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Jan 14, 2025
Hootsuite vs Buffer — a tough decision when it comes to picking the right social media management tool. Both platforms optimize social media performance through analytics, boost productivity by scheduling posts ahead of time, and bring teams on the same page via collaboration tools.
So what makes them different?
In short, Hootsuite offers excellent analytics and social media customer service capabilities at a higher price point — perfect for enterprise-level companies. Buffer is a lot more affordable and covers a little bit of everything. However, there’s a lot more to these platforms than that.
Hootsuite and Buffer are in stark contrast. The key difference is that Hootsuite is primarily designed to help social media managers working in large-scale organizations monitor and optimize their social media presence across the board.
Buffer, however, caters to smaller businesses and solopreneurs, with a feature set that mainly focuses on content creation and scheduling processes.
That said, let’s see more about each platform’s main differentiating factors.
Hootsuite’s homepage
Hootsuite is a complete social media management platform. It includes the features necessary for large companies to handle all things social media marketing-related — from social media scheduling and advertising campaign management to social listening and customer service.
Hootsuite also excels in the analytics department, where the platform stands out through its competitive and industry benchmarking capabilities.
As for supported networks, Hootsuite includes all the popular social media channels, namely Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Buffer’s homepage
Although Buffer‘s feature set is not as extensive as Hootsuite’s, the platform still offers all the tools needed for small businesses to handle their social media management needs.
Buffer packs numerous content ideation and creation features as well as scheduling, analytics, and inbox management tools — all in an affordable solution. The platform’s native Shopify integration and Link in Bio page builder are also handy for small online stores.
Besides supporting the same social media channels as Hootsuite, Buffer also works for Mastodon and Bluesky.
With the introductions out of the way, let’s see what these two platforms look like in action. I’ll walk you through how they behave across the most important areas of social media management — post scheduling, collaboration, approvals, analytics, and more.
Hootsuite’s calendar leaves no room for guesswork — you get easy access to all the relevant features, like scheduling social media posts, as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter ad campaigns.
Hootsuite’s content calendar
You can also access the media library directly from the calendar view, where you can find a large selection of stock photos via Hootsuite’s free image library.
The platform’s filtering options are more than enough — you can either filter through posts by social accounts, or by post status (draft, scheduled, published, etc.).
However, I found that rescheduling content is unnecessarily complicated. Rather than simply dragging and dropping a post across the calendar, you instead have to click on a specific post, open the preview, click Edit, and reschedule the content from there.
In contrast, Buffer’s calendar does allow you to reschedule content via a drag-and-drop interface. The option to organize social media content via color-coded tags is also a nice touch.
Monthly content calendar in Buffer
As for the drawbacks, Buffer’s filtering options are rather lackluster — they only cover drafts, scheduled, and sent posts.
The platform compensates for it through its custom color-coded tags. The option to leave calendar notes, however, would’ve been nice to have.
Hootsuite’s team collaboration tools are among its biggest drawbacks. The platform lacks the option to leave feedback via in-context comments or annotations, for example. However, the platform does have a few solid team management features.
You can create Organizations — groups of teams that work on the same brand or projects. You can then delegate social posts or incoming messages to specific teams or team members via tasks, assign custom user roles and permissions, and so on.
Buffer is slightly better in the collaboration department. You can leave feedback on content via Notes, for example.
The platform also includes similar social inbox collaboration features as Hootsuite — you can assign incoming messages to specific team members through automated workflows.
In any case, both platforms leave quite a bit to be desired when it comes to team collaboration. File proofing with annotations and suggestions would’ve been more than welcome here.
Hootsuite lets you set up custom approval workflows for both social posts and incoming messages. Most notably, you can set up multi-layered approvals that contain up to three tiers.
A social post won’t publish unless it’s approved by team members within all your set layers. Reviewers can either approve, edit, or reject the content.
But again, there’s no option to leave any feedback through comments. Hootsuite’s approval functionality is also only available in its Enterprise plan.
