Impressive free plan

Overall, I'm satisfied with Hootsuite and will continue to use this platform to manage my social media accounts. With the ability to schedule up to 30 posts on the free plan, including scheduling Instagram posts, and viewing different social media accounts all on one dashboard, it beats other social media management platforms that require plan upgrades to access similar features.

Pros

As someone who uses Hootsuite's "Free" plan, I'm incredibly impressed by what Hootsuite offers in the plan. My favorite tool on Hootsuite is the "Streams." I can sort scheduled posts, past posts, mentions, and followers' posts by social media platform using "Streams" on my dashboard. This allows me to see responses or comments on my posts and engage with followers, without having to visit several social media sites. With the free version, I can also schedule more posts on social media than other social media management programs, and the free plan allows me to schedule posts on my business Instagram account.

Cons

"Free plan" users who are needing advanced features beyond basic analytics will need to upgrade and if they shorten links using TinyUrl or Bitly, there isn't a meaningful way to track engagement in the program. Also, users need to be aware that the connections between Hootsuite and social media networks frequently drop, and that the program's connection with Instagram is frequently buggy.

Good, but could be better

Hootsuite did the job well, but it was ultimately outclassed by Buffer in my experience.

Pros

Hootsuite lets you track and schedule posts across a variety of social media accounts, although it's mainly used for Facebook. It's indispensable to have a tool like this if you manage a lot of accounts, and it has a free plan.

Cons

I ended up switching to Buffer because you couldn't post pictures and video natively through Twitter, instead it posted as "owl.ly" links

Mediocre at best

Where is the competition in the social media management software space? There has to be a better option than this?

Pros

I run a modeling and acting agency and I was posting between SC, IG, FB, Twitter and YT on a daily basis. Making it very hard to be away from my phone and risk missing prime posting opportunities and viral trends. I was looking for something that would schedule pre-selected posts, videos, pictures and adds. The best option online seemed to be Hootsuite. It was well marketed and seemed very user-friendly... at first. It does indeed schedule your posts to various social media platforms, and it also allows for multiple streams of social media (i.e other business or personal accounts). That's a very handy feature!

Cons

The user interface is weak, it's not user-friendly nor is it practical or modern looking. It has a tendency to leg, it also isn't mobile friendly, they do have an app, but again it's not easy to navigate. Which is an absolute must when working on social media on the fly. When I created beautiful well-round posts and saved them to a posting schedule. I would check the posts after they had been released, via the online social media site, the posts would always turn out unformatted, with broken links and fuzzy low res images. I was overall very disappointed with this product. especially because it was so highly rated and not free. I felt like I kept putting in a lot of effort just to re-do all my work all the time.

A Good Option for Social Publishing and Monitoring

At my previous job I was using Hootsuite to start my day. I would sign on and schedule and publish posts for the duration of the day, or over the weekend or what have you. More recently, I've been using Hootsuite's free version to manage my personal online presence, scheduling posts related to my podcast or video channels. I find that more recently, the native Twitter app has been better for just scrolling through Twitter, but as far as posting goes, I prefer to use Hootsuite.

Pros

One of my favorite things about Hootsuite is the ability to 'autoschedule' posts based on the time that you're likely to receive the most engagement. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of the job of a social media manager, as you can tend to labor over the details like whether or not something is emergent enough to post right now or whether you should wait to schedule it in the future. I find Hootsuite's customizable streams can be helpful in mitigating a lot of the noise that comes along with social media, but constant algoritm and UI updates to platforms like Twitter can make streams obsolete quickly. The platform is super simple to get set up and running with, and the free version (which I'm currently using for my personal accounts/projects) is perfectly serviceable for teams with 3 social accounts or fewer. I've never had to reach out to support, but Hootsuite's online presence is great and they're constantly providing materials that are helpful to social media managers.

Cons

I find their integration with Instagram somewhat lacking. During my time with Hootsuite, I have scheduled countless Instagram posts, but the way the marriage between Instagram and Hootsuite Works means that you can schedule the post, but you need to open the app on your phone and hit send when the time comes to actually publish your post. I have missed so many Instagram posts because of this, and the fact that I only appear to get a notification when It's time to post on Instagram about half the time. I realize that this isn't necessarily all Hootsuite's fault, but this is a real downer, and leaves me wishing that the integration was better

Great way to schedule posts on social media

I would recommend using Hootsuite to manage your social media posts. It has a free trial that is great to get to know the software before buying.

Pros

I love th fact that I can use a single platform to manage all of my social media activity. It has a great feature that allows to schedule social media posts at times when your audience is most active.

Cons

The software can be glitchy and cause frustration. It takes a bit of learning but once you know how it works you can make your posts calendar easily.