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Nov 25, 2024
A proper social media management tool helps social media managers streamline their processes, speed up approvals, improve social media strategies, and dodge many headaches using the power of automation. However, in the battle of Hootsuite vs Sprout Social, there are many things to consider before choosing the one that suits your team best.
For this article, I tried both Hootsuite and Sprout Social to compare the two major social media management software market players and help you take your pick.
Before we dive in, let’s go over each social media management tool:
Hootsuite helps businesses streamline their social media efforts. This social media management tool allows you to schedule posts, track mentions, and measure results across multiple social networks.
Key features include a shared content calendar, bulk post scheduling, social listening, and analytics, all in one dashboard.
Hootsuite works with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. It’s best for small to medium-sized marketing teams and agencies juggling multiple social media channels.
Sprout Social is a premium social media marketing solution focusing on team collaboration, detailed analytics, and managing customer interactions.
It offers features like social listening, performance reports, task management, and a combined inbox for handling messages across platforms.
Sprout Social supports all major social media channels. You can also connect your Apple App Store page, Google Play Store page, Glassdoor, Tripadvisor, and more.
It’s a good choice for larger businesses, marketing agencies, and social media managers who need strong analytics and teamwork tools.
Hootsuite and Sprout Social are social media management platforms that help teams manage multiple social media accounts.
Both offer a content calendar and publishing tools, help schedule content across social channels, and provide social media analytics.
However, they differ ever so slightly. Let’s compare the most essential features: calendar, collaboration tools, approval, analytics, UX, and integrations.
Hootsuite’s content calendar helps schedule social media posts for all your connected social channels. You can view your calendar as a list or by week or month and filter posts based on social media platform or status.
Hootsuite’s content calendar
The weekly calendar includes important dates for your social media strategy. If you click on the event’s name, OwlyWriterAI helps you draft a social media post to fit the occasion. Neat.
Hootsuite allows you to schedule and edit posts for multiple channels at once. You can tag other users directly in the post composer and choose to post in the recommended time slot or set the time manually.
The major downside is that you can’t schedule LinkedIn documents in the Professional plan, so you’ll have to upgrade.
Sprout Social’s content calendar is very minimalistic. Like in Hootsuite, it has three views (list, week, and month).
You can filter your posts by page, post type, status, and customizable tags. You can also track your content and social media campaigns across all managed pages.
Sprout Social’s content calendar
The post composer allows you to schedule posts for multiple social media platforms, set optimal posting times, select approval flows, and add tags. Bulk scheduling is also an option for the Professional and Advanced plans.
Like Hootsuite, Sprout Social doesn’t let you schedule PDFs for LinkedIn — instead, you can publish them directly on the native network.
Collaboration features are only included in the Team and Enterprise plans. Hootsuite has basic project management features like assigning tasks to team members, sending messages to specific teams within your organization, and setting up roles and permissions.
Hootsuite’s role permissions
Hootsuite doesn’t let you exchange feedback within the platform. Team members with specific access can edit, duplicate, or approve your drafts but not comment on them.
Unlike Hootsuite, Sprout Social allows team members to comment on unapproved content in the same interface. When you create a draft, your team can join an internal conversation to discuss potential changes.
To better organize your workspace, Sprout Social offers groups. Groups unite different team members and social accounts to keep things running smoothly.
Hootsuite’s approval workflows allow you to set up permissions and manage content approvals within your social media management team. You can assign roles with different approval levels, create a team of approvers for backup, and configure custom workflows.
Once set up, content can be reviewed, edited, approved, or rejected before going live.
Although you can set up roles in the Team plan, a full-scale content approval workflow management feature is only available in the Enterprise plan.
Sprout Social’s approval workflows are highly customizable, allowing teams to build processes tailored to their specific social media management pipeline.
You can define roles, set permissions, organize approval teams, and create multi-step content review and publishing workflows.
Sprout Social supports external collaboration with clients or stakeholders and integrates with tools like Canva and Google Drive. Its Publishing Calendar, Asset Library, and automated notifications streamline the workflow, keeping your team on track.
Hootsuite’s social media analytics tools offer insights into your social media performance with customizable reports and real-time data tracking.
