Hootsuite vs Buffer: Price, Features & What’s Best in 2020

Hootsuite and Buffer both offer easy-to-use social media scheduling features for small businesses. The major difference is that Hootsuite offers unlimited scheduled posts with its paid plans, while Buffer allows up to 2,000. Comparing Hootsuite vs Buffer, Hootsuite is best for active small businesses on multiple platforms, while Buffer’s best for budget-conscious online businesses.

When to Use Hootsuite

Hootsuite is best for small businesses active on multiple platforms because more than 20 social media platforms are available. All paid plans offer unlimited scheduled posts. When comparing Buffer vs Hootsuite, Buffer only allows up to 2,000 scheduled posts. Also, Hootsuite is the only provider that allows you to schedule YouTube videos. Get a free trial today.

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When to Use Buffer

Small business owners use Buffer to schedule social media posts across large social media platforms—Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram. When comparing Buffer vs Hootsuite, Buffer is the most cost-effective tool for businesses wanting to post daily, but don’t necessarily have many different social media channels or platforms. Visit Buffer to start a free trial.

Visit Buffer

When to Use an Alternative Option

If you’re simply looking for a way to create more engagement on your social media channels and you’re posting regularly, running ads is a great way to do this. Hibu is a social media marketing agency that can run these ads for your business. Pricing is custom and ranges from $100 per month to $30,000 per month, depending on the size of the audience you target, your available budget, and your competition.

Visit Hibu

Hootsuite vs Buffer at a Glance

When evaluating Hootsuite vs Buffer, we looked at which social media platforms are compatible, the availability of a free trial or a free plan, and ease of use. We also considered price and other features such as analytics, customer service availability, and reviews.

The criteria we used to evaluate Hootsuite vs Buffer include:

• Price: We looked at how much each social media scheduling tool costs on a monthly or annual basis, and what the costs are for the various add-ons. Free plans and free trials were also a consideration.
• Platforms: The scheduling tool should work with at least all major social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
• Ease of use: The best solution should be easy for any small business to set up.
• Analytics: Reports make it so businesses can evaluate the reach of their social media posts and whether their efforts need adjusting.
• Customer service: Customer support and technical assistance are important when using any kind of software. Chat availability is a bonus.
• Reviews: We considered reviews of each social media scheduling tool, and whether there are any glaring issues with the tools.

Hootsuite vs Buffer: Pricing & Features

To help determine if Hootsuite or Buffer is best for your business, we compared the pricing and features for each of the social media scheduling tools in-depth. At first glance, Hootsuite is more expensive for each of its plans compared to Buffer, aside from the free options for both tools. Hootsuite and Buffer offer several similar features, however, Hootsuite offers many features most suitable for entire marketing teams, whereas Buffer is best suited for solopreneurs or small businesses.

Hootsuite Pricing & Features

Hootsuite’s most impressive feature is the ability to schedule an unlimited number of social media posts with each of its paid plans, which start at $29 per month. This is attractive to small businesses or agencies who need to schedule a lot of social media posts in batches. Even with the free plan, you can schedule 30 social media posts, which averages one scheduled post per day. Compare this to Buffer’s free plan, and you’re getting 20 more scheduled posts at the same plan level.

In addition to unlimited scheduled posts, Hootsuite offers significantly more social media platforms compared to Buffer. While Buffer covers the big five (LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram), Hootsuite offers the big five platforms plus over 15 more social media platforms. This might not make a difference to a small business that has no interest in expanding beyond the big five, but it might be helpful to an agency with a presence on every social media platform. If you want to schedule YouTube posts, you’ll need this plan.

Hootsuite Tiered Features

Free

The Free Hootsuite plan allows you to post to three different social media profiles. You can schedule up to 30 posts total, which applies per social network. This means that if you post the same message to all three social media accounts, it counts as three of your 30 available posts.

With the Free Hootsuite plan, you can only have one user. For this reason, and because you can only schedule 30 posts per month, this plan is best for casual users of social media. This plan does not allow you to automatically publish posts to social media—you’ll need a paid plan for that. Instead, you’ll receive a push notification to manually post the content.

