Hootsuite

Pros

As someone who uses Hootsuite's "Free" plan, I'm incredibly impressed by what Hootsuite offers in the plan. My favorite tool on Hootsuite is the "Streams." I can sort scheduled posts, past posts, mentions, and followers' posts by social media platform using "Streams" on my dashboard. This allows me to see responses or comments on my posts and engage with followers, without having to visit several social media sites. With the free version, I can also schedule more posts on social media than other social media management programs, and the free plan allows me to schedule posts on my business Instagram account.

Cons

"Free plan" users who are needing advanced features beyond basic analytics will need to upgrade and if they shorten links using TinyUrl or Bitly, there isn't a meaningful way to track engagement in the program. Also, users need to be aware that the connections between Hootsuite and social media networks frequently drop, and that the program's connection with Instagram is frequently buggy.

Pros

Hootsuite is a great way to set up a multi channel dashboard to have greater oversight of your social media channels. I appreciate that it covers all the major platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Cons

At this point in time, users can't directly publish content to the Facebook and Instagram stories, which are major marketing tools. Where as you can pre schedule traditional posts, it's not an option for stories.

Pros

I run a modeling and acting agency and I was posting between SC, IG, FB, Twitter and YT on a daily basis. Making it very hard to be away from my phone and risk missing prime posting opportunities and viral trends. I was looking for something that would schedule pre-selected posts, videos, pictures and adds. The best option online seemed to be Hootsuite. It was well marketed and seemed very user-friendly... at first.
It does indeed schedule your posts to various social media platforms, and it also allows for multiple streams of social media (i.e other business or personal accounts). That's a very handy feature!

Cons

The user interface is weak, it's not user-friendly nor is it practical or modern looking. It has a tendency to leg, it also isn't mobile friendly, they do have an app, but again it's not easy to navigate. Which is an absolute must when working on social media on the fly. When I created beautiful well-round posts and saved them to a posting schedule. I would check the posts after they had been released, via the online social media site, the posts would always turn out unformatted, with broken links and fuzzy low res images. I was overall very disappointed with this product. especially because it was so highly rated and not free. I felt like I kept putting in a lot of effort just to re-do all my work all the time.

Pros

I like the ease of use the most. In your dashboard, everything is laid out in a way where you can easily view each feed to see comments/shares/messages per platform. You can reply directly from this main dashboard so you don't have to click around a lot.

Cons

The thing I like least is that it does not have the ability to post/schedule multiple Instagram photos per post. So if I want to do a 'carousel' type post, I would have to manually do it from my phone and not through this software. Seems like that would now be a standard feature, but maybe I have to upgrade my plan to get that feature?

Pros

Hootsuite offers all the features a basic social media scheduler offers: auto-posting, media library, multiple social media accounts, etc. The amazing thing about this software is it has a free account so you can test out the features before going premium. Definitely a contender for researching a social media scheduler for your business.

Cons

The software can sometimes be finicky, and auto-publishing doesn't always work.