Choosing the right social media management tool Could feel like trying to pick a winning lottery ticket.
There are so many options out there, all promising to skyrocket your engagement and save you time.
But which one is actually the right fit for your needs?
Here, We’ll break down the key differences between Hootsuite vs HubSpot so that you can make decisions and choose the platform to achieve your specific social media goals.
Overview
To give you the most accurate comparison, we’ve spent weeks testing both Hootsuite and HubSpot.
We dug deep into their features, explored their dashboards, and even ran some test campaigns to see how they perform in the real world.
This hands-on experience allows us to provide you with a practical, insightful comparison.
Ready to grow your business with a powerful all-in-one platform? Get started with HubSpot’s tools today.
Pricing: It has a free plan. The premium plan starts at $15/month.
Key Features:
- CRM
- Marketing Automation
- Analytics & Reporting
Want an affordable way to manage all your social media in one place? Start your free 30-day Hootsuite trial!
Pricing: 30 days free trial available. Paid plan Starts at $99/month
Key Features:
- Wide range of integrations
- Bulk scheduling capabilities
- Simple content creation tools
What is Hootsuite?
Ever feel like you need eight arms to handle all your social media accounts? That’s where Hootsuite comes in.
It’s like having a personal assistant for your social media, keeping an eye on what people are saying, and tracking how well your content is performing.
Think of it as mission control for your social media universe.
Also, explore our favorite Hootsuite alternatives…
Key Benefits
- Stay organized with streams: Monitor multiple social feeds, hashtags, and keywords in real time.
- Never miss a message: Manage all your social conversations from a unified inbox.
- Amplify your impact: Boost your top-performing posts directly within the platform.
- Collaborate seamlessly: Assign tasks, approve content, and manage permissions across your team.
- Get the big picture: Track your progress with comprehensive analytics and custom reports.
Pricing
Hootsuite offers a limited free plan for basic needs.
- Professional ($99/month): Unlimited post scheduling, Best time to post recommendations, Competitive benchmarking tool.
- Team ($249/month): for three users with 20 social accounts.
- Enterprise Custom: Start with five users and 50 social accounts.
Pros
Cons
What is HubSpot?
Want a tool that does it all? Meet HubSpot. It’s more than just a social media management platform.
HubSpot brings together your marketing, sales, and customer service efforts in one place.
Think of it as your all-in-one growth platform.
Also, explore our favorite Hubspot alternatives…
Our Take
HubSpot is a powerful platform with many features, but you must consider your budget and needs before committing. It’s a good choice for businesses that want a comprehensive solution & are willing to invest in it.
Key Benefits
- Free CRM: Start with a free plan with basic CRM features.
- All-in-one platform: Access a marketing, sales, and service tools suite.
- Extensive community and resources: Benefit from a wealth of knowledge and support.
- Inbound marketing focus: Attract and engage leads with valuable content.
Pricing
- Free Tools: Free for up to two users.
- Marketing Hub Starter: $15/seat/month.
- Starter Customer Platform: $15/seat/month.
- Marketing Hub Professional + three seats: $800/month, additional seats at $45/month.
Pros
Cons
Feature Comparison
Choosing between Hootsuite and HubSpot in 2025 depends on whether you need a dedicated social media management tool or a comprehensive suite that unifies your social media efforts with sales tools and a CRM system.
1. Social Media Scheduling and Publishing
Both platforms schedule posts to save time, but Hootsuite excels in high-volume, cross-platform management.
- Hootsuite: Its dashboard allows you to schedule multiple posts across multiple social media platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube. Features like the Bulk Composer and Best Time to Publish help enhance social media management for teams.
- HubSpot: HubSpot offers a visual content calendar that integrates social media posts directly into broader marketing campaigns. While it supports multiple social networks, it focuses on connecting social media content to your inbound marketing funnel.
2. CRM and Customer Profiles
A major differentiator is how each platform handles customer relationship management and customer profiles.
- Hootsuite: While it lacks a native CRM, Hootsuite integrate capabilities allow it to connect with HubSpot or Salesforce. This enabling businesses to enrich customer profiles by syncing social media interactions with external contact records.
