Are you a social media manager looking for free alternatives to Hootsuite? There are tons of social media management tools available today that are definitely worth exploring. Not a lot of them are entirely free, but almost all of them offer free trials you can avail of that are obligation-free. Here’s a list of Hootsuite alternatives with free trials you can subscribe to right now!
In this article:
- Buffer
- Sendible
- Agorapulse
- SocialOomph
- Social Pilot
- SproutSocial
Free Alternative to Hootsuite: 6 Tools with Free Trials
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Buffer
Buffer is the most popular free alternatives to Hootsuite you can get your hands on. With Buffer, you can easily craft, schedule, and publish thumb-stopping content that will drive engagements from your fans.
As a publishing tool, Buffer lets you upload and schedule content in bulk on each of your business’ social media pages. Plus, the interface offers a day and time-based calendar view of your posts to help you visualize how your content will flow on each platform.
Buffer is also equipped with an analytics feature. This allows you to measure your page’s performance and helps you think of content that ensures maximum engagement from your fans. The platform also has report templates that you can for performance reports later on.
The greatest strength this platform offers is its team collaboration feature. It allows a maximum of five members to work in the same account. To keep everyone on the same page, Buffer notifies the team on any changes that have been made.
Buffer offers a free basic plan with the following inclusions:
- Link up to 3 social accounts
- Schedule 10 posts
- Allow one user to access the account
Other subscriptions are paid, with prices ranging from $15-$99 with a billing posted monthly. These paid subscriptions also have free trials, so you can try them out for 7-14 days and then decide after.
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Sendible
Sendible is another popular Hootsuite alternative among social media managers. It’s an all-in-one tool that helps plan and publish content as well as listen and engage with your online fans.
The platform’s dashboard shows you the online activity of each of your social accounts. This keeps you from jumping to and from different social streams and potentially missing notable mentions.
Sendible also allows you to schedule and upload posts in one go. You can even tailor the same post to fit the needs of a specific platform.
With Sendible, you can also track online mentions of your brand as well as your that of your competitors. This keeps your ear to the ground and helps you your fans’ sentiment about your brand.
Lastly, the platform also has a robust analytics feature that’ll help you evaluate your page’s performance. Use the insights from these metrics to optimize your data and boost fan engagements online!
Sendible doesn’t offer a free subscription. However, all their plans have a 30-day trial period, which you can avail of and cancel at any time.
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Agorapulse
Agorapulse is another among the best free alternatives to Hootsuite. It’s a social media managing tool that lets you schedule engaging content, generate comprehensive reports, and respond to fans all in one platform.
While Agorapulse started off as a Facebook marketing tool, it is currently compatible with other social media giants–Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. This lets you stay on top of your brand’s presence online regardless of the platform.
One of the best features Agorapulse has to offer is an organized social inbox system. With this feature, you can view and respond to all your page’s direct messages in one dashboard. Agoraplus even offers an automated inbox assistant to help you reply to a high volume of comments, mentions, and messages.
Unfortunately, Agorapulse doesn’t have a free-for-life plan. However, you can avail of a 30-day trial to help you determine whether the platform suits your needs.
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SocialOomph
SocialOomph is a simple yet effective post scheduling tool compatible with Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, and Twitter accounts. It is also among the few social media scheduling tools that can help you organize blog posts on Shopify, Tumblr, and WordPress.
This platform helps social media managers boost their productivity by allowing bulk uploading and precise scheduling. SocialOomph even has a feature that enables managers to take down old and outdated posts after a certain time.
Aside from uploading, scheduling, and updating posts, SocialOomph also provides you with analytic reports on your content. This lets you optimize your content and allows you to get the most engagement from your fans in every single post.
Like Hootsuite, Social oomph’s platform is paid. But if you want to try it out, you can avail of its no-obligation 30-day free trial. If you buy a subscription and you’re not satisfied with the services, you can easily cancel your account with no complaints.
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SocialPilot
Like SocialOomph, SocialPilot is another of the free alternatives to Hootsuite that helps you simplify your posting across multiple social media channels. It has a clean and intuitive interface that can be quickly learned by a newbie or novice social media manager.
Like many content managing tools, Social Pilot lets you upload and schedule posts in bulk, whether you’re doing it for a Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram page. Plus, the platform allows you to link as many as 50 different social media profiles in a single account.
Perhaps the most unique feature of SocialPilot allows you to schedule a single post across different channels each at different times. So, you can have SocialPilot post a cat GIF on all your social media pages, but you can tell it to post it on Facebook at 6 PM and on Twitter at 7 PM.
On the flipside, SocialPilot doesn’t give you insights on the best time to post on a platform. While this isn’t much of an issue, in our opinion, SocialPilot requires you to take an extra step–log into your social media account’s native analytics to cross-check ideal posting times.
SocialPilot also doesn’t offer its platform for free all-year-round. If you want to try it out, you can sign up for a 14-day trial that you can upgrade or cancel anytime you want.
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SproutSocial
SproutSocial is one of the more advanced Hootsuite alternatives on this list. It prides itself on being an all-in-one platform that lets you publish posts, listen, and engage with your fans, as well as analyze your content’s performance.
Much like the alternatives on this list, SproutSocial can be integrated with many of today’s biggest social media platforms–Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google. It also has a social listening feature that gathers your brand’s organic mentions on social media.
SproutSocial also offers social media managers a unified inbox that collects all your brand’s messages and mentions in a single stream. This feature makes it easy for you to reply to your fans and sustain engagements on your pages.
The platform’s most competitive selling point is its organized dashboard. Simply put, SproutSocial has a no-fuss and straightforward interface for less the price of Hootsuite.
SproutSocial also offers some of the most comprehensive social media metrics of all Hootsuite alternatives. The platform even provides ready-to-use content performance reports that you can customize to suit your brand.
As with all alternative Hootsuite tools on this list, SproutSocial doesn’t have a free-all-year feature. Sprout does offer a 30-day trial for those who want to give the platform a try.
Nowadays, social media is an essential part of a brand’s marketing strategy. Every brand’s social media manager should, therefore, be equipped with the best content management tools.
It can be challenging to find the best tool that balances functionality with price. So before committing to one tool, take advantage of the free trials. Get a feel for each platform and explore its features carefully. This way, you can access the best among the free alternatives to Hootsuite that’ll help you optimize your content and boost engagements for your social accounts.
Do you know of other free alternatives to Hootsuite? Share your content management tools with us in the comments section below!