Users can monitor key metrics like engagement, follower growth, post reach, and more detailed metrics like top posts, sentiment, inbound messages, and more.
You can create customizable reports by choosing the required metrics or using pre-made templates (e.g., performance by networks or weekly overview).
Advanced features include trend analysis, performance benchmarking, and team productivity tracking. However, for a smaller social media team, basic analytics may be enough.
Once you create the report, you can send it automatically to your managers and stakeholders.
Sprout Social’s reporting features provide in-depth performance insights with detailed reports on engagement, audience growth, and content effectiveness across all major social platforms.
You can access cross-network reports for multiple accounts, individual reports on particular profiles, paid performance reports for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook… Frankly, Sprout Social seems to have a report for close to anything.
It also offers advanced features like competitor analysis, sentiment tracking, and internal performance. You can also white-label your reports and brand them.
It might be a matter of taste, but UX and interface are not Hootsuite’s strong suit for me.
It feels slightly clunky with its big numbers and somewhat bright colors — like a grandma’s mobile phone with enlarged interface elements.
Other than that, Hootsuite is intuitive and works well. It does have a bit of a learning curve to navigate reports and set up team collaboration, but posting and scheduling are super straightforward.
Sprout Social’s UX is often praised for being clean and easy to use, with a simple design that makes finding what you need straightforward.
Users like the clear layout and detailed analytics. Aesthetically speaking, Sprout Social is more attractive to me.
However — maybe because of its extensive feature list — it took me more time to navigate around Sprout Social than Hootsuite when I first launched it. It has a good onboarding process, though.
Hootsuite offers extensive integration capabilities with over 150 apps and services, including popular tools like Google Drive, Slack, Canva, MailChimp, and Dropbox.
It also connects with major social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This allows users to streamline their workflows and manage all tasks from a single dashboard.
Sprout Social integrates with many marketing tools, including Google Analytics, HubSpot, Canva, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Shopify. However, the list of supported apps is shorter than that of Hootsuite.
It also supports social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Google My Business, and Threads.
| Feature | Hootsuite | Sprout Social |
|---|---|---|
| Content Calendar | Offers list, week, and month views with filters and bulk scheduling. Doesn’t support LinkedIn docs in lower plans. | Provides list, week, and month views, with filters and bulk scheduling in higher plans. Lacks content suggestions. Doesn’t support LinkedIn docs. |
| Collaboration | Basic project management features like task assignments and permissions. Lacks in-platform feedback options. | Allows commenting on drafts and internal discussions. Offers groups for organizing teams and workflows. |
| Approvals | Customizable approval workflows with different permission levels, but full features are available only in Enterprise plan. | Highly customizable with multi-step workflows and external approvals. |
| Analytics | Provides customizable reports, trend analysis, and team productivity tracking. | Offers detailed cross-network and competitor analysis, sentiment tracking, and white-label reporting. |
| Usability & UX | Intuitive but slightly clunky interface; some users find navigation challenging, but scheduling is straightforward. | Clean, user-friendly interface praised for simplicity; extensive features can be overwhelming. |
| Integrations | Connects with over 150 apps including Google Drive, Slack, Canva, and MailChimp, covering major social platforms. | Supports key tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Salesforce; integrates with a comprehensive list of social networks including Threads. |
Feature lists are great, but your higher-ups are really interested in how much it will cost the company.
So, let’s talk budget.
Hootsuite has three paid plans:
Although Hootsuite has a 30-day free trial, it requires a credit card. The pressure is real.
But jokes aside, Hootsuite offers solid value for money. The plans are well-rounded and have balanced feature lists. Even the Professional plan gives you enough power to rock your social media efforts.
However, the Professional and Team plans lack collaboration and approval features. This means that even if you’re the only social media manager but want to automate your approval processes, you’d have to go with Enterprise.
Sprout Social is expensive. It’s worth it feature-wise, but only if you’re a big brand or a marketing agency with a lot of clients. Otherwise, it’s just a very fancy but underused software for a lot of money.
Sprout Social has four paid plans:
You can spare a coin by paying annually (for instance, Standard will cost you $199/month per user). The plans are saturated with features, making Sprout Social your big gun for social media management.
