If you’re a marketer, there’s probably a good chance you’ve heard of Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a social media marketing and management tool to get all your marketing done in one place. This means generating content, using AI to post, and having a nice workflow for you and your team.
Sounds pretty great, right? It might be for some marketing teams. But it’s not a one-size-fits-all for everyone.
Hootsuite is one of the most expensive tools on the market and comes in at roughly $99/month for one user only. They also no longer offer a free plan, so you won’t be able to try it before you buy. You’ll spend a pretty penny on its services before you even know if you like it.
With so many options at your disposal, here are 10 Hootsuite alternatives to ensure your team can work more efficiently.
Let’s review the top 10 marketing project management tools for you and your team.
1. CoSchedule Social Media Calendar
Features
Unified Calendar View: For planning and scheduling across various networks.
Auto-Scheduling: Schedule your posts for optimal engagement times and get the most out of your campaigns.
Clear Team Workflows: Collaborate with team members flawlessly and track content contribution and approval.
Integration: Seamlessly integrate with content management systems, email marketing platforms, and analytics tools.
Drag-And-Drop Functionality: For easy content management, and flexibility.
Content Rescheduling: ReSchedule your social posts seamlessly to maintain a consistent online presence.
Security & Compliance: Give users an easy and secure way to log into Social Calendar using SSO (Single Sign-On) authentication.
Digital Asset Management: Create, schedule, publish, and measure your social media strategy in a single, AI-powered social calendar.
Customer Service & Support: Fast, effective customer service and support help so you can be as productive as possible.
Social Media Management: Create and manage all of your social media content in one place for an optimal posting experience.
AI Marketing: Write first-draft copy, generate new ideas, and upgrade your marketing workflows with CoSchedule’s AI-Powered Marketing Intelligence Assistant.
Pros
- Visualize your marketing schedule in real time
- Manage work through every stage of the creative process
- Maximize your team’s productivity
- See your high-level marketing strategy at a glance
- Deliver projects on time, every time
Cons
- This tool offers so many benefits and features that it may take your team a little time to get used to it.
Pricing: Regarding pricing for Social Calendar, at $19/Month you are getting a cutting edge social media marketing tool to optimize your social media campaigns. CoSchedule offers other plans and a forever free marketing calendar if you want to try that out first.
“CoSchedule has improved our efficiency immeasurably, enabling us to scale with a very small team. Additionally – it has given us such an easy way to communicate the volume and status of work we are doing to the business teams we support. We have tried other tools, and nothing really compares.”
– Customer from ABS Group
2. Sprout Social
Features
Engagement: Enhance the efficiency and expand the scope of your customer care and community management.
Publishing: Seamlessly strategize, generate, oversee, and distribute social content and campaigns.
Analytics: Facilitate informed decision-making throughout your entire business strategy
Listening: Discover valuable insights from countless unfiltered thoughts, emotions, and opinions to enrich your existing approach and shape future initiatives.
Advocacy: Cultivate your brand and broaden your social influence through the creation of easily shareable social posts.
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Consolidated inbox
- Robust analytics capabilities
- Scheduled content management
- Mobile application
Cons
- If you need a quick answer to a burning question, you might find the wait times a bit longer than expected, as users have noted delays in responses and support.
- Given that Sprout Social comes with a hefty price tag, it’s crucial to thoroughly compare it with other tools before locking into a monthly payment plan.
Pricing
3. Agorapulse
Features
Consolidated Social Inbox: Effortlessly handle all incoming social media messages, comments, and reviews from a single, unified platform.
User-Friendly Publishing: Strategize, collaborate, and schedule content seamlessly across all your social channels.
Attuned Social Listening: Uncover trends and insights about your brand, as well as your competitors.
In-depth Analytics: Generate visually appealing and actionable reports that unveil what’s effective – and what’s not.
Social Media ROI: Gain a clear view of the posts and discussions that are boosting sales, generating leads, and driving traffic, all without needing expertise in Google Analytics.
Pros
- Ranked as the top choice for social media management
- Outstanding value for your investment
- An impressive 96% satisfaction rate among users
- Swift response times from the Customer Service Team
Cons
- Scheduled social media posts on Agorapulse do not appear correctly on the associated social media accounts.
- Some users have said the software can be buggy at times.
Pricing
4. Planable
Features
Social Media Management: Engage effectively with audiences on various platforms.
Marketing Calendar: A unified calendar to visualize and plan all your marketing efforts.
Analytics: Comprehensive analytics to bolster your marketing strategies.
Team Collaboration: Centralize all your requirements in one location for efficient teamwork.
Pros
- Planable is adaptable, catering to a diverse set of users.
- It offers user-friendly features for both individual users and teams.
- It’s ideal for brands spread across various locations, companies with multiple brands, and agencies.
Cons
- Users often face challenges with Planable, particularly in terms of its pricing and limited social media coverage.
- The pricing structure is sometimes seen as complex, both for personal use and when presented to clients.
- Some users struggle to maintain consistent posting across all platforms, often favoring a select few.
Pricing
5. Buffer
Features
Boost Productivity: Buffer allows you to delegate content to AI automatically, preventing your team from being bogged down by more monotonous tasks.
