Hootsuite Pricing Breakdown: Is it Worth the Cost?

As a well-renowned social media tool, Hootsuite pricing is common knowledge, and many businesses have used it to streamline their presence on multiple social networks. However, there is more to the pricing structure than meets the eye. Over the years, Hootsuite cost has seen several rounds of spikes, which have caused users a lot of inconvenience.

At present, there are a lot of subtle details and surcharges to access the vital features of Hootsuite. It asks for your payment details while signing up for a free trial. These factors make potential users skeptical about committing to any of Hootsuite pricing plans. This, in turn, has made them seek other, more affordable tools to manage their social media presence.

If you are in a dilemma about Hootsuite plans and whether it’ll be suitable for your business, we are going to help you answer all those questions.

Overview of All the Hootsuite Pricing

We’re sure that you’ve already seen Hootsuite’s pricing page, but here is a quick summary of the available subscriptions. We’ve included only the principal details of each plan and will discuss them in depth in the upcoming sections.

Hootsuite currently has three plans listed on its pricing page, two of which we know the exact cost of. The third one, the Enterprise plan, can be customized for the needs of large businesses.

However, Hootsuite is not exactly transparent with its pricing. It lists only the monthly prices of the plans based on annual billing, excluding taxes. We’ve discovered that if you choose to pay per month, Hootsuite pricing plans would cost you much more than it appears on its pricing page.

It seems Hootsuite pushes users toward their Enterprise plan by restricting flexibility in the lower-tier plans, where adding users or social accounts beyond the set limit isn’t allowed. In contrast, the Enterprise plan offers this flexibility but for additional fees.

Hootsuite Pricing Breakdown for Different Business Types

For Enterprises

Suitable Hootsuite Enterprise Plan:

Enterprise plan starts from $15,000 onwards.

Essential Features:

Here are some of the most notable features offered under the Enterprise plan in Hootsuite:

Enterprise is the highest-tiered Hootsuite pricing plan, best suited for large-scale business ventures. This subscription is highly customizable and supports 50 social profiles at a minimum. It has all the features that would streamline the workflow of a whole team while automating multiple social media activities into a single dashboard.

Unlimited publishing and approval workflow are two of the most important for the smooth functioning of a social media team in an enterprise to keep up a strong presence online.

Missing Features

Here are some features that are not a part of the Enterprise plan by default.

The list of features which we have mentioned above are not a part of the Enterprise plan of Hootsuite. By this, we mean that you’ll have to pay extra to avail them as add ons.

Now, users are already paying handsomely for the custom Enterprise subscription, but even then, the tool is asking for additional payment. This is one of the prominent gaps in Hootsuite pricing, where users don’t automatically get access to the most advanced features when they are at the most advanced plan in the tool.

For Agencies

Suitable Hootsuite Agencies Plan:

Team plan at $249/ month when billed annually.

Essential Features:

Hootsuite Team pricing is ideal for smaller agencies that manage up to 20 accounts at a time. It includes features such as roles and assignments to control the extent of a team member’s access to an account or task in the workflow. You can also share your progress status and current publishing schedule with shareable reposts and content calendars, respectively.

Missing Features:

One of the most important things agencies need is scalability and scope of growth. Hootsuite’s Team plan lacks in this regard by not allowing users to add team members or social accounts. This means agencies with more than 3 to 4 clients or with more than 20 social accounts to manage would have to upgrade their Hootsuite pricing plan to accommodate their needs.

A few other noteworthy abilities missing from Hootsuite’s Team plan are the approval workflow and content library. These are essential for maintaining publishing consistency and posting error-free content.

For Multi-Locational Brands

Suitable Hootsuite Multi-Locational Brands Plan:

Team plan at $249/ month when billed annually.

Essential Features:

The Team plan in Hootsuite is ideal for multi-location brands, offering streamlined tools for managing content, scheduling, and social interactions across multiple profiles. Its collaboration features, advanced reporting, and social listening capabilities help brands maintain a cohesive online presence while enabling efficient team coordination. This plan enhances control and strategy execution across various locations.

Missing Features:

The Team plan lacks essential features like add-on users, approval workflows, and advanced reporting, which can limit collaboration and efficiency for multi-location brands. These gaps may hinder seamless management and scalability, making it less suitable for brands with more complex needs.

For Small Businesses

Suitable Hootsuite Small Businesses Plan:

Professional plan at $99 when billed annually.

Essential Features:

The Professional plan is well-suited for small businesses, offering tools that simplify content creation, scheduling, and social media management. With support for multiple profiles and efficient planning features, it helps small businesses maintain a strong, consistent online presence.

Its focus on streamlined operations and basic analytics makes it a practical, cost-effective solution for smaller teams.

Missing Features:

The Professional plan in Hootsuite, while affordable, lacks key capabilities that growing small businesses often need. Without advanced collaboration tools, enhanced reporting, or social listening features, it limits scalability and comprehensive social media management.

Small businesses seeking deeper insights, better team coordination, and streamlined content workflows will likely find the plan insufficient for their evolving needs.

For Nonprofit Organizations

Suitable Hootsuite Non-Profit Organizations plan:

Hootsuite’s special Non-profit discount plans come at 75% discount. Hence they cost $24.50 for Professional and $64.50 for Team.

Essential Features:

Professional plan for Nonprofits have all the features of the default Professional plan.

Similarly Team plan for Nonprofits have identical capabilities like that of the normal Team plan in Hootsuite pricing. Despite having similar features, Hootsuite charges a quarter of the original price for these or nonprofits.

