Hootsuite and Buffer Overview
Buffer and Hootsuite have established themselves as leading tools in the market for managing the accounts of social networks. These tools help small and medium-sized businesses manage their entire social presence from a single interface.
While they are similar, they cater to slightly different audiences. That's why, in the following, I'm going to give you a clear idea of how each tool works. But before that, let's take a quick look at what these tools offer.
What is Hootsuite?
The social media management platform Hootsuite was created and launched in 2008 by Ryan Holmes. Its features cover most aspects of social media management, such as content curation and message scheduling. It even offers analysis functions dedicated to measuring the return on investment.
The tool offers a refined interface, as well as a single dashboard that provides access to all social media campaign data. It includes team management and collaboration features and can even integrate with numerous third-party applications.
Here are some of Hootsuite's most important features:
- Hootsuite offers comprehensive options for social programming and content management.
- It offers detailed analysis functions to monitor and improve the return on investment of social networks.
- Hootsuite integrates with over 100 third-party applications, increasing its functionality.
What is Buffer?
Buffer is a clean, user-friendly tool that offers features for publishing content on social media channels. Setting up and starting to work with a Buffer account is easy. The main advantage of this tool is its extreme ease of use.
Buffer offers numerous features for analyzing data and creating reports. It even provides strategic recommendations for increasing social reach and engagement. And it integrates with the latest social features like Instagram Stories.
Some of Buffer's most important features include:
- It has applications dedicated to publishing and analyzing content.
- With Buffer, you can visually plan your social media campaigns.
- It also provides detailed information on measuring social media engagement.
Both Hootsuite and Buffer work with most popular social channels, but I think their main purpose is different. Hootsuite is a dedicated social media management tool that lets you manage all of your social channels from one place.
Buffer focuses more on the content creation aspect. It is essentially a tool for queuing and publishing content that integrates with social sites. Naturally, Hootsuite is a more comprehensive tool and offers more features than Buffer.
In the following sections, I'm going to compare the features of the 2 tools so that social media marketers can decide for themselves which one is better.
Hootsuite and Buffer prices
Hootsuite prices
Hootsuite offers a limited free plan, with a single user account, 30 scheduled messages, and 3 social profiles.
Since this plan is not suitable for most businesses, she offers the following paid plans :
A. Professional plan
The professional plan is priced at $29 per month and is ideal for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs. It offers the following benefits:
- Up to 10 social profiles
- A user account
- Possibility to schedule an unlimited number of messages
- Real-time analysis functions
- An unlimited number of RSS integrations
B. Team plan
The Team plan is more suited to smaller marketing teams looking to develop their social presence. It's priced at $129 per month and offers the following features:
- Includes up to 20 social profiles
- Can support up to 3 users
- Custom analytics
- 1 personalized URL and a social media certification for each of them
- Everything that comes with the professional plan
C. Business plan
This plan is ideal for large businesses and digital marketing agencies. Priced at $599 per month, it includes all of the features from the above plans, plus the following:
- Up to 35 social profiles
- Up to 10 users
- Data export functions
- Publication based on approval
- Integration with premium applications
- 24/7 support
- Special integration and training
D. Business plan
If you're a large company with custom requirements and need to manage multiple teams, go for the Enterprise plan.
This plan offers custom features such as:
- Customized social media solutions
- Integrations with top-notch business applications, such as Adobe and Talkwalker.
- Developer APIs
- Adapted training services
The price of this plan varies depending on the features you choose.
Buffer Prices
When it comes to Buffer, we're also seeing the Freemium model in action. Buffer offers distinct sets of plans for publishing and analysis.
With the free plan, you can publish 10 scheduled posts per channel per month on 3 social channels. If that is not enough for you, you can opt for theone of their paid plans :
A. Pro Plan
Billed monthly at $15, the Pro plan allows a user to post messages on up to 8 social channels and schedule up to 100 messages per channel. You have access to all integrations and applications, comprehensive community support, and limited planning and scheduling options. The only thing missing from this plan are team management functions.
B. Premium Plan
Costing $65 per month, this plan gives you access to everything the Pro plan offers. In addition, you benefit from a maximum of 2,000 scheduled posts per channel per month, comprehensive planning and scheduling, and team management functions.
C. Business plan
The Business plan is intended for large businesses and provides access to 25 social channels with 2,000 scheduled messages per channel. It allows you to include up to 6 users and gives access to all Buffer tools. It is offered at $99 per month.
