Hootsuite vs. Later: Which One Fits Best For Your Business?

Overview

Hootsuite was one of the first tools to assist businesses with their social media marketing needs. Over time, it has developed into a diverse tool giving all-around services to agencies, businesses, and enterprises to achieve all their strategic objectives.

Hootsuite integrates all of the major platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google Business Profile. Its dashboard is chockfull of features, so it takes the users some time to familiarize themselves and use the tool proficiently.

Hootsuite also provides robust analytics and team collaboration workflows, enabling many people to work together seamlessly while dealing with all the social media activities they do.

Later can create and publish posts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok. Users can create posts in the scheduler of the tool and customize each for every platform they’ll be posted on.

Even after scheduling the posts, people can edit and reschedule them as the social media calendar enables them to drag and drop their posts to change their publishing times. It even gives the best time to post so users can schedule their posts to get optimum results.

Later has a very aesthetic, intuitive, and user-friendly interface that never requires a learning period to master the tool. It is handy for generating posts for Instagram, even providing AI-assisted captions for the platform and landing page maker for Instagram profiles. Along with all this, Later offers insightful analytical data to guide a business’s marketing strategy in the right direction.

Best Suitable for

At a Glance

We’ll weigh both tools, Hootsuite vs. Later, based on user reviews and the scores they gave. These scores on the criteria involved in defining the user experience they provided.

One look at the scores, and it’s apparent that Later takes a hefty lead on the user-opinion front. Be it in the process of getting started, the ease of use, or the quality of assistance it gives in case of problems and queries, Hootsuite is constantly rated lower than Later despite being crowned the industry leader.

Here’s an overview of all the average scores Hootsuite vs. Later got from their users, and along with them, we have SocialPilot, a user-favorite.

Quick Comparison

In this section, we will compare Later vs. Hootsuite for all the most basic but vital capabilities of social media management tools. These qualities can’t be overlooked while making the right choice for your business.

Hootsuite is a high-priced social media marketing tool which is why it is a better fit for larger organizations; meanwhile, Later is at a much lower price point, preferred by startups, growing brands, and solo marketers. However, both tools provide a similar number of account access and team member onboarding in their agency-level plans.

Hootsuite supports all the social platforms Later has under its belt, but YouTube and Google Business Profile are unique to Hootsuite. Users can schedule an unlimited number of posts on these platforms from the respective tool.

Comparing the basic features of Hootsuite vs. Later, their offerings include scheduling and publishing, analytics, inboxing, and collaboration. We’ll dive deeper into each segment in the later sections.

However, some vital features Later lacks but are present in Hootsuite. One is a content library where users can store content for future reference, and the other is white-label solutions, which is an important one for businesses to customize their experience with the tool.

Here are all the features listed for Later vs. Hootsuite to go over and compare effectively. We have also included SocialPilot in the mix for a better perspective.

Reviews

Pricing

Now, let’s get into the factor that proves to be a deal-maker or breaker when a marketer selects the perfect tool for their business, i.e., the pricing. So compare the pricing trends of Hootsuite vs. Later to see which one of them offers a better deal.

It is a well-known fact that Hootsuite is priced extravagantly high. The starting price of Hootsuite is $99, while Later’s costs less than half of that. But we’ll discuss the agency-level plans of both tools as they are the most popular ones.

Hootsuite’s Business plan costs a whopping $739 per month, while Later’s Advanced plan is just $80. For the plans mentioned above, Hootsuite allows up to 5 users to connect 35 accounts at the maximum. The numbers are six users and 36 accounts for Later, respectively. This noticeable gap in their prices makes it perfectly clear that Later is giving a better worth for users’ money.

Here are all the pricing plans, Hootsuite vs. Later, laid out side by side for comparison with SocialPilot for a better frame of reference.

In-depth Scheduling and Publishing Capabilities Comparison

Scheduling and publishing are the core compatibilities of any social media marketing tool. Hence, users prioritize these features while choosing the perfect fit for them. So let’s compare Hootsuite vs. Later regarding content automation or scheduling and publishing functions.

