Hootsuite dashboard with content calendar, analytics, social listening, and publishing features

Hootsuite vs. Later: Unlock limitless social growth with the best social media tool

Here at Hootsuite, we’ll never limit your growth. We don’t put a cap on how much you can post or enhance with AI. And our all-in-one platform lets you schedule, analyze, and grow all across social.

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Let’s compare the numbers.

2,300+

Hootsuite has 1,300 more five-star reviews than Later. Our customers love us, and the feeling’s mutual. 🥰

Source: G2

300

Later starts users with just 5 AI content creation credits. Hootsuite gives each user 300 credits that renew monthly.

Source: Hootsuite

100+

Hootsuite offers 100+ integrations, including Google Drive, Wrike, Monday.com, Salesforce, and more.

Source: Hootsuite

You get so much more with Hootsuite, plain and simple.

A unified social

media inbox

Boost engagement with a social media inbox that lets you respond to comments and messages in one place.

Unlimited AI and scheduling

Unlike Later, every Hootsuite plan includes unlimited post scheduling and AI content enhancements.

Deeper analytics that cover more

Unlike Later, Hootsuite tracks performance across all networks. Use analytics to monitor organic and paid social posts side by side.

Features that grow with you

Hootsuite is designed for brands of all sizes. Start with lightweight tools and a single user seat, then level up as you grow.

Feature	Hootsuite	Later

Post limit (per month)	Unlimited for all plans	Depends on the plan
Platforms

Scheduling, publishing, and content creation
AI caption generator	Yes, starts at 300 per month limit	Yes, starts at 5 per month limit
Unlimited AI caption enhancements (including fix spelling and grammar, optimize length, adjust tone, and inspire engagement)	Yes	No
AI hashtag suggestions	Yes	No
Recommended times to publish	Yes	Instagram and TikTok only
Free stock photos	Yes	No
Built-in Canva editor	Yes	No
Post templates for every network	Yes	No
Facebook ads	Yes	No
Instagram ads	Yes	No
LinkedIn ads	Yes	No
LinkedIn ads	Yes	No
Twitter (X) ads	Yes	No
X (Twitter) threads	Yes	No
Pinterest boards	Yes	No
YouTube videos	Yes	No
Google Business Profile Updates	Yes**	No
Facebook group posts	Yes	No
Meta Threads	Yes	No
Integrate with Bitly	Yes	No
Select target audience	Yes	No
Suspend scheduled posts	Yes	No
Alt text for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook	Yes	No
Calendar view	Yes	Yes
Instagram posts	Yes	Yes
Instagram carousels	Yes	Yes
Instagram Stories	Yes	Yes
Instagram Reels	Yes	Yes
Facebook posts	Yes	Yes
X (Twitter) posts	Yes	Yes
TikToks	Yes	Yes
LinkedIn page posts	Yes	Yes
LinkedIn personal profile posts	Yes	Yes
Pinterest Pins	Yes	Yes

Analytics and reporting
Analytics for
Recommended time to publish based on goal	Yes	No
Customizable reports	Yes	No
Paid and organic reporting	Yes	No
Competitive benchmarking	Yes	No
Social performance score	Yes	No
Report scheduling	Yes	No
White-label reports	Yes***	No
Add logo or image to report	Yes***	No
Channel analytics	Yes	No
Channel post performance	Yes	Up to 1 year
Web analytics integration	Yes*	No
Social ROI analysis	Yes*	No

Social listening
Social listening	Yes, in every plan	Yes (beta), geared towards enterprise businesses
Networks	30+ social networks*	Instagram and TikTok
Monitor mentions in images and videos	Yes*	No
Quick search	Yes	No
AI-powered summaries	Yes*	No
AI-powered sentiment analysis	Yes*	No
AI-powered peak detection	Yes*	No
AI-powered smart alerts	Yes*	No
News websites	Yes	No
Blogs	Yes	No
Forums	Yes	No
Review sites	Yes	No
Sentiment analysis	Yes	Yes
Trend search	Yes	Yes

