Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Hootsuite
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Hootsuite is a social media management platform for building brand awareness, engaging with customers, and driving business results. Users can schedule posts across multiple social networks (including Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube ), manage organic and paid social content together, keep track of customer conversations, integrate with over 200+ applications, and gain actionable real-time insights from social media to make critical business decisions from…
$99
per month
Sprout Social
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Sprout Social provides social media management, marketing, customer care, data and intelligence, and employee advocacy solutions for brands and agencies, including Ticketmaster, Chipotle, Grubhub, Subaru, and Zendesk. Sprout’s platform is used to simplify social publishing, engagement, reviews, analytics and listening for customers. Sprout also provides customer success and technical support, to deliver consistent value to all users. Any organization, regardless of size or industry, receives…
$249
per month per user
Pricing
HootsuiteSprout Social
Editions & Modules
Professional
$99
per month
Team
$249
per month
Business
$739
per month
Enterprise
Contact for Pricing
Standard
$199 annual / $249 monthly
per user/per month
Professional
$299 annual / $399 monthly
per user/per month
Advanced
$399 annual / $499 monthly
per user/per month
Free Trial
Free
for 30 days
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HootsuiteSprout Social
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details*Prices displayed in USD, based on annual billing, but do not include applicable taxes. Free - 1 user / 2 social accounts Professional @ $99/month - 1 user / 10 social accounts Team @ $249/month - 3 users / 20 social accounts Business - starting @ $739/month - 5 users / 35 social accounts Enterprise - contact for pricing, unlimited users / 50+ social accounts
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
HootsuiteSprout Social
Considered Both Products
Hootsuite
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a much more cost-effective option, despite many of the strengths, that both Sprout Social and Agorapulse have to offer. Even with a tool like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite's offering is more in-class and good for an organization just starting out or looking to scale a …
Chose Hootsuite
Buffer was the only one that could compete with Hootsuite, but [no] other has [had a] real impact on the social media scheduling tool world. Semrush, to me, was a disaster, and Sprout Social is not as accurate as Hootsuite. I guess Hootsuite is just the most popular tool …
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite was a more effective social media management platform than Sprout Social, which felt less comprehensive at a similar price point. Hootsuite also has some excellent tools that were not widely available on many of the other competitors despite the competitors being …
Chose Hootsuite
Ultimately, we selected Hootsuite for the benefits-to-cost ratio it had. Sprout Social has an incredibly robust platform with great social listening, a nice scheduling calendar, and a lot of metrics you can view, plus team post creation and approval flows. It's an impressive …
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite has a few less features than Sprout Social; however, the price point is much more favorable for a small business to utilize.
Chose Hootsuite
Overall, Hootsuite is very similar to Sprout Social. some of the analytics are a little different, but the posting process is similar. Sprout does have a social listening too, but i can't remember how it compares to Hootsuite.

Compared to Hubspot, Hubspot is a all in one …
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite lacks many features as i've said before. I think their reporting is also not as great as other platforms. I find the interface really messy and hard to navigate. The metrics also vary a lot between platforms which makes comparing success between channels very …
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite’s free service is most useful to me at this time as social media management does not have a large budget within my business. However, they are no longer offering it at this time which has led me to go to another service. Over the years, Hootsuite has been taking away …
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite is great for managing multiple accounts across multiple platforms.
Chose Hootsuite
We selected Hootsuite due to the pricing and past experience of ease of use in the tool. We knew they could deliver an easy-to-use tool to achieve what we needed. We have a growing social media marketing team, and Hootsuite is able to make the best use of its time, allowing for …
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite is better because we do not have so many failed posts. We can set up or schedule a post without having to worry whether or not our post will go through. Sometimes we could be on Holiday and we would get a notification from the previous company about the post failing. …
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite has a better interface and overall usability.
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a bit less busy and easier to use,they also offer a lot of learning resources and tools. I like the simple interface in comparison to others.
Chose Hootsuite
The cost is more within our budget and ease of use is similar in both products so we chose Hootsuite over Sprout as affordable for our basic news, but we hope to grow with Hootsuite and be a larger partner as we expand.
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite exceeds any other social media management platform on the market in terms of usability and value. The interface simply suits the way I and my colleagues like to work.
Chose Hootsuite
I found Hootsuite much more user-friendly.
Chose Hootsuite
Comparably, Sprout would be similar from a cost point but its interface is much smoother. Falcion.io is also similar, however, they have poor customer support.