Professional

Hootsuite’s Professional plan has unlimited scheduled posts, which is unusual for a social media scheduling tool. You can have up to 10 social media accounts, one user, and automated post scheduling. You’ll also get reports with detailed analytics, although this plan doesn’t allow you to customize or export the reports.

The Professional plan is appropriate for active users of social media who will post more than 30 times per month. If a user is posting less than 30 times per month, they’re better off going with the free plan. This plan is about twice as much as Buffer’s first paid plan but offers unlimited posts compared to Buffer’s 100 scheduled posts. You can also auto-publish to Instagram with this plan, but you’ll need a Business Profile set up on your Instagram account.

Team

The Hootsuite Team plan allows up to 20 different social media accounts and up to three users. You’ll also get customizable analytics and reports you can export. View, reassign, and respond to messages sent to your social media channels with this plan. This makes it easy to assign messages to team members who are best suited to answer the inquiry.

Hootsuite’s Team plan is best for companies with a team to manage its social media accounts. The reason for this is because of the ability to schedule an unlimited amount of messages across 20 different social media accounts. Plus, custom analytics, reports, and the ability to manage messages within the Hootsuite platform are perfect for teams.

Business

Hootsuite’s Business plan has unlimited post scheduling across up to 35 different social media channels. You can have five to 10 users, and get customized reports and analytics. This plan also lets you get social media certification for up to five people, which normally costs $99 per person.

The Business plan is best suited for agencies and medium-sized businesses. The reason for this is because, with 35 social media accounts available, agencies can easily manage several clients with just one Hootsuite plan. Or, if you have a medium-sized business with a lot of divisions or products, you might also have several different social media handles all falling under your parent organization.

A look at Hootsuite’s dashboard

Buffer Pricing & Features

Starting at free and going up to $99 per month, Buffer technically has eight different plans in addition to the ones we’ll review below. However, the other four plans focus specifically on creating conversations with fans, white labeling, advanced reporting, and automation. We’re focusing on the core plans offered by Buffer, which are competitively priced compared to Hootsuite.

A person wanting to schedule social media posts on a budget will find Buffer’s pricing to be more attractive. While the maximum amount of scheduled posts available is 2,000, a small business might find Buffer is perfectly suited for its needs.

Buffer Tiered Features

Free

With the Free Buffer plan, you can only have one user. For this reason, and because you can only schedule 10 posts per month, this plan is best for casual users of social media. This plan still allows you to automatically publish posts to social media, which is a standard feature for most social media scheduling tools.

In order to get access to the Free Buffer plan, you’ll first need to sign up for a free trial under one of the paid plans. At the end of the free trial, you can downgrade to the free plan, but not before then. With the free plan, you can connect three social media accounts and schedule up to 10 posts per month.

Pro

With the Pro Buffer plan, you can connect up to eight social media profiles. Buffer supports five social media platforms—Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn. However, you can use multiple social media profiles per platform, provided you don’t go over eight profiles combined across social media platforms. Pro allows you to create tailored posts for each social network, and view each post on a visual calendar. Users can get a seven-day free trial of this plan.

Compared to Hootsuite’s Professional plan, Buffer’s lowest-priced paid plan doesn’t offer an unlimited amount of scheduled posts per month. However, Buffer’s Pro plan is almost half the cost of Hootsuite’s lowest-cost plan. Pro is suitable for regular users of social media who want to post at least once a day on three different platforms, or multiple times per day on one platform. The reason for this is because you get 100 scheduled posts per month, which is a lot for just a casual user.

Premium

The Premium Buffer plan allows up to 2,000 posts per month and also includes an Instagram Hashtag Manager. Each of Buffer’s Premium plans and above supports the ability to create posts for Instagram Stories, whereas Hootsuite doesn’t at all.

