Hootsuite and Buffer both are perfect social media tools for digital marketers, bloggers, and social media managers. These automated tools and services help to organize your content on different social media platforms. Thus, saving time and effort. These social media tools also provide deep insights on data analytics to help you improve your reach and engagement rate. It often becomes difficult to pick the best out of the two fine options with so many benefits.
For this reason, we have prepared the following guide that will help you make a well-informed decision. This guide will provide a competitive analysis of each tool’s features, pricing plans, pros, and cons. So, let’s dive into the blog and check what Hootsuite and Buffer offer.
Overview
Before we dive into the features and functions of each social media tool, let’s understand what Hootsuite and Buffer are:
Hootsuite
Launched in 2008 by Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite has become the most popular social media tool well known for its functionality, team management, and collaboration features. With its user-friendly interface, Hootsuite makes the process of content curation and post scheduling more convenient and seamless.
The major strength of Hootsuite lies in its ability to integrate with any other third-party app, making it more suitable and easy to use. It offers services that help you increase engagement on any social media account. The pace of growth is subject to the subscription plan you purchase.
Buffer
Buffer promotes content creation as compared to social media management. It uses automated tools to create amazing graphics and publish content on all social media networks. Its supreme user-friendly interface provides a clean and straightforward navigation experience.
Besides its seamless user interface, Buffer is also well known for its data analytics tool that provides deep insights into your social media performance.
Buffer offers a wide range of features, but most of them come at a price. Once you sign up, Buffer offers a bonus strategy plan where it sends recommendations on how to promote your brand, grow sales, and increase your reach or engagement rate. It is best suited for bloggers and small businesses who wish to build a strong social media presence.
Key Features of Hootsuite and Buffer
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a very well-organized and powerful social media management tool. Its user-friendly interface allows integrations with multiple social media profiles such as Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Twitter, and many more. Each profile can be set up in different tabs, allowing the user to streamline their social media content and updates for individual social accounts.
Hootsuite has an incredible content library where you can discover new content or create amazing content and save it for later use. You can also view usage stats to check how a particular piece of content is being leveraged on social media.
Besides the content library, Hootsuite also offers content recommendations, which are potential posts that could be relevant to your audience. Another useful feature offered by Hootsuite is the ‘Geosearch’ – the ability to define a specific area to target. By using this filter, you can view all social media posts or tweets specific to a location.
Hootsuite provides good social media scheduling tools to schedule your posts in advance. Apart from this, it is the only social media management tool that offers advertising services. This feature allows you to launch ad campaigns across multiple platforms from the same dashboard.
Talking about team management, Hootsuite allows admins to assign team members to a specific social media account. It also provides a series of automated tools and services to create teams and organizations for large-scale marketing operations. Furthermore, Hootsuite uses SSO (Single Sign-On) security feature that keeps the site protected and allows you and the team members to log into the system within seconds.
Lastly, Hootsuite provides speedy and efficient customer support. It has a live chat feature on the dashboard from where you can send prompt solutions to your customer queries on any social media website.
Buffer
Like Hootsuite, Buffer also allows integrations with multiple social media platforms. Additionally, it also allows integrations with third-party applications that primarily consist of content creation tools. One of the most outstanding features of Buffer is ‘Pablo’. It is a content creation tool that helps to design visually stunning graphics within few seconds.
One of the reasons why most people enjoy Buffer is its clean and user-friendly interface. Apart from that, it also offers social analytics to track your performance rate and get insights on planning a powerful marketing strategy.
Additionally, Buffer provides excellent post-scheduling tools. It allows the user to create a content calendar and set time slots in advance to publish posts automatically.
The team management feature of Buffer offers a platform for open communication among the team members. It allows multiple team members to collaborate, plan content, and post schedule. They can also save a post as a draft and get feedback or approvals from other members before publishing.
Coming on to customer support, Buffer usually prefers emails. However, you can use this tool on Slack and Twitter to provide an efficient support system.
Pricing Plans
Hootsuite
Hootsuite offers a limited 30 day free trial with access to one user, 3 social media profiles, and 30 schedules posts. The pricing plans include –
- Professional Plan – It comes at $29 per month and is best for small businesses or individual creators. It provides access to one user and up to 10 social media profiles. You can schedule unlimited posts. Additionally, this plan offers real-time data analytics and unlimited RSS integrations.
- Team Plan – With $129 per month, this plan offers support to three user accounts and integration with 20 social media profiles. Additionally, it provides everything that comes in the Professional plan along with custom analytics, URLs, and social media certifications.
- Business Plan – Best suited for large businesses this plan costs $599 per month. It offers support to 10 users and up to 35 social media profiles with a data export feature. You also get 24/7 support, approval-based scheduling, and special onboarding and training.
- Enterprising Plan – The pricing of this plan varies according to the features you choose. It is best suited for large corporations with custom requirements. With this plan, you can get tailor-made social media solutions, integrations with premium business apps, and curated training services.
Buffer
Buffer offers a free 14 day trial period to get a feel for each tool. For long-term experience, it offers three types of pricing plans. These include –
- Pro Plan – Priced at $15 per month, this plan allows access to one user for 8 social media channels. With the Pro plan, you can access all integrations and community support. However, the scheduling options are limited. You can schedule only 100 posts per channel. One thing that this plan lacks is the team management feature.
- Premium Plan – It costs $65 per month and provides access to everything in the Pro plan along with an extended scheduling option. You can schedule 2000 posts per social channel each month. Additionally, you also get access to team management features.
- Business Plan – It comes at $99 per month and is best suited for large corporations. It provides access to 25 social channels with 2000 scheduled posts per social channel each month. You can also add up to 6 users that will have access to the complete Buffer toolset.
Pros and Cons
Hootsuite
Pros
- It is a complete social media management tool with a free 30 day trial period.
- Supports most of the social media channels along with third-party app integrations.
- Build-in advertising tool along with social conversation management.
Cons
- As compared to Buffer, its user interface is slightly complicated with multiple tab options.
- Not beneficial for content creation.
Buffer
Pros
- Excellent post scheduling and publishing tool
- It has a powerful user-friendly interface with easy teamwork features.
- Strong integrated platform security.
- Best content creation tool.
Cons
- Lacks paid advertising features
- Offers a limited 14 day free trial period.
Conclusion – Which One Should You Choose?
The choice between Hootsuite and Buffer depends on your goals and requirements. We have tried to showcase every feature of Hootsuite and Buffer in the above blog. If you are looking for a social media management tool, then Hootsuite is the best for you. This does not mean that a Buffer is a bad tool. Buffer is more suitable for those looking for content creation and post-scheduling tools.
The best way to figure out is to first look at what you want to achieve with the social tool and get a hands-on experience with the free trial period. If you are a beginner, an individual blogger, or a small business looking for a cheaper option, then Buffer is an excellent choice.
If you are more experienced and looking for more a tool that accommodates team management, and conversation management then Hootsuite is the best for you. Hootsuite also supports more social media channels. Moreover, it is best for large businesses and corporations.