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite was a great entry-level tool v/s some of the other tools like Falcon and Netbase in terms of breadth of features and solutions across verticals. I feel Hootsuite does a great job for D2C brands v/s enterprise solutions that need a more robust set of features and …
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite is way too expensive for a large number of accounts. It's fine if it's just for you.
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite really doesn't provide a level of functionality that meets these other players in the space. While Hootsuite was an early entrant into the space and has benefited from this, they lack the innovation, functionality, and flexible pricing options that these other …
Chose Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a budget-friendly option for us because it has a free version. I know that the other social media management software is more powerful, but they are also a lot more expensive. We've used the free version and been happy with the benefits it can provide. It's also …
Chose Hootsuite
It's easier to work with, it's the one that's been around to my knowledge. I've used it in different companies because it's the one they [chose] to use before I arrived. It has great connectivity. It allows you to add different companies to one account. It allows you to invite …
Sprout Social
Chose Sprout Social
Sprout Social had a much better UI and also enabled us to scale. I liked the Sprout social platform due to the ease of use and adoption across our team. It seemed better fit for agency management. However, Hootsuite has improved their offering and with the change in social …
Chose Sprout Social
Sprout Social's hashtag trend identification and analysis capabilities, overall real-time analytics, and simple ramp-up were the major draws of the product for our team. By comparison, Hootsuite's column-oriented dashboard is the most customizable and optimal for seeing "the …
Chose Sprout Social
Sprout Social's power shines in reporting and analytics when compared to Hootsuite Enterprise. In a market that is filled with social media management platforms, Sprout Social was a breath of fresh air with its clean interface and easy to digest social media analytics graphs.
Chose Sprout Social
I didn't select Sprout. Clients selected it. I would recommend Buffer. I also wanted one client to evaluate AgoraPulse. I haven's used Hootsuite enough to know it would stack up. The primary reason the one client selected Sprout was for the approval ability. I definitely feel …
Chose Sprout Social
Personally, I found the interface for Hootsuite less user friendly, and felt Spout Social had a cleaner interface that was easier to use. Feature to feature, Hootsuite and Sprout were fairly comparable, but I found Sprout Social to be more affordable. Regarding publishing …
Chose Sprout Social
We found that Sprout had everything we wanted and at a good price, so we didn't really compare. We just knew that Hootsuite was not at all what we needed in anyway shape or form.
Chose Sprout Social
I've found that Sprout Social has more capabilities than other social platforms, and goes above and beyond in its functionality and support. I also think that Sprout Social has one of the cleanest, easy to use interfaces of all the social platforms. Hootsuite and TweetDeck, for …
Chose Sprout Social
I've used Hootsuite, which does not offer half as much functionality as Sprout Social, however it was more cost effective for my company's primary social channels and provided the base functionality I needed for automatically posting Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest …
Chose Sprout Social
We needed something more thorough than the free products we had tested (Hootsuite and TweetDeck), but the more robust products (Falcon) were out of our budget. Sprout hit the sweet spot of having everything we needed at the time for the right price.
Chose Sprout Social
We have used Hootsuite in the past and we prefer Sprout Social because it's easier to use, more intuitive and visually appealing, provides more robust analytics, and is better organized so we can find things more easily.
Chose Sprout Social
I haven't used Hootsuite in years. But we switched over because Hootsuite would allow you to schedule content in advance but you would still have to publish within an app on your phone. Sprout Social published on its own once schedule in the software. Sprout Social also offered …
Chose Sprout Social
Although the products are very similar, I've just found Sprout Social more intuitive to use. The dashboards they provide and how they've streamlined processes within the platform, prove for a very positive user experience for us. In my opinion, everything is simply laid out, …
Chose Sprout Social
Sprout Social is probably my top pick of the lot, mainly due to its simple navigation and content calendar. While some of the other platforms have more robust functionality and integrations, I've found I'm more comfortable using Sprout Social and would prefer a seamless user …
Chose Sprout Social
For the money, I have not found Sprout's equal. Admittedly no service is perfect, which is why your tech stack is in fact a stack. For the time it saves, the reports it generates, and the tabs it allows me to keep on an inordinately large competitive landscape, Sprout is and …
Chose Sprout Social
Sprout is more intuitive and it's more reliable.
Chose Sprout Social
Sprout is more user-friendly, covers more platforms, and is simple to navigate.
