Hootsuite vs. Buffer: Which social media management tool is right for you? [2024]

Whether you're an occasional poster or a social media marketer, you need social media management apps to automate posts, monitor performance, and run multiple social media accounts without too much chaos.

There are plenty of options to choose from, but the two names you'll see popping up most often in this category are Buffer and Hootsuite. They're both synonymous with social media management, but they differ quite a bit in their features and how they approach the task at hand.

I spent time testing each app—scheduling and tracking posts for my X, LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts. Here's how they measure up: Buffer vs. Hootsuite. 

Buffer vs. Hootsuite at a glance

The simple answer is: Buffer is better for creators and small organizations that are just looking for a scheduling tool with a few extra features; Hootsuite is for larger organizations that want a robust social media management tool, especially those that want to go beyond simple scheduling and analytics.

Here's a quick table of the main features I evaluated when looking at Hootsuite vs. Buffer and how they stack up. But don't go just by the stars—context is important, so keep reading for the deep dive.

Buffer is better for creators and small businesses, but bigger orgs will prefer Hootsuite

All businesses, from solopreneurs to large organizations, are on social media—but not all of them have the same needs. If you're just starting and need something simple to schedule your posts, Buffer is the better (and more affordable) choice. But if you're running a high-profile social media account, Hootsuite's features are far more powerful.

I'll start with analytics. You get all the basic personalized data on Buffer: engagement, best times to post, best type of posts, paid posts analysis, metric insights, and post performance. You can even make customized, branded reports by adding your social media campaign details. 

But Hootsuite goes one step further by basing everything on your goals. For example, if your goal is to drive traffic, Hootsuite will tell you the post link clicks of your selected date range. But if your goal is to increase engagement, Hootsuite will show the average post engagement and break down the number of comments and other key interactions (like sharing).

Hootsuite also has Benchmarking reports. It calculates how your posts are performing based on your industry—excellent for tracking whether you're meeting your niche's standards. This feature can also aid in determining if you're shadowbanned from any social media platform.

The industry categories in Hootsuite are quite broad. For example, I'd want to post in the "marketing" industry, but that isn't an option in Hootsuite—the closest I could find was "technology." You probably won't fit any category if your business is in a small industry or if you're a sole creator—which goes to show Hootsuite is only for the big players.

You can also add multiple competitors' social media accounts and track how your social media growth is stacking up against theirs. This feature could be immensely helpful in tracking your competitors' actions, though you only get two social media competitors for reporting in the Professional and Team plan (Enterprise users can add up to 20).

Buffer is suitable for large teams, while Hootsuite is made for complex teams

Buffer's Team and Agency plans let you add unlimited users to your account. You can invite as many teammates, freelancers, and clients as you want at no extra cost. This is perfect for large teams or social media managers managing multiple clients, freelancers, and employees simultaneously. And the permission settings are straightforward: someone can either have admin access, full access, or approval-required access.

Admin access is complete access and control—it's not channel specific. Someone with admin access can invite themselves to a channel. Full and approval-required access are channel-specific. The former can create, schedule, and edit posts, while the latter needs approval to do the same thing.

Both full and approval-required access teammates can only view metrics; they can't create custom reports or even view specific campaigns. Someone with approval-required access also can't respond to comments from Buffer. This is a bit of a bummer because if you're a small business owner, you might need freelancers to create custom reports or respond to comments for you without giving them admin-level access. Picking which features a teammate can access and can't just isn't customizable in Buffer.

On Hootsuite, the limitation is on the number of users. Even their Enterprise plan allows you to add only up to five users—you'll have to pay for anyone beyond that. But the area where Hootsuite wins is complex team management. Instead of full-or-nothing access, it has layers of permissions at the organization, team, and social channel levels.

• At an organizational level, paying super admins have complete control. Super admins have all the control except creating and deleting an organization. Admins can do a little bit less. And there are always custom permissions to decide what organizational changes a team member can or cannot make.

