Social media is essential for connecting with friends, staying updated on news, discovering new interests, making sharing moments, and engaging with communities easier and more fun. This interconnectedness highlights social media marketing opportunities, as businesses can directly engage with their audience, build brand loyalty, and reach a broader market.
Leveraging social media platforms for marketing allows companies to create targeted campaigns, gather real-time feedback, and stay ahead of trends, ultimately driving growth and success.
But social media marketing is a challenging feat. It’s not something you can stay on top of 24/7 which is why you need a good social media marketing tool to help create, manage, and do proper social media marketing.
In this regard, Hootsuite is a great choice, but Hootsuite is not the only cool kid on the block. There are many Hootsuite alternatives that can help boost your social media marketing efforts.
But before we break down these Hootsuite alternatives let’s check out all about Hootsuite first. After that, we can proceed to the Hootsuite alternatives.
Here’s all you need to know about Hootsuite.
Hootsuite is a comprehensive suite of social media marketing tools. It was founded in 2008 by Ryan Holmes, a Canadian computer programmer, and internet entrepreneur, and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.
It is widely recognized as one of the leading social media marketing tools, with over 800 Fortune 1000 companies relying on it for their social media marketing efforts.
Their user base is around 200k+, including big names like Allianze, Adobe, IKEA, and U-Haul.
A glimpse at the services they offer will help you understand why such big-time companies rely on them.
Hootsuite’s wide range of tools is exactly what businesses need to keep up with the fierce social media campaign war out there.
They offer the following:
Other features include:
They also have a free set of tools for:
Visit here to check each tool and here to check out demos and tutorials.
In terms of industry, Hootsuite is best suited for:
Hootsuite offers a 30-day free trial. You also have the option to skip the trial and pay only 50% of the cost upfront for a limited time.
It’s important to note that although the pricing for all these plans is listed on a monthly basis, billing is done annually. Also, the final pricing is subject to change as applicable tax amounts are not reflected in the above pricing.
For a more comprehensive overview of the plans visit here.
Pros
Cons
And with that let’s move ahead to review the 6 Hootsuite alternatives you need to know about.
Our aim in this important segment is to provide you with valuable information on the top available Hootsuite alternatives. To make the overview easy to understand, we will cover criteria such as features, ease of use, target audience, quality of customer support, pricing, and review quality. We believe these factors will help you make an informed decision.
Finally, we will conclude with a comparison of how these Hootsuite alternatives stack up against Hootsuite.
Let’s kick off this Hootsuite alternatives list with the first item on the list.
SocialBee is a software development company specializing in social media management and lead generation, founded by Ovi Negrean and Vlad Hosu in 2016.
For a breakdown of the features, visit the feature page.
It’s an easy-to-use social media management tool that’s easy to set up and integrate with social media profiles.
They also provide a demo.
Much like Hootsuite SocialBee is an all-in-one platform so it’s suitable for the same industry categories Hootsuite offers with the addition of those on a smaller budget.
They offer customer support via live chat and email. You can also book a call with them to get technical support.
SocialBee provides a 14-day trial without the need for credit card info. They also steer clear of contracts and offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The plans are categorized as Standard and Agency, with the Standard plans starting at $29/month and the Agency plans starting at $179/month.
According to the reviews, users find Socialbee to be user-friendly and super efficient in automating and managing their social media content.
SocialBee is one of the top Hootsuite alternatives because both integrate with the same social media platforms.
However, what makes SocialBee stand out from Hootsuite is its advanced AI features. While Hootsuite’s OwlyWriter is useful for content generation, SocialBee’s AI assistance and co-pilot features help create and manage entire social media strategies. Additionally, SocialBee offers more advanced scheduling features than Hootsuite.
Most importantly, SocialBee stands out for its price, offering excellent value for money compared to Hootsuite.
Sendible was founded by Gavin Hammer in 2009. It is a software company specializing in social media marketing and other services.
Visit their feature page for more information.
Sendible has a slight learning curve in terms of features. However, they do have a user-friendly setup for scheduling and customizing posts for different social media networks.
You can also book a demo.
It’s a good tool even for small businesses but it’s best for agencies looking for white-label services.
They offer email and live chat customer support on all of their plans along with customer success webinars.
Sendible offers a 14-day free trial without credit card info for their Creator and Traction plans.
Plans start at $29/month with monthly billing similar to SocialBee.
For a plan comparison, visit here.
The gist of reviews is that Sendible is a cost-effective solution offering excellent services, particularly customer services.
There are many reasons why Sendible is one of the top Hootsuite alternatives. Sendible offers considerably lower, transparent pricing and rich features along with other stand-out features like the Smart Post feature where you can customize messages per platform in one single view, and the approval feature. These advanced features are either absent in Hootsuite or only offered in the higher tier plans where the price is steep.
Sendible also has a shared content library making collaborations a breeze. The white-label services let users set up dashboards for their clients, another feature not available on Hootsuite.
The only downside to Sendible would be its lack of AI features.
Agorapulse is a software development company founded by Emeric Ernoult and Benoit Hediard in Paris in 2011, specializes in a wide range of social media marketing services.
