Anyone that’s ever considered implementing Social Media Automation for their business knows about Hootsuite, one of the pioneer and most popular tools for Social Media Management. However, Since small businesses generally start with minimal marketing budgets, the vast majority might not be able to afford Hootsuite. And that is why we have made a compilation of the 17+ best Hootsuite alternatives.
Since its inception, many other social media management tools have flooded the market with various differentiating features and value propositions, so it’s gotten harder to discern which one is the best for your company.
Since small businesses generally start with minimal marketing budgets, the vast majority might not be able to afford Hootsuite. In contrast, others might require the support of larger teams or more features in this price range. Therefore, we have curated a list of the top 17+ Hootsuite Alternatives for such businesses and professionals in 2024.
Why should you consider a Hootsuite alternative?
Hootsuite has many great benefits, but some undesirable aspects are there too. Hence why people search for more satisfactory alternatives. So, let’s discuss some of the significant shortcomings of Hootsuite;
1. Free plan is very limited
Now, we get it! Free plans do come with limitations, but not always. Fortunately, there are some incredible tools like SocialBu that offer a free version with many excellent features. However, another leading cause why you should consider Hootsuite alternatives is that Hootsuite’s free plan is a little too limited. It only offers two social accounts, and you can schedule about five posts only.
2. The team collaboration feature is too pricey ( $29,88 per year)
Most users investing in a social media management tool want a nice team collaboration feature, right? However, Hootsuite’s team collaboration feature is only available in the plan starting from $249/month which equates to$29,88 per year. Quite expensive, isn’t it! And why would you, if I tell you that there are more affordable tools, like SocialBu, which offers an ah-mazing team collaboration feature. Sound’s incredible, right! Well, if yes! Then keep on reading to find out more.
3. Not budget-friendly!
Hootsuite offers amazing features but only in its paid plans. And I know not everyone’s budget allows them to spend $249/month (team plan), right? I mean, why would you, if you can get all these features for a lesser price or even better free! Now, here comes a frequently asked question;
Do not miss out on the best budget-friendly social media management tool.
Is There Really a Free Alternative to Hootsuite?
This is a very frequently asked question. The good news is, Yes! There are free alternatives to Hootsuite. Among multiple options, SocialBu is one of the best Hootsuite alternatives as it offers a completely free account. Later is also a great free alternative. Other than that, many amazing tools offer a free trial. To know more about these amazing free alternatives of Hootsuite, keep on reading.
17+ Best Hootsuite alternatives of the year 2024
Here is our list of the 17+ best Hootsuite alternatives for 2024;
1. Best Hootsuite Alternative – SocialBu
If your top priorities looking for a social media management tool are value for money, integrated function sets, and a clean interface, SocialBu is your best bet. With its unique value coming from Social Media Automation functions, it specializes in features revolving around this by offering support for multiple platforms (Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn) and data sources for scheduling Posts.
SocialBu’s Unique Features
Here are some of the unique, super helpful features offered by SocialBu;
Social Media Scheduling
SocialBu offers unlimited post scheduling for all the top social media platforms. In addition, it provides advanced features like X (formerly called Twitter) thread scheduling, Instagram post and story scheduling with a swipe-up link, and much more. The scheduling process is quick and simple as well.
Instagram Direct Story Scheduling
You can directly schedule your Instagram stories with SocialBu. Doing this will help you stay consistent in posting Instagram stories. You will also be able to keep your audience well engaged. And this will eventually help in enhancing your engagement rate as well as increasing your followers.
RSS Scheduling and Bulk Import
Another two examples of unique features are RSS Scheduling and Bulk Import. You can either set up posts on any platform to be automatically sourced and published from either an RSS Feed or be uploaded in bulk from a . CSV File. Both these and many other similar options save immense amounts of time for digital managers.
Social Inbox
SocialBu offers an efficient unified inbox that is time-saving and easy to use. A social inbox connects all of your social media inboxes into a unified dashboard. It is a beneficial and hassle-free feature as it lets you see and engage with all your social conversations from one place.
Social Media Monitoring
The social media monitoring feature helps you keep track of all social conversations. Along with that, it monitors keywords, accounts, and hashtags that are relevant to your business. They are great for time-saving and increasing your efficiency. Unfortunately, finding relevant keywords and hashtags is very time-consuming. Still, SocialBu can handle it easily by monitoring the trends, relevant hashtags, brand mentions, etc.
