4 hootsuite alternatives you must try

4 Hootsuite Alternatives you Must Try Businesses, small and big, are targeting social media platforms as an integral part in connecting with their audience. Surveys and reports have established Facebook as the giant in this industry, followed by Twitter. Channels like Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn are also being explored by marketers.

In order to cater to users on various social media platforms at one go, social media management apps are saving time and efforts of marketers. While the app store is full of options, one of the most popular social media management app is Hootsuite. This third-party tool enables you to collate all your social media accounts and stream them on one dashboard. Whether you have multiple accounts or use one account for multiple channels, Hootsuite’s simple dashboard allows you to schedule, compose, send and track your activities. It requires no additional downloads, and you can add team members, monitor work-flow and analyse your social media activities as well.

Hootsuite Some of the feature highlights that makes Hootsuite a popular choice are: •

It allows integration with a host of social media channels like Facebook (profile, pages, events, groups), Twitter, Foursqaure, LinkedIn (profile, pages and groups), Google+ pages, WordPress, Mixi, Flickr, Tumblr, Mailchimp,Vimeo, Myspace, Storify, and so many more

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It allows team collaboration

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Scheduling social media updates

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Save FAQ “tweets” as drafts to send out to commonly asked

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Get weekly analytical reports via email, detailing about number of clicks, most popular links, geographical information, etc.

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All browser compatible

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RSS integration

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Mobile app (Android, iPad and Blackberry) with a seamless UI

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Freemium plans. With the free plan, you can add upto 5 social media channels.

Hootsuite is a wonderful social media management app but it has its shortcomings as well•

You have to use ow.ly for link shortening. bit.ly or any other URL shortener will not work

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Analytics in details can be little expensive, although there are few free reports. Mostly it costs $50 per report

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You cannot integrate a CRM system

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Team accounts cannot be handled in mobile app

The Hootsuite review certifies it as great social media management tool. Yet we cannot ignore that there are many more alternatives out there in the market. So, after a thorough research here are some Hootsuite alternatives that can be useful for a marketer.

Hootsuite Alternative – Buffer Buffer, a Hootsuite Alternative, is a powerful social media management tool that has all the features to compete with Hootsuite fiercely. In a span of five years, Buffer has more than two million active users.

You can schedule, track and access more than one social media channel with this tool.

Hootsuite alternative-Buffer Buffer Feature Highlights •

Feedly integration allows you to quickly access title, URL, content of the article you are reading without having to open a separate browser

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You can schedule your retweets as well with Buffer

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Integration with Followerwonk in Buffer helps you know which time your followers are online.

You can schedule your posts accordingly. You can pick the handle of any influencer and analyse when their followers are online. This means your tweeting is now optimised

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Custom scheduling enables to choose the right day and time for an update that deals with sensitive topics. You can target the right set of audience in a specific time

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You can now add Google+ and LinkedIn pages in Buffer

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You can schedule posts using Buffer Inside Echofon without having to leave your Twitter window

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Auto-complete option for Twitter handles, options to post images and quotes

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“Top post” icon in Buffer lets you know which post is performing better than the others

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Compare various blog titles to see which one works best for you

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Each profile you use has a separate analytics history stored in separate tabs for reference

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Integration of Pocket with Buffer makes it easy for you to save an article to read and share later

Hootsuite vs Buffer There are few ways in which Buffer surpasses Hootsuite•

Scheduling posts for Pinterest is possible on Buffer unlike Hootsuite

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RSS Feed integration in all plans

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Buffer has great social media image creation tool called Pablo; which is another great addon.

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Five or more team members can access in all plans

Price: Free plan for Individual. Pricing starts at $10/month for Individuals, and $99/month for small teams.

Check Buffer HootSuite Alternative – SocialOomph SocialOomph, another alternative to HootSuite, was originally built to focus on Twitter only. In 2009, this Canadian-based web app expanded into other networks like Facebook, RSS, WordPress, App.net and Plurk. In many ways, SocialOomph is similar to Hootsuite, like scheduling and updating posts, and analytics updates.

Hootsuite alternative-Socialoomph Hootsuite vs SocialOomph Although there are few similarities, SocialOomph has certain features solely to itself.

