Hootsuite vs Sprout Social – A Detailed Comparison

In social media management, Sprout Social and Hootsuite are titans. Both platforms are powerful and have strong advocates who say theirs is the superior alternative.

How do you choose between these two similar tools? Let's compare each platform's pros and cons so you can choose one that meets your needs and budget.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an all-in-one social media management software with features for publishing, monitoring, and reporting. Hootsuite's user-friendly dashboard makes it easy to monitor and respond to activity across numerous networks at once.

The dashboard allows you to view what's trending in real time, schedule posts in advance, and monitor conversations and mentions. This facilitates communication with your target demographic via the means most relevant to your company's goals.

The free Hootsuite app allows you to manage your social networks while on the go.Hootsuite's powerful analytics system shows your top influencers and how engaged your followers are.

Features:

Schedule posts ahead of time.

Stop juggling business apps—use Hootsuite. You can schedule posts, monitor messages, and post updates with Hootsuite. By managing social media from a single dashboard, this all-in-one tool saves weekly hours.

Create a Hootsuite profile for any social media account you want to manage, then start scheduling posts. You can post photos, videos, and more without leaving the app.

Hootsuite lets you track brand interactions on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ so you can reply to individual customers and general comments with answers or emojis (like the happy face).

Manage all of your accounts from one place.

Find talks about certain topics easily, and use publishing tools to generate short posts. Hootsuite lets you see impressions and clicks so you know what's working.

We also have extensive analytics so you can measure social media post reach across platforms and devices. Web-based apps require no downloads or installations. The Hootsuite dashboard is mobile-friendly.

Create more targeted advertising campaigns.

The Hootsuite dashboard is broken down into tabs. Once you enter the dashboard, choose the tab that corresponds with your social media campaign. For instance, if you are running a Twitter campaign, make sure you are on the Twitter tab.

Each tab has choices to tailor your campaign and statistics and analytics to measure its success. Hootsuite's scheduling tool is key. This tool lets you schedule postings for specific times or days.

You can check messages in the dashboard and reply from other accounts. You can export account data to Excel or Google Docs for examination. Hootsuite helps businesses manage social media efforts by streamlining information.

Pros

• A few clicks can schedule social media updates. You can track likes, retweets, shares, and mentions. You can access all social media messages in one location, so you don't have to log into each site individually. Hootsuite allows direct comment response.
• Free for three social media profiles. For more, a monthly fee applies. This is important if numerous employees need access to the same social media pages..
• It can also help if you're managing your profile and want to do some cross-promotion between Facebook and Twitter.

Cons

• Hootsuite is an online tool that helps manage your social media accounts and schedule posts, but it's not free. You will need to sign up with a company like the one where I work and they'll bill you monthly for access to the program.
• It's time-consuming. The nature of social media management is such that you have to be constantly monitoring your accounts, so if you're going to use this service it needs to be for something more than just posting every once in a while.

Plans:

Hootsuite offers a variety of pricing plans and features to cater to different user needs. Here's a breakdown of their plans:

• Professional Plan – Priced at $49 per month, this plan is designed for a single user and allows management of up to 10 social profiles. It includes unlimited post scheduling, a centralized inbox for messages, and analytics tools
• Team Plan – Priced at $179 per month, this plan is designed for up to 3 users and allows management of up to 20 social profiles. It includes features like team assignments, employee permissions, and platform certification training for all users
• Business Plan – Priced at $739 per month, this plan is designed for 5 or more users and allows management of up to 35 social profiles. It includes features like campaign management, ad campaign functionality, message tagging, security notifications, and access to premium apps
• Enterprise Plan – This plan offers customizable pricing and features tailored to the specific needs of larger organizations. Contact Hootsuite for more information on this plan

Sprout Social

Sprout's features focus on content and engagement. With a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can compose social media posts, schedule them, and track their success with analytics.

You can also link multiple profiles to a single central dashboard to streamline your workflow. Furthermore, Sprout's suite of monitoring tools allows you to monitor your online reputation, providing insight into what's being said about you on social media platforms.

There is also an app available for mobile devices, so you'll always have access to your stats no matter where you go. Finally, there is live customer support available 24/7 to answer any questions or concerns that may arise during the process.

Features:

• Create a unified Set viewing priority. One person may have varied viewing demands. Another person may only want to see direct messages or engagement on their posts. Custom settings enable everyone access their favourite stuff.
• Set viewing priorities. One person may have varied viewing demands. Another person may only want to see direct messages or engagement on their posts. Custom settings enable everyone access their favourite stuff.
• A/B testing for each post, you're given two options: a control and an experiment. With this feature, you can test which version performs better before using it permanently.
• Scheduling posts Whether it's a company blog post or regular mentions for your latest project, we let you set the dates ahead so that everything goes smoothly without forgetting anything.
• Engage in real-time conversations. Keeping up with what people are saying means being quick on your feet! And with our live chat feature powered by Olark, staying engaged becomes more accessible.

