Hootsuite VS Sprout Social

Sprout Social and Hootsuite are two popular social media management tools offering extensive features for businesses and individuals looking to streamline their social media presence. Both platforms offer various features to help users manage, schedule, analyze, and effectively engage with their social media content. By comparing the important features of Sprout Social and Hootsuite, you can decide which platform aligns best with your social media management needs.

Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social: An Overview

Hootsuite is a comprehensive social media management tool that will help users handle their prominent social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, etc. It will also allow the users to manage other platforms like Vimeo, Pinterest, and even third-party apps. The software offers several features, including publishing, engagement, and social listening.

Sprout Social, on the other hand, is a robust and user-friendly social media platform designed to empower businesses and individuals with efficient tools for managing, analyzing, and enhancing their social media presence. Some key features offered by Sprout Social include smart inbox, brand keywords, review management, comprehensive tag reporting, and much more.

Between Hootsuite and Sprout Social, Hootsuite offers extensive features and more flexibility in managing accounts, especially if you have a marketing team handling multiple social media channels.

Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social: Pros & Cons

• The customer support offered by Hootsuite is extremely extensive, including a live chat option for support purposes. On the contrary, Social Sprout offers extensive support features like phone calls and email support across all the business tiers, but it lacks the live chat option.
• Hootsuite offers customized reporting functionality without any added fees or charges. On the other hand, Sprout Social provides a customized reporting feature as an add-on.
• Hootsuite offers impressive third-party integration options like Zendesk and HubSpot for robust help desk support. However, the integration options offered by Sprout Social are not as extensive and robust as Hootsuite.
• The post-scheduling feature offered by Hootsuite is much better than Sprout Social as it enables marketing professionals to schedule a large number of posts at once. On the other hand, Sprout Social only permits users to schedule 10 posts per day.
• Hootsuite offers basic collaboration tools that enable users to carefully review and edit each other's work before the posts go live. On the contrary, the collaboration functionality provided by Sprout Social includes unique features like team and task reports. Comprehensive data reports help managers or business owners see how the team members are replying to incoming messages. Sprout Social also has a feature for content approval that will allow you to adhere to safety measures and ensure content quality.

Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social: In Terms of Features

• Posts Scheduling: Hootsuite enables users to schedule as many posts as they want and as many times as they require each month, no matter whichever plan they opt for. On the contrary, Hootsuite alternatives like Sprout Social only allow the users to schedule 10 posts per day.
• Reporting: The reporting functionality offered by Hootsuite will categorize your social media accounts into four main sections: posts, followers, interaction, and metrics. This will help users understand the performance of their social channels. Sprout Social, on the other hand, will help you to engage with your audience on a single platform and evaluate how your posts are doing across all the social networking sites. Sprout Social's in-depth, comprehensive reporting feature will also give you all the relevant insights into your social media campaigns, using which you can uncover new interaction opportunities.
• Social Listening: Social listening can be defined as a practice of tracking conversations and messages related to your industry or relevant topics that are related to your brand. It will help you track what everyone is talking about, even when you're not tagged. Both Hootsuite and Sprout Social provide effective tools for keeping track of trends and generating reports. However, Hootsuite provides strong social listening capabilities for small businesses. In contrast, Sprout Social and many Sprout Social alternatives provide more advanced social listening functionalities, including industry and event-specific tools that will help you gain informative and actionable data.
• Collaboration Tools: Hootsuite provides basic collaboration tools that enable users to review and edit the work before the posts go live. Moreover, Hootsuite also consists of team assignment tools that will help marketing teams carefully study and analyze their social media tasks and incoming messages that can be directed to concerned team members. On the other hand, Sprout Social also has a comprehensive task feature using which managers can view how well the team members are replying to messages being directed to them or completing their social media tasks.
• Feed Dashboard: Both Hootsuite and Sprout Social enable users to consolidate their posts in a feed, but the approach in which each platform presents the feed is different. At the same time, Hootsuite allows users to construct adjacent feeds on a unified dashboard and control the data displayed by each feed. On the contrary, Sprout Social does not follow the multi-columnar strategy. Rather, it collects the content into a single feed.

Comparison of Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social: In Terms of Pricing

Hootsuite offers four main plans, and its basic plan starts from $23.16 per month. The professional plan offers unlimited posts, social media post scheduling, and seamless access to messages in one inbox. However, the business plan offered by Hootsuite is expensive as its basic pricing starts from $743.79 per month.

Sprout Social also offers four plans, and the standard plan pricing starts from $249 per month. Under this plan, users can easily publish, schedule, draft, and queue posts; even paid promotion tools are available to boost Facebook posts. The professional plan pricing starts from $399 per month. Under this plan, users can easily access Helpdesk, CRM, social media integrations, and trend analysis for Twitter keywords and hashtags.

When it comes to pricing, Sprout Social and Hootsuite have adopted different approaches. Sprout Social offers comprehensive features, but it is relatively expensive than Hootsuite. Conversely, Hootsuite adopts a more cost-effective strategy by offering lower-priced plans that cater to the needs of small businesses and individuals in an accessible manner. Although Hootsuite's price increases when you opt for more features, the per-user cost remains significantly lower than what Sprout Social offers.

Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social: Third Party Integrations

Hootsuite and Sprout Social offer third-party software integrations, including various CRM systems, productivity tools, and social commerce tools. Hootsuite offers robust integration capabilities with over 150 integrations, including HubSpot, Google My Business, Wordpress.com, Adobe Stock, and more. On the other hand, Sprout Social offers fewer integrations with software like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.

Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social: Ease of Use

Sprout Social is one of the most intuitive and user-friendly social media management software; even the platform's reporting capabilities are easy to use. Hootsuite, on the other hand, is not as intuitive as Sprout Social. On top of that, Hootsuite is buggy and slow. The platform also has a cluttered dashboard, making the user experience unpleasant.

Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social: Support

Sprout Social offers extensive customer support to its users, including phone call support, email queries, webinars, Q&A sessions, and a knowledge base. On the contrary, the customer support offered by Hootsuite is not quite extensive. Hootsuite offers the most basic support in the form of an in-built feedback button. This button will enable users to send their feedback to Hootsuite, with a 500-character limit.

Which Is Better, Hootsuite or Sprout Social?

Hootsuite surpasses Sprout Social in several key areas, making it a better choice for many users. Firstly, Hootsuite offers more flexibility in managing social media accounts, especially for marketing teams handling multiple channels.

It also excels in post-scheduling, allowing users to schedule as many posts as needed, while Sprout Social restricts this to just 10 posts per day. Sprout Social shines in collaboration tools and support; Hootsuite's cost-effectiveness and feature-rich options make it a strong contender.