Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the oldest and most recognized names in social media management.

It’s been around since 2008, back when modern social media management was still early.

They spent the last two decades building a platform for larger teams, agencies, and companies with more complex approval and reporting needs.

That’s kind of the key to remember here. This is the tool that gets brought in when a company has multiple brands, a compliance team that needs to approve every post, and analysts who need to pull monthly reports for clients.

Keep in mind that it’s been around for almost 20 years. Navigating the backend of Hootsuite was overwhelming, not just because they have SO many features, but also because it becomes very apparent the tool was built a long time ago. Some interfaces have been updated to be slightly more modern, but there are definitely still legacy interfaces that make you feel like you've travelled back in time a few decades.

When I picture who Hootsuite is designed for, I think about the marketing manager at a large company juggling five brand accounts, two junior team members, and a legal department that needs to review any content going out.

Or an agency owner running content for ten different clients, where every piece needs to go from writer to internal review to client approval before it publishes. 

When you're operating at that level, the scheduling is almost beside the point. You probably need a system that enforces process, tracks who approved what, and doesn't let things fall through the cracks. So Hootsuite is best for marketing teams that have outgrown basic social scheduling.

Hootsuite’s value comes from the operational layer around publishing: permissions, approvals, analytics, inbox management, and campaign reporting. If you’re not using those pieces, you end up paying for a lot of software you don't really need.

But for a small businesses? Or even medium sized social media agencies? No way, stay away from Hootsuite.

We evaluated Hootsuite when we released our podcast and wanted a social media scheduling tool. We ultimately did not end up using Hootsuite after our evaluation.

Currently, we use Ordinal for our social media posting, but here are our notes from our Hootsuite evaluation:

While Hootsuite worked better than Metricool when it came to posting on Instagram (we didn't have any issues with file sizes), we found Buffer to have a much better user experience when it came to using the actual software for scheduling posts.

We tested a TikTok post and quickly discovered that Hootsuite (like every single social media scheduling app) also couldn't handle caption formatting.

That said, Hootsuite was actually worse at TikTok scheduling than other tools—Hootsuite was giving us an error saying that we had exceeded our character limit for our TikTok caption (an error we did not get with other tools).

The Hootsuite scheduling module is quite clunky, and was giving us character limit errors while other scheudling platforms did not.

You can schedule YouTube Shorts via Hootsuite, however, like with the other social media scheduling tools, you can't add related videos, or choose a thumbnail.

Spoiler: There aren't any social media scheduling apps that allow for choosing a YouTube thumbnail, as YouTube's API doesn't allow for it.

For us, YouTube is our most important social platform, so we decided to use the native YouTube scheduling app.

At this stage of our social media management platform evaluation, we had already tested Buffer and had a 10x better experience than Hootsuite, so were eager to disconnect our social media accounts and move on seeing it didn't give us anything more than Buffer did.

• Standard — $99/user/month (billed annually): 1 user, up to 10 social accounts. Unlimited scheduling, basic analytics, AI writing assistant, outside tool integrations. Best for individual social media managers who need more than a basic scheduling tool.
• Advanced — $249/user/month (billed annually): Unlimited social accounts, customizable analytics and reporting templates, team approval workflows, bulk scheduling up to 350 posts, saved replies and auto-responses. Best for teams and agencies that need real workflow functionality. Includes approvals, reporting, and collaboration. A team of three here is spending ~$750/month, which is real money, but if approvals and reporting are saving you significant time on client work, the math could work out.
• Enterprise — custom pricing (typically starting ~$15,000–16,000/year, minimum 5 users): Full governance and compliance features, SSO, content library, multi-level approval workflows, audit trails, social listening via Hootsuite Insights, Amplify for employee advocacy, Salesforce integration, and dedicated support. Best for large organizations with complex compliance, security, or multi-brand requirements.

Is Hootsuite worth it? For most teams, no.

We have no issue paying more for software when the fit is right. Ordinal is on the pricier side, but it makes sense for us because it directly supports our post engagement via team distribution and auto-engagement. The price is connected to the value.

Hootsuite did not feel that way. So much of the product is built around enterprise complexity. If you're not using features like permissions, approval chains, reporting, and admin controls, they turn into bloat. You end up paying for a product that is harder to use because it is trying to serve a much larger, more complex organization than yours.

That’s why I wouldn’t recommend Hootsuite for solo creators, small businesses, or startups.

Hootsuite fits into multiple categories based on what it actually helps you do. Each category highlights a different strength and the efficiency points it earned, helping you compare tools not just by features, but by how well they actually perform.

Keep exploring the best software across categories, or explore Hootsuite alternatives