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Auto-responder function in SocialOomph sets it apart from Hootsuite

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You can get notified when someone retweets or mentions you

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SocialOomph uses Microsoft word file for bulk uploads unlike Hootsuite that uses a CSV file

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WYSIWYG editor for in-software editing in SocialOomph

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Analytics is slightly more detailed in SocialOomph

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Unlimited accounts in free version as well

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You can schedule and publish blog posts from unlimited blogs

Hootsuite has the advantage of letting you access more channels than SocialOomph and mobile integrations.

Price: Free version available for 7 days. Range: $0-$35 per month.

Signup at Socialoomph HootSuite Alternative – Sendible Another free alternative to Hootsuite is Sendible. It is not just a social media management tool but also caters to various other aspects of digital marketing. An easy to use dashboard where you can engage with your users, a social CRM, analytics, publishing- Sendible has it all.

Hootsuite alternative-Sendible Pros of using Sendible •

Sendible lets you grow as a brand. Even if someone has not tagged your company, yet is talking about your company, Sendible will let you know. You can bring in new users without having being tagged or mentioned

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Sendible lets you juggle multiple accounts seamlessly. The visual tick mark to the tweets that you have replied helps in long run to filter among piles of tweets

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Publish to multiple social media channels and blogs. You can schedule, queue, and maintain your consistency with RSS publishing

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Team collaboration. You can add and assign tasks to teams, review before publishing any content, and share customer records with team

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Analyse data across all the social media channels that you use via Sendible

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Mentions do not just happen over Twitter. If someone mentions your company anywhere like blog or any other channel, Sendible will notify you. You can monitor reviews on Yelp and CitySearch

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Impressive and quick customer support

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From generating to nurturing a lead, Sendible has all the tools needed for to garner an effective social media outcome. From emails to SMS marketing capabilities, Sendible goes beyond social media sharing

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You can use Sendible on the go with its mobile app

Hootsuite vs Sendible Sendible is definitely so much more than social media sharing and managing. Its a compact option for a marketer. Here are two major ways in which Sendible surpasses HootsuiteSendible has it all- posting, scheduling, sharing, sentiment analysis, auto-responder, auto-following, and so much more. The 360 degree monitoring is unique on Sendible unlike Hootsuite. Whether you want to go in to the depth of a post analysis based on reach sentiment, or consider geo/language targeting– Sendible has it all.

Sendible is much more beyond social media. Tracking campaigns, uploading HTML for email campaigns, setting auto-response for email, tweets, comments, etc and tracking popular bookmarking sites like Delicious- Sendible is a complete package.

The best part is, you can do all of this from a single dashboard alone.

Price: Free plan for 30 days. Starting at $59/month only.

Start Free Trial at Sendible HootSuite Alternative – Hubspot Hubspot, an alternative to HootSuite, is widely popular as a marketing CRM, found in 2006. The kind of hype and brand loyalty this inbound marketing tool has, is worth a mention. However, debates often surround this tool regarding its high price. Mostly used by big corporates, many medium sized startups also opt for Hubspot.

Hootsuite alternative-Hubspot Benefits of Hubspot Hubspot has a social media management aspect but it is another feature among many others.

Hubspot takes care of your SEO, blog, Lead analytics, CRM, Social media, landing pages and lead forms.

Talking specifically about Social media, Hubspot provides a social media inbox and Twitter post monitoring. It lets you to schedule and monitor posts, and also turn email lists into social media lists.

You can also build Landing Pages inside your WordPress Setup and use above mentioned alternatives.

Hootsuite vs Hubspot Like I mentioned earlier, Hubspot is perfect inbound marketing software. At $200/month you can publish your blog on Hubspot.

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Hubspot is an inbound marketing software which has social media sharing functionality to a certain extent only.

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Hootsuite is all about social media sharing.

If you draw a direct comparison, go for Hootsuite for all your social media needs, and opt for Hubspot for marketing requirements like blogs, SEO, lead generations, etc.

Price: Starting at $200/month. Free trail available for 30 days.

While we are still on Hootsuite alternatives, here are some more tools that people have used and liked as wellSproutSocial, AgoraPulse, Viralheat, TweetDeck, Sprinklr, NetBase, Tracx and so many more.

There are a host of social media management tools to choose from. If you think I have missed out any such tool that can be used as a Hootsuite alternative, feel free to comment and let me know.