If you want to get a feel for each tool, you can opt for free trials. Here, Hootsuite takes the upper hand with a 30-day trial, while Buffer offers a 14-day free trial.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite and Buffer
Comparing Buffer and Hootsuite pricing plans is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Buffer is definitely the more affordable of the two.
But Hootsuite offers comprehensive social media management features at reasonable costs. In addition, it has a longer trial period, allowing you to test the product.
Hootsuite or Buffer: Pros and Cons
To quickly get to the main differences, here are some of the main pros and cons of Hootsuite compared to Buffer:
Hootsuite
Pros
- A complete set of social media management tools
- Freemium payment model
- Supports most social media channels
- Integrated management of advertising and social conversations
Cons
- A bit complicated user interface
- Not as robust when it comes to content creation
Buffer
Pros
- The best for publishing social content
- Intuitive but powerful user interface
- Easy-to-use collaboration and teamwork features
- Integrated platform security
- Management of the programming and publication of social networks
Cons
- Does not have paid advertising features
- Programming less robust than Hootsuite
Hootsuite or Buffer: Which is better?
1. User interface and ease of use
The most notable difference between Hootsuite and Buffer is in their user interfaces.
Buffer has a clean, uncluttered dashboard that displays a queue of all currently scheduled social media posts. It's minimalistic and allows you to focus on what really matters: your scheduled content.
Hootsuite, as I mentioned before, is more feature-rich. So while Hootsuite's dashboard isn't as appealing as Buffer's, it contains greater capabilities.
For example, you can use it to follow all of your social media accounts, view social timelines, and even track mentions across channels.
If I'm being honest, it's not fair to compare the user interfaces of these 2 tools. Because Buffer focuses on creating content, its user interface is built to support this function.
Hootsuite needs to support more features, so the dashboard is naturally more complicated.
That said, I still have to admit that Buffer's interface is more user-friendly and modern. The minimal dashboard makes it easy to manage and edit all scheduled posts. In comparison, Hootsuite's approach has a steeper learning curve.
🏆 Winner: Buffer
In terms of simplicity and ease of use, Buffer is the best tool for individual users and small teams.
On the other hand, Hootsuite is more suited to larger teams with more elaborate social media marketing plans.
Hootsuite's interface is more customizable, while Buffer is more intuitive and easy to use.
2. Social networks
Buffer supports the following social media networks:
Buffer allows you to manage Facebook pages and groups, as well as LinkedIn pages and profiles.
If you're using the Pro version, you can work with and manage up to eight separate profiles. Buffer does not support YouTube. For that, you need to turn to Hootsuite.
Hootsuite integrates with all of the above channels, as well as WordPress and YouTube. With it, you can schedule posts and content, observe timelines, and monitor all social media feeds. Hootsuite even takes care of lesser-known social sites like Tumblr, Foursquare, Reddit, and Mixi.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite
Based on the number of social sites it integrates with, Hootsuite certainly wins. However, Buffer provides access to all main social networking sites, so you won't be left behind if you use it.
3. Programming and publishing
You can post messages to your social media accounts using both Buffer and Hootsuite. These 2 platforms also allow you to schedule posts in advance and personalize them according to the targeted platform.
When it comes to programming, these applications have different approaches. Buffer offers the Buffer Queue, which is a personalized schedule of all your messages.
It allows you to schedule posts more than one month before the actual publication date and offers the following benefits:
- You can add emojis to your social media posts.
- Allows the download of images
- Support for broadcasting the same message across multiple networks
- Allows you to create professional infographics using the Pablo tool.
Hootsuite allows you to personalize and schedule your posts manually. But it also has an automatic scheduling function that automatically selects the best time to post a message. However, if you choose this option, you will not be able to decide the order of the messages.
If you use the free accounts of these tools, you will also have to face programming limitations:
- Buffer's free account only allows you to schedule ten posts for each social media account.
- Hootsuite has set a maximum limit of 30 scheduled messages across all social media channels.
If you want to see a preview of the messages you've scheduled, Hootsuite is here to help. It also has a draft function that allows you to save incomplete posts. Buffer offers a similar feature, but it's only available with Business or Pro plans.
Finally, Hootsuite's planner only shows one week of scheduled content at a time. Buffer, on the other hand, offers monthly, weekly views, and even lists.
These 2 tools allow you to publish syndicated content collected from RSS feeds and blog content. And if you want to publish content on an ad hoc basis, these tools have dedicated browser plugins to help you do so.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite and Buffer
In this category, Hootsuite and Buffer are tied for the top spot. Both have good programming and publishing features. While Buffer is easier to use, Hootsuite offers more options in terms of content programming flexibility.
