11 Best Hootsuite Alternatives For 2025 (Pros And Cons)
Looking for the best Hootsuite alternatives? You’re in the right place.
Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management apps on the market, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best.
For starters, it’s a lot pricier than other tools, and there’s no free forever plan. I’m not a fan of its UI either, and it has a steeper learning curve than most other tools I’ve tried.
With that in mind, in this post, I’ll break down the best Hootsuite alternatives that I think offer more for your money. I’ll review each of them in detail and discuss how they compare.
The top Hootsuite alternatives compared
TL;DR:
- Pallyy – Best for most users. Affordable, easy to use + packed with features.
- SocialBee – Best for scheduling + powerful AI tools.
- ContentStudio – Best for content marketers.
- Sendible – Best all-in-one feature set.
#1 – Pallyy
Pallyy is the best alternative to Hootsuite for most users. Not only is it much—and I mean much—more affordable, but it’s also easier to use and packed with all the features you need.
Pallyy offers all the same core social media management features as Hootsuite, like post scheduling, unified inbox management, and analytics (although Pallyy specializes in Instagram-specific insights whereas Hootsuite offers more general platform analytics).
The only thing Pallyy is really missing is the social listening and advertising features you get with Hootsuite, but those are enterprise-grade features that you probably won’t need unless you’re running paid social media campaigns or you’re managing the socials of large brands.
I think Pallyy’s user interface is a lot better than Hootsuite. It’s much simpler and more visually oriented. You can just tell it’s made for small businesses and creators, whereas Hootsuite’s complex UI seems like it’s made more for large teams and enterprises.
I particularly like the way you schedule posts on Pallyy. You store all the images and videos for your posts in the built-in media library. Then, you can drag and drop visuals straight from the library onto dates in the content calendar to schedule posts in a couple of clicks.
If you want, you can even change the calendar interface to a replica Instagram grid, so you can see how your posts will look once they’re published on your feed. This is something I haven’t seen on Hootsuite unless you install a third-party app, and it’s one of the features that I think makes Pallyy a particularly good choice for Instagram-focused creators and influencers.
Finally, we have to talk about price. Pallyy is much more cost-effective than Hootsuite, with plans starting from just $20 per social set. Hootsuite’s starting price is more than 4x higher than that at $99/month. It’s hard to look at that and argue that Pallyy isn’t significantly better value for money.
Plus, Pallyy also offers an amazing free forever plan—you can schedule and auto-publish up to 15 posts to your socials per month without paying a penny. In contrast, Hootsuite only offers a limited 30-day free trial, which you have to enter your credit card details to sign up for.
Pros and cons
#2 – SocialBee
SocialBee is the best Hootsuite alternative for scheduling social media posts and stands out for its best-in-class AI tools.
Like Pallyy, SocialBee shares a lot of the same features as Hootsuite: content creation, scheduling, publishing, engagement management, collaboration tools, analytics, etc. But it has a few advantages that make it a better choice for certain users.
For example, I really like SocialBee’s category-based scheduling system. It allows you to group your post into categories—like promotions, evergreen content, or curated articles—and then schedule whole categories at once. This is much quicker than scheduling posts individually and helps to keep things organized.
SocialBee’s interface is much more beginner-friendly than Hootsuite too. Its layout is simpler and more intuitive, making it a great option for those who don’t have time to waste learning a new tool and want to hit the ground running.
What really sets SocialBee apart, though, is its AI Copilot tool. It can craft your entire social media strategy from scratch for you. Just answer a few questions, and it’ll decide which networks you should focus on, devise a category-based posting schedule for each of them, and generate dozens of relevant posts (including visuals and captions) to fill out each category.
By comparison, Hootsuite’s Owly AI tool is much more basic. It’s limited to tasks like writing captions or generating content ideas—it can’t automate your entire campaign end-to-end like SocialBee’s Copilot can.
