Comprehensive one-man team review of the most comprehensive social media tool available today!
April 04, 2016

Comprehensive one-man team review of the most comprehensive social media tool available today!

Ian Mayman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Hootsuite Pro

Overall Satisfaction with Hootsuite Pro

I have used Hootsuite Pro for several years as a sole trader mostly for the development of my brand on Twitter. Hootsuite has made it possible for me to go from a few thousand to hundred of thousands of genuine followers without me having to spend much time on it. All I do is create the tweets and then load them into Hootsuite for bulk scheduling, it takes seconds to schedule hundreds of tweets!
  • For me the best thing is bulk scheduling, it takes me just seconds every five or so days to schedule hundreds of tweets!
  • The reports feature allows me to create a regularly published report with various statistics on the health of my Twitter accounts. I can also use this feature to produce content for presentation or to provide to a client a record of the results being achieved.
  • The way updates can be viewed in columns is a great design. It is very customisable and means I can produce a page of columns displaying all mentions and comments, another for all scheduled tweets, one all private messages and many more options of what to have to display at a glance.
  • Something I have been critical of and requested a number of times a feature that existed years ago and was removed in a Hootsuite redesign, this feature was to enable bulk editing of common criteria of posts, such as where they are published and whether or not a notification is required. Such changes to scheduled posts must currently be done one at a time.
  • I am currently paying a discounted grandfathered price per month and in my opinion, it is a little high for anyone on a low income. I believe the starting price should be per month, this would encourage more to upgrade if they get just one of the key premium features, such as bulk scheduling (perhaps with a lower schedule limit of around 100 updates) or the analytics reports.
  • I have heard things here and there about forthcoming features such as Ads and Campaigns, these interest me, but I generally find training and support on how to use them could be better. There is "Hootsuite University" with it's certified training, but that I feel is overkill; a more basic and approachable level should be available, a "Hootsuite School" if you like.
  • Two big things premium features lacking from Hootsuite that are offered by other services: a recurring content schedule with content published at a user-defined frequency. Curated content suggested by HootSuite staff to users based on user-defined interests.
1 - For the most part, it is just me although I have connected my Hootsuite account to work with others before. My role in developing my brands is to organise my content then use Hootsuite to get that content out there quickly and efficiently. I like the way teams can be organised but these are features I have made little use of personally.
  • Financially Hootsuite has cost me money because I have not yet monetized my social media profiles, but in terms of influence and reaching a huge audience, Hootsuite has played an instrumental role in making it possible with a highly efficient system.
  • The efficiency of the bulk scheduling has saved me countless hours and I would never have developed my brand anywhere near as successfully without it.
  • While customer service is generally fantastic and very quick, I do feel like my feedback is not considered and while this is not a negative, it is not a positive either as the benefits of having features not used are not lost.
I have accounts with many different social media apps, but I choose Hootsuite Pro because I think it is the most comprehensive social media tool with a lot of the best features of many other apps such as saved Boolean searches, Ads and Campaigns, as well the core features of mentions and private messages. It doesn't have everything of course, but it has a lot of features and that makes it good value for money, and personally I am still learning about some of them as there are always more being added and improved. The number of features however is also a downside as many other online social media apps are more minimalist and easier to set up and customise.
I am giving Hootsuite Pro a rating of eight because it is generally a very good product, but could be better. Sometimes errors do occur but they are always fixed quickly and the Hootsuite team is always open and transparent about it. It isn't suitable for everyone but I think it can be a key social media tool for those working with social networks. I think it is most valuable to social media professionals because there are a lot of options and features likely to overwhelm inexperienced users wanting a more minimalist approach.

Hootsuite Feature Ratings

Boolean keyword searches
10
Filtering out noise/spam
10
Sentiment analysis
8
Broad channel coverage
8
Content planning and scheduling
9
Audience targeting
10
Content optimization
8
Workflow management
9
Automated routing and prioritization
8
Customer interaction histories
9
Bulk actions
8
Lead generation
8
Content marketing
6
Paid media management
8
Campaigns and promotions
9
Twitter
10
Facebook
10
LinkedIn
10
Google+
10
Instagram
10
Campaign success analytics
8
Real-time tracking
8
Competitor analysis
8
Role-based user permissions & privileges
9
Mobile access
8