7 Reasons NOT to use Hootsuite
By 
Hootsuite Review & Hootsuite Alternatives (Completely rewritten for 2019)
I update this article regularly. If you notice anything that has changed, please contact me.
I first published this article back in 2012. It started off as "4 Reasons NOT to use Hootsuite". I added an extra 3 reasons a little later.
I had no idea that this post would get so much traction. It's had over 842,000 views and over 850 comments. And I’ve heard it’s certainly known within Hootsuite. I believe that they couldn’t understand why it became so popular!
But it was time for an update.
In some ways, not much has changed. But some things have, and I want this article to be as helpful as possible to you.
There are so many social media management tools out there. It's so confusing for many entrepreneurs, social media teams and business owners and my aim is to help you make the right decision for you.
For some of you, Hootsuite might be the perfect tool.
In fact, many people have read this article and have become Hootsuite users.
If you read through my points and don't find that my reasons affect your situation, then Hootsuite could be the tool for you. And of course, there are lots of great things about Hootsuite. I still recommend it to some of my clients.
But this article focuses on the problems and disadvantages and why you might not want to use it.
The title of this post may sound a little provocative but I aim to be constructive in my criticism.
I have had a lot of experience with Hootsuite over the years - it was my preferred tool at one point.
Back in 2012, I wrote this post out of my personal frustrations with it.
What I find really surprising is that not much has changed.
There aren't that many new features...
The user interface is very similar (despite a lick of paint).
It's still clunky and buggy.
One thing has changed - the prices have rocketed up.
The pro plan has gone up by 7 and a half times since I wrote this article!
To be honest, that's depressing. This article, and others like it, haven’t done much to initiate change at Hootsuite.
It's still a tool I want to like, but I don't have much confidence in Hootsuite becoming the tool I want it to be any more. And that is sad.
Please let me know your thoughts. Join over 850 other comments below, and participate in the discussion. Whether you agree or disagree with me!
Of course, do have a read of my other social media management tool posts. For example:
- 7 Reasons why you SHOULD use Hootsuite
- 7 Reasons NOT to use Sprout Social
- The Hidden Prices of Social Media Management Tools
If you want to try Hootsuite, there is a free plan and also a 30-day trial of the Pro plan…
What is a Social Media Management Tool?
A social media management tool does more than publish or schedule content.
I love Buffer, SocialChamp and Friends+Me, but they are not proper social media management tools. They do a great job at posting and scheduling content and offer analytics, but that's it.
I love SEMRush, Talkwalker and Brandwatch, but these are listening or reporting tools. They are not true social media management tools.
Social Media Management Tools aim to be the "One Tool to Rule them All". They try and help manage all aspects of your social media empire including:
- Posting and scheduling content to your social media channels
- Analytics and reporting on your social media efforts.
- Engagement. So you can respond to your social media mentions, comments and messages efficiently.
- Listening. So you can find and engage with people talking about your brand, your competitors or keywords.
For more information, feel free to watch my presentation on how to Choose the Ideal Social Media Management Tool.
The History of the Owl
Hootsuite launched back in 2008 by Ryan Holmes. He launched it through his digital services agency, Invoke Media.
At first it integrated with Twitter only and called BrightKit.
In 2009 they launched a competition with a $500 prize to help choose a new name. The winning name was Hootsuite.
Since then, Hootsuite has grown tremendously. It's the biggest and most well known social media management tool. Hootsuite has over 16 million users and employs 1,000 people from over 175 countries.
In 2018 they received $50 million in growth capital. It will be interesting to see if the platform improves with this funding.
In October 2018, Hootsuite is up for sale. They hired hired Goldman Sachs to explore the possibility of selling for at least $750 million!
The head office is in Vancouver, Canada.
The Pros of Hootsuite
Hootsuite integrates with a large number of social channels. The main ones are:
- Facebook groups
- Facebook pages
- LinkedIn profiles
- LinkedIn pages (Basic Reports on Enterprise & Pro plan only)
- YouTube
- Pinterest (publishing only)
If those aren't enough, you can look through the Hootsuite App Directory. Third party developers create the bulk of these apps. Some are good, and some are, well... not!
Here are some other advantages:
- There’s a Free Plan. One of the only social media management tools to have a free plan.
- Schedule updates (including on a calendar and even upload from a spreadsheet (csv file)
- Team Features. Collaborate as a team (delegate replies, tweets, mark as done, track messages etc)
- Mobile apps (iOS & Android)
- Customised analytics (including scheduled reports)
- RSS integration (post updates from an RSS feed)
The Cons of Hootsuite
I've completely updated this article. You can still see my original reasons here. They were:
- Expensive Analytics Reports & the Point System
- Forced to Use Owly Short Links
- Expensive Custom URL Shorteners
- Facebook Image Problem
- No Data in Facebook Insights
- Lower Facebook Reach & Engagement
- Expensive for Teams
Reason #1
Expensive - Especially for Teams
Hootsuite has 5 plans.
- The free plan (which of course is free)
- Professional (from $348 per year)
- Team (from $1,548 per year)
- Business (from $7,188 per year)
- Enterprise (possibly from $16,000 per year).
Price Update March 2019
Hootsuite is experimenting with features for different users. For some users, the features are remaining the same for pro and team. But in the UK and sometimes in the US (from my testing), they have halved the number of social media profiles for pro and business plans:
I did reach out to Hootsuite on Twitter, and they replied that they sometimes vary their packages depending on your location. So be aware!
Hootsuite Free
Hootsuite does have a free plan, but it's very limiting.
You get 3 social channels, can post up to 30 scheduled posts and can only have 1 user.
Hootsuite Professional
The cheapest paid plan, is Hootsuite Pro.
When I first wrote this article, Hootsuite Pro cost $5.99 per month. It allowed you to manage an unlimited number of social channels. It came with 2 users, and you could expand up to 10 users. Additional users cost from $15/month.
Now, Hootsuite Pro costs $45 per month which adds up to $540 per year. This limits you to a maximum of 1 user. No more team users on Hootsuite Pro.
You do get a discount if you pay yearly - $348 which works out as $29 per month.
Hootsuite Legacy Pro users forced to upgrade
Hootsuite has a large number of legacy pro users - many with more than 1 user per account. And of course, Hootsuite have many users on the free plan. It's clear that Hootsuite is trying to persuade their users on to the new, more expensive pro plans.
In the comments, Jill H-W alerted me to a change Hootsuite made to the availability of Twitter DMs. From from August 2, 2018, Hootsuite removed Twitter direct message streams.
Full paying Professional, Team, Business or Enterprise users could use the new Inbox feature. But legacy Pro and free users lost access. Hootsuite said this was due to "recent API changes", but I don't see how this can be the case. Twitter hasn’t made any changes to their API which would affect viewing DMs.
The upgrade cost for legacy pro plan users or those on the free plan, can be expensive.
Legacy Pro plan users with...
- 1 user. Upgrade to new professional plan - $348 per year.
- 2-3 team users. Upgrade to team plan - $1,548 per year.
- 4-5 team users. Upgrade to business - $7,188 per year
- 6-10 team users. Upgrade to enterprise - from $17,800 upwards
Team Features
There are two levels of team features.
1. Team Users
Do you have a team of people managing your social media channels?
Are you a Micro-business owner or a "solopreneur" and have a VA (virtual assistant)? VAs can help you publish content and manage your social media.
Do you have a larger business with a social media team?
Or maybe you have dozens of team members over the world managing a global brand?
Tools with team plans allow more than one user to access the social media dashboard. These team members can manage your channels without knowing the social channel passwords.
This is vital from a security point of view.
It's surprising how many businesses share the passwords for their social media accounts.
But what if one of your team members becomes disgruntled?
Or leaves your business?
They still have your passwords!
They could log into Hootsuite and post inappropriate content.
They could change the password.
They could close down the account!
Most of these cases would not happen if each user had different user accounts. Once they left, their access could be removed from the social media management tool dashboard.
2. Team Management
To get the most out of your team, team management features are a must. Even if you have an extra team member such as a VA, being able to manage your team within the tool is important.
Tools that offer team management allow you to assign different roles to your team.
For example, admin, editor and moderator. Facebook has this built in to business pages.
Social media management tools should have this too. Team members can assign tasks to each other and you as an admin or editor can approve content.
Team management features usually include:
- Assign user roles. Control the level of access for each user on your plan.
- Assign tasks. Assign incoming messages, comments, mentions etc to other team members.
- Team activity. See when team members are online and what they are viewing or who they are replying to.
- Publishing workflow. Go from drafts to published posts with a team approval workflow.
- Team statistics. Get the number of responses and response time for each team member.
- Team audit trail. See who took action on a message
Hootsuite Plans for Solopreneurs
If you are a solopreneur or micro-business owner, you might be managing your social networks on your own. If so, I recommend managing your networks natively on each network.
If Twitter is important, you could use the free version of Hootsuite or TweetDeck. They are useful for social listening, and basic engagement.
If you really want to use a social media management tool, only need access yourself, don’t need full analytics and want to manage up to 10 networks (or up to 5 with some pro plans), then Hootsuite Pro might be a good option for you.
When compared to Agorapulse and Sprout Social, Hootsuite Pro is the cheapest at $348 per year for those needs.
Hootsuite Plans for Teams
If you need to give access to another team member and want to use Hootsuite, the pro plan won’t be enough. You'll need to upgrade to Hootsuite Team or higher.
Hootsuite Team Plan
The team plan costs $1,548 per year and includes 3 users.
You do have the ability to pay monthly at $189 per month which comes to $2,268 per year.
You can manage up to 20 networks (or 10 with some team plans) which is quite generous, but there is a big problem.
Although the team plan gives you 3 users (including you), it has very few team management features.
Out of the ones I mentioned above, it only allows you to assign tasks to other team members.
Assigning tasks is a powerful feature, but with the Team plan…
- You can't assign user roles
- You can’t view live team activity
- You can’t view team statistics
- There is no team audit trail
- There is no team publishing workflow.
For example, you may have a VA or a creative team working on draft posts for a campaign. Or perhaps you run an agency and have a team member working on a campaign for a client.
It would be great to assign different roles for content creators, editors and clients and to have a leader or the client who can mark with final approval. But with the Hootsuite Team plan, this isn't possible. Having a proper team audit trail and a publishing workflow is really important, but you don’t get that with Hootsuite Team.
Hootsuite Business Plan
The business plan costs from $7,188 per year and includes 5 users.
You don't have the ability to pay monthly, so you need to have the cash flow to pay the yearly fee.
You get to manage up to 35 networks and can have up to 10 users in your team.
Each extra user costs $1,188 per year, although it's a bit difficult to get exact prices. Their website doesn't state the price for extra users. Teams of 5 or more are going to be paying anything from $7,188 to tens of thousands of dollars per year for Hootsuite Business.
Pricing aside, there is some good news. You do get proper team management features with the business plan.
As well as assigning tasks to other team members, the business plan allows you to...
- Assign user roles
- Use a publishing workflow
- View team statistics
- View a team audit trail
The only little thing that I would have loved to have seen was the ability to see live team activity. This is available in both Sprout Social and Agorapulse at significantly cheaper prices - $5,364 per year for Sprout Social and $1,068 per year for Agorapulse.
Hootsuite Enterprise Plan
If you need more than 10 users, then you may need to opt for Hootsuite Enterprise. Although the Business plan advertises being for up to 10, internally it may be up to 15 - so best to check.
It's been years since Hootsuite published prices for their enterprise plan. However, from my research, it's likely to start from $16,000 per year for 5 users, and from $25,000 per year for 10 users. Many businesses are paying upwards of $100,000 per year and some have $1 million per year contracts.
For teams, the Hootsuite Enterprise plan doesn't offer much in the way of features over the Business plan. You still don't get to view live team activity. But there are other features that you get in Enterprise and you've got the ability to customize your solution and get personalized training.
Reason #2
Dashboard is Hopelessly out of date
Multi-Column for the Win?
