Sprout Social vs Hootsuite: Which One is the Best Social Media Management Tool?

Looking for a tool to manage your social accounts?

You have no shortage of social media management tools to choose from, but deciding which is the best fit for your business can be tricky.

This article will compare two of the most popular tools on the market: Sprout Social and Hootsuite. Both platforms offer a wide range of features, but which one is the best fit for your business?

We’ll break down each tool’s features, pricing, integrations, and customer support to help you decide which is the best for publishing social media posts.

So, let’s get started!

What is Sprout Social?

Sprout Social is a social media management software or tool that helps businesses grow their social media presence. The platform offers a wide range of features, including scheduling posts, analyzing social media analytics, and monitoring conversations on social media. Sprout also integrates with various other tools, making it easy to manage your social media campaigns from a single platform.

How does Sprout Social Work?

The Sprout Social platform is broken down into five main sections: Messages, Reports, Publishing, Analyze, and Team.

The Messages section is where you’ll see all of your incoming messages from your various social media accounts. You can respond to messages directly from this section or use integrated messaging tools to send more complex messages.

The Reports section provides information on how your social media campaigns are performing. You can use the data in this section to change your campaigns and improve your results.

The Publishing section lets you schedule posts for your social media accounts. You can create a post in Sprout, then choose when and where you want it to publish. Sprout also offers a variety of built-in templates to make creating posts more accessible.

The Analyze section provides information on how your social media posts are performing. You can use this data to determine which types of content are most popular with your audience and adjust your publishing schedule accordingly.

The Team section lets you manage team members and assign tasks to specific team members. This makes it easy to delegate tasks and ensure that everyone contributes to your social media campaigns.

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is another tool that helps businesses to manage their social media platforms. The platform offers a wide range of features, including scheduling posts, analyzing social media analytics, and monitoring conversations on social media. Hootsuite also integrates with various other tools, making it easy to manage your social media campaigns from a single platform.

How does Hootsuite Work?

The Hootsuite platform is broken into five main sections: Streams, Reports, Scheduling, Analytics, and Settings.

The Streams section is where you’ll see all of your incoming messages from your various social media accounts. You can respond to messages directly from this section or use integrated messaging tools to send more complex messages.

The Reports section provides information on how your social media campaigns are performing. You can use the data in this section to change your campaigns and improve your results.

The Scheduling section lets you schedule posts for your social media accounts. You can create a post in Hootsuite, then choose when and where you want it to publish. Hootsuite also offers a variety of built-in templates to make creating posts more accessible.

The Analytics section provides information on how your social media posts are performing. You can use this data to determine which types of content are most popular with your audience and adjust your publishing schedule accordingly.

The Settings section lets you manage team members and assign tasks to specific team members. This makes it easy to delegate tasks and ensure that everyone contributes to your social media campaigns.

Sprout Social Vs Hootsuite: Pricing Overview

Below are all the plans offered by these social media marketing tools.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social doesn’t offer any free plan but offers a trial on all plans. The first plan is called the Standard plan (Starting at $99/month per user), which includes, 5 social profiles, an all-in-one social inbox, publishing tools, content calendar, profile monitoring, keyword monitoring, social CRM tools, comprehensive reporting, paid promotion tools, and mobile apps.

The second plan is named Professional Plan (Starting at $149/month per user), which includes, All features in Standard Plan, plus 10 social profiles, content tagging, optimal post scheduling, response rate reports, competition reports, time analysis reports, trend analysis reports, paid social reporting, Helpdesk integration, and custom workflows.

The final plan is Advanced Plan (Starting at $249/ month per user), including the above features, plus 10 social profiles, message spike alerts, digital asset library, chatbot automation, suggested replies, automated inbox rule builder, and custom URL tracking, Twitter surveys.

Hootsuite

On the other hand, Hootsuite offers a free plan to their users, including 1 user, 3 social profiles, 30 scheduled posts/ month. The first paid plan is Professional Plan (Starting at $29 per month) which includes features like 10 social profiles, 1 user, unlimited scheduling, social analytics, bulk scheduling, $500 per month ad spend limit, and unlimited RSS integrations.