AI Content Generator
SocialBu’s newly introduced feature, the AI content generator, is an incredible feature that helps you generate unique written content for your social media posts in just a few minutes.
Dynamic Automation
With SocialBu, you can automate every social media scenario. Such as sending an automated reply, informing an external service when a new post is published, alerting a specific user if a comment or message has a certain keyword, etc.
Analytics
Another valuable feature of SocialBu is its advanced post insights, which lets you know where your followers are converting. You can easily calculate your Instagram engagement rates and learn what your top-performing posts are. The analytics feature will also let you know the times when your followers are the most active. And these features are the reason why SocialBu is considered one of the top Hootsuite alternatives.
Supported Platforms
- X
- Google My Business
Starting Price: SocialBu pricing starts at $15.8 per user per month. There is a free version available as well.
Don’t let your social media management slip away. You’ve found the best budget-friendly option!
SocialBu vs Hootsuite: Which one is preferred?
It is indeed true that both SocialBu and Hootsuite are top social media management tools. However, SocialBu acquires a preference over Hootsuite due to a few reasons. The primary reason is its affordability. If you can get the same feature offered by Hootsuite and much more for a lesser price, then it’s an excellent deal, right? and that is exactly what SocialBu offers. Here is a quick comparison of SocialBu and Hootsuite that will make you understand my point better;
2. Hootsuite Alternative- Hopper HQ
HopperHQ is another of the best Hootsuite alternatives in the market, which is why it is considered an incredible Hootsuite alternative. Hopper HQ’s intuitive and easy-to-use platform offers a range of impressive features like social media scheduling, post-editing, auto-posting, a hashtag tool, and analytics to save time while better planning posts and producing a consistent social media presence.
This tool is suitable for brands, agencies, influencers, freelancers, and content creators and is used by leading brands like Netflix, Vogue, Men’s health, Tina Turner, and many more.
Hopper HQ’s Features
- Scheduling social media posts with the first comment
- Hashtag Suggestions
- Suggest the best time to post
- Full image cropping & editing
- Drag n’ drop grid planner
- Intuitive Content Calendar
- Media bulk upload
- Free stock images
- Social Media Analytics
Supported Platforms
- Tiktok
- X
Starting Price: $16 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
3. Hootsuite Alternative- Later
Later is one of the top alternatives to Hootsuite. The best thing about this advanced social media management tool is that it offers a free and paid plan.
With most other Social Media Management tools, you’ll see a generalization in their features and platforms as they pitch themselves as all-in-ones. Like Instagram, Later’s priority has also been the visual aspect of social media. It competes with Hootsuite based on ease of use rather than the number of features by offering a seamless and intuitive interface. For Instagram specifically, Later provides unique features such as Story Scheduling via Instagram’s API (no chance of TOS Violation), Trackable Links, and detailed analytics like reach, completion rate, comment count, etc.
These insights are created explicitly according to each brand’s following as location data is used to pinpoint the time zones of your audience and then output a ‘best time to post, instead of just showing generic ones. For Integration, Smart Scheduling shows you the best times to post with Drag-and-drop enabled on a visual Instagram planner layout. Later can even find user-generated content to post, allowing you to see both content and the best timings to post on a single page, offering an unparalleled experience. And this is why Later is considered one of the top Hootsuite alternatives.
Supported Platforms
- X
- TikTok
Starting Price: $16.67 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
4. Hootesuite Alternative- Sendible
Content Sourcing, Posting, and Analytics. These three functions where Sendible stands apart from the pack of Social Media Management Tools. Sendible’s name is always highlighted whenever someone talks about the best social media management tools.
Although Hootsuite offers more content features in their dashboards, Sendible offers value from their analytics and CRM Section. As customer-side CRM is included in the tool, LinkedIn and Klout accounts can be integrated for lead management and customer profiling.
Once profiles and leads are developed, geographical or any other form of targeting can be applied to them, so the results of these outreach efforts are organized and published in reports shown at regular intervals. If your plan doesn’t allow for direct contact, Sendible also enables the building of influencer lists so that you can choose between each brand ambassador and compare each one’s performance of posts.
As shown below, Sendible’s Dashboard provides a comprehensive, integrated overview of your Social Media Accounts’ performances across the chosen timeline alongside a Social Inbox that displays all the brand mentions in a real-time feed.