Hootsuite launched as a Twitter-only platform.
The Hootsuite dashboard is remarkably similar to TweetDeck with its multi-column layout.
TweetDeck is another Twitter-only social media management tool owned by Twitter.
Hootsuite now integrates with a huge number of networks, and the multi-column layout makes less sense.
I think a Multi-column layout is great for Twitter, but not so much for other networks.
What is Multi-Column?
In Hootsuite, you can have more than one dashboard. Here is an example of one dashboard:
Each dashboard can have multiple columns.
A column is a stream from a social channel, and could be:
- Your tweets from Twitter
- Your mentions from Twitter
- Tweets from a Twitter search
- Tweets from a Twitter list
- Your Facebook page posts
- Your Facebook page messages
- Your Instagram posts
Multi-column - you either love it or hate it.
It's kind of good to get a quick overview of your social media empire.
But honestly, in most cases, it's really overwhelming.
The exception is for Twitter management. But in those cases, I'd recommend TweetDeck and for Twitter chats, TweetChat - both of which are free.
Social Media Overwhelm
One big issue is that it's not obvious which mentions, comments and messages you or your team have dealt with. More on that later.
It's not clear when anything new has come in. It would be great if you could sort, archive or mark as read, but you can't. Yes, you can assign a post or comment to a team user, but you need to be on the $1,548 per year team plan for that.
The human brain can get easily distracted. The Multi-column layout in Hootsuite is just too busy and cluttered. Welcome to social media overwhelm! There’s so much information it can feel like you’re looking at the Matrix!
I much prefer Sprout Social's unified stream (Smart Inbox) and Agorapulse's per-network Inbox.
UI hasn't changed for years.
Hootsuite has millions of users. It also has had the kind of funding that would make most tool companies jealous!
And that's why I am confused about why Hootsuite is taking so long to improve their UI.
The Hootsuite UI has been one of the biggest criticisms from users over the years. People calling it "clunky", "old fashioned" and "buggy".
So, back in 2014 they decided to make fun out of these negative comments with a video. Team members from Hootsuite including CEO Ryan Holmes, read out negative Tweets about their UI. And then they announced a new and improved version.
Update November 2018, the video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Marmoset LLC. You can read the original announcement from Hootsuite in an article here.
But as you'll see from the video, it was nothing more than a minor cosmetic change. Nice colours, fonts and spacing, but the same old Hootsuite. Very disappointing. What have they been doing with all that money?
No ability to Pause Bulk posts
You've scheduled all your posts across your social channels. You've got different campaigns set up, and all looks good.
But disaster strikes.
A world event has happened.
Or a negative news story on your brand has been published.
An emergency stop button would be really useful right now!
You need to pause all those scheduled posts for now - so they don't get published. Otherwise they're going to look really inappropriate.
A key feature of a social media management tool is the ability to pause your posts.
But it’s a missing feature from many tools.
Buffer allows you to pause the queue for each network. You’ll need to make sure you pause each queue separately.
Some tools kind of have it. Agorapulse allow you to pause queues of posts, but not non-queued scheduled posts.
Sprout Social allows you to pause queued posts, but from June 2018 they have a stop messages button. This pauses all posts in queues and moves any scheduled posts to drafts.
But, Hootsuite does not allow you to pause your posts at all. It doesn’t even have the ability to queue your posts (but more on that one later!)
I assumed that Hootsuite had the ability, but Ruth M. L. in a reply to one of my LinkedIn threads mentioned it.
You could bulk download your posts to a CSV file and then delete them from Hootsuite. Then re-upload them after the crisis has happened. But that’s a lot of work to do.
Or, another workaround would be to revoke access to Hootsuite across all your social media channels.
But a nice pause button would have made our life a lot easier!
Calendar Restrictions compared to other tools
Calendar view only shows posts from Hootsuite
If you use Hootsuite to post and schedule all your posts, then this is no big deal.
But many of us use a selection of tools to publish content.
For example I often post natively from Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Or I sometimes use another third party tool such as Buffer or IFTTT.
The calendar view in Hootsuite only shows posts that have been posted via Hootsuite. If you use more than one tool, then it's impossible to keep track of your content.
For example, here is a previous week’s view of my Twitter account in Hootsuite:
Here is the same week’s view in Agorapulse:
Although I use Agorapulse for scheduling some posts, I also use other tools such as Twitter itself and Buffer. They are all listed there so I can get a proper view of what has been published.
And Sprout Social is the same. It shows you all published posts no matter whether you used Sprout Social to publish them or not. Here is an example of their week view:
Hootsuite Calendar has No Monthly View
While other tools such as ContentCal, Sprout Social and Agorapulse have both weekly and monthly views, Hootsuite only offers a weekly view.
Not a massive deal, but it would be nice to have a monthly view.
Post Previews Can be Buggy and you can’t edit them
Hootsuite previously did not give you the previews of your social media posts before you posted them.
Being able to see a preview of how they will look on the platform is important. Hootsuite now gives you previews, together with the preview image... most of the time.
But it is surprisingly buggy. I've never seen this on any other tool, and I've tested a lot - Sprout Social, Agorapulse, Sendible, Jollor, Kontentino, ContentCal... I could go on!
Also, you can’t edit the preview in Hootsuite.
Editing Previews in Agorapulse
Agorapulse allow you to edit directly on each network’s preview. This allows you to craft different content for each network from one window. This is important, because each network has a different set up and different audiences. For example, with Twitter you have up to 280 characters and you can mention other screen names. With Facebook you can include a much longer post and mention Facebook pages.
Some networks allow you to edit the summary of the link. LinkedIn allows you to do this, and so does Facebook only if you verify you own your website:
Editing Previews in Sprout Social
Sprout Social doesn’t allow you to edit the preview either. So you can’t choose different content for each network, and you can’t change the summary for Facebook or LinkedIn.
Viewing Previews
If you use a link shortener or a link with a redirect, Hootsuite can get mightily confused!
But even if you add a straight link, Hootsuite sometimes can't extract the page image and preview:
Here is a similar post with the same link previewed in Agorapulse:
I particularly like the way Kontentino previews posts. You can create text, photo, video, link and carousel posts. As well as being able to add UTM tags, you can even add a call to action button.
Then once you’ve added the call to action, you can view exactly how it will look like on desktop or mobile view.
You can't move a post back into drafts from scheduled
You get a full publishing workflow in the $7,188 Hootsuite Business Plan. But that's not what we're talking about here.
If you create a draft social media post, then schedule it but then change your mind... you can't move it back to drafts. The only option is to delete it and start again.
Having said that, you can’t do this in Agorapulse or Sprout Social. But you can duplicate the post and delete the original one. With Hootsuite you can either edit or delete.
You can't publish a scheduled post now
And if you changed your mind and wanted to publish a scheduled post right now, you can't.
Your only option is to change the date and time of the scheduled post. At least you have the option of posting it 5-10 minutes in the future. But having the ability to publish a scheduled post now would have been a helpful option.
Digital Assets Library
Social media is very visual. Even Twitter, which used to be 140 characters of plain text, now supports videos, images and audio media.
If you're working with a lot of digital assets, either on your own or as part of a team, this can get a bit of a nightmare. I know digital agencies who have resorted to mad things to share their digital assets like...
- Shared USB thumb drives
- Shared network drives
- Emailing each other the files
- Services like Dropbox or Google Drive
If you’re exchanging files with clients it's even more complicated.
Having a digital assets library where you can manage all your images, videos and other digital assets takes this nightmare away.
Hootsuite does have a media library and even gives you access to a free library of images and GIPHY integration. However, you don’t immediately have the ability to upload digital assets and re-use for later.
Actually many social media management tools don't have this feature. MavSocial and ContentCal are the exception. They allow you to upload files to a central library, and then use within your posts.
SproutSocial has their Digital Asset & Content Library, but this is only available on their $249/month Enterprise plan.
One cool thing that ContentCal does is file reduction (or image optimization). When you try and post an image over a certain size to Twitter via Hootsuite or Twitter, you'll get a "file size too big" error message. ContentCal reduces the file size for you, which is cool.
But, Hootsuite does have a workaround there. You can can add apps to your media library. For example Google Drive and Dropbox. This is really useful and allows you to access all your shared assets.
The downside is that you can’t upload images or videos from Hootsuite to your media library (via Dropbox or Google Drive). So any images or videos you’ve used before in Hootsuite aren’t accessible unless you upload it manually on your computer. The media library has so much potential, but this is an oversight.
Pinterest Functionality is Publishing Only
It’s great that Hootsuite integrates with Pinterest. Although you could argue it’s a niche network when compared to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, it’s a great web traffic generator.
According to this study by Statistica, Pinterest is the second highest referrer of traffic from social media, with 7.53%. For many of my social media consultant friends, Pinterest is the highest referrer by far.
But Hootsuite’s Pinterest integration is very basic. It’s nothing more than a Pin publisher and scheduler.
If you want to schedule or publish a pin to Pinterest, you need to use the separate “New Pin” button.
This means that you can’t schedule to Pinterest as well as other networks at the same time. You need to post Pinterest pins separately.
Then you get the opportunity to select which boards you want to schedule your pin too. Unfortunately the selection panel is buggy, and didn’t show all my boards. The styling was slightly off with the checkbox overlapping my user image. I also couldn’t tell which of the boards were mine and which were shared boards.
When you publish or schedule your pins to multiple boards, they all get posted at the same time. This isn’t good practice. It’s much better to space out the posting to multiple boards over a longer time period. This just isn’t possible with Hootsuite without creating one scheduled pin at a time.
You do get the advantage of using Hootsuite’s media library, but that comes with its own issues as I have stated previously.
Hootsuite doesn’t offer any engagement or analytics features for Pinterest. There are some Pinterest reports in the old legacy reports system, but this is only for Enterprise users.
Sprout Social offers a much better Pinterest integration with decent analytics. Agorapulse doesn’t currently integrate with Pinterest.
But if you are really wanting to manage your Pinterest channel effectively then the best tool I’ve found is Tailwind.
Tailwind offers powerful analytics, interval scheduling (to stagger publishing to multiple boards), SmartLoop to repeat evergreen content and much more.
Reason #3
Poor Social Inbox - Difficult for Engagement
One of the big time savers in using a social media management tool is working through all your social mentions, comments and messages efficiently.
Being able to see new comments in the dashboard and either replying or delegating to another team member - or just archiving.
On Facebook, you may need to hide or delete comments that are offensive or libelous or just plain negative. Choosing a tool that does these things may be important for you.
Hootsuite makes it difficult to manage your social mentions. However, there have been some improvements for dealing with Facebook messages and Twitter direct messages with the Hootsuite Inbox.
Post & Comment Moderation
You can hide Facebook comments
Todd Maffin wrote an in-depth Hootsuite review back in 2016. In it he said that Hootsuite is dangerously out of date.
At the time, Todd wrote that you couldn't hide or delete Facebook comments! Thankfully, now you can. This is really important - to be able to hide or delete comments if they are overly negative or libellous.
But you can't hide Facebook posts
For posts posted by users to your page, although you can now delete posts, you still can't hide them.
The only way is to do this yourself on Facebook, or send a note to a team user asking them to do this on Facebook.
Twitter Direct Messages not available to Free or Legacy Pro users
Access to your Twitter DMs is only available in Hootsuite Inbox.
If you want to be able to see your Twitter DMs and respond to them, you'll need to upgrade to the $348/year Pro plan.
For Twitter, one of the advantages of the multi-column view was to view all your Twitter streams in once place.
But now, you can't add a stream of Twitter DMs on the Hootsuite Dashboard.
Hootsuite Inbox is Woefully inadequate
I was sad to see Twitter DMs moved away from the main dashboard.
But I was excited about the potential of the new Hootsuite Inbox.
I was expecting Hootsuite to catch up with Sprout Social and Agorapulse and offer an inbox view. Here you would be able to view comments, mentions and replies in a single stream and respond or delegate.
