Hootsuite and Later comparison

Hootsuite vs Later: A Social Media Management Tool Comparison

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Written by Raluca

Content Writer

Who will win the Hootsuite vs Later showdown? Stick around for the social media tool comparison and make your own decision.

Nowadays, social media management tools have become indispensable for any business looking to increase its online reach and grow its customer base. With hundreds of options out there, it can be hard to determine which social media tool is best for your specific needs. A comparative look is obviously necessary.

To help narrow down the options, this article will compare two popular social media management tools: Hootsuite and Later. We will also provide an alternative for both platforms, so stay tuned for that.

By the end of this article, you should be better equipped to choose the right social media management platform to fit your brand’s unique needs. Let’s begin!

SocialBee vs Competitors: A Feature Comparison

Discover how SocialBee compares to other popular social media management tools.

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SocialBee vs Hootsuite & Later: Side-by-Side Comparison Table

FeaturesHootsuiteLaterSocialBee
Social Media Profiles 
Post On

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Business Profiles, TikTok, YouTube, and Bluesky

Import Content 
CSV Upload

RSS Feeds

Social Media Management 
AI Content Generation

Content Scheduling

Bulk Scheduling

Content Publishing

Evergreen Posting

List View

Social Media Calendar

Social Media Inbox

Content Categories

Hashtag Collections

Hashtag Generator

Team Collaboration 
Client Workspaces

Content Approval

Analytics 
Social Media Analytics

Analytics On Schedule Set Up

Content Category Analytics

Export PDF Reports

Integrations 
Canva Integration

Unsplash Integration

GIPHY Integration

Multiple Shortlink Tools

Pocket Integration

QUUU Content Curation

Customer Support 
Help Documentation

Email Support

Chat Support

Support Calls

UTM Customization 
Category Based UTM Settings

Custom URL and Tracking

Additional Tools 
Mobile App

Chrome Extenstion

Additional Services 
Concierge Services

Migration / Onboarding

Pricing Plans 
Monthly Plans

Yearly Plans

Hootsuite vs Later: How to Choose the Best Social Media Management Software

When it comes to enhancing social media marketing efforts, choosing the right tool is essential. With the impressive number of options available, it can be difficult to know which one is most suitable for your needs. 

Here is what to look for in social media management software:

  1. Supported social media platforms
  2. Content creation features
  3. Social media planning and scheduling
  4. Social media analytics
  5. Social inbox and engagement tools
  6. Team collaboration features
  7. User experience and ease of use
  8. Integrations
  9. Pricing
  10. Customer support

1. Supported Social Media Platforms

In addition to using a social media marketing platform, a management tool that supports your favorite channels is a definitive must. Make sure that the tool you’ll choose will ultimately help you manage multiple social media accounts.

Hootsuite

Later

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • TikTok
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • TikTok
  • Pinterest

As you can see, Later is not currently supporting YouTube and Facebook Groups, so this might be a dealbreaker for businesses that channel their marketing efforts on these two social accounts.

2. Content Creation Features

Creating engaging content is what a great social media presence is all about, right? Before you go ahead and choose your next go-to social media management tool, make sure that you are aware of the content creation features they offer.

Hootsuite has helpful features for content creation, including the post composer that lets you create and schedule posts. The platform also has a content library of templates that can streamline your entire social media publishing process and a Canva integration for creating visuals with ease.

As for Later, they offer their users a fully visual way of creating, editing, and previewing the content that’s going to get published. Also, they make content creation an easier task via their user-generated content feature which allows you to search various hashtags that relate to your brand and repost it with no effort on your part. 

Lastly, the Unsplash photo library is a great addition for those who are in a hurry to create engaging content.

3. Social Media Planning and Scheduling

Hootsuite’s social media calendar and planner can help you get things done from one dashboard. You will be able to plan and publish new content across your social media accounts and map out new campaigns in no time. 

Their bulk post scheduling feature and recommended best times to post will take the effort and guesswork from your daily tasks.

Later, on the other hand, helps you plan your Instagram posts with its highly visual social media scheduling tool. You can bulk upload content and store it in their Media Library, plan your Instagram grid directly from their Instagram Visual Planner.

4. Social Media Analytics

Analytics are an underrated yet vital part of doing social media marketing. Luckily, Hootsuite provides powerful reporting tools that include data about engagement, impressions, likes, shares, website clicks, top-performing posts, and so much more. Furthermore, you can generate compelling reports by using their pre-made templates.

