What do you like best about the product?

After using one of their competitors in the social media space for more than five years, we wanted to find a solution that offered more flexibility in our contract arrangements and give us room to grow as an agency without breaking the bank. We also needed to make sure that we were not sacrificing on the essential social media management features that made it easy for us to work with our clients. The pricing at Hootsuite is transparent, and even though we needed a customized package to fit our needs, the team at Hootsuite was easily available to discuss options and quickly provide us with a proposal. Hootsuite even offered us a certain amount of platform time free upfront in order to facilitate our transition between our old service provider and their platform. This was very much appreciated.

The support of the Hootsuite team through the setup process made it very easy for our teams to integrate this platform in to our workflow and to transition our clients. The structured on boarding process with a dedicated trainer might have been a bit much for some, but for companies who have never used Hootsuite this is a way to make sure your team members are armed with as much knowledge as they need to make full use of the platform when they start.

HootSuite has all of the standard features you would need for managing the social media accounts of multiple clients as an agency or as a freelancer. It includes drafts and published posts for sharing content, workflows for approval, inboxes for message monitoring and community management, analytics, and social listening out of the box (enterprise package). The calendar is viewable in different time periods and offers a few options for exporting or sharing with clients. For agencies with multiple teams or members managing different accounts, HootSuite has a very handy dashboard set up view where each team member can configure their own personalize view of accounts they want to keep a closer eye on.

What do you dislike about the product?

We didn't expect that we would be able to get every single feature we were accustomed to with our previous provider from HootSuite at a price point that was significantly less per month while supporting the same number of clients. One of the essential features for agencies is calendar sharing for approval with clients. This feature is less "polished" with fewer options and more limitations than it was with our previous platform. Exporting rich text or interactive calendars is limited to a short time period. This may be OK for some users depending on your social media cycle but it is important to get a free trial to have your teams fully test out the workflows before committing so you can decide if this is a deal breaker or not. However, it is also important to note that the platform is working towards future improvements and that they were able to quickly provide a solution to the calendar sharing limitations so that we could continue servicing our clients as close to our usual standard as possible.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

As an agency, managing dozens of clients, across multiple countries with teams working remotely from various locations, Hootsuite provides a stable platform for monitoring social media channels in one place as well as producing and publishing social media content. At a time where there is much economic uncertainty and companies need to be able to pivot quickly to maintain profitability, Hootsuite offers affordable pricing with flexible contract arrangements that can grow with your operation as needed.