There are also options available for Teams to communicate through messaging or macro-responses for common queries within this feed. These Feed items can be filtered to show analytics and interactions on specific campaigns or accounts on any supported platforms. Overall, Sendible is one of the best social media management tools and a great Hootsuite alternative.
Supported Platforms
-
- X
- Google My Business
Starting Price: $29 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
5. Hootsuite Alternative- SocialPilot
Competitive pricing, unique automation features, and an uncluttered interface are what make SocialPilot special. Because Hootsuite doesn’t have a Social Media Calendar and SocialPilot does, this gives you the immediate advantage of being able to easily drag-and-drop content, organize it at any frequency, and even see which posts are performing best, so they can be termed ‘evergreen content’- prime for repetition.
This Editorial Calendar shows you the schedule for content across any filter level: monthly, weekly, daily, or across all accounts vs specific ones. This level of customizable focus allows you to take a macro and micro view of what’s happening across all accounts and campaigns, not bogging you down in clutter.
Supported Platforms
- YouTube
- X
- Google My Business
Starting Price: $25.50 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
6. Hootsuite Alternative- Crowdfire
Crowdfire is also another one of powerful alternative to Hootsuite. This superb social media management tool is used by businesses and individuals worldwide to drive social media engagement and growth. It is a wonderful tool that helps you schedule and discovers content for social media. In addition, you can easily manage all your social accounts from one place.
Keep an eye out for updates from your website, blog, or online shops, and design quick, beautiful posts for every update to easily share on all your social profiles. Crowdfire heavily focuses on its core social management function, with a powerful emphasis on scheduling content across your social channels at the most suitable times. You can also get competitor analysis through this tool. Overall, it is an easy-to-use yet powerful tool. And all this makes Crowdfire one of the best Hootsuite alternatives.
Supported Platforms
- YouTube
- X
- WordPress
- Etsy
- Shopify
- Medium
- 500px
- Vimeo, etc.
Starting Price: $7.48 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
7. Hootsuite Alternative- Buffer
Buffer is one of the most known Hootsuite alternatives in the industry. It has helped many businesses to reach their target market. In addition, many brands, agencies, and influencers claim that they experienced a boost in engagement on their social media pages after using Buffer.
Buffer offers multiple social media management services like publishing, analytics, and engagement. The customers who have used this tool love its quick and intuitive results. In addition, you can get excellent assistance from publishing, engaging, team collaboration, and analytics during social media campaigns.
For social media marketers, Buffer alleviates and automates the task of updating, connecting, and converting potential customers on different social channels. All this makes Buffer an excellent alternative for Hootsuite.
Supported Platforms
- X
Starting Price: $6 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
8. Hootsuite Alternative- eClincher
eClincher is another one of the Hootsuite alternatives. It comes with many unique features, including auto-posting, advanced publishing, recycled content, content curation, and analytics reporting to name a few. This tool can effortlessly schedule your posts on various social platforms, profiles, and pages. The unified social inbox is also of immense help. It offers a visual calendar that helps you easily plan, create, and schedule your content.
After scheduling your content, you can publish it with smart queues. This will save your time and boost your social media engagement. You can also bulk upload and schedule media files from an excel file or a CSV. You can also monitor what’s happening on social media using keywords and hashtags with this tool.
Eclincher’s user-friendly platform helps businesses grow their audiences and manage their brand reputation on multiple social networks, from posts to results. And all this makes eClincher one of the best Hootsuite alternatives.
Supported Platforms
- X
- YouTube
- TikTok
Starting Price: $59 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
9. Hootsuite Alternative- Sprout Social
Sprout Social is also a prominent alternative to Hootsuite. It is one of the best social media management tools, with functionality for multiple-person teams focusing on engagement, publishing, and analytics. This tool is a simple yet efficient tool. It saves your time and makes managing social media accounts simple. You can overcome publishing obstacles and automate time-consuming tasks easily with Sprout.
You can also design your publishing strategy and maintain oversight from a central hub. Also, you can easily organize posts across profiles, networks, and campaigns utilizing its visualized calendar to support long-term strategy. With its social inbox, you can unify your social accounts into a single stream to view incoming messages, foster conversations, and respond to your followers quickly. This tool also offers team and engagement reports which are immensely useful. Overall, it is a powerful, all-in-one social media management tool. Needless to say, it is definitely a great alternative to Hootsuite.