Additionally, Hootsuite also offers social media monitoring features. If you wish to give your social media team a helping hand in terms of communication with your followers, this can be a great addition. 

As for Later, their social media analytics allow you to measure your growth over time and identify the posts that are driving the most engagement. From the analytics dashboard, you will also be able to export the insights into CSV files. Keep in mind that exporting is only available for Instagram and Linkin.bio analytics. 

5. Social Inbox and Engagement Tools

Hootsuite’s social inbox helps you stay connected to the followers across your social media accounts from one place. You can also set up automated replies for FAQ and make sure that the communication is always quick and on-brand. 

In addition to the social inbox, Hootsuite also allows users to monitor mentions and take a look at the conversations that surround their industry and brand.

As far as Later is concerned, it does not feature a social inbox. However, it does help you improve Instagram engagement by ranking existing posts by their engagement rate. This way, you’ll get a much clearer idea of what is working and what could use some fine-tuning in terms of Instagram-worthy content.

6. Team Collaboration Features

When it comes to team collaboration, Hootsuite allows you to assign tasks to team members, send them messages whenever something comes up, and manage social channels without having to share passwords. These features streamline the usual workflow and maintain proper communication between all parties.

With Later, you can communicate with your team members via Calendar Notes, a quick and easy way to leave suggestions. You’ll also be able to invite contributors thanks to the Contributors feature and allow them to send you images and videos for the upcoming content.

7. User Experience and Ease of Use

When it comes to user experience, most Hootsuite reviews reveal that the platform is user-friendly and intuitive. However, some users noted that it can also be buggy and clunky at times. 

However, Later is mostly praised for its modern and easy-to-use interface and lacks most of the complaints Hootsuite receives. Therefore, it’s another one of the better Hootsuite alternatives out there.

8. Integrations

Integrations are a vital component of having a social media marketing strategy. It’s important to be aware of the ones offered by both Hootsuite and Later.

Hootsuite Integrations

Later Integrations

  1. MailChimp
  2. Canva
  3. Hubspot
  4. Shopify
  5. Dropbox
  6. Slack & more
  1. Google
  2. Unsplash
  3. Dropbox
  4. Adobe
  5. Shopify
  6. Linkin.bio

9. Pricing

Money talks and marketing is not always affordable, so let’s talk a bit about the pricing of both tools before we dive into the topic of Later and Hootsuite alternatives.

It’s worth mentioning that Hootsuite offers its users a 30-day free trial for their Professional and Team subscriptions. As for Later, it offers a 14-day free trial on all their subscriptions.

Hootsuite Prices

Later Prices

  • Professional: $99/month, $1.188/year
  • Team: $249/month, $2.988/year
  • Business: $739/month, $8.868/year
  • Enterprise: Custom
  • Starter: $18/month, $180/year (17% off yearly subscriptions)
  • Growth: $40/month, $399/year (17% off yearly subscriptions)
  • Advanced: $80/month, $800/year (17% off yearly subscriptions)

10. Customer Support

Last, but certainly not least, Hootsuite’s customer support is giving users mixed feelings. Some are quite pleased with its quality. On the other hand, there are plenty of displeased customers that mention that email support is very slow.

The very same can be said about Later. There are many users who are happy about the professionalism levels of the support team. Meanwhile, a handful of customers complain about the lack of replies on chat, email, and LinkedIn.

When to Choose Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that can be useful for large businesses, experienced companies, and enterprises that have several social media accounts.

Here’s when you should choose Hootsuite:

  • If you are a large business that manages multiple social media accounts
  • If you have a big budget and are willing to invest
  • If you want to monitor social media mentions and engagement across several social media channels
  • If you collaborate with a large team of social media managers
  • If you want to regularly analyze your social media performance

When to Choose Later

Later is a helpful social media scheduling tool that focuses on bringing your visual posts to the forefront. It’s especially useful for smaller businesses that wish to make it big on Instagram and are looking for an alternative to Hootsuite.

Here’s when you should choose Later:

  • You’re an Instagram-focused business
  • You’re a social media manager who wants to plan social media content visually
  • You have a limited budget and want to make a smart investment
  • You want to optimize your Instagram hashtag strategy
  • You want to collaborate with team members

What Is a Good Hootsuite and Later Alternative?

Chances are that you’re still confused about which tool would complement your social media marketing strategy. Guess what? That’s perfectly fine. It means that you’re looking for the best tool out there and, luckily, there are other Later and Hootsuite alternatives for you to consider.