• At the team level, admins have complete control, and you can create custom permissions for the remaining members.

• At the social channel level, advanced employees have full control over the platform. Then come editors who can't promote posts and alter permissions. Next is the limited access, similar to Buffer's "approval required" access. Lastly, responder access is for commenting and replying to posts and managing the inbox.

If you want granular control over permissions, Hootsuite is the way to go, but if you have a big team, the cost will start adding up.

Buffer is easier to use, but Hootsuite is more feature-rich

One of the most striking differences between Buffer and Hootsuite is their interface. Buffer is just easy. Hootsuite, in comparison, has a steep learning curve. 

Buffer has a sleek, minimalist dashboard providing details of all the scheduled posts. It's simple to navigate, and anyone can get the hang of the platform with minimal hand-holding. 

Hootsuite, on the other hand, has a feature-rich overview homepage, but it's cluttered and hard to suss out. I had trouble connecting my Twitter account to it. I encountered errors like, "can't find any data for this date range" and had to refresh multiple times. Some features—like the team management—made me reminisce about the interface of the early days of the internet. Other features—like inbox—were so complicated that I had to watch a couple of videos to understand how to navigate it. It makes sense, given how many more features it offers, but it definitely makes it a rougher experience. If you want to become a Hootsuite power user, it'll take some time and training.

To a certain extent, it's unfair to even compare the dashboard experience since the features on offer are so different—but it's still worth thinking about if simplicity is important for you. 

Buffer is meant for straightforward post scheduling, while Hootsuite has all the bells and whistles

When it comes to scheduling and publishing, Buffer and Hootsuite have some overlapping options. You can upload images, schedule posts simultaneously for multiple channels, and tweak posts for different networks. But the similarities end there. 

Buffer uses the Buffer Queue (and also has a Calendar view) to dictate when your posts should go up. For example, you can create a queue allowing for posts at noon, 3:00 p.m., and 9:00 p.m. every day. When you fill up all the slots for the day, the next post you create will automatically get slotted in for noon the next day. You can also schedule posts manually if you want, but if you don't want to think about the when too much and just ensure posts get queued, Buffer is a great choice.  

Hootsuite has an AutoSchedule feature, but it comes at the cost of losing some control. You can decide the number of posts you want to publish and a range of times when they should go live, but you can't dictate the order in which they get published. 

Note: This feature is under the Profile section and not an option in the Create a new post section—no idea why and yet another reason I find Hootsuite hard to navigate.

If you don't care about having the flexibility to decide the order of your posts, Hootsuite or Buffer won't make much difference to you in the scheduling arena. But if you need to ensure posts go live in the order you've entered them, Buffer is the right choice.

Buffer and Hootsuite also each have small but different perks for posting and scheduling. 

Buffer:

• Allows you to easily upload images from the cloud, Canva, Unsplash, and Google Photos

• Lets you store (and collaborate on) your rough ideas using the Idea feature

• Enables you to create a Start Page—a customizable, trackable landing page to collate all your links and use as your link-in-bio on social platforms

Hootsuite:

• Has a free Pixabay image library 

• Lets you filter various views of your social media content calendar—list, week, month, social accounts, and more

• Includes a bulk composer that allows you to schedule 350 posts at once through a CSV file

Overall, Hootsuite is fancier, while Buffer keeps things simple. 

Buffer connects to more social media platforms

Hootsuite doesn't have post scheduling for Bluesky, Mastodon, Shopify stores, and Google Business profiles, while Buffer offers social media management for all four. Hootsuite has only one channel that Buffer doesn't: WhatsApp Business.

These social media platforms aren't as popular, but it's still something you should think about before making your choice if you want to expand your social presence. Buffer is usually one of the quickest social media tools to support any new network and even types of posts.

For instance, you couldn't auto-publish Instagram Stories using any social media scheduling tool because of Instagram's API. Every scheduling tool had to send a push notification ("confirm for this story to go live") and couldn't publish Stories automatically like other types of posts. This changed recently, and Buffer was one of the first apps to support the auto-publishing of Instagram Stories. Hootsuite also supports auto-publishing Instagram Stories now, but it was late to the game.