When taking stock of the basic features related to content scheduling, Hootsuite and Later pretty much have them all covered. These include advanced queuing visual content support, platform-specific post customization, UTM parameters, cloud storage, hashtag suggestions, bulk scheduling of posts, social media content calendar, and more. Both the tools come in browser and mobile app versions for easy access.

But there are specific differences in the capabilities of both Later vs. Hootsuite if we dig a little deeper. After creating a post in the composer, a post preview is generated in most scheduling tools to help users visualize their content on specific social platforms. Later lacks the feature of post-preview generation.

When we compare Hootsuite vs. Later for their Facebook scheduling abilities, they enable users to schedule different forms of posts, including reels, carousels, and album posts. However, Later cannot support boost postings, a significant part of Facebook ads. And also, it does not provide location tagging while scheduling tweets.

Hootsuite, on the other hand, lacks the ability to let users schedule first comments with their posts. This practice has become really popular with netizens to keep their posts uncluttered and provide them with optimum reach. Convenient Hootsuite alternatives like Later and SocialPilot do enable people to schedule Instagram first comments.

Another very prominent gap in the abilities of Hootsuite and Later, which mirror each other, is the lack of YouTube shorts scheduling. Later does not support YouTube and hence the inability to publish Youtube shorts. Despite integrating the platform, Hootsuite is unable to publish YouTube shorts.

The detailed scheduling and publishing features for Hootsuite vs. Later are listed for an effective comparison. We have also added SocialPilot to the mix, which is a versatile tool with expertise in content automation.

In-depth Analytics Capability Comparison

The Analytics of a social media management app acts like a strategic compass, directing it ahead. Marketers depend upon these results, good or bad, to decide on their next move. So in this section, we have brought into light the analytical and reporting capabilities of Hootsuite vs. Later to see which one is doing better in this regard.

When looked at from a broader view, both tools provide adequate data on business pages connected to them. They especially have detailed perspectives on all types of content performances on Instagram, including reels, stories, and image posts. They also provide all of this through a comprehensive dashboard.

The disparity between their abilities is visible when we move on to the reporting features. While both tools generate detailed and downloadable PDF reports, Hootsuite can make them branded under the enterprise plan. But Later can’t generate white-labeled reports for its users. Also, Later lacks a custom report builder to customize the analytics reports according to the user’s requirements, while Hootsuite doesn’t have this gap. The latter tool has surcharges for users to access custom report-building features.

The export of the reports to concerned stakeholders can be easily done by both the softwares, whether it be by email or by scheduling it to be automatically sent to them.

Here are all the analytics and reporting features of Hootsuite vs. Later compared side by side along with SocialPilot for comparison’s sake.

In-depth Inbox/Listening Capability Comparison

Social listening capabilities are invaluable to growing businesses trying to establish themselves as customer-centric brands. Proactively managing communication with followers and potential customers is essential for putting yourself out there as a reliable organization. Hence we must scroll through them to compare Hootsuite vs. Later.

Hootsuite has more than sufficient social listening and inboxing capabilities, enabling users to reply to direct messages and reviews from platforms like Google, Facebook reviews, Yelp, BBB, Tripadvisor, and OpenTable. It provides very efficient real-time listening for businesses to monitor the audience’s opinion of them.

Later, however, falls short in this regard. Users can only use the inbox in Later to reply to DMs on Instagram and TikTok. They can’t monitor reviews and queries anywhere with this software, forming a gap in its otherwise diverse and accommodating features.

All of the social listening features available or lacking in both the tools in question are listed below to provide absolute clarity. An added frame of reference in the form of SocialPilot has also been given.

In-depth Social Media Collaboration Capability Comparison

To handle the needs of a social media management team, their preferred tool needs to be well-equipped with team collaboration features. This is what we will look into for Hootsuite and Later.

Both tools can support multiple users as they collaborate on different states of content creation and publishing. Account admins can regulate the access of different team members to the whole process and assign them certain tasks. They even support approval workflow to involve the relevant members and clients in the creation process. This way, each post published is perfect, without any faults, and meets everyone’s expectations.

And speaking of clients, Hootsuite, under its agency plan, allows unlimited client onboarding but Later sets the limit to six. After that, the user has to pay for each client they invite to their account.

Here is a concise view of all the team and client collaboration aspects of Hootsuite vs. Later, along with SocialPilot.