Hootsuite’s starting price of $99 per month may be too high for creators and small teams, particularly as the service no longer has a free plan. Its free offering ended in 2023, leaving new users with a 30-day trial before they need a paid subscription. The Standard plan is billed annually, amounting to $1,188 upfront.
The alternatives vary in price and focus, from free scheduling tools to platforms built for agency collaboration, influencer campaigns or enterprise reporting. Buffer offers a free plan and paid subscriptions from $6 per channel per month. Metricool’s free tier allows up to 20 posts monthly, while CoSchedule has a free option for one social profile. Sendible and Later offer 14-day trials; Sprout Social and Agorapulse offer 30-day trials.
Buffer is positioned as a low-cost choice for creators and growing teams. Its free plan supports up to 30 scheduled posts across three channels and includes a content calendar, analytics, an AI assistant and tools for managing comments. Paid plans start at $6 per channel per month for Essentials and $12 per channel per month for Team.
Sendible, starting at $29 a month after its trial, is aimed at agencies and teams. It offers a shared inbox, task assignments for colleagues or clients, scheduling and reports designed to share with stakeholders. Metricool starts at $25 a month and combines scheduling with a planner that highlights suggested posting times, competitor tracking, influencer analytics and approval workflows.
Later costs from $25 per user per month after a 14-day trial. It is geared toward visual planning, with a calendar and grid preview, and also includes influencer marketing tools, social listening, analytics and link-in-bio features. CoSchedule starts at $29 per user per month and brings social publishing together with the planning of blogs, newsletters and podcasts in a shared calendar. Its AI chatbot, Mia, can help draft content and replies.
For larger teams, Sprout Social offers CRM features, social listening, collaboration tools and reporting. Its plans start at $199 per user per month after a 30-day trial. Agorapulse starts at $99 a month after a 30-day trial and provides a shared social inbox, listening tools and Google Analytics integration to help track the effect of social posts on website traffic.
The right platform depends on budget and workflow. Before switching, users can list the features they rely on, compare tools that fit their needs and test a free plan or trial for at least a week. Scheduled or queued Hootsuite posts cannot be exported, so they will need to be rebuilt in the new platform; social accounts can be connected again.
Sources: Buffer Blog.