But no...
Right now, Hootsuite Inbox only works with Facebook page messages and Twitter Direct Messages. And from November 2018, they added LinkedIn pages. So, if you want to manage your LinkedIn profile messages, or the comments and social messages from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, you will be disappointed.
While reviewing it for this article, I couldn't get Facebook messages to appear. But Hootsuite Inbox is still in beta, so maybe things will improve.
In this video from May 2018, product manager Arvin Dwaka mentions they are hoping to add other message types. But nothing has changed since.
Hootsuite Inbox is their first stab at an inbox zero workflow. I'll talk about this later in this article, but this allows you to either respond to a message, assign it to another team member, or just dismiss. Once you've actioned the message, it disappears from view. Both Agorapulse and Sprout Social offer this - but not just for Twitter DMs and Facebook messages.
It's a start, and it's good to see Hootsuite finally doing this.
You can filter by social network and order by recent or oldest first.
Very basic, but still useful. However, I’d love to have more powerful filters in the future.
No Bulk Select in Hootsuite Inbox
One big oversight is that you can't select more than one message at one time.
This would allow you to select lots of similar messages and bulk dismiss or assign to a team member.
And you can't bulk dismiss all messages in one go.
The only thing you can do is to review each message one by one.
Hootsuite Inbox is very basic. Sprout Social and Agorapulse are far more advanced and useful with their inbox zero features. But hopefully they will improve it over time. Please do!
No Zero Inbox Workflow
When it comes to email, most of us have a system for dealing with incoming messages.
After new emails come in, some of us might check our emails a few times per day (and probably more often than that)! Depending on the email, we may take one of the following actions...
- Respond straight away
- Forward/delegate to another team member
- Archive since no response is needed
- Delete if it’s spam
Dealing with social media comments, mentions or messages should be the same.
Social media management tools such as Sprout Social and Agorapulse have zero inbox systems. They allow you (and your team) take actions on incoming social messages. You can reply, delegate, archive or delete.
The great thing is that you and your team will only see messages that are either new or have been delegated to you. All responded to, archived or deleted messages will not appear unless you need to see them.
Agorapulse
Agorapulse has a really easy to use zero inbox workflow. You can select multiple messages per channel to archive, or you can review each one separately.
You can reply, assign to a team member or review/archive. For Twitter you can like or retweet too. You’re also able to label or bookmark the message, and label the user too. And the great news is that this works across Facebook pages, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Another thing I love is the way you can set it to move to the next message automatically once you’ve actioned the current message. It makes you so quick!
As well as incoming messages, Agorapulse gives you a separate stream for each channel called Listening. Here you can search for keywords or key phrases using simple or advanced search.
Another thing that I love about Agorapulse’s zero inbox workflow is their “Inbox Assistant”. With this you can set up automated moderation rules based on certain keywords.
For example if I receive a direct message with the phrase “thank you for following me” then it automatically gets reviewed. If I get mentioned on Twitter with the phrase “via @iagdotme” it gets assigned to my VA.
There are loads of ways you can get this to action messages in the background.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social also has an inbox zero workflow and it’s called Smart Inbox. All your channels’ messages come into one inbox. But you can also filter them by social channel - for example just show Twitter or LinkedIn or a combination of the two. You’re also able to filter by message type - for example show Twitter DMs or Facebook comments or private messages.
You get a really helpful chart of your incoming messages and can visualize your progress.
A unified inbox won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I do love the way you have full control over what you see in Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox.
Like Agorapulse, you can select more than one message or you can select all and archive them (Sprout Social says “complete”).
For each message type you have different options. Some of these features aren’t available in Agorapulse such as Advanced Retweet (retweet with a mention), report as spam, email the conversation and translate into your language.
To respond to a message you need to click on reply or task. In my testing, this was a bit slow as you’re taken to a new screen for each message. Then you can reply, assign a task type, mark as high priority or assign to another team member. And of course mark the message as complete.
As well as incoming messages, you can monitor Twitter keywords, Instagram hashtags and Instagram locations.
There are no automatic moderation rules like you get with Agorapulse, but the Sprout Social zero inbox workflow is very feature rich.
Sendible
Sendible has a zero inbox workflow of sorts. Like Sprout Social, they offer a unified inbox that contains messages from all your channels. It’s called the Priority Inbox. It uses an algorithm to display messages in order of what it thinks are the most important first. I’m not a great fan of relying on an algorithm, but you do get the chance to show the streams for each individual channel.
After you reply to a message you do get the option to archive each one. But it’s an extra click to do so.
And you can archive multiple messages. I could have done with an indication of how many messages I have in my inbox and when I try and archive all, it only archives what’s on my page. But I’m pleased to see Sendible have the feature.
Hootsuite
While the new Hootsuite Inbox offers a simple zero inbox workflow, it’s only for Twitter DMs and Facebook Messages.
If you want to monitor and engage with your Twitter mentions or your Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or Instagram comments, you’re going to have to use Hootsuite Streams.
Compared to Sprout Social and Agorapulse’s zero inbox workflows, this is a total nightmare.
It’s not so bad for Twitter, since Hootsuite gives you a mentions stream. Here you can view all your comments or mentions and reply to them. But you can’t mark them as completed, so it’s difficult to know which ones have been dealt with.
For Instagram, YouTube and your Facebook page, you can't access comments and replies in one stream.
For Facebook, you have a few options.
- Add a "My Posts" stream. Scroll through your posts to see if anyone has left a comment.
- Add a "My Activity" stream. This is better, but it mixes posts where your page is mentioned and comments to your posts.
- Add a comments stream for a specific post. This is useful if there is a particular post that you want to keep track of, but you'll only see comments to that one post.
For Instagram, you only have one option - add a "My Posts" stream, which lists all your posts with the number of comments by each one. I asked their support about this and they said that they had:
"recently lost the ability to create a comment stream for Instagram. There have been some API changes recently that have disabled this functionality."
Imagine, someone has left a comment on a post from a few weeks or months back? You won't know unless you scroll down through all your posts, and see that the number of comments has gone up by one!
And even more frustratingly, even if you or a team member has dealt with the message - there is no archive button - so it will continue to appear.
Difficult to view comments on Facebook Ads / Unpublished Posts
Do you ever create Facebook ads? I’m not talking about boosting posts - I am talking about posts that are created solely for ads. They don’t appear in the page’s feed and are sometimes called unpublished or dark posts.
It’s now possible to view a page’s ads by clicking on the “info and ads” tab on the Facebook page.
When anyone comments on an ad post, you’ll want to see it straight away and engage with it.
In Hootsuite there is no Facebook ad comment stream. The only way to see such comments is to ad the Unpublished posts stream:
When you do this, you will see all your unpublished posts - a collection of current and previous Facebook ad posts.
It might be ok to manage if you have 2 or 3 ads. But what if you have 20, 30, or hundreds of ads? What if someone comments on an ad post that is at the bottom of the stream? It’s almost impossible to manage!
Reason #4
Expensive Analytics and Reports
At the time of writing this article, Hootsuite is moving over from their old point-based report system to their new Analytics.
Hootsuite Legacy Reports
The old report system is still available, and is the only way for free and pro users to access reports. Some reports are free, such as the Twitter and Facebook profile/page overview, Ow.ly Click Summary and owly URL click Stats.
The old reports are really very basic and clunky, especially when you compare to other tools such as Agorapulse or Sprout Social.
For example the Twitter Profile Overview only displays how many followers you have, how many people you follow and the number of times you are listed.
It has a follower growth chart, but the scale is zero to your max number so it’s often difficult to see the growth. Finally, if you don’t use the owly link shortener, the most popular links section will be blank.
For Facebook I was having problems viewing the data. This could have been a blip in the system, but frustrating nonetheless:
One good thing is that you can download the report data as a pdf or in CSV format.
As you will see shortly, this is something you won’t be able to do with Hootsuite’s new system unless you are paying for the Team plan or above.
For paid reports, you buy using points. Pro plan users get 50 points per month.
Paid reports in Hootsuite include:
- Facebook Insights: 30 points
- Facebook Aggregate: 15 points
- LinkedIn Page Insights: 20 points
- Google Analytics: 50 points
For Pinterest reports, it first appears that the Pinterest Engagement report is free and the Pinterest Aggregate report costs 30 points. But these are only available to $16,000+ per year Enterprise customers!
If you’ve run out of points, you’ve got two workarounds for the non-enterprise level reports. Firstly, you can delete previous generated reports to free up your points. Then you can generate new ones. This is a pain because you may find yourself deleting and regenerating reports each week or month.
Secondly, you have the option to buy more points.
Except you don’t.
Not any more.
Now that Hootsuite have their new analytics, you will be asked to “unlock custom analytics”. This basically means upgrading to at least the $1,548 per year team plan:
Hootsuite New Analytics
I was quite excited when Hootsuite announced their new Analytics.
At last, a move away from their point-based clunky and buggy reports. And they look so much nicer! A much improved UI as you can see:
The Twitter report is much more visual and helpful with a decent follower graph. You get engagement stats and even a sentiment graph:
But unless you track all your links within Hootsuite, you won’t see any traffic reports.
Hootsuite Analytics is only for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
Unfortunately Hootsuite Analytics only works for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. So even if you add your LinkedIn, Pinterest or YouTube accounts, you can’t see reports for those channels.
No Data Export unless you are on the Business or Enterprise Plan
Hootsuite has a handy export feature, which allows you to download to PDF, Powerpoint, Excel or CSV. This is a big improvement over the old report system. However, this is not available to Pro or Team plan users. You need to upgrade to the $7,188 per year Business Plan.
Post Performance and Reports Not available to Pro users.
You can, for now, continue to use some of the reports from the old system. But if you need the new reports, you’ll have quite an upgrade cost on your hands!
Expensive compared to other tools
If you want access to reports and the ability to export, you’ll need to pay over $7,000 per year. How does that compare with other tools?
Sprout Social
Sprout Social’s reports are not only powerful, they are beautiful. They offer unified reports for all your channels and individual reports for each channel.
You can also download each report as a CSV or a PDF file.
Unfortunately, like Hootsuite, Sprout Social doesn’t make all reports available to all plans. Their entry $99/user/month plan includes group and core reports. But if you want reports such as the Twitter, Instagram or Facebook Competitor Report and more, you will have to upgrade to the corporate or enterprise plans. You can see a comparison table here, or look at the plan comparison page on the Sprout Social website.
Agorapulse
Agorapulse reports are powerful and beautiful too. At the moment, they are per-network, so you don’t have any unified reports for all your channels. They’ve got reports for Twitter, Facebook pages, LinkedIn pages and Instagram. You can download them all in Powerpoint format.
You can also compare your Facebook pages with competitors and that can be integrated into the reports.
One great thing is that all reports are available on all plans, which makes Agorapulse very cost effective if you need reports for all your channels. It’s a shame they don’t yet offer unified reports, but I believe this will be coming.
Reason #5
No Queues
What is a queue?
Most tools allow you to schedule social media posts as well as publish immediately. This means you can post content in a specific time and date in the future. Some tools even allow you to bulk import content and schedule them all at specific times.
Social media content queues are a bit different. First of all you create a schedule for each of your social networks. These are time slots throughout the week when your content will be posted. You could have the same times each day or different times each day.
I post quite a lot of content to Twitter from my queue - ranging from 8 to 12 time slots per day. But for Facebook, I only have 4-5 slots per week. You’re in control!
Then you will need to add content to your queues. When a time slot comes up, the first piece of content gets posted, and the second piece of content comes to the front ready for the next time slot. When it’s time for the next time slot, that piece of content gets posted… and so on.
Once all pieces of content in the queue have been published, nothing more will be posted unless you add more to the queue.
Why would you want to use a Queue?
Using a queue is an easy way to get content posted throughout the week. Some tools also allow different schedules for different categories.
And some tools allow you to repeat content.