Revamp Content Efficiently: Users can revitalize and repurpose content with a single click. Get more engagement from older campaigns and outperform them!
Create Content with Ease: Buffer introduces a feature named “Start a Page”, where users can create a landing page in mere minutes. A page that resonates with their brand and jumpstarts their marketing efforts.
Pros
- Buffer eliminates doubt in content creation and publication.
- Buffer enables users to confidently distribute the right content on the right channels at the most suitable time.
- Buffer enhances teamwork through permission levels and approval workflows.
Cons
- Buffer users frequently face issues with failed posts during the content publication process.
- This issue has been reported across all channels.
- Users have expressed dissatisfaction with the analytics provided by Buffer, stating that they do not meet their expectations.
Pricing
6. Loomly
Features
Multi-Calendar View: Loomly offers a variety of calendar views, helping users keep up with recent updates.
Media Studio: Stream across all social media channels, cutting down the content creation time by half.
Hashtag Manager: Utilize the most efficient and popular hashtags to boost your marketing initiatives.
UTM Parameters Generator: Allows users to create legible URLs, fostering more traffic and visibility.
Pros
- Loomly excels at maintaining and tracking your content efficiently.
- Loomly provides post previews, ensuring team members are aware of the upcoming content, its publishing time, and the platform it’s being published on.
- These features effectively reduce team miscommunication.
Cons
- A notable concern among Loomly users is the platform’s inability to post directly to Instagram.
- This integration capability, particularly the ability to post directly to Instagram, is highly desired by many users.
- Users also encounter difficulties when trying to create Instagram stories through Loomly.
Pricing
7. Sendible
Features
How-To Guides: Sendible offers an extensive variety of “How-To Guides”, enabling users to grasp best practices from experts who have employed Sendible’s templates, fostering a very beginner-friendly environment.
Efficient Scheduling: Users have the option to schedule posts individually, in bulk, or via queues, and subsequently manage them through their personalized calendar.
Separate Client Dashboards: Collaborate smoothly with your team and create distinct dashboards for each client, ensuring work is optimized and well-organized.
Pros
- One of Sendible’s key benefits is its effective user onboarding and platform familiarization.
- Sendible offers exceptional customer service, as well as best practice guides.
- Users often report a sense of comfort and ease when using Sendible.
Cons
- Sendible does not have the ability to post directly to Instagram, a feature that is greatly in demand by frequent users.
- The reliability of Sendible’s mobile application has been under scrutiny.
- Some users have encountered crashes and malfunctions when posting content via the app.
Pricing
8. Later
Features
Beginner Friendly: Later provides in-depth webinars, training, and certifications to teach users how to use the platform. No second guessing or confusion for any new users.
Social Media Training: Users can revamp the way they post on social media. Learn social media best practices for specific platforms and tailored for their marketing strategy.
Caption Writer: Users can speed-up the process of writing captions for social media posts. With their AI powered Caption Writer, users can begin writing effective captions.
Pros
- The platform is user-friendly and can be easily learned by users of all levels, from beginners to advanced.
- Users can quickly become proficient in using this platform.
- Later is a reliable tool for pre-planning content.
- The platform offers an auto-posting feature, allowing users to relax without worry about manual posting.
Cons
- Later does not provide integration with Instagram or TikTok, both of which are highly desired platforms.
- A significant challenge faced by users is the necessity for placeholder images for posts.
- This requirement has been found to decrease efficiency and necessitates that teams ‘backtrack’.
Pricing
9. SocialPilot
Features
Approvals On-The-Go: Waste no time progressing through projects and campaigns with approvals on-the-go. Team members can seamlessly send work for approvals and/or edits and receive it back with just a click.
Bulk Scheduling: Users can publish content in bulk to any platform of their choice. Saving time and energy, you can post at the optimal times without any worry.
Content Library AI Assistant: Gain access to your very own library AI assistant. Produce content that relates with your brand voice and your audience, in half of the time.
Pros
- Social Pilot excels in providing scheduled posting features.
- It offers comprehensive analytics to customers.
- The analytics are based on the customers’ published content.
Cons
- Social Pilot can encounter problems during the process of bulk posting, a feature it offers.
- The platform may crash during bulk posting and does not notify the user about unsuccessful posts.
- Some users have reported that manual posting is time-consuming on this platform.
Pricing
10. Brandwatch
Features
Streamline Influencer Marketing: Gain access to untapped engagement through powerful influencers. Learn how to collaborate and find success through influencer marketing.
Measure The Competition: With data-backed insights, users can measure their progress to their competitions, so they can stay ahead of the curve.
Enhanced Customer Care: Provide exceptional customer service, with round-the-clock care, personalized to them.
Pros
- Users can be confident that their marketing efforts are performing optimally.
- The platform provides insights into consumer behavior.
- Brand watch is compatible with all popular social media platforms.
Cons
- A significant challenge for Brand Watch is the depth of their analytics.
- Users find that the analytics do not provide sufficient insights for growth.
- The data appears to only scratch the surface of the information users seek.
Pricing
All of these tools have a laundry list of benefits and features that they bring to the table. It’s up to you and your team to figure out which one will be an asset, not a burden. Remember to consider this when deciding between tools:
- Price
- User interface
- Integrations
- How many employees will be using this
- What tool will heal your pain points