- HubSpot: Built on a CRM system, HubSpot offers a holistic view of customer interactions. Every social media account interaction is logged, allowing users to see the entire customer journey from a social click to a closed deal.
3. Social Media Analytics and Reporting
Measuring your social media strategy requires robust social media metrics and analytics capabilities.
- Hootsuite: Offers granular social media analytics focused on engagement metrics, competitive benchmarking, and team performance. It provides deep sentiment analysis to help fine-tune social media strategies.
- HubSpot: Links social media metrics with marketing automation data. It tracks how social media presence impacts website traffic, lead generation, and revenue, providing a complete ROI picture of your marketing strategy.
4. Social Listening and Monitoring
Social media monitoring is crucial for protecting your brand and discovering new opportunities.
- Hootsuite: Powered by Talkwalker, its social media monitoring tools track mentions across 150 million sources. It is a powerful social media tool for identifying micro-trends and managing crises in real-time.
- HubSpot: Focuses on social media monitoring related to your existing contacts. It allows you to track mentions from specific leads or customers, ensuring your helpful support team never misses a key customer engagement opportunity.
5. Social Inbox and Customer Support
Managing customer interactions across multiple platforms is simplified through a unified inbox.
- Hootsuite: Its social inbox centralizes DMs and comments from Facebook, Instagram, and even WhatsApp. It includes customer service tools to assign messages to specific team members for faster response times.
- HubSpot: Integrates social messages with its Service Hub. Tickets can be created directly from social media interactions, ensuring that small business owner queries are handled through the same workflow as emails or live chats.
6. Marketing Automation and Workflows
To scale your social media efforts, marketing automation is a game changer.
- Hootsuite: Automation is primarily focused on the social media content lifecycle, such as RSS feeds that automatically publish new blog posts or AI-generated caption suggestions.
- HubSpot: Features advanced marketing automation where a social click can trigger email sequences, task assignments for sales, or lead scoring updates within the crm system.
7. Integrations and Third Party Apps
Customizing your social media tool with third party apps improves the content marketing process.
- Hootsuite: Its App Directory features over 100 third party apps, including Canva, Google Drive, and various crm system connectors. It is designed to be the central social media tool in a diverse tech stack.
- HubSpot: Offers a massive App Marketplace but emphasizes a built-in approach. Most social media management features are natively connected to its seo tools and inbound marketing platform.
8. Support and Educational Resources
Both companies provide extensive training resources for users at all levels.
- Hootsuite: Provides Hootsuite Academy for social media certification. Its helpful support team is available via social accounts, and enterprise users gain access to a dedicated account representative.
- HubSpot: Known for HubSpot Academy, which offers vast educational content on inbound marketing efforts. It provides phone support for higher-tier plans, making it very accessible for a small business owner.
9. Pricing and Scalability
Choosing between hubspot hootsuite or hootsuite hubspot often comes down to budget and long-term goals.
- Hootsuite: Starts at a lower entry price for dedicated social media marketing, making it affordable for teams focused solely on social media channels.
- HubSpot: While more expensive at the professional level, it replaces multiple tools by providing comprehensive tools for SEO, email, and sales, making it more cost-effective for inbound marketing growth.
What to Look for in a Social Media Management Platform?
- Ease of Use: How intuitive is the platform? Can you easily navigate the dashboard and find the features you need?
- Features: Does the platform offer the features that are important to you, such as scheduling, monitoring, analytics, and reporting?
- Integrations: Does the platform integrate with other tools you use, like your CRM, email marketing platform, or design tools?
- Pricing: Does the platform offer a pricing plan that fits your budget and needs?
- Customer Support: What kind of customer support does the platform offer? Are they responsive and helpful?
- Scalability: Can the platform grow with your business? Does it offer plans for larger teams and more complex needs?
- Mobile App: Does the platform offer a mobile app so you could manage your social media on the go?
- Security: How secure is the platform? Does it offer features like two-factor authentication to protect your accounts?
By considering these factors, you can choose a social media management platform that will help you reach your goals and streamline your workflow.
