Hootsuite is a social media management platform for scheduling posts, answering messages from one inbox, listening to what people say about a brand and reporting on results. Every plan is priced per user and billed annually: Standard costs $99 a user a month for up to 10 social accounts, Professional $199 for unlimited accounts and automation, Advanced $399 for approvals and team routing, and Enterprise is custom. There is no free plan, only a 14-day free trial with posting limits. In June 2026 Hootsuite relaunched as Social OS, with an AI agent called Wisdom running across every plan.
Reviewed by EdGrows·Updated Sep 28, 2026This analysis is based on documentation, public user reports, and vendor materials — not yet on our own hands-on testing. How we rate
Hootsuite has been a staple of social media teams for years: one calendar to schedule posts across networks, one inbox for comments and messages, and reports that show what worked. On June 24, 2026 it reorganized that portfolio as Social OS, four products tied together by an AI agent.
Perch handles planning and publishing, Nest handles messaging and customer care, Parliament runs employee advocacy, and Lumen, built on Talkwalker, which Hootsuite acquired, does social listening and intelligence. Wisdom, the agent, drafts content, recommends what to post and analyzes results across all four, and new MCP connectors let outside AI tools pull Hootsuite data into other workflows. The homepage now greets visitors with a prompt box for generating content, brainstorming a strategy or tracking a trend.
Hootsuite's plans as shown to us in euros on September 28, 2026. US prices are in the table.
| Plan | Per user, per month (annual) | Social accounts | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $99 | Up to 10 | Unlimited scheduling, AI posts and images, unified inbox, brand and competitor monitoring |
| Professional | $199 | Unlimited | Automated inbox replies and workflows, trend forecasts up to 90 days, custom reports |
| Advanced | $399 | Unlimited | Content approvals, message assignment and routing, team performance |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | Advanced analytics, listening across social, digital and AI, SSO, compliance tools |
Prices exclude taxes. Every plan includes Wisdom; Standard, Professional and Advanced start with a free 14-day trial.
Because every seat costs the full plan price, the bill grows with the team, not with the work:
| Team | Plan | Yearly cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 person, a few brand accounts | Standard | $1,188 |
| 3 people, many accounts, automation | Professional | $7,164 |
| 5 people with approvals and routing | Advanced | $23,940 |
For a five-person team, the jump from Professional to Advanced alone costs $12,000 a year. It pays off when approvals and message routing prevent mistakes in a brand's public channels; it does not for a team that mostly schedules posts.
Hootsuite offers a free 14-day trial on Standard, Professional and Advanced, with no credit card and no commitment. Two limits make it a test drive rather than free usage: trial organizations can publish only 10 to 20 posts a day, depending on the plan, and bulk scheduling is switched off. Use the trial to connect your real accounts, route a week of messages through the inbox and build one report, which is where Hootsuite's value shows.
Scheduling is a commodity; plenty of cheaper tools do it well. Hootsuite's case rests on what sits around the calendar. The unified inbox lets a team answer comments and messages from every network in one queue, with routing and approvals on Advanced. Lumen, the Talkwalker-based listening product, tracks mentions of a brand and its competitors, with the broadest coverage of social, digital and AI sources on Enterprise. And Wisdom connects the pieces, suggesting posts based on what the listening data says.
If those capabilities matter, Professional and Advanced are reasonable for mid-sized brands and agencies. If they do not, most of the price is paying for features you will not open.
Buffer is the simplest and cheapest way to schedule posts for a creator or small business. Later focuses on visual planning for Instagram and TikTok. Metricool combines scheduling with analytics and competitor tracking at a low price. Vista Social offers inbox, scheduling and reporting for agencies at a fraction of Hootsuite's per-seat cost, and HubSpot bundles social publishing into its marketing suite for teams already on it.
On annual billing, Standard costs $99 per user a month, Professional $199 and Advanced $399; Enterprise is priced on request. Hootsuite shows prices in local currency, so European visitors see €99, €199 and €399. The published prices assume annual billing and exclude taxes.
No. Hootsuite sells only paid plans, each with a free 14-day trial that needs no credit card. Trial accounts can post only 10 to 20 times a day per organization, depending on the plan, and cannot bulk schedule, so the trial is for testing the workflow rather than running a full calendar.
Standard manages up to 10 social accounts. Professional, Advanced and Enterprise allow unlimited accounts. Hootsuite counts each profile or page, such as one Instagram account or one Facebook page, as a social account.
The June 2026 reorganization of Hootsuite into four connected products: Perch for planning and publishing, Nest for messaging and customer care, Parliament for employee advocacy and Lumen by Talkwalker for social listening and intelligence, with Wisdom as the AI layer across them.
When you manage more than 10 accounts, want automated inbox replies and workflows, or need custom reports and trend forecasts up to 90 days ahead. For one person scheduling posts to a handful of profiles, Standard is enough.
Collaboration controls: content review and approval, assigning and auto-routing messages to the right people, coordinating publishing with customer care and measuring team performance and response efficiency. It suits brands where several people publish and answer messages under one name.
For teams that need a shared inbox, approvals and listening, yes. For a creator or small business that mainly schedules posts, Buffer costs a fraction of the price and is simpler. Hootsuite's value rises with the number of people and accounts involved.
A data and outreach workbench for growth teams, priced on two meters: actions for platform work and data credits for the data you buy. Launch starts at $185.
The best backlink data in the industry, sold with a credit meter and single-seat plans that make the real cost hard to read.
The best fiction-tuned AI available, wrapped in a credit system that's genuinely hard to predict. Worth it if prose generation is your actual bottleneck.