4. Managing social conversations
Hootsuite and Buffer offer completely different approaches to managing conversations on social networks. If you're using Hootsuite, you'll find social conversation management built into the product itself.
Because Hootsuite allows you to personalize the dashboard the way you want, managing posts and comments becomes easier.
Hootsuite Streams is another great feature. It allows you to interact and respond to social media channel activity just as you would on the original site.
In my opinion, flows give this tool a certain advantage. In short, Hootsuite offers all the tools you need to respond to and monitor your social media audience in real time.
Buffer uses an entirely separate application to manage social media conversations. The Buffer Reply app comes with a lot of useful features, but its only downside is that it's quite expensive. Hootsuite offers conversation management features even with the free version of the tool.
In contrast, the Buffer Reply app costs $50 per month for the basic version alone. And that's for a single social media account.
If you want to upgrade, you need to add users at $25 per user per month. For additional social media accounts, you'll need to pay $10 per account per month.
Despite its high price, I would say that the app is worth the effort for the wide range of features it offers. You can assign conversations to individual team members and add conversation notes. The application even allows you to track responses in real time.
The app integrates with other business communication tools like Slack. If you upgrade to the Business plan, you'll get keyword tracking tools as well as automation features.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite
Buffer Reply offers a lot of advanced features that are good enough for smaller brands. In contrast, Hootsuite is ideal for larger businesses looking to grow quickly.
5. Collaboration and teamwork
The number of people on your social media team can determine whether you choose Buffer or Hootsuite. As a planning tool, both allow you to delegate specific accounts to individual members of your team.
When using Buffer to collaborate, you need to manually select which social media accounts your teams will manage. On this platform, you have 2 types of permissions: Contributor and Manager.
This allows you to grant contributors full posting rights or keep the approval provision prior to posting.
This simple workflow is suitable for small organizations working with a limited number of social profiles. For larger businesses with a massive social media presence, Hootsuite has more features to offer.
With Hootsuite, you can split your teams into individual members or groups. You can even create team groups at an organizational level. In this way, it becomes easier to allow marketing efforts on a large scale.
🏆 Winner: Buffer and Hootsuite
The 2 tools are comparable in terms of collaboration features. The only difference I see is that Buffer offers a more direct approach that's better suited to smaller teams. For larger organizations, Hootsuite is the best choice.
6. Publicity
Paid social media content is an essential part of any social media strategy. Without paid promotions and ads, it's hard to maximize your reach.
However, paid campaigns require detailed message customizations, ad placements, audience and geolocation selections, and more.
You can still use each social platform's native advertising interface to manage campaigns. The problem is that this might involve switching between multiple dashboards.
Hootsuite keeps you out of trouble by providing a single dashboard from which you can create and manage ads across multiple social media sites.
The only downside is that you have to spend on Hootsuite Ads, the company's separate ad manager. But if you want a seamless social media experience using the same tool, I suggest that you opt for this solution.
Unfortunately, Buffer has no provisions for managing social media ads. If you're using the tool to manage your social media content, you'll need to stick to native social interfaces.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite
In this category, Hootsuite definitely wins because Buffer doesn't offer ad management options. In fact, you can even combine the 2: just use Buffer for daily social media management and Hootsuite Ads for paid campaign management.
7. Content curation
La creating engaging content takes time. As a result, filling out your social feeds every day can become a challenge. That means you'll often need to pull in content from other sources to drive ongoing engagement.
Hootsuite and Buffer both help you with this. Buffer offers a dedicated content curation tool, called Content Inbox, that allows you to manage RSS feeds from the dashboard. By using it, you can find relevant content and add it to your social media queues.
The only downside is that the Content Inbox tool is only available for Pro and Business plans. If you're working with lower-level plans, Buffers allows you to integrate other content curation tools like Pocket and Feedly.
As expected, Hootsuite gives you more tools from within the app to find relevant content. With Hootsuite, you can create hashtags and keyword searches on platforms like Instagram and Twitter. On top of that, you can even share posts with more flexibility and ease than on Buffer.
Hootsuite and Buffer also offer browser extensions that work with major browsers like Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.
I particularly like theHootlet expansion, which makes it easy to find and add tweets to your social queues. It even provides you with a feed of the most recent tweets on the subject that interests you.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite and Buffer
When it comes to content curation functionality, Hootsuite and Buffer are on the same level. Buffer is the best choice for monitoring RSS feeds. But if you're looking to keep an eye on social searches and the latest tweets/retweets, then Hootlet is the best choice.