Chose Sprout Social
Though those were less expensive, they weren't nearly as easy or good as Sprout!
Chose Sprout Social
More features for the price point, easy to understand, always adding additional features, streamlined.
Chose Sprout Social
Sprout Social is easy to set up and use. It didn't take much time to get all of our marketing clients set up in the system, and it's an affordable social media management platform. Sprout allows us to manage multiple social media platforms for our clients and schedule their …
Chose Sprout Social
I've used many tools and this is one of the easiest. Very easy to set-up, pull reporting and get started. Others only have a boolean search which is very complicated. The pricing is reasonable and I highly recommend this product.
Chose Sprout Social
Sprout is more user-friendly and efficient at consolidating.
Chose Sprout Social
As a CMS, Sprout Social, in my opinion, is the best. Their customer service is terrific. Where they lose me is on price and the ability to add a number of users to the platform.
Chose Sprout Social
For my clients who are using Sprout Social over the other available options, it came down to ease of setup and use, the insane quality of customer support, their social reporting, and analysis, influencer identification, social measurement, and engagement, scheduling, and …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
HootsuiteSprout Social
Listening/monitoring
Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Hootsuite
7.6
262 Ratings
1% below category average
Sprout Social
7.1
53 Ratings
7% below category average
Boolean keyword searches7.4178 Ratings6.739 Ratings
Filtering out noise/spam7.0186 Ratings6.943 Ratings
Sentiment analysis7.4180 Ratings6.824 Ratings
Broad channel coverage8.3245 Ratings8.134 Ratings
Publishing
Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Hootsuite
8.3
368 Ratings
5% above category average
Sprout Social
4.9
57 Ratings
47% below category average
Content planning and scheduling8.9367 Ratings7.057 Ratings
Audience targeting8.1252 Ratings3.248 Ratings
Content optimization7.8300 Ratings3.749 Ratings
Workflow management8.2309 Ratings5.852 Ratings
Engagement
Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
Hootsuite
7.8
295 Ratings
3% below category average
Sprout Social
5.9
55 Ratings
31% below category average
Automated routing and prioritization7.7213 Ratings2.925 Ratings
Customer interaction histories7.6230 Ratings7.651 Ratings
Bulk actions8.0253 Ratings7.146 Ratings
Marketing
Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Hootsuite
7.4
285 Ratings
3% below category average
Sprout Social
4.8
39 Ratings
46% below category average
Lead generation6.6171 Ratings2.531 Ratings
Content marketing7.8255 Ratings3.135 Ratings
Paid media management7.5170 Ratings6.23 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions7.8218 Ratings7.24 Ratings
Channel coverage/integration
Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
Hootsuite
8.6
364 Ratings
1% above category average
Sprout Social
7.4
59 Ratings
14% below category average
Twitter8.9333 Ratings7.757 Ratings
Facebook9.1348 Ratings6.459 Ratings
LinkedIn8.7304 Ratings8.252 Ratings
Google+8.960 Ratings7.721 Ratings
Instagram8.6307 Ratings6.949 Ratings
Pinterest8.2158 Ratings7.214 Ratings
YouTube8.2145 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Reporting/analytics
Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
Hootsuite
7.8
292 Ratings
1% below category average
Sprout Social
5.8
58 Ratings
30% below category average
Campaign success analytics7.8268 Ratings4.354 Ratings
Real-time tracking7.9269 Ratings6.355 Ratings
Competitor analysis7.7182 Ratings6.847 Ratings
Account management
Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
Hootsuite
8.1
304 Ratings
1% below category average
Sprout Social
7.5
58 Ratings
8% below category average
Role-based user permissions & privileges8.4257 Ratings7.655 Ratings
Mobile access7.9282 Ratings7.551 Ratings
Best Alternatives
HootsuiteSprout Social
Small Businesses
Conte.ai
Conte.ai
Score 1.6 out of 10
Conte.ai
Conte.ai
Score 1.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.3 out of 10
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.3 out of 10
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
HootsuiteSprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(427 ratings)
7.4
(115 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.2
(89 ratings)
9.0
(62 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(65 ratings)
6.9
(42 ratings)
Availability
9.5
(21 ratings)
7.7
(8 ratings)
Performance
9.5
(19 ratings)
8.0
(7 ratings)
Support Rating
7.4
(264 ratings)
5.1
(37 ratings)
In-Person Training
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(17 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.1
(39 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Configurability
7.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.5
(3 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.3
(18 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
HootsuiteSprout Social
Likelihood to Recommend
Hootsuite
I really like that I can just go into hootsuite, connect all the our social channels and be able to have a great overview on what our social feeds look like. It's super handy not having to spend time going into each social platform to do the same post, and I can spend one day scheduling out that month's social plan. I much prefer sorting out boosting post from Hootsuite, the only downside is that they have a limit to what you can boost a month so a lot of the time I have to grin and bear it and use Meta Business Suite instead for boosting posts.