Buffer allows content reviewers to leave comments and send rejected posts back to the content creator for further edits. The platform’s approval functionality is also available via Buffer’s Team package, which costs $10 per user per month (billed annually).
However, Buffer doesn’t include multi-tiered approval workflows, leading to less structured review processes.
Hootsuite’s analytics capabilities are by far among the platform’s hallmarks. You can gauge performance through cross-network or network-specific reports.
Hootsuite’s analytics dashboard
The platform’s analytics cover all the metrics necessary to measure your social media growth efforts — from content engagement, reach, and impressions to advertising campaign performance. You can also set up custom goals and track social performance based on the metrics that matter most to you.
The platform’s ability to automatically identify top-performing organic posts and turn them into boosted content is a nice touch for maximizing your ROI.
Hootsuite’s competitive and industry benchmarking capabilities also let you compare your social media performance against your competitors or industry averages side-by-side.
The platform also covers team productivity reports — but that’s only available for the Enterprise package. The same story goes for social listening, as well as paid and organic post performance comparison analytics.
Although not as advanced as Hootsuite, Buffer still has you covered in the analytics department. The platform lets you track either your overall account performance or measure individual posts.
Just like Hootsuite, Buffer includes boosted post and hashtag analytics, while its Machine Learning Insights feature will deliver posting time, frequency, and content type suggestions for maximized results.
Still, the platform stands out through its Shopify integration. You can identify which social media accounts drove the most traffic to your store, your top-selling products, and more.
Unlike Hootsuite, however, Buffer doesn’t let you track ad campaign performance.
Despite its complex feature set, Hootsuite does a good job of keeping the interface clutter-free. Its dashboards have loads of breathing room, while key features are where you would expect them to be.
As mentioned, the calendar view gives you easy access to the media library, while scheduling posts and ad campaigns is a breeze. Still, “clutter-free” doesn’t always mean “easy-to-navigate”. Some functionalities are buried under menus and sub-menus.
For example, if you want to set up an approval workflow, you’ll have to head over to your account, select Social accounts and teams, click Manage, pick one of your social media accounts, press Settings, and then manage team member permissions — it’s a lot.
Buffer is not as complex, making navigation on the platform a much more straightforward process.
You can easily juggle between multiple accounts, while the platform’s main features are neatly organized in a navigation menu at the top of the screen — you can easily schedule posts, and then jump to analytics or the platform’s inbox management tools, for example.
However, the lack of filtering options will make it challenging to find specific posts. If you opt for Buffer’s free plan, you’ll also have to deal with disrupting full-screen pop-ups nudging you to upgrade.
Hootsuite integrates with 150+ apps via the platform’s app library. These integrations range from design tools like Figma and Canva to project management platforms like Asana, Monday, and ClickUp.
Hootsuite’s integrations are rather extensive and can help make up for some of the platform’s shortcomings.
But it’s worth noting that a large portion of Hootsuite integrations are paid, which adds up to the platform’s total price tag.
Buffer’s integrations offer less variety, but they are still useful. Apps like Canva, Dropbox, and Pixlee help streamline digital asset management and content curation processes. Unlike Hootsuite, Buffer’s integrations are free to use.
| Hootsuite | Buffer | |
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| Supported networks | Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube | Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Mastodon, Bluesky |
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Now let’s go through a brief overview of each platform’s pricing packages, along with the key features they have to offer.
Hootsuite’s pricing plans
Hootsuite covers the following three pricing packages:
There’s a 30-day free trial available for the Professional and Team plans.
Buffer’s pricing plans
Buffer offers four pricing plans:
There’s a 14-day free trial for all paid packages.
Hootsuite is a viable option for a social media marketing team with a sizeable budget, that primarily focuses its efforts on social media customer service and analytics.
The platform’s Enterprise plan unlocks most of Hootsuite’s inbox management capabilities, like contact management, skill-based routing, auto-responders, and CSAT surveys.
Buffer is one of the more affordable social media management tools for agencies seeking to maintain a solid presence across most social media platforms. Buffer’s Shopify integration is one of its key standouts — an excellent option for marketing agencies that also manage campaigns for online stores.
