Hootsuite

Hootsuite Review: The Enterprise Social Media Management Standard

Hootsuite defined the social media management category when it launched in 2008, and for over a decade it was the default tool for businesses taking social media seriously. The platform's 2023 pricing restructuring — moving the entry tier from $49 to $99/month — has pushed it firmly into enterprise and agency territory, but within that context it remains one of the most feature-complete social media management platforms available.

Scheduling and Content Calendar

Hootsuite's scheduling capability supports bulk content upload (CSV import for mass-scheduling), automatic best-time scheduling based on audience activity data, content calendar views (day, week, month), and post preview across all connected channel formats. The planner view is more visually organised than Hootsuite's legacy column dashboard, which remains available but feels like a holdover from an earlier interface generation.

For enterprise social media teams producing hundreds of posts per month across dozens of channels, the bulk scheduling and calendar management capabilities justify the platform's complexity in a way they do not for smaller operations.

Social Listening

Hootsuite's Streams panel monitors brand mentions, product keywords, competitor names, and hashtags across Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Reddit in real time. Mentions are organised into configurable streams visible from the main dashboard — allowing social media managers to monitor brand conversation and respond to relevant mentions without leaving the platform.

For brands where social listening is a meaningful business intelligence function — monitoring competitor launches, tracking campaign sentiment, identifying customer service issues surfaced in social conversations — this built-in capability avoids the cost of a separate Brandwatch or Mention subscription.

Team Collaboration and Approval Workflows

Hootsuite's enterprise team features include draft post creation, multi-level content approval workflows (writer submits → manager reviews → director approves), team member assignment for incoming messages, and role-based access controls limiting what each team member can view, create, approve, and publish.

For regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, government) where every published social post must pass compliance review, or for agencies where client approval of content before publishing is required, these approval workflows are a functional necessity rather than a nice-to-have.

Paid Social Integration

Hootsuite Ads integrates with Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Twitter/X Ads to manage and report on paid social campaigns alongside organic content. The unified organic + paid performance view enables attribution analysis — understanding how paid promotion amplifies organic reach for a campaign — that requires switching between platforms in a non-integrated workflow.

The Pricing Problem

Hootsuite's 2023 pricing change from $49 to $99/month for the Professional plan was the most significant single pricing action in the social media tool category in years. Small businesses and independent consultants that had used Hootsuite as their standard tool faced a 100% price increase with no commensurate feature additions. The resulting user migration to Buffer, Later, and Sprout Social alternatives is visible in community discussions and third-party review platforms.

At $99/month for one user and 10 social accounts, Hootsuite's price is justifiable for agencies billing the cost to clients and for enterprises where the alternative is hiring an additional social media coordinator. For small businesses and individual consultants, it is difficult to justify versus Buffer's $6/channel/month or Sprout Social's more feature-rich $249/month team plans.

Verdict

Hootsuite is the right tool for enterprise teams and agencies that need the full suite of scheduling, listening, engagement, paid social, and team approval features in one platform and can justify the $99+/month cost. Small businesses and creators are better served by Buffer, Later, or Metricool.

Score: 8.2/10 — Most comprehensive enterprise feature set; dated interface and aggressive 2023 repricing limit accessibility for non-enterprise users.