Read full review
Sprout Social
Sprout [Social] is great for small businesses, small agencies and those who need a platform but don't want to spend a fortune. If you need multiple user log-in's, the cost will add up. This is great to share a log-in for different people to use or add one or two users
Read full review
Pros
Hootsuite
  • Scheduling of content. The ease of use for Hootsuite's planner abilities is top of the industry. It is simple and effective in posting content to different channels and accounts.
  • Analytics are superior on Hootsuite. Their custom reports allow you to view very specific KPI's that you can adjust for each channel or account. The reports are also exportable to be used for others in the company.
  • Inbox management. The inbox manager is superior to any in the industry. Hootsuite allows you to tag certain phrases or keywords to better filter messages based on importance or topic.
Read full review
Sprout Social
  • The Landscape system that Sprout Social offers allows me to modify all the images that I want to publish on my social networks. This service allows me to modify the size of the image, add filters, modify the colors and much more, it is a very important tool to be able to have a better presentation of the images that we use in our publications on social networks.
  • It offers me a perfect statistical system where I can consult all kinds of movements that have occurred in all my social networks, I can see statistics individually or generally. The statistics allow me to see group reports, participation, information on audience movement on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and also allow me to view the activity that has occurred in my account.
  • Sprout Social allows me to view a record in real time that shows me all the movements that my social networks are having by my employees. As Director of the Marketing Sector, this is a very important role, as I can know what actions my employees are taking to improve marketing with social networks.
Read full review
Cons
Hootsuite
  • Because of the way algorithms works, we would have loved to be able to automate making a post with no link and posting the first comment with a link (hello LinkedIn)
  • We would have loved an easy way to post from a main account and repost the post for other accounts we administrate, for instance a corporate post reposted by individuals for LinkedIn, or retweets from one main account by child accounts
Read full review
Sprout Social
  • I'd love to see more robust tag reporting capabilities, but they mentioned that this is something in the pipeline for improvement.
  • I wish it was easier to batch content and shift it to approval or draft mode. Sometimes clients can change their mind and moving through each post individually can be a bit time consuming. This is a very minor thing.
  • I'd love to see more customization options come to its reporting feature so we can insert graphics. Currently it supports the insertion of text only.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Hootsuite
At this time we are satisfied that Hootsuite offers the most of what we are looking for at the most reasonable price point. As the social media landscape and monitoring/scheduling software changes, so do our needs. We re-evaluate our tools semi-annually or as new tools emerge onto the market. If we find at any point that we aren't gaining an advantage, then we are open to switching products.
Read full review
Sprout Social
While I am currently no longer working with the company in which I was employed and utilized Sprout Social, I do know that the company is still utilizing Sprout Social on a daily basis and I do not foresee a time when the subscription would be cancelled.
Read full review
Usability
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is probably the easiest to use social media scheduler of all the ones that I've used. It's been easy to teach clients how to use the software themselves and it can be accessed easily on anyone's phone through their mobile app. Highly recommend for anyone that wants a software that is easy to learn!
Read full review
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is extremely user-friendly. The publishing feature is easy to use, and provides previews of what your content will look like once posted. I also love the calendar view where you can view all posts you have scheduled for the month. The collaborative nature of the platform makes working directly in Sprout Social with clients a breeze, and we are seeing our content get approved much faster.
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Reliability and Availability
Hootsuite
Any outages are communicated in advance and have not been a problem. We let our clients know based on communications from HootSuite. Since we operate 24/7 with multiple shifts, planned outages can interfere with our operations, but we can always work around it.
Read full review
Sprout Social
Uptime was OK, but given the fact that we are in Europe, there were some specific problems: They tended to take the system down for maintenance during the night in the US, which was during our workday. This was definitely problematic and hard to explain to our clients.