SocialBee also supports a wider range of platforms than Hootsuite. It’s one of the few tools that integrates directly with Bluesky—one of the fastest-growing social networks.
And its universal posting feature even enables you to plan and schedule content to networks that don’t have direct integrations with SocialBee yet, like Reddit, WhatsApp, and Facebook Groups.
Price-wise, SocialBee is much more affordable, offering robust features for small and medium businesses without the hefty price tag associated with Hootsuite’s higher-tier plans.
That said, Hootsuite does excel in a few areas where SocialBee falls short. For instance, Hootsuite’s advanced analytics offer more detailed insights than you get on SocialBee, like ROI tracking, as well as more customizable reports.
It also has social listening, employee advocacy, and ad management capabilities that SocialBee lacks, making it a better choice for enterprise users.
Pros and cons
#3 – ContentStudio
ContentStudio is the best Hootsuite alternative for content marketers.
It offers much better content curation capabilities than Hootsuite (or any other social media management tool, for that matter). And it’s one of the only tools I’ve tried that lets you schedule posts to your socials and your blog in the same place.
ContentStudio’s standout feature is its Discover tool, which helps you find and curate top-performing content from around the web—such as blog posts, YouTube videos, or news articles—that align with your audiences’ interests. Then, share them to your socials in a few clicks.
You get insights about each piece of content so you can see things like how many engagements it’s had, its sentiment, etc. to help you figure out which ones are worth sharing and which ones you should avoid.
You can also use Discover to find and analyze creators, with metrics to tell you how much influence they have in your niche. This makes ContentStudio a good choice if you plan on running influencer marketing campaigns as part of your wider social or content marketing strategy.
I should mention that Hootsuite also has its own content curation tools—they’re just not nearly as powerful as ContentStudio’s Discover.
Aside from that, ContentStudio also comes with powerful social media publishing, analytics, and inbox management tools—all the same important features you get on Hootsuite.
But crucially, you get all of that for a fraction of the price of Hootsuite. Plans start at just $19/month, which is over 5x cheaper than Hootsuite’s entry-level plan.
Hootsuite does have a few extra bells and whistles that you don’t get on ContentStudio though, including social listening, employee advocacy, and social advertising tools.
I think Hootsuite’s team collaboration and analytics capabilities are a little better too, making it a better fit for large teams & enterprises.
Pros and cons
#4 – Sendible
Sendible offers the best all-in-one feature set of any Hootsuite alternative on this list. It’s also a much better choice for social media management agencies that need detailed collaboration features and client approval processes.
Like Hootsuite, Sendible includes all the features you need to manage your social media campaigns, including post scheduling, content management, analytics, and a unified inbox.
However, it also boasts some unique benefits that you don’t get with Hootsuite, and that I think make it a better fit for agencies.
For example, it’s one of the only fully white-label social media management platforms I’ve come across. You can add your own branding everywhere and even host it on your own domain so it looks like your own in-house software, rather than a third-party tool.
With the client connect feature, you can securely onboard your clients to their own personalized dashboards, without having to share passwords. Then, your clients can collaborate with you by approving posts and leaving feedback in the app.
Sendible is one of the few tools with a reporting tool that can hold a candle to Hootsuite’s too. You get access to advanced analytics and deep insights, as well as fully white-label, automated reports.
The Smart Queues feature is another highlight. You can use it to automatically reschedule and repost your evergreen content at predefined intervals, saving you a ton of time. This is something I haven’t seen on Hootsuite either.
Hootsuite does integrate with a few social networks that Sendible doesn’t, like Threads and WhatsApp. And I still think Hootsuite’s social listening tool is a little better. But I don’t think that justifies Hootsuite’s steep price tag or makes up for its shortfalls elsewhere.
Pros and cons
#5 – Agorapulse
Agorapulse isn’t the cheapest tool on this list. Its starting price is very similar to Hootsuite’s, so it’s a little expensive, but you do get a lot for your money.