Experience across social networks

Social media is now an essential component of any marketing strategy. However, with so much noise, getting your message heard can be difficult. We've created a one-stop shop for managing all of your social channels in one place to help you cut through the clutter.

It's called Sprout Social, and it works like this:

Upload your feeds. We'll combine them into one place where you can manage all of your content in a streamlined way. You can post new updates, respond to comments and messages, and monitor engagements across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube from a single location.

Manage all of your profiles through one interface

Sprout Social is a comprehensive, all-in-one social media and marketing solution for agencies and small businesses. With an easy-to-use interface, Sprout simplifies your work by allowing you to manage your profiles through one interface.

Here are just a few of its features:

• A robust dashboard for managing your clients' accounts
• Social listening tools so you can monitor sentiment across social channels
• Incoming webhooks that allow you to integrate with third-party services like Google Analytics, Market, Slack, and more
• Helpful reporting features that help measure success in terms of engagement or conversion rates

Find actionable insights about what people are saying about you

Sprout Social provides a suite of tools for managing your company's social media channels. From monitoring your messages and measuring engagement rates to posting on behalf of your company and creating reports, Sprout Social is a one-stop-shop for all things social.

There are many features available in Sprout's product, such as analytics that allow you to identify what people are saying about your company, and filters that allow you to search through content by keyword. But there is much more than just analytics and filtering capabilities.

Sprout also has tools for scheduling posts in advance, publishing content from other websites, tracking conversions (e.g., leads), analysing different kinds of data points (including sentiment analysis), and reporting on the effectiveness of campaigns.

Here at Postciao, we use Sprout Social every day because it integrates seamlessly with our dashboard and increases our efficiency when handling customer inquiries or managing our social accounts.

Pros

• Sprout Social is a social media marketing software for businesses that lets you manage all of your accounts in one location. It delivers data and insights into each post, helping organisations decide how to spend time and money on each platform.
• Sprout Social's tools make it a good choice for businesses with many social profiles or those trying to measure ROI across channels. Automatic scheduling and campaign measurement help explain why Sprout Social is so popular.

Cons

• Sprout Social is one of the greatest social media management solutions with over 10 million customers. Small businesses and companies may effortlessly engage their audiences with Sprout.
• These qualities make it a great tool for individuals who wish to spend less time managing their internet presence and more time on other business matters. Sprout isn't free; cost depends on how many users will utilize it.

Plans:

Sprout Social offers a variety of pricing plans and features to cater to different user needs. Here's a breakdown of their plans:

• Standard Plan – Priced at $89 per user per month, this plan allows management of up to 5 social media profiles. It includes essential tools for getting started with social media management
• Professional Plan – Priced at $149 per user per month, this plan allows management of up to 10 social profiles. It includes features like paid reports, competitive reports for Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and access to the Helpdesk integration
• Advanced Plan – Priced at $249 per user per month, this plan includes the most extensive features, such as digital asset and content library, chatbots, and automated link tracking

Hootsuite vs Sprout Social: Which is better?

Hootsuite and Sprout Social are two popular platforms for managing your marketing on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.

Here are some of the critical differences between Hootsuite and Sprout Social.

• Hootsuite is web-based only, whereas Sprout offers a mobile app version as well
• Hootsuite is focused on managing one account at a time, but with multiple users accessing that one account; while Sprout can manage up to four accounts simultaneously
• Hootsuite has no dedicated customer service team; Sprout's team responds quickly and efficiently in an emergency. If you're looking for a versatile tool that can help you monitor all your social media channels from one place.

FAQs

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that allows users to schedule, publish and monitor content across multiple platforms.

What are its benefits?

It has been praised for being easy to use and for how it can help users manage their online presence. The downside of this, however, is that it may be too simplistic and not offer enough features for those looking for more advanced functionality.

What are its limitations?

It doesn't have key features other platforms offer, such as analytics or lead generation.

What is Sprout Social?

Sprout Social is strong social media management software that helps professionals interact with followers, discover influencers, and design effective strategies. Automated workflows, team communication, and unlimited scalability help firms save time and money.

Sprout is a social media management software. Unlike many platforms on our list, Sprout allows limitless team members, so there's room for everyone.

Conclusion

The Hootsuite and Sprout Social comparison have come to an end. Both tools are excellent options for social media marketing, depending on which features are most important for your business and your needs.

The advantages of using Hootsuite over Sprout Social include its long list of features and integration with other platforms such as Buffer, WordPress, MailChimp, Salesforce, etc., which can be beneficial if your company is already using these.

Moreover, it offers a free trial for up to three users, which can be very helpful when trying out new software or if you're starting a new business and want to see how it functions before committing any money.

However, one major disadvantage of Hootsuite is that it lacks integrations with Google Analytics and Facebook Ads Manager. These two apps are crucial for analysing traffic sources and ad performance.

If those aspects are essential for your business, you will have to look elsewhere. On the other hand, there are no significant disadvantages to using Sprout Social since it only has the essential features available at a much more affordable price point.