Social media advertising
Social ads publishing and scheduling	Yes	No
Social ads analytics and reporting	Yes	No
Social ads campaign management	Yes	No
Multiple channels post boosting	Yes	No
Automatically boost posts	Yes	No

Employee advocacy
Employee advocacy	Yes*	No

Messaging and customer service
Inbox	Yes	Comments only
Message spike alerts	Yes*	No
Message prioritization	Yes*	No
Saved and suggested replies	Yes*	No
Business hours	Yes*	No
Message tags and topics	Yes*	No
Auto-resolve conversations	Yes*	No
Auto-responder	Yes*	No
Agent availability	Yes*	No
Team performance metrics	Yes*	No
Chatbot support	Yes*	No
Review management	Yes*	No
CRM integrations/API access	Yes*	No
CSAT surveys	Yes*	No
Custom inbox views	Yes***	No
Conversation and contact notes	Yes	No
Message masking	Yes	No
Cross-channel conversation history	Yes***	No
Data export	Yes***	No
Generative AI chatbot	Yes*	No
Salesforce integration	Yes*	No
Review moderation	Yes*	No
Assign messages to teammates	Yes	No
Agent collision avoidance	Yes	No
Chat with other agents	Yes	No
Skill-based routing	Yes***	No

Collaboration
Project management integrations	Yes	No
Assign posts to team members	Yes	No
Approval workflows	Yes***	No
Give feedback on drafts	Yes	No
Export content calendar for stakeholders	Yes	Instagram only
Roles and permissions	Yes	Yes

Shopping
Social commerce integrations	3, including support for Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce	1
Shoppable Instagram posts	Yes*	Yes

Integrations
App store	100+	Limited

Accessibility
Alt text for posts	Yes	No

Creator tools
Track influencer trends	Yes*	No
One centralized inbox to communicate with influencers across platforms	Yes	No

Content curation and user-generated content (UGC)
Manage Twitter lists	Yes	No
Collect the best customer content from social media and clear the rights	Yes**	No
Streams to follow and share relevant content	Yes	Yes
RSS Feeds	Yes**	No
WordPress integration	Yes	No
Canva	Yes	No

Compliance
Single sign-on	Yes*	Yes
Safeguards to prevent accidental publishing	Yes	No
Option to add publishing security with Proofpoint	Yes	No
Global publishing pause	Yes	No
Multi-factor authentication	Yes	Yes

Strategy guidance
In-app Social Score to help you improve in real-time	Yes	No
Link shortener	Yes	No
Webinars	Yes	Yes
Platform certification training	Yes	Yes

*available with add-on **available with integration ***enterprise only

Last updated Dec. 9, 2024

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What we do better

Looking for a Later alternative that does way more? Here are a few of the reasons savvy marketers choose Hootsuite over any other social media management tool, including Later.

Hootsuite social listening dashboard and quick search

Never miss a mention or an opportunity to engage

Every single Hootsuite plan includes social listening tools, while Later offers limited listening only for enterprise customers. With Hootsuite, you can track the latest trends, monitor mentions and keywords, and see exactly how people feel about your brand with sentiment analysis. Advanced AI tools even summarize complex results so you can turn insights into action faster.

Hootsuite paid ad content calendar and advertising features

Manage and improve your paid ad performance

With Hootsuite, you can manage, track, and schedule all kinds of social media posts, including paid ads. Identify which paid campaigns are working and why with in-depth paid social analytics, advanced targeting, and AI content creation. Schedule paid ads right alongside your organic posts and extend the reach of your top-performing organic content by boosting and auto-boosting right from the Hootsuite dashboard.

Hootsuite content calendar and best time to post tools

Dazzle your audience with better content creation tools

Take the dread out of crafting content with time-saving content creation tools you won’t find in Later. Design beautiful posts in seconds with Canva templates and free stock photos right in the window where you draft your content. Plus, write engaging captions fast with AI-powered tools, hashtag suggestions, and content ideas — all for free with your Hootsuite plan.