Agorapulse comes with all the features you’d expect from an all-in-one social media management platform, including publishing tools, inbox management tools, analytics and reporting, a content calendar, etc.
It also shares a few advanced, enterprise-grade features with Hootsuite that most other alternatives on this list are missing.
For example, it’s one of the few Hootsuite alternatives that comes with a built-in employee advocacy tool.
You can use this to enable your employees, partners, and brand advocates to engage with and share your brand’s content to their own socials in order to amplify your reach. Just keep in mind that you have to purchase this separately as an optional add-on (but you have to do that on Hootsuite too).
Another feature you get with both Agorapulse and Hootsuite, but few other tools, is ROI analysis. Agorapulse can tie your social media activity to revenue goals so you can measure and prove ROI to the clients you work with.
This comes in super useful for social media managers as it makes it easier to demonstrate to your clients that your efforts are paying off and having a tangible impact on their bottom line.
While Agorapulse is very similar to Hootsuite in terms of both features and pricing, Agorapulse wins hands-down when it comes to ease of use.
It has a much more intuitive interface that creators and smaller teams should find easier to work with, whereas Hootsuite’s interface better suits larger organizations with complex workflows.
Pros and cons
#6 – Metricool
Metricool is a great choice if you’re looking for a free Hootsuite alternative. It has one of the most generous free forever plans of any tool on this list, letting you schedule up to 50 social media posts per month.
If you want to be able to schedule an unlimited number of posts, you’ll need to upgrade to one of Metricool’s paid plans, which are super affordable and much better value for money than Hootsuite.
For example, Metricool’s Advanced plan lets you connect 50 social profiles and starts from just $45/month. Hootsuite’s Team plan costs more than 5x as much and only lets you connect 20 social profiles.
And despite the much lower price tag, you can do most of the same stuff on Metricool as you can on Hootsuite.
You can create, schedule, and publish posts to all your connected social media accounts. Plus, find your best time to post, manage and respond to comments and messages across all social media channels, set up approval workflows, build a link-in-bio page, and so on.
Metricool even lets you manage and measure your social media ads just like Hootsuite, making it one of the only alternatives on this list that’s useful for both organic and paid social media campaigns.
But my favorite thing about Metricool is its analytics capabilities. Don’t get me wrong, Hootsuite’s analytics are excellent, but Metricool’s are even better.
You can track all the important social media metrics (reach, engagement, follower growth, etc.) and conduct detailed competitor and influencer analysis.
Then, you can use the Looker Studio connector to import all that data into Google’s Looker Studio, where you can merge it with data from other sources (like Google Analytics) to see how your social media efforts are impacting other areas (like your website traffic).
Pros and cons
#7 – Iconosquare
Iconosquare is another powerful Hootsuite alternative with a lot of great features. And I like its flexible pricing plans.
What’s cool about Iconosquare is that, unlike Hootsuite, it doesn’t do any feature-gating. So no matter what plan you sign up for, you get access to all features.
Those features include a powerful social media publishing toolkit, in-depth analytics, flexible reports, collaboration tools, a conversations inbox, and a social listening tool.
The only differences between each plan tier are their data retention periods, support options, and number of user seats.
You can customize each Iconosquare plan by choosing how many social media profiles you want to add to your account—this makes it super scalable and ensures you don’t pay for allowances you won’t use.
In comparison, you get a set amount of social profiles on each Hootsuite plan that you can’t customize (unless you sign up for the expensive Enterprise plan), so it’s not as flexible.
The other thing I prefer about Iconosquare is its user interface. In particular, I’m a big fan of its customizable analytics dashboard.
You can drag and drop widgets to choose what data you want to show on your own personalized dashboard. There are 100+ metrics and data visualizations to choose from, and you’re able to pick and choose which of those you want to display, and in what order.
