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HootSuite vs Sprout Social comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

HootSuite
Ranking in Social CRM
3rd
Ranking in Social Media Management Solutions
4th
Ranking in Social Media Analytics Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sprout Social
Ranking in Social CRM
2nd
Ranking in Social Media Management Solutions
2nd
Ranking in Social Media Analytics Software
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
AI Customer Experience Personalization (10th), AI Content Creation (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Social CRM category, the mindshare of HootSuite is 10.3%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sprout Social is 8.4%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Social CRM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sprout Social8.4%
HootSuite10.3%
Other81.3%
Social CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Calin Balaita - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at Wärtsilä
Consistent scheduling has amplified our global branding and simplified weekly content sharing
HootSuite does a good job at what it does, and I didn't have any issues with it. If I had to think about one thing that could make my experience even better, the interface on the iOS version could be a bit smoother and things could be more visible, but other than that, it works fine.
Mirella Karpiesiuk - PeerSpot reviewer
Social Engagement Manager at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Centralized social channels have transformed daily engagement and reporting workflows
Regarding how Sprout Social can be improved, these are very minor areas. Sometimes we have this metric called action rate, which reflects how fast a message has been touched in Sprout Social, whether that is the message being tagged, responded to, or closed out. Apparently, we cannot get a 100% action rate because some responses come in that are auto-replied to, and that action rate misses that. I think this is one thing that can be improved: figuring out how to count those auto-responded messages. This is a niche area. Outside of that, I do not have much advice for improvements in Sprout Social; I truly think it is a hub of value and provides a lot for us. The user interface is great; it is super friendly. For someone who has never touched it before, I knew where everything was and maneuvered through it within a week of using it. The integrations are seamless with all of our social media accounts: Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and all of that. We can also export data and PDF files, which helps us with other projects. I see very minimal improvements needed on my end; I think it is a very valuable program that we use.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"HootSuite has been truly useful and helpful in my organization because impressions have increased, there has been an increase in traffic, scheduling has become simpler, and approvals have been excellent."
"Hootsuite feels like an all-in-one tool; I can publish content on Hootsuite and then answer comments, which is what I do for my customers."
"Customer Service: Great. Technical Support: Good."
"HootSuite has an AI engine to suggest trending topics related to our business. The engine works really well and comes up with excellent suggestions for more posts."
"HootSuite has positively impacted my organization by offering the possibility to connect everything in one platform, all the social channels, import the assets, and create the copies."
"HootSuite has impacted my organization positively by making my social media marketing easier by ensuring that it got posted on time."
"HootSuite has positively impacted my organization quite significantly because we have seen a rise in applications, and I think we won an award for the best branding use of this technology."
"One of the best things about HootSuite is their clear UX design that is easy to navigate around the platform, and also to see the social media calendar of the clients, so we can see on which channel which post is going when and how the posts look."
"Sprout Social impacts my organization positively by allowing me to gauge the sentiment around different topics and helping me to stay on top of my social media growth and reporting."
"One of the biggest advantages of Sprout Social is its user-friendly dashboard and clear visual reports, which make it easy to interpret data and present insights to clients."
"The only outcome I have seen in my workflow because of Sprout Social is the time, as the same thing if I do manually will cost me around maybe one day or two days, and using Sprout Social this time has shortened to maybe one hour or one and a half hour maximum."
"In my experience, the best features Sprout Social offers are the ability to manage multiple campaigns."
"Sprout Social has saved us a lot of time, provided the convenience of a single login to multiple socials, and requires less time for training, making it very easy to use and start using it."
"I have definitely seen a return on investment with Sprout Social, as it has led to time savings, improved efficiency, and financial returns since not everything had to be manually posted."
"Using Sprout Social helps us post content within peak active windows; by having that content scheduled in advance, we can better reach our more active audience times, which has a direct correlation to increased engagement and impressions."
"Sprout Social has centralized all of our social media communications, saved us a lot of time, and allowed the team to be more organized and on top of what is going on in social."
 

Cons

"The company should reduce the pricing to make it easier for companies to deploy to larger social teams."
"Sometimes the suggestions or the content suggestions that the OwlyWriter AI gives are not up to the mark that we want."
"I think HootSuite can be improved with a better user interface."
"HootSuite can be improved regarding their summarized AI brand sentiment."
"Last I checked, you can't schedule Twitter threads where each tweet is a reply to a previous tweet."
"Sometimes we received emails that due to some reasons, posts were not shared automatically. This was also one of the reasons why we left HootSuite."
"Bulk scheduling."
"The pricing would be great if it were free. It costs $99 per month, which is quite expensive."
"AI tool reliability and accuracy is a significant concern."
"There is a limitation for us with Sprout Social in publishing boosted content within LinkedIn, and we would appreciate that to be improved."
"I know Sprout Social is expensive; it is on the higher side."
"Realistically, I find the pricing quite high."
"If you do not already have existing solutions and you are using the platform to help schedule out marketing campaigns, it will not be that helpful."
"My advice to others considering Sprout Social is that I believe it is a good platform to use temporarily for some clients, but it does not scale well for growth."
"It is not perfect. Sometimes its information or its syncing to platforms is clunky, so you end up having slightly wrong information or data."
"Sometimes, when it comes to user experience, it's really hard to tag businesses in the copy because the way they appear in the dropdown is really slow, and it doesn't always find them, even when I use the at symbol to tag them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​I have only used the free versions.​"
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
21%
University
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Media Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
University
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HootSuite?
In terms of branding and brand mentions, it would be useful if we could use multiple sources to pull data from, which would be more helpful. Reporting would be somewhat more helpful if we were able...
What is your primary use case for HootSuite?
My main use case for HootSuite is scheduling social media posts and managing all our social and content calendars in a central location. We mainly use HootSuite to schedule our posts by bulk produc...
What advice do you have for others considering HootSuite?
HootSuite serves the purpose of what it is designed for. However, sometimes the admin dashboard and the backend panel can be a bit slow and clunky, so it could improve in terms of speed and managin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sprout Social?
We do not mind the setup cost because the organization provides whatever we are asking for, and we are just working on it. We do not know much about pricing and setup costs as we have a separate te...
What needs improvement with Sprout Social?
For me, I am open to suggestions, but currently, I do not think that it needs improvement or anything that needs to be changed or anything that needs to be added. For me, it is perfect at the moment.
What is your primary use case for Sprout Social?
The main use for Sprout Social in my field is that I sum up all the brands of the agency in it, and I take the comments, take the messages, and reply to the community messages. This is the main and...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vega, TicketLeap, Radio Italia, The PureMatter Agency, Kiva, The Vancouver Canucks
Hyatt, Stanford University, Coldwell Banker, Razorfish, UPS, Box, Zipcar, PepsiCo, YogurtLand, Dove, TechSmith
Find out what your peers are saying about HootSuite vs. Sprout Social and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
907,372 professionals have used our research since 2012.