Repeating content can be really useful on certain networks. Agorapulse CEO Emeric Ernoult wrote a blog post on how he Got 24 Times More Views on LinkedIn. And repeating content has been very powerful on Twitter in the past. This is because not all your followers would have seen your content the first time. Also, having the ability to repeat weekly event-based posts to Facebook groups or Twitter chat announcements is really useful. Do bear in mind that Twitter does not want you to post duplicate content.
Which tools have it?
SocialOomph
SocialOomph was first called TweetLater and was founded in 2008. It was one of the first Twitter automation tools that offered queues and recurring updates. It now integrates with Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and RSS feeds as well as Twitter. The professional version works out just under $40 per month.
Buffer
Buffer was the tool that first made queuing posts popular. For each of your networks you can choose the same times per day, or you can choose a different schedule for weekdays and the weekend, or even a different schedule every day.
However, you don’t have the option to repeat or loop your content so there’s no recycling evergreen content.
Once your queue or reservoir is empty, that’s it. You’ll need to keep on adding posts to keep things topped up. Also, no categories for different types of content with different schedules
For one user, Buffer is good value for money, with free and $15/mth plans. For team users, the Buffer business plan costs $99 per month and includes 5 users.
You can import from RSS feeds but not CSV files. But it’s great because it integrates with automation tools IFTTT and Zapier so you can import content from other platforms very easily.
Sprout Social
Sprout has two options - Viralpost and the manual times queue.
Viralpost chooses the times for you using an algorithm. In Sprout Social’s words it “works for you by taking the guesswork out of delivery times. This data-centric solution analyzes your audience's usage & engagement patterns, content velocity and other factors to determine the optimal times to deliver content.”
This is only available on the $99/user/month Premium plan and above. Anyone on legacy standard plans will need to upgrade.
The manual times option in Sprout Social is similar to Buffer.
You can choose post time settings for weekdays/weekends or individual days. But the number of times is quite limited depending on the plan you’re on. The old standard plan only gives you 5 slots per day. New plans now give you 10 per day (for Premium), 20 (for Corporate) and 30 (for Enterprise).
But there is no ability to recycle evergreen content. And you can’t have categories for different types of content with different schedules.
Agorapulse
Agorapulse has a full publishing queue system with categories. You get to create different categories for different types of content. For example, I have one for evergreen content, another for amazing posts I’ve found during my content research and another for events. Each of these has a different schedule with time slots throughout the week.
For each piece of content (depending on the network) you have the option to post it once or many times (from twice to 50 times). I actually like the fact that content expires as looping content forever is bad practice as it means your content becomes stale.
You can also export the content for each queue. Since Twitter no longer wants us to re-post the same content, you can download, tweak and re-upload.
Edgar
Edgar was the first tools to offer a content library, each with categories and their own schedule and the ability to repeat evergreen content. It launched in 2014 and became very successful. Like Buffer, it’s not a full social media management tool. It really just does one thing - schedule content. It used to cost $79/mth but they’ve reduced it down to $49/mth.
To find out more, check out my Edgar review.
SmarterQueue
SmarterQueue is a more powerful, geeky and less expensive alternative to Edgar. Their plans start from $16.99 per month. You can recycle evergreen content, create categories with their own schedules and more. It has a great bulk import system and even tries to import images directly from the web pages. Again, like Buffer and Edgar, it isn’t a full social media management tool in that it doesn’t help with engagement. But if you want a tool to publish and schedule from a content library with categories, queues and looping content, check out SmarterQueue.
Hootsuite
And so finally we come to Hootsuite’s offering. It’s called AutoSchedule and has been around since 2012.
AutoSchedule only available on legacy message composer
AutoSchedule is not available in the new publishing tool. You’ll need to post your scheduled posts using the legacy message composer. This means you won’t be able to preview your posts before you schedule them.
AutoSchedule is very basic
Hootsuite’s AutoSchedule is similar to Sprout Social’s Viralpost, in that it uses an algorithm to work out the “best times” to post each day.
Sadly, it’s very basic. You choose your days and how many time slots per day between a certain time frame. You only get one time schedule per week and you only get to schedule up to 10 per day.
No control over times
But perhaps the biggest issue is that you have no control over when it posts out your content. It uses a proprietary algorithm to work it the “optimal posting times”. It all sounds great, but we have no idea how Hootsuite works out those times.
Hootsuite could post out our content at exactly the wrong moment. Maybe you’ve just launched another campaign, and AutoSchedule decides to post something unrelated. Maybe you’re hosting a Twitter chat, and again AutoSchedule posts out content - and it gets lost.
AutoSchedule is a nice to have, despite it being very basic, but we really need a manual queuing option too.
No content categories
Like Sprout Social and Buffer, Hootsuite’s AutoSchedule doesn’t allow you to create different content categories with their own schedules. It will post out all content using the one schedule.
No evergreen queue recycling
Finally, Hootsuite doesn’t have the ability to repeat or loop content in a queue. Once it’s posted, that’s it.
Reason #6
Historically Terrible Support (but improving)
Learning how to use a new social media management tool effectively takes time.
Sometimes you may make a mistake. Or need an answer to a problem quickly.
Quick and reliable support from your social media management tool is really important.
Hootsuite has been plagued with reports of bad customer service for years. My view is that they've not been able to cope with all the free or low-paying pro plan users.
However, things do seem to be getting better. Maybe they are ploughing more resources into their support department?
While I was researching this update, I contacted them a few times and got a fairly quick response. So please do take that into account while reading this section. Hopefully things are on the up!
Hootsuite offers a few support and training solutions for users.
Hootsuite Academy
First of all there is the Hootsuite Academy. These give you access to different training courses. There are two free ones: Hootsuite Platform Training and Social Marketing Training.
Paid ones range from Social Selling Training at $299 to Hootsuite Enterprise Training at $499.
Did you notice that?
Hootsuite are charging Enterprise users (who are paying from $16,000 per year) a $500 training course to use their product!
But, that aside, it's good that they offer a free training course on how to use the platform.
Hootsuite Help Center
Like most social media management tools, Hootsuite offers a knowledge base website. They call this the Hootsuite Help Center. As Help centers go, it’s actually pretty good. I could have done with a few more videos, but the content was easy to follow.
Live chat, Twitter support and telephone support
Hootsuite offers a live chat facility.
I tested this out, and was pleasantly surprised to get a reply within a couple of minutes. I didn’t ask a complicated question, but they did reply in a friendly and helpful manner.
It’s supposed to be available 24 hours (Monday-Friday), but in my experience it wasn’t always available. I was told that if they’re not able to respond right away, it’s because they’re under capacity - but they’ll be able to reply by email.
They offer support in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese which is very comprehensive..
They also offer support via their Hootsuite Helpers Twitter channel.
Hootsuite doesn’t offer telephone support. Personally, I don’t think that’s a big deal. I rarely want to deal with support issues over the phone. But occasionally it’s nice to have the option. I do think it might be different if you are paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (or even millions) per year for the Enterprise plan. This is a point that Todd Maffin talks about in his article, The Hootsuite Problem.
Comparing with other tools
Agorapulse offers 24 hours (Monday - Friday) live chat/email support in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. They also offer a more limited support over the weekend.
Their average response time is 30 minutes, but usually you won’t have to wait more than 5-10 minutes. They provide training via recorded webinars, and for larger companies they can provide a full personalised walkthrough. They don’t offer telephone support.
Sprout Social doesn’t offer live chat, but they do offer telephone, email and Twitter support. It’s 24 hours and they offer support in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
G2Crowd rating
G2Crowd allows customers to rate the tools they use. It’s useful to get a comparison between different tools and what their customers think of them.
I don’t always agree with their definitions though. For example they include tools such as Buffer, Edgar and SocialBakers in the social media management category. But it can be helpful to get a rough picture.
I wrote a comparison of the top 5 social media management tools according to G2 Crowd on my blog. Hootsuite scored lowest for their level of support.
For this update, I compared Hootsuite with Agorapulse, Sendible and Sprout Social. Although 8/10 is not a shocking score for quality of support, this is far lower than the score of 8.8 for Sendible, 9.0 for Sprout Social, and 9.3 for Agorapulse. It also scored lowest for the “ease of doing business with” category and product direction.
Reason #7
Expensive Custom URL Shorteners
This is not so much of a big deal as it used to be.
Hootsuite used to force you to use their own URL shortener, ow.ly.
Thankfully, you now have the choice - most of the time.
Why URL shorteners?
Let me explain a little about URL shorteners.
URL shortening started as a result of people wanting to add links to their Tweets without using up as much space.
Later on, URL shortener providers offered tracking services. This gave reports on the clicks on the link. For example, the number of clicks and the location of those visitors.
The big advantages in using link shortening services like bit.ly or bl.ink is that they are portable. You can use them with just about any tool you want, or simply paste the shortened link into your social network or email marketing tool. That means you can track all the stats no matter where they are posted.
You can also set up tracking, including Google Analytics parameters, and get full analytics.
The other advantage with these link shorteners is that you can create your own custom branded short URL. For example:
- Unshortened:
https://iag.me/socialmedia/reviews/7-reasons-not-to-use-hootsuite/ - Shortened with bit.ly:
https://to.iag.me/7reasons - Shortened with bit.ly and using my custom URL:
https://to.iag.me/7reasons - Shortened with bl.ink and their smart links URL:
http://reasons.social/hootsuite7 - Shortened with bl.ink and my custom domain:
http://ian.live/7reasons
You can paste in your shortened domains into any tool, but one cool thing about bit.ly is that it integrates with lots of social media tools including Buffer, Sprout Social, Agorapulse, Sendible and more.
But not Hootsuite.
Hootsuite’s URL Shorteners
Hootsuite now allows you to choose between no shortening or the ow.ly link shortener.
With no shortening, you can can use the original URL. Or you can paste in a custom URL from another service such as bit.ly or bl.ink.
With link shortening switched on, your links will be shortened using the Hootsuite ow.ly URL shortener.
It also offers url tracking. I found this a little buggy, but finally I got this to work.
URL tracking is really useful. It allows you to see where your visitors have come from to visit a page, buy a product or do something else on your website.
Tools that offer URL tracking add strings to the end of the URL. Services like Google Analytics can then track these. And you can see how successful your social media campaigns have been.
Hootsuite offers tracking with Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics and custom.
I have to say, Hootsuite have definitely made improvements here. It’s good to see them offering so many tracking features.
No custom urls unless you are on the team plan
A few years back, a custom URL from Hootsuite was already pretty expensive - $49.99 per month.
If you want a custom URL now, you’re going to have to upgrade to the $1,548 per year team plan.
And like before, this custom URL is fixed to Hootsuite. Unlike portable services like bl.ink and bit.ly, the Hootsuite URL shortener can only be used within Hootsuite.
Workaround
Of course you could just paste in your bit.ly or blink custom urls, but that’s time consuming.
Tools like Sprout Social, Buffer, Sendible and Agorapulse all integrate with bit.ly and shorten your links automatically with your custom URL - so it’s a lot easier.
So what next?
I’ve given 7 reasons why you might not want to use Hootsuite as your social media management tool. But, what’s the next stage?
Try Hootsuite
If the above reasons don't put you off, then Hootsuite may well be the best solution for you. Check out the alternatives below as well as test out Hootsuite. They offer a free plan and a 30-day free trial.
Look at the 7 Reasons why you SHOULD use Hootsuite
I’ve gone through 7 problems with Hootsuite in this article, but I’ve also written about 7 reasons why you SHOULD consider Hootsuite. The article is in need of an update, but the reasons are still current today. Have a read to get a balanced view.
Hootsuite Alternatives
Look at an alternative
Whether you’ve been using Hootsuite for a while, or looking for a new social media management tool it’s important to do a comparison. I recommend making a list of your top requirements in order of priority. Then compare at least 3 tools to see how they stand up to your list. Most tools have a free trial and provide support while you make your decision.
To help with this, I’ve listed loads of alternatives below.
