Love this social tool!

I saved ENORMOUS amounts of time with Hootsuite. I can't imagine doing all that it helped me do manually... from monitoring comments, to responding to people, to scheduling multiple posts a week on multiple platforms per week, to everything in between. Hootsuite really helped me streamline my job even when we had limited budgets and resources to do anything else.

Pros

I used to do full-time social media management and was using Hootsuite constantly to schedule posts for my clients and track social conversations and mentions in real time. I love how simple and easy it is to use – you'd never think multiple columns across your screen would work or keep you sane... but it gets the job done! I can easily respond to people, retweet it, flag it and more. Another awesome think I love about Hootsuite is the ability you have to help gather content. I was constantly looking for things to retweet to get engaged with others online, so I used one of my columns to track particular keywords. I could then get real-time tweets and posts from people talking about the topics I wanted to engage with and retweet for the brands I was managing. Honestly that made my job 100x easier!

Cons

I do know it has been a little clunky for me in the past. Sometimes keyword columns won't update and I've had to delete and recreate the search – or I would schedule posts and the photos wouldn't go out. I think they have fixed some of these issues over the years. There is also a maximum number of columns you can create in the free version, so I sometimes ran into issues where I wanted to use more features but couldn't. But, overall, I appreciate the value I got for the $$.

Great tool, but feels like it could still do with something extra - better planning, more LinkedIn features

It might feel like it's missing a few extras, but generally its a really useful platform and out social media activity has been much better in terms or both organisation and analytics. There's also a massive community for Hootsuite so you can always find out how other people are using it. We used a Meltwater before and it was so scientific and clunky to set up we never ended up using it. We use Hootsuite daily now and the ability to shorten links is also really helpful.

Pros

Really easy to use and so many resources. The platform is brilliant for scheduling and you don't even have to visit the other social platforms to post and engage with the audience. You can really customise the streams for each user which is great for productivity, and the analytics is really useful.

As a manager, I only have to hop into the publisher section to see what posts are going out, how often we're posting, and what platform we're using most.

Using the streams, I can set up one for all posts to check consistency and monitor engagement, one for competitor research, and one for searches, and then more platform specific streams so I can really dive into the nitty-gritty if I need to.

Cons

It's very Twitter orientated, most of the useful streams like monitoring topical conversations etc are in Twitter (probably by nature of the Twitter platform), but I would like to see more feature on LinkedIn - so far there's only TWO streams; one to monitor Company Updates, and second to monitor scheduled posts (I can see this in the publisher planner anyway).

It would be good to see similar monitoring streams for Hashtag conversations because this feature is applicable in LinkedIn as well as Twitter.

The Publisher also feels like it's just missing something and I think it's the ability to 'plot' in posts rather than drafting out complete posts. For example when we're planning what activity we want to launch, we might not know what the full post is going to look like, but we might just want to plot in ideas which at the moment we have to do on a spreadsheet and then translate over to the Hootsuite publisher. It would be good to see this feature in the planner where we can plot ideas, and then fully draft them out later.

Manage and schedule your tweets (and posts) for SUITE results

Pros

As a Hootsuite user for 7 years now, it is by far my favorite social media management software. Creating, optimizing, and posting social media for different platforms, etc. takes a lot more time than you would expect. Not only do you have to craft each post to fit each platform you’re posting to… you have to choose the best time, use the right hashtags, shorten URLS, and include something interesting (i.e. picture, video, content). Overall, what many believe will only take them 10 minutes, in reality it can take up 2-5 (or more) hours of your work week; even more when you include the content creation for the actual posting. Hootsuite is the best tool for compiling all your social media efforts into one dashboard you can work from and will definitely knock hours off your work week.

PROS
The best feature of Hootsuite is the time you will gain. Most social media platforms have a scheduling aspect to them but having to manually log in and out of each one, to do so, is not feasible or conducive for speed. Hootsuite provides you with analytics on each of your chosen platforms, located in its dashboard, to help you identify the most optimal time(s) to schedule each post to be sent out; this especially comes in handy for days you know you will be on the go and/or do not have access to technology. You can also scroll through past social media posts, save unfinished drafts, and boost posts for content promos; which will provide you with more insight and/or a better understanding of which of your efforts and/or CTA’s are working best. Hootsuite’s platform has various analytics and reports you can export so your team(s) can measure things like conversion rates, marketing and sales initiatives, and improvements in monthly social capital. One of the neat things about this platform is the option to purchase additional social media management applications for things like YouTube Analytics and video posting, Wordpress blog analytics and posting, Google Analytics, etc. Hootsuite also provides the option to export reports (including customized reports) on any of the platforms connected to your account, to measure competition, areas of improvement, click stats, and which platform is bringing in the largest amount of traffic to your website/content, etc.

Because the company I work for uses another third-party application (Lead Liaison) to track visitors and traffic sources to our website, we use the free version of Hootsuite.