The second Team plan (starts at $129/month) includes all the above features Plus 20 social profiles, unlimited scheduling, 3 users, custom analytics reports, team assignments, one custom branded URL, 1 Hootsuite platform certification $2,000/month ad spend limit.

Third, Business Plan (Starting at $599/month), Above features plus 35 social profiles, unlimited scheduling, up to 10 users, analytics exporting, publishing approvals, app integrations, custom branded URLs, 1 social media certification, extended training, $5,000/month ad spend limit.

If you want a custom plan, you can also get a Quote from their support team.

Sprout Social Vs Hootsuite: The Pros and Cons of Each

Sprout Social Pros:

• A broad range of insightful reporting possibilities
• A user-friendly, feature-full interface
• Offers trial
• Extensive publishing, analytical, engagement, and listening features
• Automated responses to incoming communications
• Browser Extension

Sprout Social Cons:

• Advanced features limited to more expensive subscriptions
• Extra users cost more
• It doesn’t offer a free plan

Hootsuite Pros:

• Very user-friendly interface that is easy to learn and navigate.
• A huge variety of integrations with other platforms makes it an extremely versatile tool.
• Effective collaboration and automation tools
• Unlimited scheduling across all plans
• Free plan available
• Browser Extension

Hootsuite Cons:

• It doesn’t offer Phone support
• Lacks advanced automation capabilities

Sprout Social Vs Hootsuite: Dashboard

The dashboard is where you will find all of your social media profiles and the essential metrics for each account. Sprout Social’s dashboard is well-organized and easy to navigate.

The first thing you see is a list of your recent posts, which makes it easy to post new content. Hootsuite’s dashboard also lists your recent posts, but it’s not as prominently displayed as Sprout Social’s. Instead, you have to scroll down to see it.

The next thing you’ll see in Sprout Social’s dashboard is a list of your scheduled posts. This is an excellent feature because it allows you to plan your content. Hootsuite does not have this feature. Instead, you have to use the calendar view to schedule your posts.

Both dashboards have an overview of your social media accounts and the number of followers for each account. However, Sprout Social’s dashboard also lists recent interactions for each account.

This is a great way to see what people are talking about on social media and how you can join the conversation. Unfortunately, Hootsuite does not have this feature.

Overall, Sprout Social’s dashboard is more user-friendly and has more features than Hootsuite’s dashboard. So if you’re looking for a comprehensive social media management tool, Sprout Social is the better option.

Sprout Social Vs Hootsuite: Collaboration and Workflow

When it comes to team collaboration and workflow, both Sprout Social and Hootsuite are great platforms. You can add team members who can help manage your social media profiles and messages with both platforms. You can also create tasks to complete and assign messages to specific team members.

Hootsuite offers a few more features for team collaboration and workflow. For example, you can create teams within Hootsuite and designate a team captain responsible for approving posts before they’re published. You can also set up automatic notifications for team members when new messages are assigned.

Sprout Social Vs Hootsuite: Integration

Both Sprout Social and Hootsuite have a multitude of integrations. These third-party programs work with your social media platform to enhance its functionality.

Sprout Social’s list of integrations includes Google Analytics, Highrise CRM, Postling, SalesforceIQ CRM, LiveChat Support System, Giphy, and many more.

Hootsuite’s list of integrations is more extensive than Sprout Social/ Some of the platforms Hootsuite integrates with are MailChimp, SalesforceIQ CRM, Evernote, Nimble CRM, Zendesk, and more.

Both Sprout Social’s and Hootsuite’s integrations make it easy to get the most out of your social media management platform. So they’re worth looking into if you’re serious about using a social media tool for your business.

Publishing and Scheduling

Sprout Social offers a few more options when it comes to publishing and scheduling. With Hootsuite, you can publish and schedule posts to multiple users or social media profiles at once. At the same time, Sprout Social lets you also publish and organize groups, including various social media profiles and RSS feeds. You can also use Sprout’s Queue feature to draft and schedule messages ahead of time.

Both platforms offer great options for queuing posts, but Sprout Social takes it a step further by allowing you to add tasks to your queue.

For example, if you want to remind yourself to post a link to an article later in the day, you can add that as a task, and it will appear in your queue. This is a great way to ensure that important messages don’t get forgotten.