Missing Features:

As there are no enterprise-level plans for Nonprofits, they are missing all the advanced capabilities and flexibility that come with them. Due to the lack of an add-on allowance, nonprofit plan users can not add profiles or users more than their plan designates.

So, despite having specially designed Hootsuite pricing for nonprofits, users under these plans have some restrictions that might hinder them. Organizations looking for advanced features might find the nonprofit discounted plans under Hootsuite insufficient for their requirements.

For Individuals

Suitable Hootsuite Plan for Individuals:

Professional plan at $99 when billed annually.

Essential Features:

There are a lot of features in this plan which might prove suitable for individual users. If you have the budget to get the Professional plan, then Hootsuite offers capabilities under the Professional plan which would let you manage up to 10 social media accounts for $99 a month.

However, this might prove to be costly for many people when there are much cheaper options available.

Missing Features:

As you can see, many advanced compatibilities are missing in the Professional plan which might be required by even a solo entrepreneur or marketing manager. Paying $1188 annually for a diverse tool such as Hootsuite and not having access to more advanced features detracts potential individual users for opting it.

Alternative to Hootsuite

Although Hootsuite is a proficient social media tool, the platform’s pricing plans have often deterred potential users from choosing it over other tools. This is why social media professionals seek out alternatives to Hootsuite. They want in these, what Hootsuite lacks, i.e., cost-effectiveness for smaller and growing businesses, and flexibility in pricing structure.

Here is a comparison of the pricing structures of Hootsuite with that of one of its best alternatives, SocialPilot.

	SocialPilot	Hootsuite
Pricing	Starts at $25/Month	Starts at $99/Month
Best for	Agencies & Small Businesses	Brands & Enterprises
Social Profiles	10	10
Ease of Use
Support
Publishing
Smart Queues
Repeat Posts
Calendar View
Auto Post From RSS Feeds		(Add on)
Bulk Scheduling	(500 Posts)	(350 Posts)
First Comment	Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn (Available in all plans)
Post Creation
Draft Your Posts		(Obscure settings)
Image Editor
AI Assistant
Hashtag Generator	(Aligned with captions)
Holiday Calendar
Canva Integration	(On all plans)
Media From External Sources
Custom Call-To-Actions
Content Library		(Only in Enterprise Plan)
Location Tagging
Instagram Collaboration Post
TikTok Carousel Scheduling
LinkedIn Carousel	(Converts images into PDF internally)	(Needs content in PDF file)
Team Collaboration
Content Approval Workflows	(Quick and Easy)	(Complicated)
Multi-User Collaboration Per Post
Comments on Post
Client Management	(Unlimited clients)
Engagement
Social Inbox	(Unified Inbox)	(Complex setup)
Reply to DMs & Comments
Reply to Reviews & Queries
Analytics
Detailed Social Media Analytics	(Easy to read)	(Complicated to set up)
Post Performance
Custom Report Builder
Auto-Schedule Report Sharing to Clients
White Label
White Label Dashboard
Branded Downloadable Report
Support
Priority Customer Support		(Delayed response)
	Try for Free	Learn More

Hootsuite pricing has seen a lot of changes over the past few years, but at present, it comes with a lot of limitations for users.

Let us condense all the problems with the tool’s pricing structures we and many other users have observed:

• Very limited options are available among pricing plans for users to choose from. 
• There is no way to add users to the workspace if you are on any plan other than Enterprise. 
• Users are unable to connect and manage more accounts than the plan allows. The limit is 10 for Professional and 20 accounts for Team plan. This hinders the growth and scaling of a business. 
• The Professional plan lacks team collaboration features, such as role-based access and content approval workflows.
• Advanced reporting and social listening tools are only available as expensive add-ons or in higher-tier plans.
• The hidden add-ons and taxes significantly add up to make the actual prices of Hootsuite much more than they are shown which might cause miscommunication. 
• Most of the flexibility of accessing the add-on features are available to the Enterprise plan users only. 
• Priority service and training are provided to Enterprise plan holders only. 
• Advanced listening and review monitoring are offered as add-ons even after buying the highest tier plan on Hootsuite. 

The above reasons have led marketers to select other options instead of Hootsuite. And there are a lot of social media tools readily available based on differing requirements and business sizes.

SocialPilot comes on top as a Hootsuite alternative as it does not pose the limitations that Hootsuite pricing does on users. It is a multi-faceted social media management tool with advanced features tailored perfectly to fit the needs of businesses of all sizes, including individuals, small businesses, agencies, and enterprises.

Here are some notable details about SocialPilot:

• SocialPilot has a considerably flexible pricing structure with four plans for different business types. 
• Unlike Hootsuite, SocialPilot has complete transparency regarding its pricing plans.
• Each pricing plan in SocialPilot allows users to connect additional social accounts within the plan criteria other than the Professional plan. In contrast, Hootsuite allows this only for its Enterprise plan. 
• With higher-tiered plans, users can add unlimited clients to the workspace without additional costs. 
• The platform offers a 14-day free trial for all of its paid pricing plans for potential users to help them make informed decisions.  
• The collaborative workflow features in SocialPilot provide an ideal stage for whole social media teams to work seamlessly at much more affordable price than in Hootsuite.  
• SocialPilot does not ask for payment information for a free trial, unlike Hootsuite.  The latter requires you to add your payment information even if you sign up for a trial. 
• The platform is user-friendly and provides excellent support through live chat, calls, emails, and social media. In comparison, Hootsuite’s support lacks efficiency, making it take longer to solve customer queries. 

SocialPilot Pricing Plans