If so, you’ll be pleased to find out more about SocialBee, one of the best social media management platforms for entrepreneurs, content creators, agencies, and small business social media managers. It’s perhaps the best alternative to Hootsuite and Later out there.

Here are the features SocialBee has over Hootsuite and Later:

  • AI post assistant
  • Multiple social networks supported
  • Evergreen posting
  • Content categories
  • Content category analytics
  • Hashtag collections
  • Client workspaces
  • Multiple integrations
  • Affordable pricing
  • Stellar customer support

1. AI Post Assistant

Are you a social media manager? SocialBee offers the ultimate social media tools for maintaining a consistent posting schedule with ease. It’s one of the best Hootsuite alternatives out right now. With the help of cutting-edge AI technology, SocialBee’s social media post generator tool can assist you in producing high-quality posts, thereby speeding up your content creation process.

SocialBee AI caption generator

Leverage the creative power of SocialBee’s AI post generator and create content seamlessly.

Start our 14-day free trial now!

SocialBee’s AI-powered post generator allows you to quickly generate captions tailored to your specific needs. This tool can assist you with creating posts based on 1000+ detailed prompts that you can infinitely customize, summarizing complex concepts, and effortlessly transforming your existing product descriptions into promotional posts. Try our free AI social media post generator now!

SocialBee blog CTA box visual with the supported platforms

SocialBee: Your AI-powered Later and Hootsuite Alternative

Create posts, publish, analyze, engage and collaborate, all from SocialBee.

2. Multiple Social Networks Supported

Why is SocialBee the best Hootsuite alternative currently available? Because by using it you can post your awesome content to:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Threads
  • LinkedIn 
  • Pinterest
  • Google Business Profiles
  • TikTok 
  • YouTube
  • Bluesky
Note: Hootsuite is currently missing Google Business Profiles, while Later, doesn’t support Google Business Profile and YouTube.

3. Evergreen Posting

As you’re looking for Later and Hootsuite alternatives, evergreen content might become a subject of interest. It’s generally a unique type of post that remains relevant and never becomes outdated, regardless of how much time passes or how many trends come and go. 

SocialBee post resharing and expiration features

Recycle your evergreen content with SocialBee and limit the time spent on content creation.

Start your 14-day free trial now!

For example, evergreen social media posts can feature brand history, philosophy, client testimonials, tips and tricks, how-to guides, quotes and more.

Unlike Later, SocialBee not only aids in social media planning but also assists in creating, scheduling, sharing, and re-queueing evergreen content. 

You can easily create a separate content category of evergreen content ideas and set this as a category default, so each post in that category is going to be shared indefinitely until it expires or until you manually remove it.

Let’s say you have 10 articles inside this kind of category. An evergreen (or re-queue) category will share each article one by one until it reaches the last article, and then will revert to the first one all over again, therefore maximizing your social media efforts.

SocialBee works in a Last In, First Out sequence. So, the last article you added will be the first one to be shared and it will go through the entire list in that order. If you add more articles, SocialBee will include them in the same sequence. It’s one of the best Hootsuite alternatives out there.

4. Content Categories

Later does not feature content categories for a more streamlined content creation and scheduling process. SocialBee gives users a structured way to organize their social media posts by various topics and other criteria with the help of content categories. Keeping your posts organized, sorted, and easily accessible for the benefit of your social accounts has never been easier.

SocialBee's content categories

Sort your upcoming content into easy-to-use categories directly from the SocialBee app.

Start our 14-day free trial today!

Take the stress out of your content strategy with SocialBee. Through categorizing and better organizing your posts, you can easily offer followers the variety they’re looking for and schedule for each social media account with ease. It’s a must for all leading social media experts – try it now to get ahead of the game.

5. Content Category Analytics

Although both Hootsuite and Later feature analytics worth leveraging, it’s worth noting that they do not provide users with content category analytics. For example, you can’t figure out whether your meme posts are performing better than your hard sell posts.

To assist you, SocialBee is a Hootsuite alternative that provides robust content category metrics that showcase just how well various content types are performing and what exactly your followers enjoy seeing from you.

6. Hashtag Collections

Neither Hootsuite nor Later offer social media tools that help you organize your hashtags into easily accessible collections. 

With SocialBee as a Hootsuite alternative, you now have the ability to save time more efficiently by creating collections for your frequently used hashtags directly within your account.

SocialBee's hashtag collections

Organize your hashtags with ease and add them to your posts with just a few clicks.

Start our 14-day free trial now!