Supported Platforms
- X
- YouTube
Starting Price: $249 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
10. Hootsuite Alternative- Viralpep
If you love Hootsuite’s offered features but want them for free, then Viralpep might be a great option. This is a fantastic alternative to Hootsuite, perfect for agencies and small businesses. The best thing is that this tool is free to use. Sounds incredible, right! You can easily manage three social media profiles in the lifetime free plan. Other incredible features include profile & Post Timezone, Posting Schedule, URL shortener, link preview, and GIF support.
Supported Platforms
- X
Starting Price: $15/month
Starting Price: $19 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
11. Hootsuite Alternative- Agora pulse
Like Hootsuite, AgoraPulse is a leading social media management platform that enables agencies, businesses, and marketers to manage their social media messages, schedule & publish content, identify key influencers, monitor social channels, and get stunning reports, all in one easy way to use a dashboard. It is a social media management tool designed to help you stay organized and manage your social media effortlessly. So we can say it is also a great alternative to Hootsuite. In addition, interesting features like easy social media Scheduling, social inbox, analytics, unified calendar, social media monitoring, and shared calendars are also super helpful in boosting your social media presence. And all this makes AgoraPulse one of the best Hootsuite alternatives.
Supported Platforms
- X
- Youtube
Starting Price: $49 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
12. Hootsuite Alternative- Loomly
Another awesome Hootsuite alternative is the super famous Loomly. Because it is an easy social media calendar app that aids social media managers in composing and scheduling posts, it’s hired by many top brands, agencies, and freelancers searching out methods to streamline their inner workflow for growing and posting updates on social media.
A powerful SM publishing tool provides great ideas to optimize your content. Loomly also works like other marketing tools based on the latest marketing strategies and social media practices. It also helps you work more efficiently by giving you access to a library’s brand assets.
Some key features of Loomly are:
- It makes it easy for you to manage all social media accounts, posts, and advertisements as a single platform.
- You can receive notifications when someone comments on your content.
- Loomly gives you a step-by-step guide to creating ads and posts.
- It provides the latest ideas for trending topics, scheduled events, and social media practices.
Supported Platforms
- X
- Youtube
Starting Price: $32 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
13. Hootsuite Alternative- Zoho Social
Zoho Social is another one of the Hootsuite alternatives because it is an exclusive social media control platform for businesses & agencies. It facilitates your timetable posts, shows mentions, creates custom dashboards, and does much more to boost your social media presence.
Using Zoho’s Marketing Automation, you may improve your brand’s attainment through social media to make posts and share promotional campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Zoho Marketing Automation additionally allows you to research your performance.
You can schedule your posts for instances while your target market is maximum active. Its Multiple listening columns assist you in staying tuned to the entirety of its relevant content. The social analytics feature enables you to pre-construct reports or creates new ones from scratch, mostly based on the stats that depend on you.
Supported Platforms
- X
Starting Price: $10.77 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
14. Hootsuite Alternative- Statusbrew
Statusbrew can be considered an excellent alternative to Hootsuite because it is an amazing social media management and engagement tool. With this superb tool, you can efficiently handle your social media activities. You can also discover new audiences and engage with them to boost your social media presence. Overall, it offers excellent features that save a lot of your time and hassle.
You will be able to please your audience and engage with them suitably with the unified inbox of StatusBrew. With this tool, you can supply your team with the most impactful publishing tools. This way, they’ll be able to reach a wider audience with less effort.
You can quickly discover new audiences with the help of Statusbrew’s social listening feature. It helps you listen to social conversations about your brand and products. And all this makes Status brew a great Hootsuite alternative. Moreover, it is trusted by more than 10,000 top-notch businesses globally because of its fantastic customer satisfaction.
Supported Platforms
- X
- Youtube
Starting Price: $69 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
15. Hootsuite Alternative- Socialoomph
SocialOomph is another great alternative because it is very affordable. This tool is an entire social media scheduling solution. It is primarily geared nearer to Twitter, and it has a few, in reality, thrilling functions now no longer observed everywhere else. The pricing of this tool is reasonable, but you can easily cancel the purchased plan anytime. Amazing, isn’t it?