Cons

One of the cons of Hootsuite is its inability to detect whether or not your traffic is originating from an actual human or an automated bot. This can interfere with your data and make it hard to decipher if the data you have access to is valid or not; this is true for Google Analytics as well. To avoid this, we use a third-party application for visitor tracking (Lead Liaison).

You may get notifications that your social network(s) have been disconnected from your dashboard; don’t worry, you simply just have to reconnect them. Although I am not sure why this happens so often, I trust that this has nothing to do the security of my account and I always receive notifications when I sign in to my account from a new device, etc.

Reliable and easy social media manager

Hootsuite and Buffer are my go to social media, despite the several other SM Managers that I've tried out. I work with 5 brands and I have to manage their social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn) I've been using Hootsuite (and Buffer) for three years but of the two Hootsuite is my favorite and my safe bet. I have a habit of testing out as many free marketing software's as I can find and in terms of social media marketing Hootsuite is the best. The interface is easy to use, and the tutorial available to each new signup is very helpful. I love being able to tag a Facebook page, Twitter profile or Instagram profile in a post. The android app is also fully functional on my Kindle Fire (Unlike Buffer) which is a plus. The Feedly> Hootsuite integration is a major plus, I've never used the Hootsuite RSS feed option even though I keep planning to, but I like being able to share informative posts from feedly (On my Kindle Fire) to Hootsuite. What I love the best is that the free plan unlike buffer lets you schedule as many posts as you want to 3 social media profiles. This is great because I can schedule a month worth of social media posts in three days unlike the 10 posts per profile restriction on the Buffer's free plan. The analytics reports aren't very detailed and often I rely on Start a Fire as well as a variety of other software's to get in-depth analytics but the brands I work with do not understand or see the need for in-depth analysis so I suppose it's okay. I'm not happy that Hootsuite doesn't support posts with multiple images, I learnt that the awkward way when I made a post with 3 pictures. I recommend Hootsuite for beginners and Individuals who want a simple, straight forward social media manager. Oh, and the Hootsuite academy is very insightful.

Pros

It is one of the simplest Social media managers in the market, the freeplan is great because it provides essential features for beginners and experts at no cost. I also like the mini tutorial for new users, at the right side of the dashboard.

I personally use Tweetdeck for social listening on Twitter but Hootsuite is also great for that.

Cons

I dont like the fact that if i want to schedule a post with multiple images i'll have to schedule it directly on Facebook or on Tweetdeck for twitter.

Perfect for individuals, business and agencies alike!

Pros

As a marketeer, I was lucky enough to try a few different social media management platforms. Personally, Hootsuite has always been one of my favorites.
The platform is quite easy to use, and setup. The interface is quite intuitive and on boarding new members normally takes us a few minutes.
We easily managed multiple accounts and switched between them in single clicks. The mini profile icons helped our team differentiate between our different clients, so we had a smaller number of mistakes.
But that's not all!
Team collaboration is superb once you establish a professional account. Content review and approvals that is easy to set up. You can review comments and replies and assign them to other users, and even leaves comments and notes for them. You can review other users performance and get full reports on their work.

Cons

Reporting is weak compared to other tools. And while I enjoy their pre-designed scheduled reports, I normally end up creating my own reports using other analytics tools that are more robust and provide more in-depth insights.
While i enjoy setting up multiple topic columns to monitor, extracting the data is impossible and you will always need a listening tool to create monitoring and listening reports.
I was on an older pricing plan for awhile now, but when I checked recently, they seem to have increased their pricing and are now quite pricey compared to some of the competing platforms, however, I still have a soft spot for them.

Hootsuite is great for individuals and marketing firms alike

My company uses Hootsuite to schedule social media for our clients. If I were trying to post multiple times a day for each client through the individual accounts, I would never do anything else. So, Hootsuite helps me set up a social media and content schedule that is unique to each business while leaving room for me to add content as I go throughout my other daily tasks. It streamlines and automates a task that would otherwise take up all of my time.

Pros

If I had to pick a favorite, I would say that the scheduling feature is extraordinarily helpful. I run a small digital marketing firm and handle the social media for almost all of my clients. I created separate accounts for each client to keep my own costs down, so I will simply schedule out 30 posts at a time and set a memo for myself to post more before the campaign ends.
After that, I love the plugins and tools, especially the ones that allow you to curate content that is relevant to the industry of my clients (Mostly cleaning, software, and daycares). I can set up an RSS feed that posts at regular intervals in case I am late on posting.
Finally, the photo editor - I like this because I post a ton of pictures for my clients, which means that I need the images to fit well on different networks. The photo editor allows me to play with the size right in the app until it fits properly, which takes a lot of guesswork out when trying to edit for size rather than picture quality.

Cons

Honestly, I have used multiple different scheduling software for social media - Hootsuite is by far my favorite because it is so feature rich. If I had one complaint, it would actually be the cost. If you are trying to use one platform for all clients or have more than 3 social accounts per client, Hootsuite can get pretty pricey, especially for a smaller startup without much capital while they are growing.

