auto recycling best content
• Single dashboard
• Real-time post editing
• Performance metrics
• Team collaboration
• Content curation

Price:

Post Planner has 3 pricing plans:

TweetDeck

Hootsuite has a cluttered dashboard and inbox when it comes to Twitter. So, if you are looking for something that doesn’t look like the Matrix, then TweetDeck is the one. 

Best for: Teams, Individuals, Startups, small businesses, a Twitter account.

Features: 

• Twitter interface with columns 
• Team collaboration and management
• Advanced features for notification
• Activity monitoring tool
• Multiple twitter account activity management

Price: TweetDeck is free.

Social Blade: Hootsuite Alternative

Social Blade is a publicly accessible platform that is perfect for startups, budding influencers and media enthusiasts.

It provides detailed insights into analytics and performance as the basic feature. However, if you buy a premium membership, you can get access to many other features, as listed below!

Best for: Influencers, Start ups, individuals, content planners, analytics teams, brand, live streaming, YouTubers, and other media.

Features: 

• Consulting services
• Partnerships
• Social channel growth
• Video ranking tools
• Reports
• Social media analytics             

Price: Social Blade has a free trial period

Final Words

Apart from all the above-mentioned applications, there are plenty of other alternatives available for Hootsuite. So, if you are looking for the best alternative for Hootsuite, consider comparing the price along with all the features that you need before choosing the cheap and best.