Hootsuite is a social media scheduling and management platform founded by Ryan Holmes in 2008. Compare its Standard, Professional and Advanced pricing.
Hootsuite is one of the original social media management platforms, founded in December 2008 in Vancouver by Ryan Holmes, Dario Meli and David Tedman. It began as an internal Twitter dashboard called BrightKit at Holmes's digital agency, Invoke Media, before a 2009 crowdsourced naming contest turned it into Hootsuite, named after the platform's owl logo, Owly.
Since then, Hootsuite has grown into a global company headquartered in Vancouver with offices in 13 cities and roughly 1,500 to 1,900 employees. It has expanded through acquisitions including Seesmic, AdEspresso, LiftMetrix, Sparkcentral and, most recently, the social listening company Talkwalker in 2024, which significantly broadened its brand monitoring and analytics capabilities.
Hootsuite's dashboard lets teams schedule and publish content in bulk across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok and X, plan campaigns on a shared content calendar, and monitor and respond to comments and messages from a unified inbox called Streams. Social listening and competitor monitoring, powered by the Talkwalker acquisition, track brand mentions and industry trends at scale.
Higher tiers add content approval workflows, team message routing for customer care, custom performance reporting, and paid social ad management. An AI assistant helps generate captions and images and surface content recommendations, and enterprise customers get single sign-on and custom compliance tooling.
Hootsuite removed its free plan in March 2023 and now sells exclusively through paid subscriptions, starting at 99 dollars per user per month for the Standard plan, which covers up to 10 social accounts. A trial period of roughly two to four weeks is available but requires a credit card upfront.
Professional costs 199 dollars per user per month and unlocks unlimited social accounts and inbox automation, while Advanced costs 399 dollars per user per month and adds approval workflows and team performance metrics. Enterprise pricing is custom and includes full social listening, SSO and compliance features for large organizations.
No, Hootsuite removed its permanent free plan in March 2023. It now offers a trial period of roughly 14 to 30 days on paid plans, requiring a credit card to start.
Hootsuite starts at 99 dollars per user per month for the Standard plan (annual billing), rising to 199 dollars for Professional and 399 dollars for Advanced, with custom Enterprise pricing above that.
Hootsuite was founded in December 2008 by Ryan Holmes, Dario Meli and David Tedman in Vancouver, Canada, evolving from an internal Twitter dashboard at Holmes's agency, Invoke Media.
Hootsuite supports Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok and X, among other integrations.
Yes, following its 2024 acquisition of Talkwalker, Hootsuite includes brand and competitor monitoring, with full social listening available on higher-tier plans.
Common alternatives include Sprout Social, Buffer, Later, Agorapulse and, at the enterprise end, Sprinklr.