If you’re on the hunt for a social media management tool, chances are that Buffer and Hootsuite are some of the first names that pop up — with good reason.
The two best options will make you more productive and increase your audience.
Which one do you think is the best? Interesting question — and it’s one without a straightforward answer. It would probably be better to ask: Which social media management The tool can be used to help you. What is right for you?
While both Buffer and Hootsuite offer similar core features — social media management, scheduling, and analytics — these tools were built with pretty different users in mind.
Buffer is a service that caters to small and medium-sized businesses, entrepreneurs, as well as creators. Hootsuite is more focused on larger businesses. social media marketing Teams at larger businesses
Those key target users show up in a lot of ways in how various features within these social media management tools work (and how much they cost) — we’ll get into all that below — but that’s not to say that, if you’re on a large marketing team, Hootsuite is automatically the best option for you.
Consider the following when choosing between Buffer and Hootsuite:
Take a look at these two tools in more detail.
Buffer vs Hootsuite feature overview
The following is an overview of each tool’s features. The rest of this article will cover most of these features in more detail.
Pricing and plans
Cost is an important factor for some people, so we’ll start with the biggest difference between Buffer vs. Hootsuite.
You should also consider whether you need to pay extra for certain features or if they are only available with specific plans.
Take a broad look at Buffer’s and Hootsuite’s pricing.
Buffer Pricing
- Plan Free (up to three social media channels/accounts). — $0
- Essentials plan — $6 per channel per month (or $5 per channel paid annually)
- Plan your team’s activities — $12 per channel per month (or $10 per channel paid annually)
- Plan agency — $120 for 10 channels per month (or $100 per 10 channels paid annually)
See Buffer’s full pricing guide here →
Pricing for Hootsuite
- Professional Plan — $99 per month, billed annually
- Plan team — $249 per month, billed annually
- Enterprise plan — Contact for pricing
See Hootsuite’s full pricing guide here →
Enjoy free trials
Buffer, as well as Hootsuite, offer free trials to their plans. You can try out pretty much everything above without having to pay a dime.
Try Buffer for free Plan Essentials, Team, or Agency Plan. 14-day free trial. Buffer’s free plan allows up to 3 social media channels.
Hootsuite free trial: You can try the Professional and Teams plans for 30 days before being charged either $99 or $249 a month.
After we have discussed the costs, lets get to the core of what these two powerful tools can accomplish.
Buffer and Hootsuite both offer comprehensive options for scheduling social media posts. social media content calendar You can easily schedule and plan your posts using the queue system.
The tools are designed to allow multiple devices to be connected. social media Manage all your accounts from one dashboard.
It is important to consider which channels are supported by each tool. This is a brief breakdown of all the social media platforms that each tool supports:
Buffer has a very intuitive, clean system that makes it easy for you to quickly get started with your multiple social media accounts.
Hootsuite’s tools for social media management include some extra features that are useful (like paid posting and bulk scheduling), but they also come with an added learning curve.
These are some factors worth noting when scheduling social media on either tool, because they may prove to be the deciding factor for certain social media managers or creators.
- Buffer, as well as Hootsuite, both include an AI assistant in the Creator. Buffer’s AI Assistant There is no restriction on the number of ideas you can generate or your posts. Hootsuite also offers OwlyWriterAI on paid plans. However, there is a limitation to the number of times you can use this tool.
- Hootsuite does not have an option for selecting covers or thumbnails to be used with Instagram Reels and TikToks.
- Hootsuite does not allow cross-posting to Pinterest. ‘Pins’ are treated as separate from ‘posts’ on other platforms, and the former will need to be created and scheduled separately.
- Buffer doesn’t allow you to bulk create posts for social media.
- Buffer doesn’t have hashtag suggestions.
This is a comparison between the Post Composer window of Buffer and Hootsuite when scheduling Instagram Reels and TikTok.
The Buffer planning tool is a powerful one. Create Space — an ideas hub where you can store any content ideas, text, and media to access when you’re ready to publish them.
