Hootsuite’s free plan is officially going the way of the dodo (wait… the dodo might be coming back?).
If you’ve been using Hootsuite’s free plan then you likely know that they’ve been quietly phasing it out for years, first by limiting what you could do with it, then just about making it impossible to actually find the free option when creating a new account.
If you’re currently using Hootsuite’s free plan, I doubt you have intentions of staying on considering their CHEAPEST plan is $100 A MONTH. I can’t imagine they’re going to retain many or any of their free members at that price, but I digress.
Let’s talk Hootsuite Alternatives which are free so that you can stay on top of your social game without spending a dime. And note that unlike OTHER articles on this subject, I’m not covering services which offer free trial periods. That’s cheating.
These Hootsuite Alternatives are actually free, so let’s get into the list.
Hootsuite Alternatives (Free)
Best Twitter Managing Service
First let’s get to Twitter considering that’s the service which through a monkey wrench into not one but multiple social media management services I tried using.
Due to Twitter’s change to their API, what once was free to services like Hootsuite is now extremely expensive. As such, part of that cost has trickled down to the consumers of Hootsuites and other services of the like.
I jumped to another service (which I’ll cover later) when Hootsuite made the announcement only to be hit by a similar message a few weeks later on that platform.
At this point the best service for managing your Twitter profile(s) is Tweet Deck.
What was once an independent service for managing your Twitter accounts is now owned by Twitter so it has everything built into it. You can see all of your feeds in one place, schedule messages in advance, and much more.
Also you can conveniently switch between multiple profiles within the interface without remembering login details for each account you manage.
It’s what I use now and it’s completely free.
Best Facebook Managing Service
For some of my small businesses I exclusively use Twitter and Facebook. Knowing I couldn’t group them together with one service with the changes to the former, I looked for a good stand alone Facebook managing service.
Meta Business Suite is the best service for managing Facebook exclusively.
Similar to Tweet Deck, you can access all of your messages and comments, make and schedule posts, and very importantly it also lets you transition between different pages you manage just as easily.
It also features an “insights” tab which show the engagement with the content you put out on Facebook so you can make informed decisions about what your audience likes and responds to.
As an added bonus, because Facebook owns Instagram it also features complete built in support for this platform, as well.
So if you’re primarily using some combination of Facebook, Twitter, and or Instagram, I recommend using these two services. On my desktop browser I have both services in a folder on my bookmark toolbar so I can open them all together when I need to send out a new tweet/post.
Very handy and completely free.
Now let’s get into some other services for managing multiple networks BESIDES Twitter.
Social Champ was the service I jumped to after HootSuite was no longer an option.
It’s my favorite HootSuite alternative (for everything EXCEPT Twitter) in terms of free social media management software.
It features:
- No limit to scheduling posts
- User friendly interface for posting/scheduling content
- Analytics on the posts you make and how people interact with them
- Engagement tab for replying to messages across the platforms
- A decent number of platforms to include:
Again note that Twitter is only for the pro members, but everything else is included in the free plan.
All in all, it’s a great supplement to Tweet Deck if you have a need for several of the networks listed in addition to Twitter.
Buffer is a nice free Hootsuite alternative which offers a competitive number of social networks they integrate with:
Unfortunately you can only use three networks at a time with your account, though you could create a second account if you needed more with a different browser to get them all going at once.
One of my favorite things about Buffer is that when creating a message on a specific network, typing @ allows you to quickly find another account you might want to mention or connect with. It’s a nice time saver.
While there’s no analytics included with the free plan with Buffer, the ability to have up to 10 scheduled posts per network at once is nice, and I love the interface.
If you liked Hootsuite, Buffer will certainly feel familiar in that regard.
Later are Buffer are similar in that they both limit you to 10 posts PER NETWORK to schedule in advance.
The problem with Later is the additional limitation of just giving you 10 for the entire MONTH per network.
So once you schedule 10 posts for Facebook, you can’t do anymore for the rest of the month. This limitation admittedly will not work for those post frequently. It also only features Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn:
Later does offer some very limited analytics on the content you post, but you need to go premium to get the full picture.
It’s not a bad free Hootsuite alternative, but between the two I’d go with Buffer.
Simplified is a bit different in that it’s not strictly a social media management service.
In addition to that, it offers tools for content creation which could be worth your time, but that’s a topic for another day.
With a free account, it’s kind of in between Buffer and Later, the reason being that they offer the option to attach three networks at a time and 10 scheduled posts, like Buffer.
Here’s a look at the networks they cover, but note the Twitter comes with an asterisk.
A nice detail is that you can stagger your posts to make it look less automated rather than posting the same message to everything all at once.
I also like that they let you create the message you want to send to the various networks, then give you an option to tweak each one individually if you want to make any changes before you send.
They also have a calendar which, in addition to using it to schedule messages, comes stocked with all of the national and international holidays including a number of obscure ones. This gives you extra fodder to create lighter content around.
There’s quite a few options out there to replace Hootsuite, but with the Twitter shakeup you need to be aware of the limitations to that platform with most of these services.
Like me, your best bet is to probably create a combination plan of a couple services to cover all bases and fill in the gaps.
And again, like me I just recommend putting them all in an easy to access folder on your bookmark shortcut tab to open them all at once then copy and paste your content accordingly around.