Social Media Management Tools
Agorapulse
Free Trial, then from $99/user/month
A powerful fully-fledged social media management tool
Publishing:
Facebook Pages Facebook Groups Twitter Twitter DMs LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn pages YouTube Instagram Direct Publishing Instagram Push Notification Publishing
Social Inbox
Facebook Pages Facebook Ad & Dark Post Comments Facebook Messenger for Pages Twitter Mentions Twitter Search Twitter DMs LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn pages YouTube Instagram
Listening & Monitoring:
Facebook Pages Facebook Messenger for Pages Twitter Mentions Twitter Search Twitter DMs LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn pages YouTube Instagram
Analytics & Reports:
Facebook Pages Twitter Instagram
Other features:
Official Instagram Partners, Official Facebook Partners, iOS mobile app, Android mobile app
A powerful social media management tool for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube which aims to offer enterprise-level features at a lower monthly price. It has an inbox zero feature which allows you to get through your social comments and messages really easily or delegate them to team members. There is a very handy automated moderation rules feature for social networks which can filter spam out for you or automatically delegate or review certain messages.
AgoraPulse has a built-in customer relationship management tool (CRM) allowing you to build up a list of your social contacts. The integrated reports and analytics are detailed and engaging and you can also export as a pdf. The publishing feature is really powerful too with Instagram Direct Publishing & YouTube video publishing.
There is a mobile app for iOS and Android devices.
Sprout Social
Free trial, then from $99/user/month
Publishing:
Facebook Pages Facebook Groups Twitter Twitter DMs LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn pages Pinterest Instagram
Monitoring:
Facebook Pages Facebook Messenger for Pages Facebook Groups Twitter Lists Twitter Mentions Twitter Search Twitter DMs LinkedIn pages Instagram
Other features:
Official Instagram Partners, iOS mobile app, Android mobile app
A big competitor to Hootsuite with some awesome features (really snazzy reports, multiple bit.ly URL shortener integrations etc) - it does have a hefty price tag though- prices start at $99/user/month (sadly, they recently removed the entry $59/user/month plan). There is no free account but they offer a free trial. Do have a look at my related article 7 Reasons NOT to use Sprout Social.
Sotrender
Free trial, then from $20/mth (for one user) or from $35 for plans with social inbox
A really powerful reporting and social media performance measurement tool with a newly added social inbox
Social Inbox:
Facebook Pages Facebook Ad & Dark Post Comments Facebook Messenger for Pages
Analytics & Reports:
Facebook Pages Twitter YouTube Instagram
Sotrender is an incredibly powerful analytics, reporting and performance measurement tool for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Although Sotrender isn't a full social media management tool (in that it doesn't offer publishing or listening/monitoring) it does have an easy to use social inbox for Facebook, analytics, reporting and competitor analysis.
The analytics feature goes far beyond what Facebook and other networks tell you in their insights. As well as data on the demographics of your audience, Sotrender also shows you your top community members. I love the segmentation chart which breaks down your community into different categories - Debators, Occasional, Activists, Likers and Writers. You can also view when your audience is most active, so you know the best time and day to post your contet
I also love the tips feature, where it lists your posts with tips on how to approve for next time.
You can also create stunning reports (perfect for agencies and larger businesses) and compare your social channels with your competitors.
Sendible
Free trial, then from $29/mth (for one user)
A full social media management tool with a huge number of integrations.
Publishing:
Facebook Pages Facebook Groups Twitter LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn pages Pinterest YouTube Instagram Direct Publishing Tumblr Google My Business Medium
Social Inbox:
Facebook Pages Facebook Ad & Dark Post Comments Facebook Messenger for Pages Twitter Lists Twitter Mentions Twitter Search Twitter DMs LinkedIn pages Instagram
Listening & Monitoring:
Facebook Pages Facebook Messenger for Pages Twitter Lists Twitter Mentions Twitter Search Twitter DMs LinkedIn pages Instagram
Analytics & Reports:
Facebook Pages Twitter LinkedIn pages YouTube Instagram
Other features:
Official Facebook Marketing Partners, Instagram Partners, Google Chrome browser extension, Review Monitoring (including sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor), RSS Feed Importer (adding RSS feeds in bulk), iOS mobile app, Android mobile app
Similar to Hootsuite and SproutSocial with an impressive array of features. Sendible integrates with a huge number of social channels including Twitter, Facebook (profiles, pages & groups), LinkedIn (profiles, pages & groups), Foursquare, Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and more. You can have as many team members as you like (although you will have to pay per user above your allocated amount) and it integrates with bit.ly and other URL shorteners.
There is no free account but they offer a free trial. Be aware that Sendible includes a certain number of "services" for each plan. For the basic Micro plan you get 12 "services", with the Small plan 48 services and with the large plan you get 192 services. Services can get a little confusing, because a Twitter list stream, Twitter mention stream, Twitter Search stream, Facebook Group and Facebook Profile stream are all classed as separate services. You can find yourself running out of services very quickly.
MavSocial
Free Trial, then from $19/mth for 10 profiles
A full social media management tool that integrates with the Chinese network Wechat on its enterprise plan.
Publishing:
Facebook Pages Facebook Groups Twitter LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn pages YouTube Instagram Tumblr WeChat
Monitoring/Engagement:
Facebook Pages Facebook Messenger for Pages Facebook Groups Twitter Lists Twitter Mentions Twitter Search Twitter DMs LinkedIn pages YouTube Instagram WeChat
Other features:
Official Instagram Partners, iOS mobile app, Android mobile app
A simple and affordable social media management tool for curating, scheduling and managing your socials all in one platform. Integrating Facebook, Instagram (direct publishing), Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr and WeChat, it streamlines the entire social media process from content discovery to audience engagement to reporting. WeChat integration is only available on the business/enterprise plans which start at $199/month.
MavSocial has an AI-powered digital asset management system, scheduling calendar and post recycling tools, Social Inbox, comprehensive real-time and exportable reports, and customizable team management features. Social listening to be released shortly
A mobile app for iOS and Android is available to make social media management even easier on the go.
Social Report
Free trial, and from $49/month
Social Report launched back in 2011 and has a robust all-in-one solution covering publishing and scheduling, analytics, reporting, a “smart inbox”, team management and automation. They integrate with most networks out there, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and more. They’re going to be shortly launching direct publishing for Instagram too. It's cost-effective and cheaper for teams when compared to Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Buffer.
Jollor
Free Trial, then from $5/month
A lesser-known but nicely put together social media management tool.
Publishing:
Facebook Pages Twitter LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn pages YouTube Instagram VKontakte Odnoklassniki
Jollor isn't as well known as the likes of Hootsuite and SproutSocial, but it's a really good looking social media management tool that integrates with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube as well as the Russian networks VK and Odnoklassniki. They don't integrate yet with bit.ly, but they have some enterprise features such as team and role management and delegation. Analytics look very impressive. There is a mobile app coming, but the website is fully responsive and can be used well on a mobile or tablet. They have a very transparent pricing scheme starting at $5. It basically costs $5 per network, and you can add extra team members for $5 per month as well as other features.
TweetDeck
Free
Publishing:
Twitter
Monitoring:
Twitter Twitter Lists Twitter Mentions Twitter Search
Twitter Management Only.
This used to be one of my top recommendations, but Twitter has done their best to make this less useful. But Tweetdeck is a free way of managing multiple Twitter accounts and useful for scheduling posts as well as managing Twitter Chats.
ContentCal
Free plan, and from $13/month
A social media & content planning solution which has recently entered the social media management tool space.
Publishing:
Facebook Pages Facebook Groups Twitter LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn pages Instagram Push Notification Publishing
Social Inbox
Facebook Messenger for Pages Twitter Mentions
Analytics & Reports:
Facebook Pages Twitter LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn pages Instagram
Note that ContentCal's reports only show data on posts posted via ContentCal itself.
Other features:
iOS mobile app
ContentCal is a great visual tool to help solo freelancers, small business owners or agencies (and beyond) manage their social channels. A content calendar is central to ContentCal, giving you a 'birdseye view' of all the social posts going out across multiple channels. It currently integrates with Facebook (Pages), LinkedIn (Pages, Profiles) and Twitter. It has very affordable plans despite some very enterprise focussed features.
Social Media Planning & Publishing Tools
Kontentino
Free and from $10/month
Kontentino is a content planning and publishing tool which has packed some amazing features. It has team planning and collaboration at heart, and it's perfect for agencies who want to work with their clients and get approval. Clients can approve work directly through the web app or on mobile with the click of a button. You can preview how your content looks across all platforms including all the major Facebook ad formats. Kontentino sends over all the scheduled posts to Facebook and allows Facebook to schedule them. This allows you to tag posts and do things that can only be done directly on Facebook.
Social Media Publishing & Scheduling Tools
Buffer
Free or $15/mth for Pro Plan. Business plans from $99/month
Publishing:
Facebook Pages Facebook Groups Twitter LinkedIn profiles LinkedIn pages Pinterest Instagram
Monitoring/Engagement:
No Monitoring/Engagement available,
Other features:
Official Instagram Partners, iOS mobile app, Android mobile app.
Allows you to post or cross-post to Twitter, Facebook (profiles, pages or groups), LinkedIn (profile, groups or company pages), Instagram, Pinterest or Google+ business profiles/pages. You can either post straight away or create a schedule for each social network. Buffer is an amazing tool and one that I use every day.
Social Champ
From $10/month
Social Champ allows you to schedule and publish content to a wide variety of networks, not just once, but many times in a cycle. You can also link up your RSS feed and set up filters.
Tool Comparison Table
Scroll to see more
| Tool | URL | Parent Company | Year Founded | Head Office Location | Free Plan? | Number of users in free plan | Max number of users in free plan | Cheapest Paid Plan | Number of users in cheapest paid plan | Max Number of users in cheapest paid plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hootsuite | hootsuite.com | N/A | 2008 | Vancouver, Canada | Yes | 1 | 1 | $45/user/mth/billed annually | 1 | 1 |
| Agorapulse | agorapulse.com | N/A | 2011 | Paris, France | No | N/A | N/A | $49/user/mth $39/usr/mth if paid annually | 1 | Unlimited (extra users $39/user/mth) |
| Sprout Social | sproutsocial.com | N/A | 2010 | Chicazgo, US | No | N/A | N/A | $99/user/mth | 1 | Unlimited (extra users $99/user/mth) |
| Sendible | sendible.com | N/A | 2009 | London, UK | No | N/A | N/A | $29/user/mth $24/user/mth if billed annually | 1 | 1 |
| Zoho Social | zoho.com/social | Zoho | 2015 | Chennai, India | Yes | 1 | 1 | $10/user/mth $8.33/user/mth if billed annually | 2 | Not specified/addit'l user $10/mth |
| ContentCal | ContentCal | N/A | 2014 | London, UK | Yes | 1 | 1 | £15/mth billed annually | 1 | Not specified/addit'l user £15/mth |
| Social Report | socialreport.com | N/A | 2010 | New York, NY | No | N/A | N/A | $49/mth | 5 | 5 |
| Muster Point | musterpoint.io | N/A | 2012 | London, London | No | N/A | N/A | $35/£25 per month per user | 1 | Not specified/addit'l user $35/£25/mth |
| Jollor | jollor.com | N/A | 2014 | Prague, Czech Republic | No | N/A | N/A | $5/per mth | 2 | Not specified/addit'l user $5/mth |
| MavSocial | MavSocial | N/A | 2012 | San Francisco, CA | Yes | 1 | 1 | $16/mth billed annually | 1 | 1 |
| Tweetdeck | tweetdeck.twitter.com | N/A | 2008 | Yes | 1 | 1 | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
| Kontentino | Kontentino | N/A | 2014 | Bratislava, Slovakia | Yes | 1 | 1 | $10/mth | 3 | 3 |
| Lately | trylately.com | N/A | 2014 | New York, US | No | N/A | N/A | $79/mth | 1 | 1 |
Look at other Resources
If you need any more help on getting started with Hootsuite or want more advice on whether or not Hootsuite is for you, check out these posts…
Hire me!