Monitoring Conversations

Both Sprout Social and Hootsuite have great monitoring features. For example, you can easily see what people say about your brand, product, or competitors across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Hootsuite offers a little more flexibility when monitoring conversations because you can choose which social media channels you want to watch and then create a list of keywords to monitor.

On the other hand, Sprout Social’s monitoring features are more intuitive because you don’t have to create a separate keyword list. Instead, you can select specific words and phrases that will trigger an alert whenever someone uses them on social media.

When it comes to monitoring conversations, both platforms are great because you can quickly join the conversation and create valuable social media content from what you’ve learned.

Sprout Social Vs Hootsuite: Analytics reports

Both platforms have a wide variety of analytics reports, but Sprout Social offers more detailed reporting. With a standard subscription, you’ll get daily and weekly reports that include data about followers, referrals, activities, social media engagement levels, and more.

If you want to see even more detailed information, you can upgrade to one of the Business or Enterprise plans. With a Business plan, you’ll get monthly reports that include data about social media engagement levels broken down by time, device, and type of message sent. You can also find out how many times a post was viewed and clicked on.

If you have the Enterprise plan, you’ll even be able to see data from your competitors! There’s also a dedicated reporting API that allows you to integrate Sprout Social data with your company’s existing reporting tools.

As for Hootsuite, you won’t get as much detailed information in your standard reports. Instead, you’ll only see daily and weekly data like the number of clicks on each post and followers gained or lost for each social media profile.

If you upgrade to the Advanced or Pro plan, you’ll get more detailed information like social reach and impact scores. But even with this plan, there’s no option for breaking down data by device type and time of day.

In general, if you want more in-depth analytics reports, then Sprout Social is the better choice.

Sprout Social Vs Hootsuite: Customer Service

Finally, let’s talk about customer service. Sprout Social provides standard support services, such as a phone help number, email questions, webinars, Q&A sessions, and a knowledge base.

With this level of assistance, you can submit problems or discover answers to your queries, however deep or wide-ranging they may be. If necessary, Sprout Social support even responds to their client’s inquiries through social media channels, which is helpful.

On the other hand, Hootsuite also offers three distinct kinds of assistance. Unfortunately, none of them is available by phone, but that doesn’t imply you can’t obtain answers to your questions.

The built-in feedback mechanism in the program is the first and most basic form of assistance. This button allows you to submit comments about Hootsuite with a maximum length of 500 characters.

The second type is the knowledge base, which contains comprehensive answers to many platform inquiries. The final assistance stage is the support ticket form accessible via the Hootsuite website’s help section. You may use this ticketing system to create and monitor your concerns with the support team at once.

User Interface and Ease of Use

Sprout Social and Hootsuite are both very user-friendly when it comes to the user interface. Both platforms offer a wide range of features that are easy to navigate, and both platforms have a sleek, modern design that makes them easy to use.

Both Sprout Social and Hootsuite have very user-friendly interfaces. Their features are easy to find and use, and they both have sleek, modern designs.

However, when it comes to a sheer number of features, Sprout Social is the clear winner. In addition, its comprehensive suite of tools makes it an excellent choice for growing its social media presence.

When comparing the user interfaces of both platforms, Sprout Social comes out on top. This is because it has more features than Hootsuite, which are easy to find and use.

Additionally, its sleek design makes it visually appealing and easy to navigate. So overall, Sprout Social is the better option for businesses that want powerful yet user-friendly social media.

Related: SocialPilot Review

Final Thoughts: Sprout Social Vs Hootsuite

Both Sprout Social and Hootsuite are great tools for businesses. Their user interfaces are easy to use, they both have tons of features, and they’re both decently priced.

However, Sprout Social is the better choice when it comes down to it. It has more features than Hootsuite, and it’s more user-friendly in general.

If you want a tool with a wide range of features that can help grow your social media presence, then Sprout Social is the better choice. But if you need a simple way to schedule posts and monitor your social media accounts, Hootsuite should be fine.

In conclusion, Sprout Social has better features and a more user-friendly interface than Hootsuite. So if you’re looking for an excellent program to help grow your social media presence, then you should go with Sprout Social.

Thanks for Reading!