Best Social Media Marketing Software Compared

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Social media marketing software helps you scale, manage, and monitor your business’s online presence and social media efforts across different platforms. After reviewing dozens of social media marketing software, from management solutions to schedulers, we determined that Hootsuite is the best option for most users. Hootsuite is an extensive, all-in-one social media management software that will transform your social strategy and grow your following with ease. 

The Best Social Media Marketing Software for Most 

Hootsuite is a global leader in social media management with over 18 million users, proving that it’s a trusted software for social media connection and growth. Hootsuite lets you maximize your social media potential with its robust suite of powerful tools in ads, ROI, insights, and reach. 

Hootsuite also prides itself on helping big-name brands like Georgia State University, Allianz, and Dominos manage their social media platforms—making it a suitable software for both small and large teams. 

The best part? Hootsuite comes with a free plan that offers basic features for anyone learning the ropes of social media marketing.

The Best Social Media Marketing Software to Consider 

1. Hootsuite – Best for most 
2. Sprout Social – Best for identifying trends
3. Agorapulse – Best for unified messaging
4. ContentCal – Best for businesses with over 50 channels
5. Eclincher – Best for team collaboration

When It Makes Sense to Invest Into Social Media Marketing Software

The main reason to invest in social media marketing software is if your current social strategies aren’t working. If your content is unorganized, inconsistent, and time-consuming, marketing software can help you stay organized and on schedule–and if you just aren’t getting the results you want, software can help you evaluate, test, strategize, and adapt your social media efforts to improve those results.  

Another reason to invest is if you’re looking at using social media to meet specific goals around boosting your brand’s awareness, increasing site traffic, or selling products and services. Marketing software will help you refine these goals by offering content calendars, image assets, automated campaign management, and advanced analytics–all of which help you move closer to your specific goals. 

Social media marketing software can also be a huge help if your business is scaling up. Whether that means expanding enough that you don’t have the bandwidth to handle the social media work yourself anymore, growing to where you need multiple social campaigns running concurrently, or adding one or more new social platforms to your marketing strategy, marketing software can take the burden of managing your social media expansion off your plate–while also supporting a variety of growth efforts. 

#1 – Hootsuite – The Best Social Media Marketing Software for Most 

Hootsuite is the best social media marketing software for most because it has excellent value for money. You can create, share, and manage your content all from one easy-to-use platform. 

Whether you’re a professional social media expert, a marketer from a small team, or an owner of a large business, Hootsuite will maximize your social media potential. It supplies you with everything you need to manage all your socials in one place. 

If you want to plan, create, and publish on-brand content seamlessly across multiple social channels at once, then Hootsuite has got you covered. With its simplified calendar view, you can plan your posts with ease by mapping out campaigns, filling out content gaps, and collaborating in real-time. 

The best part about Hootsuite is how advanced its monitoring tools are. You can set up custom streams that allow you to focus on essential topics, trends, and social profiles, to see what’s going on in a simple column view. 

You also get real-time monitoring and audience insights to gain an instant overview of online conversations about your brand. Hootsuite lets you search for any topic or keyword and filter them by date, time, or location. 

Hootsuite also lets you identify thought leaders, understand your brand’s perception, and get immediate alerts if your mentions increase. It lets you publish, engage, advertise, and analyze content for multiple social channels, among a variety of distinct features, including: 

• Monitor and manage incoming messages 
• Analyze your performance with a 360-degree view 
• Mobile marketing with iOS and Android apps
• Collaborate with your team 
• Create and launch ad campaigns 

Hootsuite offers five plans with a bunch of excellent features and a flexible range of social accounts.

• Free: Free forever with two social accounts, five scheduled posts, and self-serve support
• Professional: $49 per month for one user and 10 social accounts 
• Team: $129 per month for three users and 20 social accounts 
• Business: $599 per month for up to 10 users and 35 social accounts
• Enterprise: Custom solutions for unlimited users and 50 social accounts 

The Professional and Team pricing plans come with a 30-day free trial. And you can request a demo for both the Business and Enterprise pricing plans. Visit Hootsuite to get started or request your free demo today.

#2 – Sprout Social – The Best Social Media Marketing Software for Identifying Trends 

Sprout Social will change the way you do business with its powerful social listening tool, allowing you to uncover trends and actionable insights from social data. Sprout Social is a leader in usability and user adoption, making it an easy software to help you inform both your brand and business strategy. 

Sprout Social is another all-in-one platform focusing on social media management and audience analytics. It lets you put your audience first by creating easy-to-view data that shows you what content is doing well and why, all in real-time.

With Sprout Social, you can begin to understand your audience by using its advanced listening tool that offers unique features. With the listening tool, you get to learn about conversations the public are having about your brand while also making sure you’re dominating the share of voice in your industry. 