Of course, you can also build custom reports with different metrics. And you can get really granular with the data, choosing exactly which profiles and time frames you want to report on. Once you’re done, you can export them in a couple of clicks, or just set up automated email delivery to have reports sent straight to your inbox at regular intervals.
Inconosqaure’s scheduling workflow is great too—you just upload media to your library, then drag it onto dates in the calendar to schedule. You can then click on any date in the calendar to edit the post caption and other details, with the option to cross-post it to multiple networks if you want.
My only gripe with Iconosquare is that it doesn’t integrate with a lot of niche social networks. It covers all the main platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and TikTok.
But unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to support a few other platforms that Hootsuite does, like YouTube, Pinterest, and Threads.
Pros and cons
#8 – Publer
Publer is a good Hootsuite alternative for teams and agencies on account of its excellent value-for-money team plans, powerful collaboration tools, and workspaces feature. It also has a few more things going for it that make it a better choice than Hootsuite for certain users.
Publer isn’t as feature-rich as Hootsuite. It focuses mostly on social media post scheduling & content creation. It also comes with basic social media analytics and a link in bio tool, but that’s pretty much it. It’s missing a lot of the other bells and whistles you get with Hootsuite.
Most notably, you don’t get any inbox management features with Publer, so you can’t use it to manage and reply to all your social messages, comments, DMs, etc. in one place.
But if you don’t need those missing features, it’s a fantastic option. Its publishing tools are just as good, if not better than Hootsuite’s.
The interactive, drag-and-drop content calendar is really nice. It shows you the social media holidays that are happening on each date to help you come up with post ideas, and you can schedule posts in a couple of clicks.
There are a bunch of advanced scheduling features like automated post recycling, RSS posting, bulk scheduling, post previews, and more. And you can filter scheduled posts by labels, social accounts, etc.
Publer comes with a bunch of powerful design tools to help you create the visuals for your posts. You can easily import photos, videos, gifs, etc. from external platforms like Unsplash and Dropbox. Plus, design visuals from scratch with native Canva and VistaCreate integrations, and manage everything in the built-in library with color-coded labels.
And to help you create captions, Publer has its own generative AI Assist tool. It’s a lot like Hootsuite’s Owly Writer, but better IMO..
My favorite thing about Publer, though, is its Workspaces feature. Unlike Hootsuite, it lets you organize social media profiles and pages into completely separate portals within your account. This is important for social media managers and agencies that work with a bunch of different brands as it allows you to silo each brand’s social set and keep things organized.
Agencies will also appreciate Publer’s highly customizable and scalable pricing options. You can choose how many social accounts and user seats you want to add to your plan (an option you don’t have on Hootsuite).
Additional accounts & seats are super cheap (just a few bucks each), so it’s very good value for money for large teams compared to Hootsuite and most other alternatives (many of which charge $20+ per additional user seat).
Another cool thing is that you can set account permissions and hierarchies for each user you add. So for example, you can give different permissions to any clients, guest writers, graphic designers, and social media managers that you onboard to control what they can do.
Pros and cons
#9 – Vista Social
Vista Social is a good choice if you’re mainly focusing on reputation management.
Like Hootsuite, it provides all the social media tools you need to manage your brand’s social presence.
That includes publishing tools, a unified social inbox, analytics & reports, social listening, and a link in bio tool. Also like Hootsuite, it has an employee advocacy tool as an optional add-on.
But on top of that, you also get something extra with Vista Social that you don’t get with Hootsuite: a review management tool.
You can use this to manage reviews across sites like TripAdvisor, TrustPilot, Yelp, Facebook, etc. in a single stream, all within the same platform you manage your socials.
Once you set it up, you’ll get alerts (notifications in-app, by email, or by text) about any new reviews you receive, and you can respond to them from your Vista Social dashboard straight away.
This, combined with the built-in social listening tool, makes Vista Social a great choice for businesses that want an easier way to track and manage their online reputation.
