Are you looking for a social media management tool to up your social media game? My comprehensive Hootsuite vs. Buffer comparison will help you choose between two of the industry’s biggest names.
Social media managers, digital marketers, bloggers, and content creators are some of the people who will benefit from using a social media management tool to save time and effort. Being in the digital marketing niche, I’ll guide you throughout this article to give you an idea of which to choose between Hootsuite and Buffer.
To help you make the best-informed decision, I’ll share the essential features, pros and cons, pricing, and more with you.
Then, let’s get started.
- 1. Hootsuite vs. Buffer At A Glance
- 2. Who Is Hootsuite Best For?
- 3. Who Is Buffer Best For?
- 4. A Close Look At The Features Of Hootsuite and Buffer
- 5. Key Features Of Hootsuite
- 6. Key Features Of Buffer
- 7. Hootsuite vs. Buffer – Pros And Cons
- 8. Where Do I Get The Most For My Money?
- 9. Conclusion – Which Is Better: Hootsuite Or Buffer?
- 10. Hootsuite vs. Buffer – FAQ
1. Hootsuite vs. Buffer At A Glance
As the two of the leading names in the industry, let’s look at how Hootsuite vs. Buffer fare against each other through a quick glance at their most important features and starting pricing plans.
   4.8 |   4.5 |
| Best Overall. Powerful all-around social media management tool with intuitive task delegation tools. Starts at $19/month. | Best for value. Affordable platform for content publishing and post scheduling. Starts at $15/month. |
| Try Hootsuite | Try Buffer |
2. Who Is Hootsuite Best For?
Hootsuite is best for marketers, social media managers, and those looking for an all-in-one social management tool that comes with powerful and extensive features, making managing your social media activities easy and all in one place. Hootsuite’s features cater to businesses of all sizes, but its subscription plans are perfect for small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Individuals or sole proprietors may find that Hootsuite’s free plan meets their needs. It comes with the basic features you need to manage your social media accounts but comes at no cost.
3. Who Is Buffer Best For?
Buffer is also excellent for digital marketers and social media managers and those looking for an easy-to-use and affordable social management tool whose main function is to publish and schedule posts. Individuals and small social media teams will find Buffer’s simple set-up and intuitive navigation appealing, and that Buffer’s advanced and reliable features are just what they need.
4. A Close Look At The Features Of Hootsuite and Buffer
Let’s take a look at the features of Hootsuite vs. Buffer and find out which of these features make them outshine the other.
| Features | | |
| Create and Publish Posts |  | |
| Schedule Posts | | |
| Advertising | |  |
| Analytics and Reporting | | |
| Social Media Monitoring | | |
| Team Management | | |
| Supported Social Media Networks | | |
| Social Conversation Management/Engagement | | |
| Strategy Recommendation | | |
| Third-party Integrations | | |
| Automation | | |
| Get Started | Try Hootsuite | Try Buffer |
Burkhard Berger
When it comes to the number of features, Hootsuite outperforms Buffer. Hootsuite’s advertising features and social media listening capabilities are just two of the features that sets it apart from Buffer
5. Key Features Of Hootsuite
As one of the leading brands in social media management, let’s take a look at the features Hootsuite has to offer.
#1 Publish with Hootsuite
Creating, curating, and publishing content are the key elements in social media management. Hootsuite got this covered with its publishing feature.
Hootsuite simplifies the planning, composing, publishing of engaging, and on-brand content. With Hootsuite, you can create, publish, curate, and schedule content for your audiences to all your social media accounts from just a single dashboard.
Hootsuite gives you an overview of your published and scheduled content across all your social media accounts in one calendar view. You can map out campaigns, fill in content gaps, and collaborate with your team in real-time.
Hootsuite’s Composer lets you easily create and preview your posts. You also get access to the asset libraries, image editing, and Hootsuite’s video publishing that auto-adjusts the bitrate, height, and width according to each social network’s requirements.