Save time and boost engagement with a better inbox

Hootsuite brings all your conversations — comments, mentions, and messages — into one inbox. Save time with an organized space for conversations across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and WhatsApp. Later only lets you reply to public TikTok and Instagram comments, not messages.

Delight your customers and reduce response time

Manage high volumes of customer inquiries with ease thanks to saved replies, agent chat, the ability to assign messages to other agents, and more. Enterprise customers can merge social with customer care with our generative AI chatbot and Salesforce integration add-ons.

Hootsuite is more advanced and more user-friendly than Later.

Andrea Hansgen

Artemis Center

Why Hootsuite?

Still considering other options? Visit our comparison pages to get feature-by-feature breakdowns — and see why Hootsuite wins every time.

Hootsuite vs. Sprout

Sprout is missing fundamental publishing features, like the ability to post to multiple networks at once and customize posts for each network. It’s also more expensive than Hootsuite.

Hootsuite vs. Sprout Social

Hootsuite vs. Buffer

Buffer has limited features compared to Hootsuite. For example, it doesn’t offer a universal inbox and you can’t use it to schedule or analyze paid content.

Hootsuite vs. Buffer

Hootsuite vs. Sprinklr

Sprinklr costs significantly more than Hootsuite. It also has limitations on publishing, exporting content calendars, and storing assets.

Hootsuite vs. Sprinklr Social

Frequently Asked Questions

Hootsuite is the clear winner in the battle of the best social media management tools. With Hootsuite, you'll only need a single tool to publish content across all channels. Post to all the main players plus YouTube, Pinterest, Google My Business, and more. Plus, unlike Later, Hootsuite offers analytics for LinkedIn and more in-depth analytics for Facebook.

Hootsuite is the best solution for social media managers dealing with overflowing inboxes. Save time and keep your audience happy by responding to comments and messages in one place. Content creation is superior on Hootsuite, too. Make better content faster with Canva, free stock photos, and trend discovery tools — all built into the product.

Last but not least: Hootsuite has way more integrations. Use it as your central marketing dashboard with all your most-used tools in one tab. Add Google My Business, Wrike, Monday.com, Slack, Google Drive, RSS feeds, and so much more.

Hootsuite makes the best employee advocacy tool. Hootsuite Amplify lets you grow your reach exponentially by setting up your employees to share relevant, on-brand content. This translates to a significant boost in revenue, reach, and employee engagement. Later does not offer an employee advocacy solution.

Learn more

Hootsuite is the best social media management solution for growing businesses. It lets you connect up to 50 social media accounts and schedule as many posts as you need. Most Later plans limit the number of posts you can publish each month.

All Hootsuite plans come with the basics you need to start growing your social media presence right out of the box. From the minute you connect your accounts, you get industry-leading analytics, social listening, messaging, and publishing tools.

Plus, Hootsuite has a whole suite of extra tools designed to help you go further as you grow.

Ramp up your efforts with social media listening, employee advocacy, advanced analytics, and advanced messaging add-ons.

Hootsuite makes the best social media inbox manager, hands down. It allows you to respond to public comments and private messages within a single inbox.

Save time, delight your customers, and deliver top-notch customer service with a unified inbox. Hootsuite lets you automate responses, assign messages to team members, and keep your inbox tidy.

With every single Hootsuite plan, you can reply to conversations across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Later’s limited inbox only lets you reply to Instagram and TikTok comments. It doesn't currently support private message replies on any network.

Plus, Hootsuite isn’t just a social media management platform. It’s also one of the best customer care tools for smart marketers.

As you grow, you can add Advanced Inbox, our Generative AI Chatbot, or Salesforce integration to turn your inbox into a full-fledged customer care tool.

Hootsuite is the best tool for enterprise businesses as well as small brands looking to save time and improve performance on social media. We’ve designed our plans to be infinitely scalable to your needs and the size of your team.

Why wait until later when you could start seeing results with Hootsuite right now?

Sign up for a free Hootsuite trial and get immediate access to next-level social listening, the deepest analytics, and AI content creation tools.

Start your free 30-day trialRequest a demo