You can seamlessly integrate the Sprout Social listening tool into your business strategy with its user-friendly platform. You can then find valuable intelligence by utilizing specific industry, brand, and competitive insights to better understand consumer sentiment and brand health. 

Sprout Social lets you identify trends, influencers, and thought leaders to engage as brand advocates through a column-based board for easy viewing. You can also gather honest feedback to generate new content ideas.

Sprout Social uses real-time monitoring in the form of graphs, tables, and charts to show you social data that will help you distinguish your unique brand voice. With real-time monitoring, you can discover how consumers feel about your competitors, identify industry gaps, and leverage opportunities. 

Just like big-name brands such as Ticketmaster, Subaru, and Cinnabon, you will benefit from other Sprout Social features, including:

• Enhance social posts with multimedia assets 
• Dedicated training and customer support 
• Increase productivity with collaboration tools 
• Message spike alerts 
• Real-time monitoring alerts through the mobile app 

Sprout Social offers three pricing plans built to scale. You can purchase additional profiles for a nominal fee without upgrading to a higher pricing plan. 

• Standard: $249 per user, per month with five social profiles 
• Professional: $399 per user, per month with unlimited social profiles 
• Advanced: $499 per user, per month with unlimited social profiles 

You can try Sprout Social for free with a 30-day trial and request a demo of both the Professional and Advanced pricing plans. 

#3 – Agorapulse – The Best Social Media Marketing Software for Unified Messaging

If you’re looking for a social media marketing software that lets you manage and respond to all your incoming messages in one place, Agorapulse is an excellent choice. Having an unorganized and cluttered inbox is a non-existent issue with Agorapulse, as it uses state-of-the-art technology to conquer the chaos in your inbox.

Agorapulse is popular marketing software for many reasons, but its all-in-one messaging portal takes this software to the next level. You can organize, manage, assign, and label all inbox conversations for easy sharing and ultimate convenience. 

Agorapulse lets you create a more personable experience with your followers, as you can see the sender’s name and profile with every comment. You have the option to add labels to categorize users and internal notes to give your team context before they contact customers. 

You can also manage and synchronize all Facebook and Instagram ad comments and receive stats in chronological order for easy real-time monitoring. The synchronization feature makes Agorapulse the first marketing tool to collect 100% of your ad comments—making sure negative comments do not hinder your ad performance. 

The best part about the unified messaging portal from Agorapulse is that you can complete multiple tasks and enjoy inbox-clearing tools, all from a mobile app, too. You get access to inbox filters, saved replies, bulk actions, one-click translations, and team assignments on its iOS and Android app, no matter which plan you choose. 

Agorapulse lets you have meaningful conversations, as its inbox feature captures organic and paid comments, mentions, and private messages that you can review chronologically. You also receive the benefits from the “Inbox Assistant,” which organizes your inbox automatically. 

Alongside the features of unified messaging, you will receive other standard features like: 

• Real-time collaboration tools
• Manage and publish from your mobile 
• Intuitive publishing 
• Insightful analytics 
• 24/7 customer support (96% user satisfaction score)

Agorapulse offers three pricing plans for small teams, agencies, and large enterprises. For the Premium plan, you can purchase additional social profiles for $40 each (up to 40) and additional users for $30 each (up to eight). 

• Pro: $79 per month, billed at $948 per year for two users and 10 social profiles
• Premium: $159 per month, billed at $1,908 per year for four users and 25 social profiles
• Enterprise: Custom for over eight users and 40+ social profiles 

You can try Agorapulse for free with a 30-day trial and request a demo for both the Premium and Enterprise pricing plans. 

#4 – ContentCal – The Best Social Media Marketing Software for Businesses With Over 50 Channels 

ContentCal is an excellent social media marketing software for large-scale and enterprise-level businesses because of its flexibility with custom channels. The software focuses on larger teams looking for a suitable tool that won’t put them out of pocket. 

A lot of marketing software offers pricing plans with a dedicated amount of social profiles, which usually goes up to 20-40. But what about large teams that manage multiple clients? What if you have more than 50 channels to monitor? 

That’s where ContentCal comes in. ContentCal is a simple and intuitive marketing tool that will help you manage a high volume of channels with ease. With its Premium Custom, Enterprise Custom, and Agency plans, you can completely customize how many social profiles you need. 

With ContentCal, you can choose to connect up to 100 social profiles to your Agency plan before needing to upgrade. Customizable pricing plans are excellent for growing, large, and enterprise-level businesses that need additional profiles. 

ContentCal allows you to connect a higher volume of social profiles to your account but also supplies you with the tools and integrations you would need to manage these profiles. It allows your team to collaborate and publish content while still being in control of the overall plan. 