Final Verdict (Our Pick)
So, which tool comes out on top? For us, it’s HubSpot.
It’s a powerful all-in-one platform that can really streamline your marketing efforts.
We love how it combines social media management tools with CRM, email marketing, and a ton of other features.
This helps you see the big picture and understand how your social media activity impacts your overall business goals.
However, Hootsuite is still a great option, especially if you’re mainly focused on social media scheduling and monitoring.
It’s easier to use and more affordable if you have a limited budget.
Ultimately, the best choice for you depends on your specific needs and priorities. We’ve given you the information; now it’s time to make the call!
More of Hubspot
Here’s a brief comparison of Hubspot with these software solutions:
- HubSpot vs GoHighLevel: Hubspot is an all-in-one platform for agencies, with strong marketing automation and white-labeling options.
- Hubspot vs Pipedrive: It is a sales-focused CRM known for its visual sales pipeline management and intuitive interface, which makes it ideal for tracking deals. Hubspot provides a more comprehensive, all-in-one platform that encompasses sales, marketing, and customer service.
- Hubspot vs Keap: It (formerly Infusionsoft) specializes in CRM and marketing automation, particularly for small businesses looking to streamline sales processes. Hubspot offers a wider range of marketing, sales, and service features.
- Hubspot vs ActiveCampaign: It excels in email marketing and marketing automation, with advanced segmentation and conditional logic. However, Hubspot provides a more extensive all-in-one platform that encompasses lead generation.
- Hubspot vs Clickfunnels: It is dedicated to creating high-converting sales funnels, focusing on landing pages and sales processes. Hubspot, on the other hand, is a broader marketing and sales automation platform.
- Hubspot vs Folk: It is a simpler CRM solution that excels in straightforward contact management and organization. It is suitable for small teams that prioritize ease of use.
- Hubspot vs Instantly: It specializes in cold email outreach and lead generation automation. Hubspot provides a much broader suite of tools, including a full CRM, comprehensive email marketing with advanced design capabilities.
- Hubspot vs ClickUp: It is primarily a project management tool with extensive customization and collaboration features. It allows users to manage tasks, documents, and goals. While it offers some CRM functionalities through custom fields.
- Hubspot vs Monday CRM: It.com is a work operating system focused on project management, collaboration, and workflow automation. In contrast,
- Hubspot vs Capsule CRM: It is a simpler, user-friendly contact manager and sales tracker, ideal for small businesses needing organized customer information and clear pipeline views.
- Hubspot vs Insightly: It combines CRM with strong project management features, making it versatile for businesses requiring both.
- Hubspot vs Freshsales CRM: It is a sales-focused CRM emphasizing AI-powered lead scoring and sales automation for efficient deal management. Hubspot provides a more extensive all-in-one platform with robust marketing automation features integrated alongside sales and service tools.
- Hubspot vs Salesforce: It is a powerful, highly customizable enterprise-grade CRM with robust reporting and forecasting capabilities, ideal for large organizations with complex needs.
- Hubspot vs Zendesk: It is a specialized customer service and support platform, excelling in omnichannel support, ticketing, and advanced AI capabilities for issue resolution.
More of Hootsuite
- Hootsuite vs Sprout Social: It’s standout feature is its robust project management and in-depth analytics for large teams.
- Hootsuite vs Metricool: It’s standout feature is its focus on a more user-friendly interface and team collaboration.
- Hootsuite vs SocialPilot: It’s standout feature is its comprehensive scheduling and valuable features for multi-location brands and agencies.
- Hootsuite vs Sendible: It’s standout feature is its agency-focused design with custom dashboards and white-label reporting.
- Hootsuite vs Content Studio: It’s standout feature is its powerful content discovery and curation tools for creators.
- Hootsuite vs Heropost: It’s standout feature is its AI writing assistant and ability to create branded short links.
- Hootsuite vs Agorapulse: It’s standout feature is its unified social inbox and transparent, user-friendly approach to customer support.
- Hootsuite vs Zoho Social: It’s standout feature is its SmartQ predictions for optimal scheduling and a highly user-friendly interface.