With Hootsuite, you can save time because you can schedule your content in advance, and you can schedule multiple posts all at once with the Bulk Composer. Hootsuite allows you to maximize your engagement with the Auto Scheduler that automatically schedules posts to fill your social calendar gaps.
You can work with your team seamlessly as Hootsuite lets you see the post author of every post for easy reference. Hootsuite also allows your team members to give insights and edits on your posts before your drafts go live.
#2 Social Conversation Management
You’ll never miss a single message or mention with Hootsuite. You’ll be able to monitor and manage all incoming messages across your social networks.
Hootsuite lets you monitor trends and see your posts’ performance across profiles in just one place by setting up custom streams that you want to track. You can respond to queries, encourage positive reactions, and share items with your teammates easily.
Hootsuite gives you an inbox that helps you monitor messages from different social networks in a single place. You can filter out the messages that need action, dismiss in bulk the messages that don’t, and respond to the messages yourself or by assigning another team member to the task.
Hootsuite lets you integrate with top CRM tools like Salesforce and Zendesk so you can route the messages to the appropriate department for seamless handling.
#3 Hootsuite Monitoring
With Hootsuite, you can stay on top of conversations on key topics. You can also monitor your posts and brand mentions, and your competitors’ activities from one dashboard.
Hootsuite gives you access to Hootsuite Insights, powered by Brandwatch so that you can gain an overview of millions of online conversations in real-time. With Hootsuite Insights, you can search for any keyword or topic, filter by date, demographic and more, identify thought leaders, and get notifications when your mentions spike.
Aside from Hootsuite Insights, Hootsuite also lets you integrate with the top social listening tools like Brandwatch and Talkwater so that you can get essential insights in the comfort of your dashboards. Hootsuite’s app directory gives you access to over 150+ integrations to reliable third-party apps.
#4 Advertising with Hootsuite
Hootsuite helps you expand your reach and grow your audience with promotions and ad campaigns.
With Hootsuite, you can manually or automatically boost your Facebook content so it can reach new audiences right from the Hootsuite Composer. With this, you can target key segments and niches by age, location, and user interests easily.
Aside from Facebook, Hootsuite also lets you promote your LinkedIn posts as Sponsored Content ads. With this, you can easily target audiences according to their location, interests, and more to make sure that your content connects with your readers.
Hootsuite’s collaborative platform, Hootsuite Ads, simplifies advertising workflow allowing you to oversee all your search and social campaigns in a single place. You can create and test campaigns, review the results, work with your team and clients, and launch campaigns that convert.
#5 Hootsuite Analytics
Hootsuite Analytics lets you analyze your posts’ performance across all your social media networks. You can create custom reports to get detailed information that shows your brand’s impact.
Hootsuite gives you a 360-degree view of your social networks’ performance in a single place, so you can set performance benchmarks and monitor improvements over time. Hootsuite also gives you recommendations and insights on when are the best times to post so you can maximize your reach and engagement.
Hootsuite Impact lets you calculate your ROI on your social media investment and show how your social media channels and campaigns generate leads and create conversions and sales. Impact’s dashboard also shows you easy-to-read graphs, tables, and KPI summaries.
6. Key Features Of Buffer
Buffer is a household name in social media management. Let’s discover the features that come with it.
#1 Buffer Publish
Buffer Publish lets you plan, collaborate, and publish content that drives growth for your brand. You can create, publish, and schedule your content for your social media accounts, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter from one simple dashboard.
Buffer takes your Instagram marketing to the next level by letting you plan and schedule your posts directly to Instagram and including the first comment when you schedule Instagram posts. Aside from these, Buffer gives you Shop Grid that helps drive traffic and sales to your shop from your Instagram bio.
Aside from Instagram posts, Buffer allows you to plan and schedule your Instagram stories. When it’s time to post, Buffer will notify you of everything you need to share the Story on Instagram.
Burkhard Berger
Although Hootsuite outperforms Buffer in terms of the number of features, Buffer’s publishing and scheduling capability are top-notch. Buffer’s Instagram posting features are better than Hootsuite’s general publishing and posting features.