Vista Social is a lot more affordable than Hootsuite too—the starting price is less than half as high. And it’s great for teams as it has rich collaboration features, like the ability to assign tasks to specific users, create internal notes, etc.
Pros and cons
#10 – Later
Later is another all-in-one social media tool that can make for a good alternative to Hootsuite. It’s highly optimized for visual content and has superior Instagram and TikTok scheduling features.
The best thing about Later is its user interface. I personally find it much easier to work with. In particular, I like the way you manage visual media in Later.
You have a media library to store all your photos, videos, gifs, etc. But what’s really cool is you can pull UGC from Instagram directly into your library by searching for hashtags, mentions, etc., all within the app.
Later’s link in bio tool (Linkin.bio) is really good too. You can use it to create a replica of your Instagram feed with clickable links. And as you schedule posts to Instagram on Later, it automatically adds them to your link in bio page.
Aside from that, Later also has all the other essential features you get on Hootsuite, like an AI caption writer, social media scheduler, a social listening tool, analytics and reports, etc. And it covers most of the same social media platforms as Hootsuite, bar a few exceptions like YouTube and Threads.
You also get useful brand collaboration tools on Later that you don’t get on Hootsuite (as far as I know).
For example, Later’s Creator Database is super useful for both influencers and brands. Creators can sign up to advertise themselves and brands can browse it to find and contract influencers in their target niche for partnership opportunities.
Later is much better value for money too. Plans start at a fraction of the price of Hootsuite and include most of the same features.
My one gripe is that you don’t get to schedule unlimited posts on Later unless you sign up for the Advanced plan or above. On Hootsuite, unlimited posts are included as standard on all plans.
Pros and cons
#11 – Sprout Social
Sprout Social is the most expensive Hootsuite alternative on this list. However, it also has an enterprise-grade feature set, so it may be worth the cost for big businesses who want the very best.
Sprout Social has a significantly higher starting price than Hootsuite to begin with (which is saying something, as Hootsuite is already super expensive). But you also pay per seat, so it gets ridiculously expensive for large teams. If you need to add dozens of users, expect to pay thousands of dollars a month.
That said, you do get unlimited social profiles in Sprout Social’s Professional plan, which goes some way to justifying the cost. You can only add up to 20 social accounts on Hootsuite’s team plan, which is a similar price point. So if you need to add 20+ accounts, you’ll probably save money with Sprout Social.
Feature-wise, you get all the same features on Sprout as you do on Hootsuite, including content scheduling, engagement management, analytics, reporting, social listening, and employee advocacy.
Plus, you get a few extra powerful features with Sprout that you don’t get on Hootsuite, including a robust social CRM system, an influencer marketing toolkit, a social bot builder, and a bunch of powerful social media automation tools.
I don’t think Sprout’s best time to post suggestions are quite as good as Hootsuite’s, and I don’t love the fact that Sprout requires you to purchase an add-on for premium analytics.
Like Hootsuite, it also has a steep learning curve, so I wouldn’t recommend it to beginners or small businesses.
Overall, I’d say both are good options for larger businesses and enterprises, but Sprout Social excels more in the customer engagement side of things, whereas Hootsuite offers better social scheduling.
Pros and cons
Final thoughts
Those are my top picks for the best Hootsuite alternatives on the market right now.
All of these tools offer the same core features as Hootsuite, like social media scheduling and analytics. And most of them are available at a much more attractive price point.
The right choice for you will depend on the additional features you need, as well as other factors like your budget, workflow, whether or not you plan to work alone or with a team, your target social networks, your required integrations, and so on.
I’d recommend trying a few different platforms out to get a feel for them and see which one you like best. The good news is most of the alternatives on this list offer free trials, so you can try them out risk-free without getting locked into a subscription.
While you’re here, you might want to take a look at some of our other posts. Read the latest social media statistics, find out what the most-used social media platforms are, or check out these awesome social media post ideas.
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