Most people around the globe are either users of or are aware of the various social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and many others. People who are unfamiliar with them are rarely seen nowadays.
Because of the millions of active users on these platforms daily, companies are taking advantage of these applications to promote, spread awareness, and share content made available to a large audience.
Almost every company has already converged to these social media and has been acquiring teams to specifically manage these platforms.
More than ever, these platforms have become essential, especially because of the constraint of having to work from home due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19. Many have relied upon these social media platforms to sustain their company’s workflow and marketing strategies.
From large companies to startups, it can be a struggle to keep track of every social media application there is. A company would optimally aim to have a big social media influence but they can only do so much.
This becomes an even more daunting task when posting regular content on each of the social media platforms manually and individually. Not only do they exhibit different interfaces and purposes, but they also require specific formats and file dimensions for publication materials unique to each platform.
This is a problem that social media managing platforms such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Zoho fill the gap in.
These managing platforms will post content on your behalf. Just place your content through their application, and set a specified date to which you want your content to be posted.
The amount of time it takes to regularly post on the different social media has been cut short to seconds by these managing platforms allowing for more productive time to be spent elsewhere.
Therefore, Pro5 compiled some features that might be of interest when comparing the three applications, which have been listed in the table below. Credit goes to The Blueprint and G2 for some items included in the chart.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite was created by Ryan Holmes in 2009. A few of its great features include the application having an extensive list of social media platforms, and having a free version available to many users.
Something that makes Hootsuite unique among the other two social media managing tools is that Hootsuite allows the personalization of a dashboard where the different social media pages are displayed and maintained to the author’s preference.
The number of dashboards that one can create is subject to the deals subscribed to by the customer.
A significant challenge among Sprout Social and Zoho Social is that these tools are primarily focused on managing the schedule of content posting to the different social media channels but not on maintaining control over these posts.
Hootsuite solves this problem because not only is the dashboard customizable, but it also gives customers the ability to reply to posts and react to comments across different social media platforms through Hootsuite directly.
This does not necessarily mean that Sprout Social and Zoho Social do not have these features. Hootsuite just has more advanced features in the maintenance of the posts on social media.
Another advanced feature of Hootsuite is that they show you a preview of how a post looks like in real-time or as you edit it. This helps minimize a few more clicks that a person would do when checking how their content would look on different platforms.
One last thing to note about Hootsuite’s advantages is that its pricing is the most customer-friendly having both cheap and expensive prices depending on the customer’s actual need. Their prices go for as low as $19 and as high as $599 (disclaimer: prices vary from region to region across the globe).
This makes Hootsuite an ideal choice between people who mean to manage just a few social media and large companies with a significant number of social media and audiences.
While Hootsuite’s wide pricing gap allows for basic and professional choices for management, it has ironically become a disadvantage as well. Hootsuite’s cheaper prices are a bit lackluster.
This may mean that the lowest plan contains very limited capabilities that push customers to consider the higher-tiered, more pricey options. Customer review said that the cheaper packages are limited and that they are not satisfied with it.
People can probably only make the best out of Hootsuite if they purchase the deals that are a bit steeper.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social was founded in 2010, a year after Hootsuite was created. An advantage that Sprout Social poses is that it’s the social media managing application that’s easiest learned among the three. Its user-friendly interface allows its customers to maximize all the tools present in the application to the best of their abilities.
Regarding data analytics comparison, Sprout Social comes in second to Zoho Social to which will be explained further in the progression of this article. Sprout Social has visually pleasing data analytics making them easy to understand and analyze.
Sprout Social also has the best features for publishing and scheduling posts with different content on social media. Sprout Social and its user-friendliness allows its users to enjoy the application and make use of them enthusiastically.
One disadvantage of Sprout Social is that its pricing starts a bit more expensive than Hootsuite and Zoho Social, but its users are already satisfied with its cheapest deal of 89$, unlike Hootsuite where users are basically left wanting more.
Sprout Social also has the feature for the maintenance of posts (replying, commenting, and reacting to posts) but the downside is that all the posts on the different contents on social media are all shown in a single columnar feed.
They do not have a customizable dashboard, unlike Hootsuite. Everyone can pretty much picture out how messy that will be, also taking into consideration the number of social media the same content would be posted on. Regardless, Sprout Social is a good social media managing tool overall and is considered to be at par with Hootsuite and Zoho Social.
Zoho Social
Zoho Corporation is the oldest among the three being founded in 1996. Zoho Social was created a few years down the line after it has been founded. Zoho Social is the best at data analytics among the two other applications for the primary reason that they give data on the tiniest details and features.
Data can be seen almost on every page in Zoho Social you go, and an even more in-depth data analysis is presented when you go to its data analytics.
Another key feature that Zoho Social offers is that they are backed by several applications from Zoho Corporation that come along with Zoho Social. This is a plus when users consider other applications that may sync well with Zoho Social.
This is much like Microsoft but in Zoho (disclaimer, some apps may require additional subscription fees to allow use).
Zoho Social among the three has the cheapest of deals, ranging from 10$ to 40$ in subscription fees.
A disadvantage of Zoho is that its features do not allow much interaction with the users and reviews say that these features need to be able to interact with the audience with much more ease.
Another disadvantage is linked shorteners are unreliable, making the posts link-heavy and visually distracting.
So, which among the three?
Ultimately, all these three apps offer their own advantage to the user’s own preference and should not be narrowed down to the best one.
For pricing, every price when combining the three allows versatility and much more freedom to choose which application users would optimally choose in the end.
Hootsuite has an extensive dashboard that not only makes the application suitable for publishing and scheduling content but also maintaining these posts through the app.
Sprout Social has a very user-friendly and visually pleasing interface that allows for much more formal use and has the best publishing and scheduling features.
Zoho Social has the best data analytics feature which allows its users to study the data of their content.
For pricing, every price when combining the three allows versatility and much more freedom to choose which application users would optimally choose.
In the end, it all boils down to the need of a person or company to determine which application they would choose. It’s a matter of weighing in the pros and cons of each application and determining if they’re suitable to the customer’s preference.
Want to give your own personal review of any of the three applications? Talk to us!
References:
Hootsuite (2020, September 20). How to use Hootsuite in 13 minutes [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztk6PXD1EjU
Paul Nicholson (2020, February 20). Zoho social introduction 2020 beginner tutorial [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFzSMGaDL9k
How to Use (2017, July 25). How to use sprout social – get started – basics [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--aI_yJHMB8
The Blueprint (2021). Sprout Social vs. Hootsuite: Function or pricing? https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/sprout-social-vs-hootsuite/
G2 (n.d.). Compare Hootsuite and Zoho social. https://www.g2.com/compare/hootsuite-vs-zoho-social