In addition, you can create multiple collections tailored to all of your social profiles and platforms. This can save you an awful lot of time when you’re busy taking care of other tasks.

7. Client Workspaces

To ensure the success of each client or business is achieved, we highly suggest you manage their respective social media accounts separately. 

Hootsuite and Later do not provide customers with separate workspaces for each of your clients. For this reason, your social media strategy might suffer.

As soon as you start using SocialBee as a Hootsuite alternative, you’ll discover just how effective client workspaces can be. You’ll be able to easily switch between each client’s workspace, invite users, and assign roles as needed. 

This feature helps you manage multiple clients at once, without having to worry about excessive multitasking and or struggling to share feedback points with team members.

8. Multiple Integrations

Although Later has a GIPHY and Unsplash integration, SocialBee also integrates with Canva on top of the two aforementioned visual platforms. Also, SocialBee features Pocket, QUUU, and a variety of shortlink integrations.

Furthermore, SocialBee has added Unsplash to its list of integrations, unlike Hootsuite. If you’re looking for Hootsuite alternatives for managing your social accounts, this is it.

9. Affordable Pricing

SocialBee is a much more affordable Hootsuite alternative for both businesses and agencies. Since both SocialBee and Later have similar pricing points, their features are worth weighing.

SocialBee

Hootsuite

Later

  • 30-day free trial
  • Starts at $99/month
  • 14-day free trial
  • Starts at $18/month

10. Stellar Customer Support

Looking for social media management tools that provide quick and professional customer support? Among the variety of Hootsuite alternatives, SocialBee’s customer success efforts stand out for all the right reasons. 

The team will assist you every step of the way, from migrating your content from another platform to helping you get all settled in. 

Unlike Later, SocialBee also offer support calls to customers that need to talk to an expert in order to get a problem solved.

Switch to SocialBee to Simplify Your Social Media Planning

Are you ready to make the switch to SocialBee, the best Hootsuite alternative out there, and make the most of social media planning? Nothing easier. Our Migration service is the optimal solution for you if you want to bring your content, feeds, and settings over to SocialBee.

As part of the migration process, we’ll transfer all of the content from your profiles, including the posting schedule, RSS feeds, and settings for your shortlink provider. Then, we’ll send you a report via email that will feature what exactly was migrated. No other Hootsuite alternatives offer this, so give it a try!

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What Is the Difference Between Hootsuite and Later?

Although both Hootsuite and Later are social media management tools, they have different features and target audiences.

Hootsuite is a comprehensive platform that enables users to schedule and manage posts on various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and provides analytics and reporting tools to monitor the performance of social media campaigns.

On the other hand, Later is a scheduling and visual planning tool that is specifically designed for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. 

In summary, Hootsuite is a comprehensive social media management tool that supports multiple platforms, while Later is a specialized tool for visual planning and scheduling, primarily for Instagram and other visual-based platforms, catering to smaller businesses and influencers.

2. Which Platform Is Better for Small Businesses - Hootsuite or Later?

Organizations of all sizes can take advantage of the capabilities provided by Hootsuite and Later; however, if a company needs to manage multiple social media networks, then Hootsuite offers an abundance of features that fulfill that purpose.

On the other hand, when visual planning and scheduling are needed for platforms such as Instagram or any other photo-centric platform, Later has specialized tools ideal for these tasks.

Ultimately, Later is much more affordable Hootsuite alternative for small businesses.

3. Is Later Just for Instagram?

No, Later is not just for Instagram. Although Later is a great Instagram scheduling tool, it also supports other social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Therefore, it could be a great Hootsuite alternative.

Choose the Best Social Media Marketing Solution for You

In conclusion, choosing the right social media management tool can be a difficult decision. However, by understanding your needs and the features offered by each of these tools, you can make an informed choice between the variety of Hoosuite alternatives.

SocialBee is a top-rated social media management platform and a Later and Hootsuite alternative that allows you to take full control over your online presence and social accounts. Create, plan, and schedule your content by using our social media calendar. 

Furthermore, the AI post generator is guaranteed to revamp your social media presence. Our 14-day free trial is waiting for you!

SocialBee blog CTA box visual with the supported platforms

SocialBee: Your AI-powered Later and Hootsuite Alternative

Create posts, publish, analyze, engage and collaborate, all from SocialBee.
Manage your social media with SocialBee: publishing, AI assistance, Canva magic, analytics, unified inbox, and more.
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Alexandra

Content writer at SocialBee

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