Easy to use with tons of features and plugins to compliment it

Pros

Hootsuite is one of the most versatile tools out there in the market. Starting from its free package, you will find yourself covering all the essentials you need for your day to day operations when it comes to social media. The columns/tabs interface is what sold the product to our team compared to all the other competitors we tried.
In addition, the ability to connect multiple profiles, create columns to listen to important topics and team communications and messaging (paid feature).

The free plan also allows you to schedule up to 30 posts, and if you need more, upgrading to any of their paid plans is as cheap.
As we had many clients to handle and our team required a lot of collaboration, we were under the team plan. it was easy to setup an automated monthly report that goes to the client, which saved us tons of time, and the team collaboration features allowed us to assign the right roles and exchange messages, assign tasks and customer inquiries (tweets and comments) to one another with ease.

Cons

While Hootsuite covers the essentials you might need for your day to day social media, it lacks much in-depth analysis, listening and reporting features.

In addition, it does not have cross-platform profiling and does not have features to help you setup competitions or gather/mine data easily.

The standard, but not my favourite

I manage a number of social media accounts for an international software company, and am also tasked with monitoring social mentions for our brand. For all my (relatively minor) issues with Hootsuite, it certainly lets me get the job done. On the level of features, I think Hootsuite is near the top of the heap as far as most social media management platforms go. Just don't expect the prettiest packaging, best user experience, or to be able to fully schedule your social activity in advance on some networks.

Pros

Make no mistake about it; when it comes to getting your social media work done, Hootsuite will deliver. Its scheduling feature is great, it (mostly) does a good job of letting you tag things, and it offers a good suite of analytics features that will help you review your social media performance and deliver key insights to other members of your organization.

Cons

My issues with Hootsuite aren't dealbreakers, but they do make me less than enthusiastic about bringing my business to this platform. The UI just isn't very attractive or intuitive, which is a shame. Competitors offer much more modern looks and simpler posting functionality than you get with Hootsuite. Annoyingly, and I know this isn't Hootsuite's fault, there are issues relating to who you are able to tag on certain networks, like LinkedIn. I often find myself unable to schedule a post to LinkedIn because of who I need to tag, and having to post manually defeats the purpose of having Hootsuite in the first place. I do understand that this is an issue created by the social networks themselves, but it's an annoyance nonetheless.

Great for Managing My Nonprofit Social Media Pages!

If you manage multiple social media pages for an organization or business, this is a great tool that will make your life so much easier and save you a lot of time!

Pros

Hootsuite is a great timesaver. I love that as I'm setting up social media posts for the week, I can schedule posts across multiple platforms at the same time, and be able to further tailor them to the character of each platform (Facebook post vs. Twitter post) all from the same site. I also really appreciate how you can add or remove different "streams" from your viewing page for each social media platform. For instance, on my Facebook tab in Hootsuite, I have my page's scheduled posts in one column, our already published posts in the next column, and our inbox messages in another. For Twitter, though, I have my page's tweets in one column, our other newsfeed tweets in another (which I can retweet, reply to, and like all from that column in Hootsuite!), our mentions in a third column, and our direct messages in another.

Cons

Overall, Hootsuite is great, but there are a couple of things that bother me from time to time. When scheduling Facebook posts with multiple photo attachments, I've found that Hootsuite will publish each photo as a separate post, but with the same text each time, instead of including all the images in one post. This means that in these cases, I always have to go to Facebook's page to schedule posts with multiple images instead of being able to do it from Hootsuite. It's not something I have to do very often (typically, I only include one image with a post), but it's annoying nevertheless. I've also occasionally had Hootsuite incorrectly block me from being able to schedule my posts because it's internal clock is off and says that my posts (which I'm trying to schedule for several days away) aren't being scheduled for more than 5 minutes in the future.

Great tool for agencies managing multiple clients

Pros

Benefits of Hootsuite for agencies:
1. Super easy to manage multiple networks for multiple clients, and all in one or two clicks once you've completed set-up
2. Easy to collaborate, which is key for agency happiness; you can assign tasks and monitor the progress of those assignments
3. Viewing scheduled content for single accounts or multiple accounts is possible, even across clients, which is a big plus
4. They do have a content approval process that you can set up at their highest level which is pretty good, not the best out there, but more than most other management platforms offer
5. They have a LOT of plug-ins for their platform, which is awesome, including Slack, Wordpress and several other big ones that agencies might use or find helpful
6. They stay ahead of opportunities and have the first collaborations with the key social networks, like Instagram publishing, they were the first there

Cons

On the negative side:
1. You can only have like 7 streams in each tab, which seems like a lot, but it's not enough. I feel like there should not be a limit within each tab
2. They are expensive, in my opinion; they do compare with Sprout Social and some others, but I think they are all on the pricey side
3. Not their fault, but you now have to go direct to IG and FB for some things like checking private messages or for IG even commenting on others content is no longer available; this makes paying the higher price less desirable because now you are having to go back to managing the channels directly AND managing them via Hootsuite