Perhaps you are still confused and you need some expert help. I offer a social media consultation service in which I can help find the best selection of tools and solutions for you or your business.
What the * means above...
If a link has an asterisk by it, it means it is an affiliate link and generates a little income for the site. If you end up signing up for the service and paying it may result in a small proportion going towards the upkeep of this site. You shouldn't notice any difference in the sign up process.
The editorial line is NEVER impacted by these links. I will only ever recommend a product or service if I think it is worth recommending! If a product or service does not have an affiliate scheme, then we will still include it in the same way.
In the interests of transparency, here are the non-affiliate links which will not help iag.me:
About Ian Anderson Gray
The Seriously Social Community
What do you think? Join the fun & Let me know below...
Hello everyone! I first published this article back in 2012. Although I’ve updated it over the years, it was time for a big update. So, I am pleased to say I’ve completely rewritten the article. It’s the most comprehensive article I’ve ever written. I won’t begin to explain how much work has gone into it! I hope it’s it helpful for you in making the right decision – whether that is in choosing Hootsuite or another tool. Ian
So much info, but still so confused. I have a small agency. Would need myself and a team member and to handle 5 accounts max. Doing posts mostly at the moment. Just wanting to be able to do a day of planning at the start of the month and automate. Any thoughts on the best one for something that simple 🙂
PS I am extremely frugal 🙂
Hi Brian, Sorry for the delay. It sounds like you are probably best just posting natively on the platforms. And Facebook now has a free tool called Creator Studio – where you can post and schedule and respond to Instagram and Facebook posts. Other than that, you really do get what you pay for. There are cheap tools out there, but they’re either not very good, or won’t last very long.
Google
Check beneath, are some totally unrelated internet sites to ours, however, they are most trustworthy sources that we use.
Thank you for this thorough explanation! My daughter and I are on a mission to share social, academic, and mental wellness strategies, but with NO social media marketing skills most of what we create is in a vacuum. Hootsuite has been so cumbersome we stopped using it but are now in need of tool that is easier to use.
Unless I’m mistaken, your history of Hootsuite is missing a limb. I was with Seesmic when it turned into Hootsuite. I chose it over Tweetdeck. And it was fine for a while. But then, they started cutting basic services, changing the interface and flow, limiting the number of accounts you could synch, and well, it basically all went to shit.
That’s my experience with Hootsuite. My sad experience.
I miss Seesmic.
Hi David, thanks for your comment. I do remember Seesmic, but I don’t think I ever used it myself. I also remember it being acquired by Hootsuite back in 2012 (four years after Seesmic was founded). More info here – https://hootsuite.com/en-gb/newsroom/press-releases/welcomes-seesmic-users Hootsuite acquired lots of companies over the years and either killed them, amalgamated them into their main product or whatever. I am sorry to hear about your experience. So, what do you use now? Hootsuite or something else? Thankfully there are some great alternatives now – such as Agorapulse
that was a very great post on hootsuite, sorry but i reached to it very very late…why didn’t i reach to it earlier though…thank you dear. It was a very great article.
Hey Ian Anderson Gray,
I have used Hootsuite before and have faced these issues and left. Someone should be there to tell people what is the drawback of the particular thing. Thanks, you are here to tell people. I wish I would have seen this post before I used the Hootsuite. Keep doing your good work.
Thanks for the insight. I just received an invoice I won’t be paying for 339 I may have shown interest in it but never signed up for them. Not sure whether to take this to RCMP Fraud or ignore it. THank again
Hi Barry. Sorry to hear you’ve had issues. Did you contact Hootsuite? Ian
Most of these social media management services are getting greedy … prices seem to be going up and up while you get less for you money. Hootesuite used to offer 50 social profiles and unlimited RSS feeds for around £10 per month …
Hootsuite used to charge $5.99 per month for 50 profiles! But that kind of offer is not sustainable. Running a decent social media management tool is expensive. There are plenty of new tools on the market which are charging pretty low fees. But they’ll end up having to up their fees at some point.
Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook are making it really difficult for these companies. The APIs are becoming more complicated and there are loads more rules and regulations. It’s not as easy or cheap as it used to be.
RIPPED OFF!
We only signed up to look at the features for a customer, we had to enter CC details, but like most companies was expecting a trail period ending email, so I didn’t worry over the Christmas break. The trial period ended, we never received any warning, then got charged 525$, never received an invoice or receipt. I admitted that I had forgotten about it, and apologized hoping they could see it was a honest mistake. They could see we never logged back in, or that we never even used the account.
NO RECEIPT
NO TRAIL PERIOD ENDING EMAIL
These guys are criminals, pure greed and arrogance. No refund, no consideration, black and white response. Made to feel like we where in the wrong when we never even used the service.
UNBELIEVABLY RUBBISH.
Who ever heads up this business making these types of decisions to outwardly rip off unknowing customers should be publicly shamed.
SHAME ON YOU HOOTSUITE!!
We had a similar experience with Dropbox, $600, refunded on the spot.
I stopped using hootsuite because their customer service was bad. i waited forever for a subpar response. Your article also helped in actually looking at other companies. I ended up using Heropost which is very good but not on your article and their price point is great. sprout social is also nice.
Other than Sprout Social and AgoraPulse, what other sites allow you to post from other sites but have all the data displayed in one calendar? E.g. if I had a Agora account I could post from buffer and it be visible in the Agora calendar.
Are there cheaper alternatives?
Hi Megan, Sorry for the delay. I’m not sure there is a decent and cheap alternative to do what you want. I had hoped ContentCal did that, but they don’t – they only display posts that have been published via ContentCal. Agorapulse now has unified calendars which are awesome, but I assume you are. looking for.
a cheaper option. I tried to look at Kontentino, but unfortunately my trial has expired. Might be worth talking to them. You could check out my sister article – https://iag.me/socialmedia/7-must-have-social-media-management-tools-2020/
Hi Anderson,
thanks for the article it was of great value, i was looking forward to use hootsuite for my personal sites but now after reading your article i have changed my mind.
Hi there,
great article – I am looking for reporting mainly to give event organizers a feedback on the social media reach. Using a number of facebook pages, instagram, twitter, youtube. Any suggestions what might be best and cost-effective ?
I used to collect the numbers manually from fb insight, insta insight etc but its a lot of manual work and that is mainly what I am looking for. Tried agorapulse but just for reporting the pricetag of 150 is a bit hefty…
Thanks in advance !
Markus
Ian, we are currently using CloudCampaign due to that we are an agency and needed 5-7 social profiles per client. Even at 10 clients, you can imagine that some of these other options get expensive. Are there other platforms that host unlimited social profiles? I didn’t see that data in here.
Hello love your article.
I started a google search on hootsuite competition because I am going to dump them really soon – that’s when I found your article. Thank you this helps me choose a suitable replacement.
The thing that has done it for me with hootsuite is their CRAPPY CUSTOMER SERVICE. I have put in 4 tickets for the same problem hoping to get help and an answer and THEY HAVE NEVER RESPONDED TO ANYTHING.
They obviously don’t want my money. Thank you for your article, it will help me find a new service.
Hi Frank. Thanks for your comment. So glad you enjoyed my article. Sorry to hear that you’ve had a bad experience with Hootsuite’s customer service.
I’ve heard similar reports. Part of the issue is that they have a HUGE customer base, and many of those customers and on the free plan or legacy pro plans and so not paying much money. The bad customer service has hurt their brand a bit I think. Have you decided on a new platform? You might like this new article I’ve written on social media management tools for 2020 – https://iag.me/socialmedia/7-must-have-social-media-management-tools-2020/
Hi Ian, I just posted a few weeks ago but had a couple of follow up questions: You had said that social networks can occasionally have issues with their APIs which can cause issues for tools like Hootsuite. The issue our organization had is that we couldn’t log into our Instagram account at all for close to a week. It isn’t that we just couldn’t post to Instagram through Hootsuite, we were locked out of our Instagram account entirely. If this is an issue with APIs that can cause issues for third party tools like Hootsuite, it sounds like this account lockout issue could happen, not only to Instagram, but to any of our social accounts like Facebook and Twitter (though it is unlikely that more than one social account would be affected at one time). Am I interpreting that right? I was also wondering, if this is an issue with the social network’s APIs that affect third-party tools, isn’t this account lockout issue likely to occur with other social media management tools when a social network has an issue with their APIs? It seems like it wouldn’t just be Hootsuite that is affected… It also seemed odd to me… Read more »
Thanks, Emily. Really sorry to hear you had issues with your Instagram account. It sounds like your Instagram account was temporarily suspended. What message did you receive when you tried to log in? Did you receive an email about this? Did they give you any reasons? Instagram is really hot on stopping automation and bots from misusing Instagram accounts. More so than other networks in my experience. It may not have been a third-party tool that caused the issue, although it might have been. I would check to see which tools have access to your Instagram account and change your password just to be on the safe side. The issues that some tools have with social networks’ APIs is that the APIs can go down. Or in severe situations, social networks can stop the tool from accessing their API altogether as was in the case of Social Report. Unfortunately, Social Report was incorrectly banned from using the Facebook API. Thankfully they managed to be put back on. In some situations, only certain users will be suspended because an algorithm has detected “bad behaviour”. Maybe Instagram thought you were abusing your account by using bots or aggressive automation. I assume you… Read more »
Great content here! Firstly, have a good day!
I read this article fully and I became confused about using Hootsuite because recently I have downloaded its app for scheduling my instagram and twitter posts. I read its pros and cons, I found it good but as my post limit reaches. I’ll need to purchase it but I am not able to afford. So, Are there any other good options to use?
Thank you for this article. And waiting for a response.
Hi Turner. There are lots of good alternatives. I recommend either Buffer or Later for scheduling to Instagram (and other networks. Hope that helps!
Apparently Hootsuite has caused some customers to be unable to access their Instagram accounts: https://status.hootsuite.com/
Do you think this is the kind of thing that will take a long time to be resolved? Do you think there is a threat that this kind of thing could happen with other social media accounts like Facebook Pages or Twitter? Hoping for your thoughts.
The account lock out makes me feel like Hootsuite might not be as secure as we’d like and this article has lots of information about other options so thanks!
Hi Emily. I didn’t quite catch the message on the Hootsuite Status website.
From time to time social networks have issues with their APIs which can cause issues for third party tools like Hootsuite. The API is a way that allows a tool like Hootsuite to connect to a social network. Sometimes these APIs can go down – and often it’s not Hoosuite’s fault. Glad you found my article helpful!
Great article but I have used Hootsuite professional for a long time and will continue to do so as I love the price. I have looked at the others, specifically Agora Pulse. For my size company, they are way too high. I have never had a real issue with Hootsuite although they occasionally disconnect from platforms for no real reason. I think for companies with under 10 employees or small business, Hootsuite is fine. I know people rave about Agora and if you have expendable income to pay their fees, then go for it. For my book, anything over $30.00 a month for automation tools is too much.
Hi Roy. Thanks for your comment. Out of curiosity, what are you paying for Hootsuite Professional? If you were to sign up now, you’d be paying $45 per month and you’d only have one team member. As a current Hootsuite professional user on the legacy prices, you’ll not have access to a lot of the newer features. Agorapulse isn’t cheap. Their cheapest plan is $89 or $99 per month. So for some solopreneurs it’s going to be too much. But, you do get a lot for that money – much more than you get with Hootsuite professional. So it really depends on what you are looking for. For small businesses with under 10 employees, they could use Hootsuite, yes. It would cost them at least $45 and only one person could use it unless they share the password which isn’t something I’d recommend. The cheapest plan where more than one person can use it is $189 per month, and that doesn’t give you anywhere the same as what you get with Agorapulse and other tools. If a business’ budget is under $30 per month, then Hootsuite isn’t an option anymore. I’d just recommend they post natively to the platform or… Read more »
Facebook is actively trying to kill Social Report right now. They recently took down all post that were scheduled through them so if you were using their platform for a substantial amount of time you’re totally screwed right now.