- Hootsuite vs Buffer: It’s standout feature is its simplicity and ease of use, making it ideal for small businesses.
- Hootsuite vs Sprinklr: It’s standout feature is its advanced social listening and deeper customer engagement capabilities for enterprises.
- Hootsuite vs Later: It’s standout feature is its visual-first approach, especially for Instagram, with its visual planner and Linkin.bio.
- Hootsuite vs Loomly: It’s standout feature is its daily post inspiration and a streamlined, collaborative content approval workflow.
- Hootsuite vs Blaze: It’s standout feature is its AI-first approach, specializing in creating high-quality AI images and content.
- Hootsuite vs Planable: It’s standout feature is its focus on intuitive collaboration and an in-depth, visual content planning process.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between Hootsuite and HubSpot?
Hootsuite is a dedicated social media powerhouse. It handles complex scheduling and deep listening across platforms like TikTok. HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM ecosystem. While it includes social tools, its real strength is connecting those posts to actual sales revenue and lead tracking.
Why not use Hootsuite?
Cost is the biggest barrier. With plans starting at $99/month and no free tier, it is pricey for hobbyists. Also, it lacks built-in CRM features. If you need to manage email marketing or sales pipelines alongside social, a standalone tool like Hootsuite might feel too fragmented.
Is Hootsuite still popular?
Absolutely. It remains an industry standard for enterprise-level social management. While newer, cheaper competitors exist, professional agencies still rely on its robust analytics and bulk scheduling. It’s the “old guard” that keeps evolving with AI features like OwlyWriter to stay relevant in 2026.
Does HubSpot do social media scheduling?
Yes, but there is a catch. You need the Marketing Hub Professional tier, which starts around $800/month. It offers great scheduling for LinkedIn and Instagram, but lacks the deep “social-first” features of Hootsuite. It’s built for ROI tracking, not just making pretty posts.
Does Hootsuite work with HubSpot?
They are actually a great pair. You can install the HubSpot app within the Hootsuite dashboard. This allows you to turn a social media comment into a HubSpot lead or support ticket instantly. It bridges the gap between social engagement and formal customer relationship management.
Is Hootsuite a CRM or CMS?
Neither, strictly speaking. It is a Social Media Management (SMM) platform. While it has “Social CRM” features to track follower interactions, it doesn’t manage your website (CMS) or hold your full sales database (CRM). For a true CRM, you’d look toward HubSpot or Salesforce.
What exactly does Hootsuite do?
It’s your central command center for social media. You can schedule hundreds of posts at once, monitor brand mentions in real-time, and run detailed performance reports. Basically, it lets you manage 20+ social profiles from a single tab without losing your mind.
More Facts about Hootsuite and HubSpot
- HubSpot is a big toolbox for all your marketing, like emails, sales, and websites, while Hootsuite is a specialist that focuses only on social media.
- HubSpot keeps all your customer information in one place, so your whole team sees the same information.
- If you want to see how a social media post actually turns into a sale, HubSpot is the best choice because it connects to your sales records.
- Hootsuite is better suited for fast posting and managing multiple social media accounts simultaneously on a single screen.
- Hootsuite lets you use over 100 other apps, like Canva and Slack, right inside its dashboard.
- Hootsuite costs less for small teams, with plans starting at around $149 per month.
- HubSpot is more expensive because it does more; its professional social media tools cost about $800 to $890 a month in 2026.
- Hootsuite has a “Social Inbox” where you can see messages from all your different social apps in one list.
- HubSpot offers “Automated Workflows,” which are like automated triggers that send emails or messages to people automatically after they click a link.
- Hootsuite uses a tool called OwlyWriter AI to help you write posts quickly and Talkwalker to hear what people are saying about your brand online.
- Both companies offer free versions, but they only let you do a few things, like connecting just two accounts.
- Hootsuite is great for “social listening,” which means it helps you find out when people are talking about your business.
- In 2026, choose Hootsuite if you only care about social media, but choose HubSpot if you want to track a customer’s entire journey from the first click to the final purchase.
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