Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social: Which is Better For your Business?

Overview

What is Hootsuite Used For?

Hootsuite is a market leader among social media management tools that helps businesses to manage their social media marketing activities from a single space. With a versatile set of features to automate and streamline social media activities, it makes complicated tasks achievable in a shorter time.

Social media management entails many activities, including planning your content strategy, scheduling your posts, monitoring analytics, listening to conversations online, and much more. Well, Hootsuite does it all. It also lets the users onboard their team members and clients into the workflow and collaborate successfully.

Hootsuite will enable you to run multiple social media accounts from a single dashboard as it supports many significant social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube. So all you have to do is connect accounts from these platforms, and you’ll hold all their controls from your Hootsuite account.

According to users’ opinions, Hootsuite has a very intricate UI, which, if mastered, can make the tool a great asset. But it takes a lot of time to learn the tool thoroughly.

What is Sprout Social?

Sprout Social also is a social media management tool. And just like Hootsuite, it is a multipurpose tool that can take care of all facets of social media marketing. Sprout Social integrates multiple social platforms so you can manage them all from a single space.

The tool supports Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube, TikTok, Facebook Messenger, Google Business Profile, and Whatsapp. Other than these social platforms, Sprout Social also accumulates many other app integrations like Canva, Bitly, Google Analytics, Feedly, Salesforce Cloud Intelligence, and many more. Together, these help users scale up their overall marketing efforts to a greater extent.

Industry pros prefer Sprout Social because of its commendable strength in data and analytics. Few Sprout Social alternatives can match what it offers in its robust data-backed insights, which in turn support and strengthen its various other capabilities. And another notable feature of the tool is its social listening. You can engage with your audience proactively and monitor your brand image in the public eye from Sprout Social. This also makes for excellent customer care.

When you go to publish a post, the tool tells you the best possible time to schedule it for!

Best Suitable for

At a Glance

If we compare some of the basic but essential facts about these tools, it will become apparent that Hootsuite and Sprout Social have different strengths and weaknesses.

Hootsuite has a slightly lower overall star rating than Sprout Social. As mentioned earlier, Hootsuite is a difficult tool to get used to. So Sprout Social scores higher in ease of its setup process, usability, as well as quality of its customer support than Hootsuite.

Have a look at the user ratings of Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social along with SocialPilot to get a clearer view.

Quick Comparison

Now, let’s dive a little deeper into the specifics to get a clearer picture to see which tool comes out on top, Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social.

If you compare it to Hootsuite alternatives, the tool itself is priced fairly high, but Sprout Social’s primary paid plans seem to leave the former in the dust. However, Hootsuite charges a whopping $739 per month for its Business pack, while Sprout Social’s Advanced plan costs $499 for the same time.

If we talk about the broader spectrum of features related to a social media management tool, both Hootsuite and Sprout Social have all of them.

When comparing Sprout Social vs. Hootsuite, both the tools have users worldwide, but only Sprout Social supports multiple languages, including English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. In the case of customer support, both tools provide email and chat support. But only Hootsuite provides support through tweets. Another aspect that Sprout Social lacks from Hootsuite is providing white-label solutions. Any marketing agency using Hootsuite can customize its tool to give its clients a branded experience, but Sprout Social doesn’t possess that ability.

However, it’s hard not to mention that SocialPilot provides all the features, including white-label, making a great Hootsuite alternative at an unbelievable price!

Have a look at all the notable features, Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social along with SocialPilot to get a direct perspective.

Reviews

Pricing

Now, let us consider one of the most vital aspects when comparing Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social, i.e., their pricing models. Before starting, it’s important to note that pricing can vary based on various factors. Hootsuite and Sprout Social have four paid plans, so we compare them one by one.

Hootsuite charges way more than Sprout Social for its monthly agency plan. At $739 per month, 5 team members can connect 35 social accounts and schedule unlimited posts. In comparison, Sprout Social costs $499 per month for its agency plan and allows connecting an unlimited number of social accounts but has a limitation of 10000 posts that can be scheduled. Also, 10 users can work from the same Hootsuite account under this plan.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of all pricing plans, Sprout Social vs. Hootsuite along with SocialPilot to get a clearer view.

In-depth Scheduling and Publishing Capabilities Comparison

In this part of the debate of Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social, we will discuss the features which make the bedrock of any social media scheduling tool, i.e., scheduling and publishing.

Both tools have advanced capabilities in post-scheduling, including platform-specific customization, cloud content storage, and more. However, if we split hairs for comparing Sprout Social vs. Hootsuite, the former lacks advanced queuing for smart scheduling and URL shortening. In contrast, Sprout Social does not have hashtag suggestions in its repertoire.

Another very important feature that Sprout Social lacks is the ability to schedule Instagram reels, which is an important part of marketing strategies. SocialPilot, however, does have the capability of scheduling Instagram and Facebook reels, making it a very cost-effective Sprout Social alternative.

Regarding in-app integrations, Sprout Social has many, but Hootsuite takes the cake in this one with over 40 app integrations. One more fact worth mentioning in this comparison is that Hootsuite lacks a browser extension.

Here is an in-depth analysis of all the scheduling and publishing features, Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social, along with SocialPilot, for a more transparent analysis.

In-depth Analytics Capability Comparison

Now we come to analytics and reporting, which acts like a roadmap for any user to retrace their strategic steps or plan for the path they want to take in the future.

Be it Hootsuite or Sprout Social, both contenders are quite skilled when it comes to data-related insights. Both provide powerful analytics for all the business pages you have connected and generate PDF reports for them in a neat and comprehensive dashboard.

Following is a comparative chart of the analytics capabilities, Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social, along with SocialPilot.

In-depth Inbox/Listening Capability Comparison

Now, we will discuss the listening capabilities of Hootsuite and Sprout Social. Although none of them boasts a specialty in this feature, they are more than adequately able to manage all social conversations with their social inbox.

Here is all you need to know about the listening capabilities of Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social and SocialPilot for a better perspective.

In-depth Social Media Collaboration Capability Comparison

When it comes to businesses managing their social media or a marketing agency doing it for their clients, team workflows and multi-user capabilities are necessary. That is why collaboration is yet another aspect of social media management tools we can’t ignore.

Hootsuite and Sprout Social have team workflow capabilities and unlimited client onboarding allowance with the right pricing plans. You can define roles for each team member and have a content approval workflow to smoothen the back-and-forth communication.

Below is the representation for you, showing how both Hootsuite and Sprout Social are competent in their collaborative capabilities and see SocialPilot match them feature for feature.