8. Analysis and reports
Social analytics and reports should play an important role in your social media strategy. If you don't follow what works and what doesn't, you risk losing out. Both Buffer and Hootsuite offer numerous tools to analyze audience reaction to your social media activity.
First, let's talk about Hootsuite, which offers multiple levels of analysis depending on the plan you're using.
Here's a detailed analysis of Hootsuite data:
- The Hootsuite Free plan provides the analytics tools needed to get a holistic view of engagement.
- The professional plan provides real-time reports and retrospective engagement metrics.
- The business plan includes all of the above, as well as team-level performance overviews.
With Hootsuite, you can get a comprehensive overview of how your social messages are performing across channels.
As I mentioned before, Buffer is primarily a content publishing platform. It therefore only offers analyses on posts published via its interface. As a result, you won't get performance reports for content published through native social apps.
That said, social media managers will appreciate theenforcement Intuitive Buffer Analyze from Buffer.
By using it, you can track performance based on engagement, post type, and reach. Buffer has a mobile application that allows you to track your social performance on the go. Additionally, you can export all data for further analysis.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite
Again, Buffer and Hootsuite both offer analysis functions. But Hootsuite comes out on top because it provides analytics, even for the free plan and for all social messages.
On the other hand, Buffer is limited in its capabilities and only works for content posted from the platform. Furthermore, it does not offer any analysis functions in its free version.
9. Platform security
For any social media management tool, security plays an important role. Especially if you are a large company that works with numerous social accounts, you should provide controlled access to each of them.
Fortunately, the 2 tools I am talking about here have solid security features. You need a valid email address or social media account to connect to these tools. Both even offer role-based user account control, which is useful in the case of onboarding and reintegrating employees.
Hootsuite supports single sign-on through corporate accounts. Buffer, on the other hand, provides 2-factor authentication, which adds an extra layer of protection. It even keeps activity logs for the past 2 weeks so you can keep an eye out for any unauthorized access.
With Hootsuite, you can also use a dual approval system that prevents users from posting to the wrong networks. In addition, it provides access to the HTTPS protocol, which protects your passwords and access data from prying eyes.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite and Buffer
When it comes to security features, Buffer and Hootsuite are both comparable services. That said, Hootsuite offers a more granular level of access permissions than Buffer.
So for larger businesses, Hootsuite is the best choice. Buffer is great for small businesses and teams.
10. Number of integrations
In terms of the number of integrations, Hootsuite far surpasses Buffer.
Buffer offers around 60 integrations and Hootsuite offers over 140.
Hootsuite provides digital marketers with apps for ad management, marketing automation, and influencer marketing, to name a few. With so many integrations at your fingertips, there's very little you can't do with it.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite
Hootsuite definitely wins the prize in this category. Its considerable number of integrations allows you to easily meet your social media needs. Buffer isn't far behind, but it's no match for Hootsuite.
11. Training resources
Hootsuite has its own academy where users can take free or paid courses on social media marketing.
This is a pretty impressive set of online courses and over 550,000 students have completed the program.
Hootsuite Academy offers courses on the following topics:
- How to use Hootsuite
- Social media marketing
- Social selling training
- Advanced social advertising training
There are courses for corporate teams as well as individuals. Some of these courses even offer certificates and may be linked to college credit.
The Buffer website offers numerous resources such as blogs, guides, FAQs, and online tutorials to help new users. It even organizes periodic webinars where company experts teach users how to take advantage of the tool.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite
Buffer offers standard training resources that fulfill their role well. However, Hootsuite is raising the bar a notch with dedicated Hootsuite Academy courses. Its structured courses make learning social networks a great experience. Additionally, they offer professional certifications.
12. Customer support
When it comes to customer support, both platforms offer a fairly positive experience. Buffer is active on Slack and Twitter and also offers email support systems. Hootsuite has a livechat function and is also active on social networking sites.
🏆 Winner: Hootsuite and Buffer
When it comes to customer support, the 2 applications are comparable, although I tend to lean towards Hootsuite. Its livechat function makes it possible to solve problems in real time. In contrast, Buffer email responses take longer.
Summary.
Hopefully, this detailed Hootsuite vs Buffer comparison helps you make an informed decision.
Overall, both are robust platforms for managing social media content.
If you're looking for a simple tool that lets you post social content, Buffer is your best bet.
However, for larger businesses that need a comprehensive social media management solution, Hootsuite is the best solution. If necessary, you can even use the 2 in combination.