This library is easy to manage with features like Kanban Board view and tags.
Hootsuite provides Content Library, an equivalent feature that focuses specifically on saving media. The feature is available only on the higher-tiered plans, starting at $249/month for Teams. Buffer’s Create feature is available for all plans including the Free.
Buffer as well as Hootsuite both offer an a social media engagement Dashboard that helps you keep track of all your social media messages.
You’ll notice some differences. Buffer offers engagement tools to help you keep track of your comments. Facebook and Instagram. You can filter these comments based on important sentiments (‘negativity,’ ‘order,’ and ‘question’) so you always know how to prioritize your replies.
Hootsuite is a bit different, as its Inbox for social media helps you to monitor Facebook Page“Private messages”, comments and replies and visitor posts as well X/Twitter’s All messages are sent directly to the recipient. The LinkedIn Pages Comments and responses
Hootsuite is worth mentioning. social listening tool. Hootsuite offers powerful tools for tracking brand mentions and customer sentiment. You’ll have access to ‘basic’ social listening features like those within the example below, but full access to the tool is only available on their price-on-request Enterprise plan.
Social media analytics tools Can be a game changer if your goal is to increase your followers and your presence on social media across all platforms.
Both Buffer and Hootsuite will cover you, but the differences in user focus are evident when it comes to the complex social media analytics features.
It’s easy to interpret Buffer analytics: you will have full access to all of the supported social media channels, and can track content performance in a flash.
You can now get more detailed analytics, but they are still simple to use. The metrics are available for Facebook pages, Instagram business and creator accounts, as well as Twitter/X and LinkedIn Page.
You’ll receive a detailed look at the numbers for each social media channel mentioned, as well (and here is the magic) recommendations that are based on the numbers.
So, not only does Buffer surface all the most important numbers — it also interprets them and suggests specific actions that will help improve your performance. Under the ‘Answers’ tab, you’ll find:
- When is your personal favorite time to post?
- The best content for you
- Your best posting frequency
Tags and Analytics are a powerful feature. When planning your content, you have the option to choose how much time is allocated for each type of post. custom tags Thank you for each and every one of your comments.
You might, for example, want to organize your blog posts according to content pillar This can be a specific product (as shown in the screenshot). Social media managers can use this to show the worth of specific campaigns or series.
The analytics dashboard allows you to track how your target audience reacts on different platforms.
All of the metrics mentioned above can be turned into beautiful custom social media reports by simply clicking the ‘+’ button next to each section.
Hootsuite is a great tool for large teams. Buffer excels at serving creators and smaller businesses. The latter allows you to create specific goals that will help you surface your most critical numbers, as well as measure how organic and paid social media content performs.
You can choose to display your metrics in widgets, or convert them into reports.
Collaboration and teamwork
Hootsuite has been designed to accommodate large teams. The access and approvals system is complex and layered, which allows the user to be very precise about who sees and can access certain content.
You can also find out more about different ‘organizations,’ teams, and channels, Create a system that is complex for large teams (or multiples). The highest level of the system is the Organization. This allows superusers the ability to assign tasks or groups to team members, send messages to certain teams and manage access to social media accounts.
Even on Hootsuite Enterprise’s Premium plan, teams with more than 5 users will need to pay an additional fee.
On Buffer, things are more straightforward — you can add an unlimited number of users to the platform on both the Teams and Agency plans.
Choose to offer users the option of:
- Posting access for all: When scheduled, their posts and ideas are published.
The approval is required
Before anything can be published, it must first be reviewed by someone who has full access to the posting system.
You can restrict the access of users to specific social media accounts.
You can give admins full access to the system, or you can restrict it to only those users who have the ability to post.
Like I said above, this really depends. It’s not a one-size fits all approach to choosing the right social media tool for you and your business. You can also check our site if there’s something you don’t see here. round-up of Hootsuite alternatives.
If you do decide on Buffer (yay!) If you have any questions about Buffer (yay!) hello@buffer.com. As we are a worldwide team, there is always someone to assist you online!