Buffer may be more of a publishing and scheduling tool, but it does so exceptionally well.”
#2 Team Collaboration with Buffer
With Buffer, you and your team can work together to create high-quality and on-brand content that your audience will surely love.
Buffer lets you draft posts, receive feedback, and refine content with the help of your team. Buffer also enables you to review posts for quality checking before your post goes live.
Everyone on the team will be in sync and on the same page since Buffer shares everyone’s post within the set schedule. Buffer also allows you to share and manage access to each social media account you and your team can manage.
#3 Buffer Analyze
Buffer Analyze gives you insights and helps you measure your social media performance. You can generate reports and receive recommendations on how to grow your reach, engagement, and sales.
Buffer provides you with one dashboard for your social media analytics and reporting so you can track your posts’ performance and create reports for your social media channels in just one intuitive dashboard.
With Buffer Analyze, you can get insights and compare the results of paid vs. organic boosted posts, monitor crucial engagement metrics for each social media account, get analytics for stories, individual posts, and hashtags, and know if you’re reaching the correct audience.
#4 Buffer Engage
Buffer Engage helps you build a loyal audience on social media. It lets you see all of your comments so you can stay on top of important interactions.
Buffer Engage allows you to reply to comments from your desktop and view all your unanswered comments in a single dashboard. You won’t miss a comment since Buffer will highlight the important ones for you, and with the familiar grid view, you can jump quickly from post to post.
Buffer Engage helps prioritize the important conversations with the use of machine learning to give you intelligent alerts, so you’ll know at a glance whether your post has questions, negative sentiments, or comments regarding a purchase.
#5 Buffer Apps, Extensions, and Extras
Buffer has several plugins and extensions that you can install to give you added functionalities.
Buffer has integration with Zapier that automatically lets you push content from over 400+ apps connected to Zapier to your Buffer. Aside from Zapier, Buffer also has integration with WordPress so that you can have your Buffer posts automatically published to your WordPress blog as well.
Other apps that have integration with Buffer are Microsoft, automate.io, IFTTT, integromat, paper.li, CrowdRiff, Feedly, CoSchedule, and more.
7. Hootsuite vs. Buffer – Pros And Cons
There are no social media management tools that have no pros and cons. So, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of Hootsuite vs. Buffer.
Here are Hootsuite’s pros and cons to help you determine if it suits your needs.
Hootsuite:
| Pros | Cons |
| Extensive social network integrations | Add-ons add on top of the monthly cost and can get expensive quickly |
| Extensive library of apps in the Hootsuite App Discovery store | Most powerful features are only available for enterprise plans |
| Offers free version |
Take a closer look at Buffer’s pros and cons and determine if it’s just what you need.
Buffer:
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy to use | Social listening capabilities are limited |
| Excellent for publishing and scheduling posts | No phone and live chat support |
| Offers free version | It can get a bit pricey if you need multiple subscriptions. |
8. Where Do I Get The Most For My Money?
So, between Hootsuite vs. Buffer, which social media management tool gives you the most bang for your buck? Which tool should you invest in?
Let’s take a look at the price breakdown of Hootsuite and Buffer.
Hootsuite Pricing Plan
Hootsuite currently offers a free plan and four paid plans.
- Free ($0) – Hootsuite’s free plan comes with the basic features you need to manage your social media accounts. With the free plan, you can have one user, manage two social media accounts, schedule up to 5 posts, access Hootsuite’s self-serve online Help Center and FAQs, and integrate with basic free apps from Hootsuite’s App Directory.
- Professional ($19/month, annual billing) – Hootsuite’s Professional plan, like the free plan, is for one user only. It includes all features of the Free plan, except you can now manage up to 10 social media accounts, schedule unlimited posts, have access to messages in one inbox, schedule posts in advance, schedule multiple posts at a time, and more.
- Team ($99/month, annual billing) – With Hootsuite’s Team plan, you get all the features of the Profession plan plus now you can have up to 3 users, manage 20 social accounts, manage team access and roles with permissions, assign posts or comments to team members, and more.