Hootsuite has an excellent social listening feature

Hootsuite has an excellent social listening dashboard. You can choose the area you market in (let's say America, Europe, and Canada) and type a brand, topic, or person you want to analyze (for example, productivity). Hootsuite will display an in-depth report on what people in your chosen locations are saying about the keyword for the past one or seven days (and up to 30 days if you have an Enterprise plan).

Apart from the key popularity metrics, you can also get a word cloud of the key themes, see content that's getting the most engagement, and compare its performance to another keyword. The Enterprise plan can purchase a host of other features by buying them as an add-on. This feature of Hootsuite became all the more powerful when it acquired Talwalker earlier in 2024.

I love the social listening tool because it has so many use cases: track brand mentions, monitor the popularity of content topics, and see what's trending in your industry.

Buffer has no social listening feature as of the time I'm writing this article.

Hootsuite's OwlyWriterAI is a bit more impressive than Buffer's AI assistant

Both Hootsuite and Buffer have released AI features to help social media managers save time. In my opinion, Hootsuite's AI features are better.

For starters, Hootsuite's OwlyWriterAI can do more things than Buffer's AI assistant: it can repurpose your top posts, turn web content into social media posts, and create holiday-centric social content. Plus, you can generate unique captions catered to each social media platform from scratch and use popular copywriting formulas.

Currently, Buffer's AI assistant doesn't have so many features. You can generate text and then ask the AI to rephrase it, shorten it, or change its tone—but that's pretty much it. I gave the same prompt to both Hootsuite and Buffer for a LinkedIn post. Hootsuite generated three possible options while Buffer stuck to one. In all honesty, neither response was all that great. They can be a first draft to build off from, but they still need a lot of refining.

Hootsuite also has a Get inspired feature within its AI assistant that helps you generate post ideas based on a topic. While it might be helpful to get the ball rolling, it isn't going to give you a good social media post on its own.

Hootsuite is the winner in this department because of its copywriting formulas and extensive idea library.

Buffer has a better free plan

Hootsuite has no free plan, while Buffer has a generous one—with up to three social media accounts and 10 scheduled posts per channel. The free plan doesn't have analytics or engagement features in Buffer, but it's still enough for creators and solopreneurs who just want to schedule their posts in advance. And you still have access to the AI assistant, storing up to 100 ideas, and all other content creation features (like importing visuals directly from Canva).

Even when you move to the paid plans, Buffer's Essential plan is only $5/month/channel, while Hootsuite's starting price is $99/month for up to ten social media accounts. Buffer's cost for ten social channels would still be way less than Hootsuite at $50/month ($5 x 10 channels).

Both tools integrate with Zapier

Whichever app you choose, you can integrate it with thousands of other apps in your marketing tech stack using Zapier. That means you can automatically schedule posts in Buffer and Hootsuite from the other apps you use at work and streamline your other social media management workflows.

Here's how to automate Buffer and your other social media management tools, or take a look at these pre-made workflows for some inspiration.

Hootsuite vs. Buffer: Which should you choose?

Hootsuite is a Buffer alternative for when you're ready to graduate from the uncomplicated social media scheduling tools. Here's the bottom line:

Use Buffer if: 

• You're a small team or solopreneur 

• You're just getting started with social media management 

• You need a simple and straightforward content scheduling tool

Use Hootsuite if: 

• You're a social media manager managing accounts for different clients 

• You're a large organization with an elaborate social media marketing strategy

• You need a feature-rich tool that goes beyond post scheduling

Related reading:

• How to download your social media data and information

• Ways to use social media automation to promote your content

• Social media advertising examples to inspire your next campaign

• Social media marketing examples to learn from

• The best Hootsuite alternatives

This article was originally published in March 2019 and has had contributions from Joseph Genest and Eric Ravenscraft. The most recent update was in August 2024.