Premium is best for very active users and growing brands—at 2,000 posts per month, that’s similar to posting a maximum of 13 times per day across all five supported platforms. A hashtag manager also makes it easy for active users to not continually use the same hashtags for every post they make. By using new, relevant hashtags, users can reach new audiences.

Business

Buffer’s Business plan is almost identical to the Premium plan, except it allows up to 25 social media accounts. This plan is ideal for larger teams because you’re managing multiple social media accounts at a time. Keep in mind that you’re still getting 2,000 scheduled posts per month. However, instead of posting 13 times a day across each social media account, it’s more like posting twice on each account.

A look at the Buffer dashboard

Hootsuite vs Buffer: Ease of Use

Overall, both Hootsuite and Buffer have an easy-to-follow tutorial or tour showing how to use the different features available on the tool. Both user interfaces are attractive and simple, however, we had difficulty scheduling videos to post on YouTube through Hootsuite. Buffer doesn’t offer YouTube as an option. Both tools are very easy to sign up for and offer instant access to a wide array of tools to meet social media scheduling needs.

Hootsuite Ease of Use

After creating your Hootsuite account, you receive a step-by-step tutorial. Hootsuite prompts you to complete your next task, but if you’re not ready to do a task yet, you can close out of the prompt and ask it later. The site is intuitive and easy-to-use. However, during our testing, we couldn’t get Hootsuite to schedule a YouTube video, despite connecting the channel to the account. We didn’t have any issues scheduling posts to other social media platforms.

Buffer Ease of Use

Upon creating a Buffer account, you receive a tour of the features of your plan. It’ll walk you through how to connect and post to your social media accounts. Creating a post using Buffer is simple, and there are instructions on how to perform each task. We had no issues navigating the site, nor did we have any technical difficulties with posting content.

An example of Buffer’s tour about Reminders for Instagram

Hootsuite vs Buffer: Customer Service

Both Hootsuite and Buffer offer Facebook Messenger and Twitter as support options. However, Buffer’s response time is about a day, whereas Hootsuite provides 24/7 access via those two social media channels, but doesn’t provide a typical response time. You can email either company, but you won’t find phone support. Additionally, each social media scheduler has a comprehensive FAQs section to troubleshoot and answer questions.

Hootsuite Customer Service

Hootsuite help is available 24/7 via Facebook Messenger and Twitter. There’s a comprehensive FAQs section, and you can email with any issues. Hootsuite’s Contact Us page mentions the ability to call with questions, but it doesn’t actually list a phone number to call.

Buffer Customer Service

Buffer offers support via tweet, Facebook Messenger, and email. There is no option to contact support via phone, so if you have any urgent problems you’ll have to wait for a response. You can also access its comprehensive FAQs page via the bottom right corner of your dashboard.

Hootsuite vs Buffer: Customer Reviews

A common theme when you compare Buffer vs Hootsuite is how customers favor pricing when using Buffer. Hootsuite is more expensive overall but does have several features customers like that still make it competitive. Buffer users make a suggestion about using artificial intelligence, although that’s not a common feature with social media scheduling tools.

Hootsuite Customer Reviews

Hootsuite user reviews mention enjoying the ability to see social media feeds to efficiently display which posts get the most engagement. Some reviewers complain about the price of Hootsuite compared to other similar tools. However, one user stated that despite being expensive, it has nice features.

Buffer Customer Reviews

Buffer customers enjoy how easy the scheduling tool is to use, and that it’s very cost-effective for all plan levels. One Buffer user review mentions how it would be nice if it could use artificial intelligence to help customers find content that fits their followers more easily.

Bottom Line – Hootsuite vs Buffer

Hootsuite’s focus is on volume scheduling to many different social media platforms while Buffer targets users who want to post regularly on just the five most popular social media channels. If you want to post on many different social media platforms such as YouTube and Tumblr. If the most popular channels are your focus, use Buffer.

Buffer is our overall pick for small and growing businesses that have a range of social media scheduling needs. With Buffer, you get far more than just a scheduler. You get a suite of business management tools included in each plan, all of which are cost-effective. Start a free trial with Buffer today.

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