- Business ($599/month, annual billing) – The Business plan gives you all of the Team plan’s features, except now you can have up to more than five users, manage 35 social accounts, review messages before publishing, extend functionality with premium apps, have 24//7 priority support, and more.
- Enterprise (Custom Pricing) – For the Enterprise plan, you have to contact Hootsuite’s sales team for pricing. You’ll get all the Business plan’s features plus, and now you can have unlimited users, manage 50 social media accounts, automatically assign posts or comments to team members, get a quarterly business review, promote unlimited posts, report on team performance, custom solutions, and more.
Buffer Pricing Plan
Buffer comes with two pricing plans, one free plan and four paid plans for Publishing, and two paid Analytics plans. The Publishing plans are mainly for creating, publishing, scheduling posts, and team collaboration, while the Analytics plans are for comprehensive statistics for your social media accounts.
- Publishing Free ($0) – The Free plan lets you have one user, connect up to 3 social channels or pages, schedule up to 10 posts per social channel, directly schedule posts, create a posting schedule, tailor post for each social network, limited posts report, add the Buffer browser extension, access to 30+ third-party integrations, and two-factor authentication.
- Publishing Pro ($15/monthly if monthly billing; $12/month or $144/year if annual billing) – The Publishing Pro plan also lets you have one user and has all the Free plan features, except you can now connect up to 8 social channels, schedule up to 100 posts per social channel, access to the Calendar view, choose custom video thumbnails, Instagram first comment, Instagram tagging, post report full history, and engagement features like grid view, comment sentiment, and hotkeys.
- Publishing Premium ($65/monthly if monthly billing; $56/month or $663/year if annual billing) – The Premium plan also lets you connect eight social channels and has all the Pro plan features with the addition that you can now have up to 2 users, Instagram hashtag manager, Instagram stories, Instagram shop grid, create and manage draft posts, and team management features.
- Publishing Business ($99/monthly if monthly billing; $85/month or $1010/year if annual billing) – The Business plan has all the Premium plan features, except you can now connect up to 25 social channels and have up to 6 users.
- Analytics Pro ($35/monthly if monthly billing; $28/month or $336/year if annual billing) – The Analytics Pro plan lets you connect up to 8 social accounts, connect to the channels Instagram Business profiles, Facebook pages, Twitter profiles, and LinkedIn pages. You also get analytics features like performance overview, individual post analytics, etc., and reporting features like creating custom reports and export reports as PDF, images, or CSV.
- Analytics Premium ($50/monthly if monthly billing; $40/month or $480/year if annual billing) – The Analytics Premium plan has all the Analytics Pro plan features except you can now connect up to 10 social accounts, connect to the same channels as the Pro plan but now including Shopify store, full analytics features, and full reporting features.
9. Conclusion – Which Is Better: Hootsuite Or Buffer?
As I conclude this article, let’s now give the verdict on which is the better social management tool between Hootsuite vs. Buffer.
For providing an all-in-one social media management tool with powerful and advanced features, I’d recommend Hootsuite over Buffer. From creating, publishing, scheduling posts, collaborating with your team and getting analytics reports to engaging with your audience, you can do all of these in one place with Hootsuite.
Buffer is still a great social media management tool, but it’s more of a content publishing and scheduling tool since that is where Buffer excels at.
10. Hootsuite vs. Buffer – FAQ
I will now answer four of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) about Hootsuite vs. Buffer.
What is the most popular feature of Hootsuite?
Hootsuite’s most popular feature is that it lets you schedule and publish posts or messages to multiple social media accounts at once.
Is Buffer good for Instagram?
Buffer comes with excellent features for posting on Instagram, such as planning for Instagram Stories, scheduling your first comment, and providing you with an Instagram hashtag manager.
What platforms does Hootsuite support?
Hootsuite connects you with 20+ social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Can you use Buffer for free?
Yes, with Buffer’s free plan, you can use it to connect and manage up to 3 social channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and schedule up to 10 posts per social channel. If you want more advanced features, you can avail one of Buffer’s paid plans.