Sprout Social vs Hootsuite: Comparing Two Social Media Management Giants

While both services are top-of-the-line, Hootsuite is a better social media management tool than Sprout Social due to its extensive features, range of integrations, and better overall value.

Sprout Social has a lot to offer, though, and if great customer service is essential to you, you'll find it to be the superior tool.

Our research compared the two services across five different categories of features (publishing, engagement, organization, listening, and analytics), as well as value for money and the help and support tools available from each provider. Here are all the benefits, disadvantages, and pricing plans to know for the two best social media management services on the market today.

In this guide:

• Which is Best for You?
• Which platform has the best features?
• Which platform offers the best value for money?
• Which platform has the best Help & Support?
• Which platform has the most integrations?
• Other Social Media Management Tool Alternatives
• Verdict
• Frequently Asked Questions

Sprout Social vs Hootsuite – Which is Best for You?

Social media management tools allow a business to stay on top of its brand's online footprint, and keep tabs on its social media audience in the modern world. However, Sprout Social and Hootsuite take slightly different approaches to achieve these goals. Here's what sets them apart.

Sprout Social – Best Suited for Customer Service

The Sprout Social platform offers a deep bench of features across the core categories of social media management. It's easy to have your needs met when it comes to publishing, engagement, analysis, and social listening. It's also the only platform in this space that provides automated responses to incoming communications – giving users a tool to streamline their process further – while it also bundles in a “brand mention alerts” feature that Hootsuite only makes available for an extra cost.

Depending on which Sprout pricing plan you opt for, the service comes with user limits and social profile restrictions that could pose a problem for businesses with a broad range of social platforms to keep up with. Plus, some advanced features will cost extra. But the service stands out for one particular perk: It offers great customer service, scoring higher in our tests than almost every other social management platform. If your business needs strong support and complex features, Sprout Social is for you.

Hootsuite – Best Suited for Teams

Like Sprout Social, Hootsuite is also impressively strong across all feature categories. It's easily a top service for publishing, listening, and analytics, as well as for the depth of software integrations available. Its publishing features in particular are unmatched, making Hootsuite a great option for businesses that need the easiest platform for creating and managing content across all their social media accounts. Those publishing features also make it a helpful service for teams of social media managers, as it enables them to work together without stepping on each other's virtual toes.

While the customer support and engagement features leave a little to be desired, Hootsuite is easily a top platform overall, even when pitted against any of the top ten social media managers. It's also a good pick for businesses small to large, thanks to tailored pricing plans that won't make businesses pay for features they won't use.

Which platform has the best features?

We'll further explain each platform's features here, but it's worth noting that Sprout Social and Hootsuite are top of their class in social media management. Even when one beats out the other in a feature category, it doesn't mean the other isn't great as well.

Best Dashboards

Both Hootsuite and Sprout Social's home pages feature a vertical menu of the various dashboards each platform offers, from Publisher to Inbox to Analytics. Each button opens an additional menu of more granular features to choose from, with both services' stellar social publishing features front and center. Ultimately, both services offer an easy path towards all their features with just a few clicks, and it's tough to improve on any dashboard that can say that much. Hootsuite and Sprout are tied for their intuitive and easy to use dashboards.

Best Scheduling

Across all plans, Hootsuite supports unlimited scheduling and an unlimited number of posts per month. Sprout Social also has an unlimited number of posts across all plans, but it limits the amount scheduled per day to ten posts. If a Sprout user stocks up posts at the rate of ten per day, they'll quickly build up a large queue, so this won't be an issue – but it adds a constraint that Hootsuite doesn't have.

The number of social platforms supported also varies depending on the plan. Sprout supports five social profiles with its Standard plan and ten with its Professional and Advanced plans, while Hootsuite supports three profiles with its Free plan, ten with its Professional plan, 20 with Team, 35 with Business, and 50 or more with Enterprise. Hootsuite's wider range, in addition to its unlimited scheduling policy, makes Hootsuite the best option for social scheduling.

Click for larger versions of the Sprout Social and Hootsuite dashboards

Best Reporting

Hootsuite offers advanced reporting abilities, but what you get depends on your plan. The lowest plan, Free, doesn't including any reporting. The Professional plan covers audience demographics extensively, and supports easy pre-made reports. Business and Enterprise both support customizable reports, and, through an add-on, offer ad analytics and audience demographics – features that large businesses can use to hone their social media presence. Competitor analysis features are an Enterprise-only add-on, too.

Sprout Social includes audience demographics, ad analytics, and pre-made reports across all plans.  Granted, ad analytics is only available for Facebook, but few would contest that Facebook is the biggest social ad platform out there. Both the Professional and Advanced plans offer competitor analysis, with custom reports available as an add-on for both plans.

Hootsuite narrowly wins for best reporting, as it offers customizable reports without any additional cost. Still, both services offer the same abilities, so you'll likely find the reporting satisfactory for both.