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Performance
Hootsuite
Hootsuite makes passing on articles from the web very easy- when it works! I have had a number of gliches with Chrome where it does not open properly and the solution (after some toing and froing with support) was to uninstall and reinstall. The support staff are always very helpful (which is great!) but the gliches..... well, they suck when you are already busy!
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Sprout Social
It is quick to post, however you have to refresh the page every time you add a new scheduled item.
Read full review
Support Rating
Hootsuite
I can manage all of my accounts on one site! It's absolutely amazing!
The dashboard is helpful to see how you are doing as well. Still
getting to understand the analytics and may need to reach out for help
on this
Read full review
Sprout Social
Sprout Social's customer support is extremely prompt and always helpful. Not only do they provide quick and useful service, but the representatives follow up multiple times to ensure that the issue is fully address and/or completely resolved. The overall experience is exemplary; very few other companies provide comparable service.
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In-Person Training
Hootsuite
Very easy to teach and learn
Read full review
Sprout Social
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Hootsuite
The online training is decent; however, it takes a lot more time to search for answers to my questions. Having a training session with a live person was much more effective as they were able to quickly address the business needs I have.
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Sprout Social
Their training is good, but the promotion of it is even better. I don't need or have the time for training, but I was always happy to know it was there. They did a great job sending updates out and making me aware when there was a new feature that I may want training for. As for the training I never used it, so I can't comment on that
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Implementation Rating
Hootsuite
• Combination of vendor and internal. The vendor bumped up our account to the Enterprise version (quite simple and easy) and then set up our organization and team structure. We then had to log in and set up team members and assign members to social media accounts. This was pretty easy to do as they have a great user interface. We simply had to drag and drop people into the correct team giving them access to specific social media accounts.
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Sprout Social
Make sure you do it all the way. Do not break it into phases. Pour yourself a coffee, start it in the morning and you'll be done before you finish that coffee.
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Alternatives Considered
Hootsuite
Hootsuite's free account was sufficient for use on behalf of our client. When they restructured their pricing model and eliminated free and affordable subscriptions suitable for a small business, we found that Zoho Social was an excellent replacement. The interface was simpler and the pricing was affordable and suitable for a small business.
Read full review
Sprout Social
I used Buffer previous to Sprout Social for two years. It was a good solution as we were getting a handle on scheduling content. It was the first real tool we had for this. But we outgrew it and they began removing features that were critical to our workflow, such as the RSS Feed. While their 50% off policy for non-profits was very helpful, once we started adding up the cost to use features like Replies and Analytics, we discovered that our needs were simply too robust for Buffer to handle. Sprout Social was the solution suggested by all our peers and we've been very happy with it ever since.
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Scalability
Hootsuite
We are only using in marketing and have been able to scale.
Read full review
Sprout Social
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Hootsuite
  • I have been able to evaluate which posts, in general, do well and figure out what types of posts to make (content)
  • It's been harder however to compare on social medial platform compared to another because it's hard to duplicate a post with a new owly (I think you used to be able to) but more so, you also can't assign it a custom owly link so I can see at a glance which owly link was associated with what platform.
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Sprout Social
  • Sprout has given insights to lead our creative refreshes every quarter. As we have a healthy budget on paid social, it is crucial to understand the type of creative that works best.
  • Sprout has the ability to send notifications based on certain types of messages received. This is crucial for social media teams who don't have 24/7 coverage but need to be notified of urgent matters.
  • Sprout has saved me hours of time as I no longer pull analytics natively from each social platform. The generated reports give me a look at all of the platforms and can be customized.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Hootsuite Screenshots

Screenshot of Monitoring: Monitors social media profiles in one place and tracks the topics that matter to the brand.Screenshot of Publishing: Create, publish and schedule engaging posts across social channels.Screenshot of Customer Engagement: A consolidated stream of messages across networks that can be triaged and assigned to respond to customers faster. Provides optional chatbot handover for automated responses.Screenshot of Scheduling: Social content can be planned as a team with a shared calendar that features collaborative post drafts and built-in approval workflows.Screenshot of Analytics & Reporting: Measures the effectiveness of a social media strategy to help turn strategy into execution with meaningful and actionable insights. Reports can be customized and shared according to unique business goals and objectives.Screenshot of Best Time to Publish: Helps to find the best time to publish so posts are seen more often by fans and followers.

Sprout Social Screenshots

Screenshot of Sprout’s social media publishing tools, used to schedule and post messages to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn simultaneously from a single Compose window.