You can efficiently schedule social media posts to be published at a specific time and date. You can select the time zone of your choice as well. This is the awesome quality of SocialOomph’s precise scheduling. You can automatically feed your social media networks from post queues presented by SocialOomph that never run out. They will be set according to fixed or variable schedules. Other amazing features of Socialoomph are; Self-destructing posts, Post-flood control, RSS feeds, Post tags, and Webhooks.
Supported Platforms
- X
Starting Price: $83 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
16. Hootsuite Alternative- Tailwind
Tailwind is one of the best-rated social media management tools for Pinterest and Instagram marketing and advertising campaigns. This is the tool that will act as your marketing team. This tool helps you plan social media posts, analyze discussions, and measure results. It also gives suggestions for enhancing your Pinterest and Instagram marketing strategies. Its extraordinary features include a scope of highlights particular to these visual social media platforms. You can adeptly utilize Tailwind for Pinterest Content Advancement and Instagram UGC Content Management. And all this makes Tailwind one of the best Hootsuite alternatives.
Some awesome features include; Automated publishing, Customized visual planning, Personalized Smart schedules, Monitoring and listening, and a Hashtag finder.
Supported Platforms
Starting Price: $14.99 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
17. Hootsuite Alternative- Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is also one of the most awesome Hootsuite alternatives available in the market. With Buzzsumo, you can easily find the content that works the best for you on social media. You can use the content insights offered by this incredible tool to generate ideas, design high-performing content, monitor your performance, and identify influencers. With this tool, you can easily find new keywords, trending stories, customer questions, and content success while monitoring what’s most important to your brand. This tool is trusted by millions of marketers who rely on it to reveal the truth about what content works for them and what doesn’t. So, you know that it is a reliable tool. Some unique features include; Comments and trend tracking, Influencer Identification, Research and analytics feature, and Content Analysis.
Supported Platforms
- X
- Youtube
Starting Price: $199 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
18. Hootsuite Alternative- Meet Edgar
MeetEdgar is another one of the Hootsuite alternatives and one of the best social media management tools. With a focus on sourcing, publiscontent’d re-purposing content auto-magically,’ Edgar seeks to minimize the repetitive nature of Social Media Management by saving time for its users in many ways.
At its core, MeetEdgar differentiates itself based on the Unlimited Content Library functionalities crafted specially to make and keep content running for more extended periods. These features include Evergreen Content Shuffle, Auto-Publish from RSS Feeds, websites, or podcasts, and Category-Based Scheduling.
MeetEdgar also features innovative features like Auto-Variations, which automatically takes whatever link is inputted to scan and presents you with multiple possibilities of posts. One example is an article you’ve chosen to incorporate into your posts, and MeetEdgar will automatically choose different text excerpts to create content based on that piece.
Results on these variations can also be tracked using the in-built shortener or with A/B Test Social Messaging so that you know what worked best and what type of content is to be prioritized with each audience in upcoming schedules.
Supported Platforms
- X
Starting Price: $41.58 per month. There is a 14-day free trial available as well.
Wrapping Up
With all these fantastic tools having unique value propositions and features, it’s pretty hard to discern between them. So we suggest you take the trial periods of each and compare your requirements with their functions to see which offers the best fit in terms of cost-benefit.
If you are looking for a free alternative, SocialBu is an excellent option. All the tools mentioned in our article offer excellent features and are some of the best social media management tools. All this makes these tools great Hootsuite alternatives.
You can keep our article as a guide and select the tool that sparks the most interest in you, the one that best fits your requirements. Then, if you’re already using one of these or any other Hootsuite alternatives, tell us why they’re your favourite below.
FAQs
Is there still a free version of Hootsuite?
There are no longer any free plans available for Hootsuite. However, SocialBu offers a 14-day free trial that will give you a good start.
Is buffer a good app?
Buffer is a great tool for social media management if you are a social media influencer. Nevertheless, if you take social media management and automation to the next gear then you should use SocialBu.
Why not to use Hootsuite?
Hootsuite is not a cost effective option anymore. Not only that but the tool as limited social media support which makes it a poor option when you have other great options like SocialBu that provides you with everything with excellent value for money.
What is the difference between Hootsuite and SocialBu?
When it comes to differentiating between the two, SocialBU has the upper hand as it offers more comprehensive social media management services. It provides more options for publishing posts, tracking, and automating your content.