Although both Hootsuite and Buffer are solid social media management software solutions, their pricing plans leave a lot to be desired. Hootsuite is only ever worth it if you choose the Enterprise package — otherwise, basic features like digital asset management or approval workflows are not available in cheaper plans.
Buffer’s per-channel pricing model can become expensive if you manage multiple social accounts. Besides, its entry-level plans are only available for one user — not suitable for social media teams.
That’s where alternatives like Planable can fill in the gaps.
Scheduling, approvals, media library, feedback, and collaborative tools in Planable
Planable is a social media and content collaboration tool that stands out through its scheduling and approval functionalities. The platform lets you plan content for all popular social networks: Instagram, Threads, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and Pinterest.
You can plan content through Calendar, List, Grid (Instagram-specific), and Feed views. Plus, you can collaborate on any other type of written content — blogs, video scripts, newsletters, you name it.
Facebook feed view in Planable
Unlike Hootsuite, Planable includes approval functionalities in its entry-level packages, while its collaboration tools are among the platform’s hallmarks. You can collaborate on each post through in-context comments, annotations, and suggestions.
The platform also includes a media library and built-in image/video editing tools — or you can take your designs up a notch via Planable’s native Canva integration.
Media library in Planable
Let’s get into more detail and see how Planable stacks up against the other two platforms in terms of calendar, collaboration, and approval features.
Planable’s calendar lets you schedule posts via a user-friendly interface. You can plan content by simply dragging and dropping it across the calendar, while its color-coded labels make keeping track of ongoing work that much easier.
Content calendar view in Planable
Unlike Buffer and Hootsuite, Planable has loads of filters. You can sift through content by type (image, video, GIF, etc.), approval status (approved, not approved, pending, or partially approved), authors, and more.
The option to leave calendar notes and approve content with just one click also adds an extra layer of convenience.
Planable’s on-text comments, annotations, and suggestions allow for precise feedback. The platform also includes solid client collaboration features. Onboarding clients is as easy as sending an email or invite link — no account setup needed.
Collaboration on an Instagram post in Planable
From there, you can set up custom permissions (viewer, editor, approver, etc.), while its internal comments and posts are ideal for hiding feedback — or complete projects — away from your client’s view.
Setting roles and permissions in a Planable workspace
Planable’s approval features are significantly more in-depth compared to Hootsuite and Buffer. The platform lets you choose between four approval workflow types: none, optional, required, and multi-level.
Multi-level approval workflow in Planable
Just like Hootsuite’s multi-level approvals, content won’t publish unless it passes through all approval layers. Unlike Hootsuite, however, Planable lets you set up as many approval levels as you wish.
And of course, in case a post gets rejected, reviewers can leave feedback through comments and suggestions to speed up the editing process.
Planable’s pricing plans
Planable covers four pricing plans:
There’s also the Planable Analytics add-on — it costs an extra $9 per workspace per month and covers audience demographics, cross-network, and network-specific reports.
Both platforms have their own pros and cons and are meant for various use cases. Hootsuite prioritizes social media customer service and analytics, while Buffer is good for social media content creation and scheduling — its Shopify integration is also a big plus.
Either way, both platforms are good at what they do. Consider testing both tools and make your decision based on your budget, as well as needs and preferences.
Planable is one of the best Buffer alternatives — it’s far more in-depth in terms of content scheduling, collaboration, and approvals.
You should also consider Later if your marketing strategy relies more on Instagram and TikTok, while Planoly is a solid social media tool if you handle your accounts on your own.
Buffer is a good social media management tool for small businesses. Its native Shopify integration makes it a particularly good choice for online stores looking to optimize their social presence. Buffer supports all popular social media platforms and offers solid social media scheduling tools but doesn’t impress in terms of collaboration and approval features.
Digital marketing enthusiast, language nerd, and content writer. Horea loves writing about SaaS and anything that involves boosting online presence – from SEO to social media, web design, and more. His content is allergic to fluff and eats research for breakfast.
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