Click for larger versions of Hootsuite's analytics dashboard and Sprout Social's reports page

Best Analysis

Both systems offer a strong suite of analytics features, allowing users to easily track and view impressions, engagements, engagements per post, and engagements by type (likes, comments etc.) across all supported social platforms. Additional analytics, including reach numbers and further breakdowns of engagement, are also available for the biggest platforms.

Some of the specifics for what's easily trackable differ between Hootsuite and Sprout Social. For example, Hootsuite lets users categorize inbound messages from Facebook and Instagram by sentiment, while Sprout Social lets users rank types of interactions per YouTube video. On the whole, datahounds will be equally happy with the depth of analytics offered by either service, but Hootsuite supports slightly more analysis features across more platforms than Sprout Social – making Hootsuite just a little better than Sprout at analysis.

Best Listening

The two services also offer great social listening features. These are the tools that help businesses track mentions of their brand across the internet, even if they're not specifically tagged in any given post. Both services let users flag specific keyword searches (though thanks to API constraints, Sprout makes this available only on Twitter), as well as track social feeds in general.

For both services, some listening abilities are held back for add-ons or more advanced plans. Hootsuite makes brand mention alerts, custom reports, and sentiment analysis available only as add-ons for those using the Business or Enterprise plans. Meanwhile, Sprout Social has Instagram and Twitter brand mention alerts available across all plans, though it restricts custom reports and sentiment analysis to its Listening add-on for Professional and Advanced Plans. It's another tie for best listening features.

Most social platforms supported

As our table below shows, the two social media management services support the same total number of social platforms. However, the lists aren't exactly the same. They both cover all the major platforms, but Hootsuite supports Reddit while Sprout Social does not, and Sprout Social supports Tumblr while Hootsuite does not.

In addition, neither support TikTok – if Gen Z is a big chunk of your audience, this could be a concern.

Which platform offers the best value for money?

Despite both offering a host of great features, the real value offered by both Hootsuite and Sprout Social comes down to which of those features they deliver – and at what cost.

Hootsuite offers a very limited free plan, followed by three paid plans: Professional, Team, and Business. Here's a table charting Hootsuite's plan costs, and the main limitations each one brings with it.

Click for larger versions of two Hootsuite and Sprout Social views

Sprout has three pricing plans, with no free option. These are Standard, Professional, and Advanced, and all billed annually. Here are Sprout's plan costs and restrictions.

Hootsuite has a broader range, with its paid plans starting at $25 per month, compared to Sprout's $99 per month. Granted, Hootsuite's highest plan soars to $599 per month – far higher than Sprout's $249 per month cost – but Sprout does come with a big user restriction: Each new Sprout user costs a full license fee. Hootsuite, by contrast, is a team player, supporting three users with the Team plan and between five and ten with the Business plan. If you have more than one user, Hootsuite offers better value for money.

Which platform has the best Help & Support?

Both platforms offer a variety of customer support options, including an online knowledge center and educational content such as e-learning courses and webinars.

However, live customer support is more limited. Hootsuite offers live chat support, but does not offer either phone or email support. Sprout is the reverse: It offers both phone and email support, but not live chat. Of those three forms of live support, phone and email are more robust, so Sprout takes the crown for best customer support.

Which platform has the most integrations?

Hootsuite's range of integrations is impressive, with over 150 apps available in its online App Directory The most useful business software integrations it offers for businesses include a Shopify integration for ecommerce, Mailchimp for email marketing, and both Zendesk and ClickDesk for help desks.

Sprout offers some valuable core integrations as well, though most – including its Zendesk and Hubspot integrations for help desk support – are available only through Professional and Advanced, not the Standard plan. Sprout has more than twenty integrations, but it's no contest: Of the two, Hootsuite has the most integrations.

Other Social Media Management Tool Alternatives

Sprout Social and Hootsuite may be at the top of our list for social media managing services, but they're far from the only options. If you're about to commit your business to a specific service, you should know about the choices available to you before you do so.

Sendible comes with great features overall, and starts at a tidy $25/month. While it has a posting limit, as well as user role restrictions, it does offer one standout benefit that's not available with either Sprout Social or Hootsuite: It provides advanced social listening features at a much lower price point.

HubSpot is great at everything, offering a huge amount of features and integrations that address business needs beyond just social media – and with great customer support as well. The catch? It's expensive, starting at $800 a month – a price which makes it a great option for large businesses, but not a great pick for medium or small operations.

Loomly offers extensive organizational and team features, making it an attractive choice for businesses after a $25/month Hootsuite alternative that also comes with great team tools and can handle a larger number of social profiles. No phone support or listening features are offered, however.

Those are just the top five services. For a breakdown of all nine major social media managing tools, read through our full guide over here.

Click for larger versions of Sendible, HubSpot, and Loomly's software services in action

Frequently Asked Questions