Hi Chris. Oh no! I just saw their Twitter status. That’s really bad. I don’t know the whole back story but I’d be surprised if Facebook was trying to actively kill Social Report. Unless Social Report was doing something against their Terms. But I doubt that. Do you know anymore behind what’s been happening?
Ian, thanks for sharing such a great article. We’re using Hootsuite at my workplace and aren’t thrilled with it. Glad to have this resource to make suggestions with moving forward!
Thanks for your comments. What bits aren’t you thrilled about?
Thank you for this article! I finally found someone who also doesn’t like working with Hootsuite. It was such a hassle for me, that I stopped using it after two weeks. I really care about the business processes I use, also the processes for social media, and this is just not working for me!
Anne
Thanks, Anne. Hootsuite continues to be a good tool for some, but I wanted to give people the pros and the cons. Glad this was helpful for you. Ian
Thanks for this article. I’ve been thinking about leaving Hootsuite because of the inconvenience in posting to Instagram. If it’s just a single-photo post, then no problem; but it won’t let me post a carousel of photos. So I end up using Google Drive to copy the photos to my phone so I can upload directly through the Instagram app. I have also run into issues with Instagram video length on Hootsuite. If I edit a video in iMovie, I have to make sure that the video length is :59s or less. There have been times when the video was :60s long and Hootsuite refused to upload it. Probably, the video was a fraction of a second longer than :60, but iMovie didn’t indicate any partial seconds. Anyway, I copied the video to my phone and attempted to load the video directly through the Instagram app. Guess what – it worked. Why should Hootsuite be stricter about the time limit than Instagram? Yet another hassle using Hootsuite for Instagram. Just recently, I encountered a bitrate error while trying to load a video to Instagram. Hootsuite gave me an error message saying my video’s bitrate was too high. Again, I transferred… Read more »
Hi Ken, Sorry for not getting back to you. Some of the issues you are referring to aren’t really Hootsuite’s fault. It’s down to the Instagram API.
Unfortunately, at the moment, the Instagram API does not allow third-party tools such as Hootsuite to upload carousel images. However, you can do this with the push notification system. When you choose that, you are emailed or pushed a notification at the time the post should be scheduled and then you manually post the images via the official Instagram mobile app. That’s the only way right now. Or you use the official mobile app.
I’ve found the same with third-party tools and the video length. It needs to be 59 seconds or possibly a little over.
I’ve not had any issues with the bitrate. Again, this could be an API issue. I can ask around if it helps.
Thanks for this article, worth sharing and borrowing a few points from it!
Glad you enjoyed it, Antonina! Let me know how you get on!
I’m taking a course in Social Marketing and my institution has a contract with Hootsuite hence we are using it in class and for learning. However, I find it incredibly buggy. I’m also managing social for a small business and tried using it for publishing and monitoring. However, doing monitoring is pretty useless, as for some reason the hashtag search streams ignore some Twitter posts, apparently randomly. When I contacted customer service about this in what is the longest online chat of all time (they replied on average ever 30 minutes), they came up with gibberish explanation and just opened a ticket for me. It’s still not solved and it’s been a while. I would never pay to use it!
Hi Eli, oh dear, that’s not good. Which plan are you on? I hope they sort it out for you. Are you looking to switch? Ian
As a student I have access to Enterprise edition. If I were buying it for myself, I’d seriously just skip it. I can’t believe the reply I got from them: “Twitter indexes their search based on how popular the search term is. At this time this index could return tweets anywhere between 6-9 days in the past. Note that Twitter’s search service and, by extension, the Search API is not meant to be an exhaustive source of tweets. Not all tweets will be indexed or made available via the search interface, meaning, this is expected behaviour. ” – this is just copy pasted from their help page – they didn’t seriously investigate the problem.
But this definitely does not answer why Hootsuite just skips certain accounts when it lists posts with particular hashtags. I am very disappointed.
That’s interesting. I didn’t realise students could get access to the Enterprise edition. You’re very lucky! Their customer service doesn’t have the greatest reputation. What they say about the Search API is technically true. But there are other ways that Twitter offers that give more accurate information. Twitter charges for that information via their premium APIs. So I would have thought Hootsuite Enterprise would have those. But perhaps not. Thanks for letting me know.
Ian, love your blog and articles. Am a beginnger parenting social media creator, Vlad SuperDad. Am looking for a project management software for a distributed team helping me around France. I’m kind of thinking about basecamp or teamwork projects. Can’t decide. Di d you try one of them ? What do you think ?
Hi Vlad. So sorry, I missed your comment. I’d recommend Slack or Asana. Basecamp is cool too, but I personally prefer Asana and Slack.
I was still loving Hootsuite until they recently killed their old composer and replaced with a new junk!
And here’s why I hate it:
1) No more autoselect of Social Accounts
Previously I could select 1 (or more) of my social accounts and all posts I scheduled will be defaulted to this account.
Now I have to select the social accounts for EVERY post I make
2) No more Auto scheduling
Previously I could set the auto scheduler to post X posts between Y and Z times of the day. But now, I’ve got to schedule each post individually
It is so much of a time waster!
Terri. Oh no. You make some great points. The old composer didn’t look great, but it did have a few more features. I think they are trying to simplify things, but if you miss out on features you need, that isn’t good.
Are you looking at switching to a different tool?
Ian, this is the most comprehensive assessment I’ve seen. I love Buffer and have used it since its launch but you’re right-there is limited reporting. I stopped using Hootsuite years ago and recently returned because it is a requirement of a class I’m taking this quarter. It has been frustrating and although a couple of their tech support people have tried to be helpful, others have seemed downright evil. I’m staying with it for a few months, then need to decide what to do. Bookmarking your article.
Hi Terri. Great to hear from you! And thanks for your kind words. I love Buffer too. It’s so good at what it does. But I find the lack of decent analytics and not having a social inbox frustrating. Hootsuite support can be very helpful – but it’s like you say – it depends on who you get. But, wow, I’ve never come across downright evil people there! What kind of things did you encounter? Have you looked at other platforms out there such as Agorapulse, Sendible or Sprout Social? Ian
Hootsuite refuses to give us a refund.
There have been huge glitches in their platform. On yet another support call, I asked for a refund of at least part of the 300+ dollars paid for the Professional plan. Their response was although they couldnt even explain the platform inconsistencies and offer a solution, they could not offer any type of refund. It was a few months into the plan and we’d paid for a year.
I have yet to hear back regarding the latest platform errors and problems and it’s been over a month. Waste of money and time.
Don’t make the same mistake we did. Avoid this overpriced, clunky, time wasting platform. We found better solutions for much less since then.
Hi Jennifer,
Oh no, that’s not great to hear. I think that is the problem when you pay for a year. I would recommend paying for a few months to try it out and then once you are happy, pay for a year. Of course, they offer a good discount for annual plans. And some plans (such as enterprise and business) aren’t available on a monthly basis. Really they should be going out their way to help you. Have you found a better solution?
I really appreciate this article. I love blogs like this because it allows an open forum for the “user” like us to provide our assessment of a tool without the fall back of getting fired by the company you work for. This is not the case for all businesses and I am not making a claiming that Hoot Suite is one of those companies. When someone puts in the time to generate a view of a product like this, I take heed. Thank you for fostering this forum.
Great article about hootsuite. I was just about to sign up for Hootsuite and then I found this article. Great comparison between the top tools. Also really appreciate the interactive tool comparison chart. For a solopreneur with a VA and less than 10 profiles to start, My choice is AgoraPulse.
And as a side note, I have been using QUUU to Buffer for last 24 months to post engaging content on my FB Pages and FB groups on autopilot. I also use a RSS Feed tool called RSSMasher to create a combined RSS Feed that uses IFTTT to deliver regular social content to my social profiles.
These are just some of the more simpler ways to start Social Media marketing. Maybe in another article, you can address these auto-posting options.
Thanks again for the very well researched software tool comparisons.
Thanks, Damon. Glad you found this article helpful. I’m a big Agorapulse fan myself – hope it works out for you. I will cover some of the auto-poster tools in the future. But, I’m not so much of a fan of them anymore. I used to use these workflows all the time, but they end up being a very blunt tool and its so easy to become lazy if you just auto-post content all the time. I prefer a semi-automated method where I can connect Feedly to a tool like Buffer when I choose which articles to share. But I think automation tools have their place. Ian
Came across this blog because I was having issues with my scheduled post on Instagram. The formatting was incorrect especially the spaces. I can’t even edit it. It’s really important to be accurate with my post format since it’s part of my client’s business. smh.
Hi Shea. Oh no, that’s not good! Did you manage to sort it out? If Instagram is important to you, why not check out another tool that works really well with Instagram such as Later, Tailwind or Agorapulse.
Thanks for the review. I am really crossed since they increased the prices. Since then I use a free account. I have 3 pages and that suits me. I get around the 30 posts limitation and the lack of bulk scheduler by using a piece of clever software to automate hootsuite post creation. It does exactly as the pro plan bulk publisher without the limitation of 350 posts and for free.
Hi Vas, yes, it is annoying that the prices have increased so much. But glad the free plan works for you. Just be careful with that tool – it sounds like it’s breaking Hoosuite’s terms! Not something I recommend at all. Also, I assume you still won’t be able to manage your Twitter DMs, because you’ll need Hootsuite Pro for that.
A scheduling app, OneUp, recently came across my desk. It schedules to Google My Business, also, which is a great feature. The cost is VERY reasonable! The interface reminds me of “old” Google, not too pretty, but simple to use. Be curious if you can review at some point? I’m just beginning to use OneUp and currently use Hootsuite, am a legacy Pro user. I can still add a team member in Hootsuite, but I can’t collaborate with them for Reviewing… how lame is that? Hootsuite is definitely too pricey now. I also get a lot of really helpful (automated) emails from the founder on OneUp, more helpful than Hootsuite’s emails. He is very responsive when have a question as well. https://www.oneupapp.io/price
Hi Teresa. I haven’t heard of OneUp. There are so many tools out there, and it’s easy to lose count! I’ll look into it at some point. Thanks for
I didn’t see an important issue covered here and that involves the terms of their contract and their methods for enforcing it. The Hootsuite contract auto renews. Fair enough, except, it requires 60 days’ notice of cancelation! Moreover, Hootsuite does not provide notice like every reputable firm would that your auto renew is about to kick in; rather, when you realize you want to alter your contract near the anniversary date, they say “Sorry, too late. Next year you can cancel.” They even say that say if you provided them notice 50 days before renewal. Sorry for you. Moreover, Hootsuite applies Canadian law to their terms of the agreement. Thus, for example, if your business is in California, which I am sure is where many Hootsuite customers operate, you are unable to rely in California law which sharply limits the auto renewal tricks as practiced by Hootsuite; rather, in California an agreement cannot auto renew without sufficient open and obvious notice in advance. No hiding in the mice type, cross-referencing other clauses in other contracts and invoking Canadian law here. So, if you want anther good reason not to use Hootsuite, that’s a very good one.
Hi Rudi. That’s a great comment – thanks so much for sharing your thoughts here. But I am sorry you’ve had a bad experience with Hootsuite here. Which plan are you on with Hootsuite? Is this Professional, Team, Business or Enterprise? I’ve had a look through their terms and the cancellation help docs and I can’t see anything about a 60 day cancellation period. If you pay for a year, you can cancel before the end of the year, but you won’t get a refund. But as long as you cancel before your renewal date, you’ll be able to cancel. However, I do understand how frustrating it can be if you forget to cancel and are charged. In my opinion, as long as you are quick to get back to them after the renewal period, they should refund you. But it sounds like they stick to their terms pretty strongly. However, it could well be a different matter for the Enterprise plan.
How about Later? Do you like it?