I recommend Hootsuite if you are a small to mid-sized in-house social media team. Hootsuite has powerful social media analytics, helps craft and schedule content easily, and is significantly cheaper than Sprout Social.
If you’re searching for reliable publishing tools, analytics, and basic social listening, Hootsuite is a good option for a decent price.
Despite being slightly clunky and less striking in automation tools, Hootsuite does the job well, streamlining your marketing efforts.
Sprout Social is a social media management platform for big brands and marketing agencies. It can be overkill for a smaller in-house team with less content to track, manage, and approve.
Compared to Hootsuite, Sprout Social has more options for team collaboration and can also serve as a dashboard for your customer support services.
Go for Sprout Social if your main needs relate to advanced social media marketing automation, detailed analytics, and customer support.
Approvals, publishing, feedback, media library, and cross-company collaboration in Planable
I think Planable is a strong alternative for both, especially if you want to streamline your content management but also have collaboration and approval perks.
Planable supports scheduling social media posts for nine major social media platforms: Instagram, Threads, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and Pinterest.
Posts always preview exactly as they’ll appear on social media, making content planning precise and stress-free.
Mockup feed view with post previews in Planable
Besides scheduling and publishing your content, Planable strongly focuses on collaboration and approvals. Its internal and external collaboration tools and multi-level custom workflows for approvals make Planable a perfect fit for marketing agencies and in-house teams.
What else is in store?
Media library in Planable
Social media analytics in Planable for LI page
Planable’s social media calendar is a powerful tool that helps teams keep their content organized and on track.
Content calendar view in Planable
Categorize and sort content with color-coded labels and filters. The drag-and-drop feature allows for quick rescheduling, and you can switch between weekly and monthly views to get a broader or more detailed look at your plans.
The calendar simplifies content management, making it easy to adjust plans on the go and get a quick overview of multiple social media platforms.
The platform’s intuitive interface offers four content views: feed, list, calendar, and grid. I love how the Instagram grid view lets you preview exactly how your content is going to look on your profile.
Instagram grid view in Planable
Planable thrives on collaboration. It allows teams to communicate directly within the platform.
Collaboration on an Instagram post in Planable
Features like comments, annotations, and suggestions enable real-time feedback on posts, making it easy to refine content.
Internal notes are perfect for keeping sensitive feedback or specific instructions within the team, ensuring external collaborators see only what’s necessary.
Internal team comments in Planable
This communication flow helps teams work faster. No need for lengthy email chains and endless rounds of fixes — you have all your feedback consolidated in one place in real time.
Planable’s approval features are the star of the show. The platform provides flexible and customizable options to suit different team needs.
Each workspace can have its own approval flow, with four options available: none, optional, required, and multi-level. These settings allow teams to tailor the approval process based on the complexity of the project.
For example, multi-level approvals are ideal for agencies with multiple stakeholders, ensuring each layer of approval is met before content goes live.
Multi-level approval workflow in Planable
This flexibility helps streamline the approval process, reduce bottlenecks, and maintain quality control without overwhelming everyone or anyone involved.
Unlike Hootsuite and Sprout, Planable doesn’t time-limit your trial period. You get 50 free posts you can use for as long as you like to explore the platform at your own pace.
Planable has a flexible billing system. It starts at $33/month, and from there, you can tailor the platform’s price based on your needs. Choose the required workspaces and add analytics for $9/month per workspace.
Hootsuite and Sprout Social have their strengths and weaknesses. Choose based on your team’s specific needs, budget, and personal preferences.
There are many alternatives to Sprout Social that do the job well but don’t break the bank. Among them are social media management software like Planable, Loomly, Buffer, and Later.
Hootsuite is a good tool for managing your social media presence, but its a bit outdated UX and lack of collaboration features are among its main challenges.
Definitely the price. Sprout Social is a powerful tool, but it’s expensive and slightly hard to figure out — mostly because of its extensive capabilities.
Content marketer with a background in journalism; digital nomad, and tech geek. In love with blogs, storytelling, strategies, and old-school Instagram. If it can be written, I probably wrote it.
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