You get access to onboarding and a dedicated account manager to make things simple and organized. ContentCal also lets you assign permissions and access levels, so users in larger teams know their role. 

With ContentCal, you get fun and extensive features like: 

• Publish content across multiple channels 
• “Contributions” forms to collect ideas and feedback 
• Over 2,000 integrations 
• Publish Instagram-specific content via the mobile app 
• Create template posts 

ContentCal offers six pricing plans for individuals to enterprise-level businesses. 

• Hobbyist: Free for one user, four social profiles, one calendar, and 10 posts per month
• Pro: $17 per month, billed at $204 per year with one user, one calendar, and four social profiles 
• Company: $47 per month, billed at $564 per year with two users, two calendars, and eight social profiles 
• Premium Custom: From 3 to 10 users and calendars with custom social profiles 
• Enterprise Custom: From 10+ users and calendars with custom social profiles 
• Agency: Custom pricing for up to 100 social profiles 

ContentCal offers a 14-day free trial on all plans, with no credit card required. Start your free trial here. 

#5 – Eclincher – The Best Social Media Marketing Software for Team Collaboration

Team collaboration is essential to save time and make sure everyone is on the same page, which is especially important for remote teams. With Eclincher, you can have the team collaboration of your dreams with its seamless transitions and approval workflow features. 

You never have to cross wires with team and client collaboration again with Eclincher. It separates boards for external and internal clients, which will help you manage your collaboration efforts easier.

With Eclincher, you can tag and assign messages as tasks, add notes, and view log history for a simple overview of your content schedule and team members. You can also manage content and collaborate with members by using drafts, comments, and real-time notifications.

The best element of Eclincher is its visual calendar, which helps with team collaboration immensely. With its visual calendar, you can cross-network social publishing, editing, and filtering, so every team member can view what you do. 

Eclincher offers a drag-and-drop functionality so you can visually plan your posts on the calendar easily with other team members at the same time. You can also decide to color-code, edit, reuse, and delete content from the calendar to improve collaboration workflow. 

Another prominent feature that ties into effortless team collaboration is Eclincher’s mobile app. You can publish, manage, and send messages via the iOS, Android, or desktop app. The app also offers management support, analytics, and now supports Instagram carousels and video functions.

Some other helpful features of Eclincher include: 

• Auto-post smart queues
• Automate posting with RSS feeds
• Analytics dashboard 
• Reputation management 
• Link shortener and tracking

Eclincher offers three pricing plans, including:

• Basic: $59 per month for one user and 10 social profiles 
• Premier: $119 per month for three users and 20 social profiles
• Agency: $219 per month for six users and 40 social profiles 

Eclincher offers a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.

Methodology for Choosing the Best Social Media Marketing Software 

There are a few factors that go into finding the best social media marketing software. Sometimes it’s difficult to choose the right software when you don’t know what elements to consider. So we put together this methodology of the top three most important elements that factor into buying a good social media marketing software. 

Number of Social Profiles

It’s important to consider the number of social profiles you need before committing to social media marketing software. The amount is important because each marketing software will have different minimum and maximum amounts of social profiles you can have. 

A lot of software will also charge you an additional fee to add extra social profiles, so it’s best to find a product that will grow with your business. Hootsuite and ContentCal are excellent examples of software that scale to the size of your business, as Hootsuite offers a maximum of 50 profiles and ContentCal offers over 100 at no additional cost. 

Mobile Marketing

Most people use their mobile phones to publish on their social platforms. So it only makes sense that a social media marketing software would offer mobile marketing. Whether it be for iOS or Android, it’s essential to have a mobile app for functionality. 

Mobile marketing is important because some social media API doesn’t allow you to publish content via a desktop. All the software listed here offers some form of mobile marketing, but Agorapulse and Eclincher really focus on the specific tasks you can achieve with their mobile apps, such as unified messaging and management support. 

Real-Time Monitoring

For social media marketing software, in particular, real-time monitoring refers to the data and analytics you get access to. Some software gives you access to monthly or bi-weekly reports, but it’s important to find software that will monitor and send you data in real-time. 

Sprout Social does real-time monitoring exceptionally well by providing its users with up-to-date data. You receive graphs, charts, and tables that you can access at any time, which is exactly what you should look for in any marketing software. 

Summary 

Overall, Hootsuite is our top recommendation as to the best social media marketing software for most users on the market.

It has a decent free plan alongside valuable and affordable paid plans that offer a range of features and flexible social accounts. Hootsuite users get to create and publish on-brand content from an all-in-one platform, with real-time monitoring and audience insights. 

Before purchasing, remember to consider factors like the number of social profiles, mobile marketing, and real-time monitoring. Whichever product you choose, a social media marketing software will take your marketing strategies from good to great.