Yes, I really do like Later! It’s one of the best tool out there for scheduling to Instagram. I talk about it as an alternative to Agorapulse in my 7 Reasons NOT to use Agorapulse article. There are a number of options for Instagram scheduling and Later is great. Alternatives include Buffer (which is ok for Instagram) and Tailwind (which is excellent). Do you use Later?
I have SO many issues with Hootsuite. Their tech team can never seem to give me a solution either. I have countless issues with link previews and most recently, an issue with being able to delete the link and having the preview stay there.i was always able to populate the link and then delete the text but today this is not the case. How glitchy can it be? Also, when I post to our Facebook group, it does not allow link previews. What I mean by this is it populated the link and the minute I click schedule the whole link preview disappears. The Hootsuite Team has been trying to figure this out for a month now. I am just sick of it and appreciate your VERY thorough article on alternatives.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Felicia. And really sorry to hear the issues you’ve been facing. I had very similar issues with the link previews too. Yes, it can be very glitchy. So, have you heard anything back from Hootsuite? Are you sticking with them or trying an alternative? Ian
What an exhaustive rundown, Ian. Thank you! As a legacy Hoot user, I’ve been at it for a longgggg time, managing over 60-80 accounts at any one time. Like you, I’ve tried many others and use several as additions (Buffer primarily, as well as Social Pilot and Quuuu for content, as well as a few others). I stay with Hoot primarily because I like for the format – it works well with my brain. You mention that it doesn’t have a monthly view. It does. Unless I’m misunderstanding your comment- just toggle over on the top right in Publisher view. I frequently use the ‘past scheduled’ tab to re-queue popular posts (though I’m primarily in LIST view while working). The new update does allow us to preview posts so I think that takes care of your ‘lack of preview’ issue, maybe. I’d love to hear your thoughts on PromoRepublic, which I find quite helpful with regard to utilizing graphics and pre-prepared content, as well as scheduling in repeated posts for FB and IG (no longer allowable on Twitter). Not a huge fan or their scheduling format, though. I also find CoSchedule to be helpful, though TBH, it doesn’t work well… Read more »
I think this option was JUST taken away…. unless I am mistaken. I always really appreciated the monthly view but now it’s not available…….
Thanks, Ileana. Yes, I don’t have this option either. I am wondering whether it’s only available to legacy customers or those on certain plans?
Hi Rachel, Thanks so much for your detailed reply – I really appreciate it! I know what you mean about sticking with a tool like Hootsuite if you are used to it. Switching to a different tool takes a lot of brain power. I remember the last time I switched and it took a lot. But I am glad I did. But if Hootsuite is working for you, then that’s great. I still recommend Hootsuite to many people – and it could be the right fit for you. That was interesting that you have the option to switch the calendar view. I don’t have that. I’ve only got a weekly view with no ability to change. And, yes, I do have the ability to preview posts – but we can’t edit directly on the preview which was what I was saying in the article. Not necessarily a deal killer for many people, but surprising that they don’t have it. I really like PromoRepublic. I know the CEO, Max. He’s lovely! It is great for producing graphics for scheduled content and I highly recommend it. Do get in touch with them and give them feedback, by the way. And CoSchedule is… Read more »
Appreciate the reply, Ian. It’s possible they do have different views for different plans. Honestly, if there was one service that had everything, I’d be so happy LOL.
They did just cut me down to 50 accounts only (I used to be able to have basically as many as I wanted as a Legacy user). I imagine I’ll have to also start paying a lot more soon as well (and still using other services to fill in the gaps).
I am also a Legacy Pro user and the last time I added a network in February I still had “unlimited” networks.
Two weeks ago I tried to add a new Facebook Page to my list of networks, and was told I was over my limit. Hootsuite Support have have come back to me today to tell me that I have a new 50 network limit on my account, but they’ll increase it to 100 if I pay for an upgrade.
Hi Graham. That’s frustrating. But yes, they are effectively forcing their legacy pro users to upgrade. They’re focussing much more on their business and enterprise clients, and the old pro isn’t making them any money.
However, whichever tool you choose, getting more than 50 networks is going to be expensive. Hope you get this sorted out. Ian
I use Hootsuite for my personal Twitter accounts, mostly just because I don’t like the Twitter web interface. But when it comes to managing client projects, we need better tools and team accessibility. There seem to be new tools coming on the market everyday and it’s hard to choose, so I certainly appreciate thorough comparisons like this.
Thanks, Loretta. That makes sense. Have you tried Tweetdeck for managing personal Twitter accounts? But you are right, there are so many new tools coming out and it’s so difficult to choose. Glad this has been helpful. Ian
Hi, Ian! Thank you for such an insightful article, I really enjoyed reading it! I also realized that Hootsuite is just not for me and I prefer other tools way more. For example, I think many URL shorteners are way better (I’m currently using Capsulink and I think it’s just way better) than theirs and have more features. Not a fan of Bitly though, but other than that, I agree with everything else you wrote!
That’s interesting. Yes, the Hootsuite URL shortener is fairly basic and very restrictive. Although it had improved since I originally wrote the article. But you’re right there are many other URL shorteners that are better. I don’t mind bitly – it’s simple and it has a free custom short domain option. I also like bl.ink. Not heard of Capsulink. What do you like about it? The only issue with these URL shorteners is that they’re not that portable yet. Most tools out there, love it or hate it, integrate with bitly. But thanks for your encouragement!
Ian, thanks for such a thorough article. We’re currently trying Hootsuite at my workplace and aren’t thrilled with it. Glad to have this resource to make suggestions with moving forward!
That’s great to hear, Blake. What issues are you having with Hootsuite?
Hope this article helps. Ian
Hi all, any services that can autpost to GoogleMyBusiness from RSS feed yet?
Also any services that can autopost to Instagram Business?
Thanks
By Autopost what do you mean? You can certainly use IFTTT and Buffer for Instagram. But not sure about Google My Business. Ian
I mean with an RSS …. I donlt think it’s possible to post RSS to Instagram via IFTTT ?
You’re right – although IFTTT can take items from an RSS feed, it doesn’t publish directly to Instagram. But you could use Buffer in the middle. So RSS->Buffer via IFTTT and then Buffer->Instagram via IFTTT. Yes, that would mean paying for Buffer’s paid plan, but I think that would be the easiest.
The only issue here is extracting the image from the blog post. And it might not be the right dimensions. But you could have a play.
Hi! Thanks for the useful information! I’d like to know if you are familiar with Later because you didn’t mention it here! I’ wondering if it is also a good option to try!
Thanks!
Yes, I am familiar with Later. in fact it was founded by some ex-Hootsuite employees. I’ve mentioned it more in my 7 Reasons Not to use Agorapulse article. It’s a great scheduling tool – particularly for Instagram.
Thanks a million! I will read the article you recommended and I’ll be back here to more comments! My experience with Hootsuite is not the best one, and I have even tried a long time! I used for a week, and I didn’t like it! I will read the article and I’ll try Later too! Thanks!
Thanks, glad I could help. There’s no such thing as a perfect tool. I feel part of my job is to display the good and bad parts of the main tools out there. I personally use Agorapulse, but it may not be the best tool for everyone. But there are loads of tools to choose from as you can see! Let
Hi Ian,
Since Dec. last year, Hootsuite hashtag monitoring took only allows a maximum of 30 hashtags, and the search results will show only the posts published during that day. Do you know any other free alternative, or way to monitor more than 30 hashtags. Thank you so much for your post!
Thanks, Diana, I have to admit, I’ve not looked closely at the hashtag monitoring side of things. Is this just with Twitter? And which plan are you referring to? I assume you’re talking about the free plan? If it’s Twitter, then look no further than Tweetdeck.
Hi Ian, no was referring to Instagram. I use both hootsuite and later.com and they only allow a maximum of 30 hashtags, which is not enough for big companies with many locations. Thank you!
Oh, I see. The issue is that Instagram allows a maximum of 30 hashtags. So it’s not Hootsuite or Later that is restricting this – it’s Instagram itself. So there isn’t a way around this. Sorry! Ian
Thank you for the article! Very thorough review, which I appreciate. Unfortunately, you might add that Hootsuite’s latest update means it no longer supports Instagram. For my business, and for many others like mine, IG is the highest percentage of our social revenue. I can’t for the life of me understand this move. https://help.hootsuite.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002742853-Facebook-and-Instagram-changes-updated-August-9-2018
Hi Liz. Are you referring to the section that says…
– Liking Instagram posts or comments, or viewing likes, will no longer be supported.
– Following or unfollowing Instagram users will no longer be supported.
?
If so, unfortunately this is a restriction imposed by Facebook who owns Instagram. No 3rd party tools including Hootsuite, Sprout Social or Agorapulse can do any of those things anymore. It’s really frustrating. So, as well as using a social media management tool, you’ll also need to use the mobile app from Instagram.
I REALLY REALLY Love the multicolumn layout in Hootsuite. I became addicted to that from Tweetdeck – it is so user friendly and helpful and creates much better engagement and efficient use of my time. Unfortunately, I cannot comment or reply to comments on instagram or facebook with Hootsuite. What’s the point of using it then? SO frustrating. I really want to be able to engage with followers this way. Also I cannot load instagram or facebook feeds, only my own posts. Again, what is the point? Come on Hootsuite.
Hi Krystina, thanks for your comment. I totally understand why you’d love the multicolumn layout if you came from Tweetdeck. For certain things the multi-column layout makes perfect sense – especially for Twitter. If you’re doing a Twitter chat, or monitoring keywords – it makes sense to have a multi-column layout. But I found out over time, that it doesn’t make sense for almost everything else. For everything else it’s overwhelming. If I want to go through my comments or mentions, or respond to searches, or look through my LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube comments, having a single stream is much better. It’s very similar to going through your emails. Imagine if your email inbox had multiple columns!
For IG in Hootsuite, have you tried disconnecting and then reconnecting?
You should be able to do respond to comments. Are you on their free account? If you pay, you can always contact their support? But, maybe it’s also time to try a different tool and see if you prefer it? Ian
Hootsuit tried for a small team and used it to use a pain,
Thanks for the article. It was really completely. I found a good option for Hootsuit, which has no hidden costs – socialization. Thanks in advance!
Trying to get out of HootSuite now. WP connection no longer works, their tech support won’t fix it even after I asked…errr…. demanded several times. Since it’s past my “one month” they refused to offer a refund for the remaining 3-4 months left on my plan. I’m stuck with manually posting all of my blog posts since I can only get so many from Buffer’s “free” plan (because I refuse to pay for 2 social sharing software right now. It’s just aggravating.
Hi Anna, oh no, that’s not good at all. How long have you been with Hootsuite? I am surprised you’ve had such a poor response from Hootsuite support. In the past, my experience was poor, but it seemed to have improved a lot recently. Could you explain a bit more about the WP connection? What do you use this for? What have they said? Have you tried connecting your blog to Hootsuite using RSS? Ian
DON’T USE HOOSUITE!!! The service is sh**ty, constantly goes down or channels disconnect randomly, and support is very bad. Their live chat feature is almost always offline, it’s horrible.
Sorry to hear that, Gregory. I’ve not had the experience of Hootsuite going down or disconnecting from channels – at least while I was reviewing it for the update of this article. Also, I had good experience with their live chat. But, you’ve had a very different experience so obviously it really depends! Are you continuing to use Hootsuite or are you using a different tool?
Don’t forget that Hootsuite implements a 6-minute window where you can’t edit a scheduled post. Tweetdeck doesn’t have that. Annoying.
Hi Jen, that’s an interesting. I don’t remember seeing that when I reviewed Hootsuite. Are you sure that’s the case? Is this directly after creating the scheduled post?
She might mean that if a post is scheduled to go out in under 5 minutes, you cannot edit the post. You must delete the post and re-enter it for a later time. You can only send a post immediately, or >5 minutes into the future.
Thanks, Ileana. That would make sense. Most tools don’t allow you to schedule anything sooner than 5 minutes. But I am surprised that you can’t edit it if it’s scheduled under 5 minutes away. Thanks for letting me know.