Agorapulse is easy to set up and has a user-friendly UI/UX that boosts productivity, saving 50% of content-creating time according to their metrics.
Agorapulse is best suited for agencies, social commerce specialists, and consumer goods and retailers.
They have a live chat option for customer communication with an average 30 minutes or less response time.
They also provide a demo.
Agorapulse is free to use for 30 days with no credit card requirement.
They also offer a free plan with limited monthly usage. Paid plans start at $69/per user/per month, billed monthly.
For a plan comparison visit here
Also, agencies with more advanced needs are welcome at Agorapulse.
The reviewers testify to the effectiveness of Agorapulse in their daily workflows and also to how well their customer services are.
Agorapulse claims that they’re the only social media management and scheduling tool that enables quick and easy tracking of sales, traffic, and leads generated from organic social media posts. They also provide more features and attentive customer support than Hootsuite.
Agorapulse also has much more expansive collaboration and approval features than Hootsuite.
And even though it’s more expensive than the previous 2 Hootsuite alternatives we looked at it’s still cheaper than Hootsuite itself.
Pally is a social media management platform founded by Tim Benetto, who built it over the last four years. They are headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.
Pally’s features help make it a very easy-to-use, straightforward social media management tool.
Its low cost makes it suitable for small-level businesses and solopreneurs.
Pally offers customer service via email. You also have the option to book a call with the founder for a demo.
Pally offers a free plan forever with limited usage. They have only one simple paid plan offered at a low price of just $18/month, per Social Set. A Social Set includes 7 social accounts across each of the 7 social networks Pally supports.
For additional team members, it’ll be $29/month, per user.
You can also try the premium features for free in their 14-day trial.
To compare features in the free and paid plans visit here.
As a whole reviewers are happy about how user-friendly and budget-friendly Pally is.
Pally isn’t as robust as Hootsuite. It misses things like social listening tools. But it has unique features not seen in Hootsuite. Pally lets you see your visual content calendar in monthly view and not just in weekly view like Hootsuite.
Also, the integration of the media library with the calendar makes scheduling as simple as just dragging and dropping images and videos to the required date, an excellent feature absent in Hootsuite.
And the greatest advantage of Pally is the low price making it one of the top Hootsuite alternatives on this list.
Buffer is a platform offering social media marketing services and was founded by Joel Gascoigne in 2010.
In comparison to Hootsuite, it’s much simpler and easy to use.
Buffer works for businesses of all sizes but it’s best suited for simpler teams.
Buffer offers 24/7 customer service via email and social media. They also have a help center for solo troubleshooting.
Buffer offers a free plan for up to 3 channels. Paid plans start from $6/month per channel. The plans can be customized according to the number of channels.
They also provide a 14-day free trial.
To customize plans and/or compare features, we recommend visiting their pricing page.
According to the reviews Buffer offers good and helpful social media management features that are easy to use.
Apart from the usual social media networks, Buffer lets you schedule content to Mastodon, a feature not available on Hootsuite. And unlike Hootsuite, it offers a generous free plan making it one of the top free Hootsuite alternatives to try. Even the scheduling workflow and approval process are simpler and better than Hootsuite’s.
However, it should be noted that a content curation tool is missing in Buffer.
ContentStudio is an all-in-one social media marketing platform founded in 2017 by co-founders Waqar Azeem and Muhammad Azhar.
ContentStudio has a slight learning curve because it’s a feature-rich platform. But once you get the hang of it, it’s fairly easy to use.
ContentStudio is best suited for agencies, brands, and marketers irrespective of size.
They offer customer services via email and live chat.
They offer a 14-day free trial without credit card info. They do not offer a free plan.
Paid plans start at $25/month with 1 user.
To compare features in each plan, please visit here.
Generally, most reviewers are happy about the wide tool range it offers.
ContentStudio comes with a “best time to post” and AI writer features much like Hootsuite. But one main reason it’s one of the top Hootsuite alternatives to look out for is that it offers managing and publishing blog posts and not just social media content. This is great for content marketers looking for a one-stop solution.
ContentStudio is also much better at content curation than Hootsuite because of the Discovery feature, another reason qualifying it as one of the top Hootsuite alternatives.
The only downside would be the lack of a social listening tool and free plan.
And that wraps up our list of Hootsuite alternatives.
So there you have our list of top Hootsuite alternatives to know about. All of these Hootsuite alternatives offer good features that rival those of Hootsuite.
Ultimately, the best choice depends on your unique needs. Whether you prioritize features, ease of use, industry suitability, quality of customer service, budget-friendliness, or user reviews, selecting the right tool will streamline your workflow and offer numerous benefits.
Understanding what matters most to you will guide you in making an informed decision. Because it will help enhance your social media management efforts helping you churn content consistently. After all, avoiding social media marketing mistakes, creating good social media designs, and doing good marketing is what increase brand exposure.
According to a whopping 86% of industry professionals, social media helped boost their brand exposure. It can yield the same results for you. So whether you choose Hootsuite or any of these Hootsuite alternatives, make your social media marketing game strong.
