Loomly vs. Hootsuite vs. Vista Social: Which SMM Platform is Right for You

Loomly vs. Hootsuite vs. Vista Social: which SMM platform deserves your money?

The internet is laden with social media management and marketing platforms that can do a bunch of neat stuff. 

Sure, most of their core features are similar, like scheduling content and audience engagement tracking. But when it comes to the implementation of those features and pricing, the differences are glaring enough for marketers to favor one particular platform.

In this post, we’ll compare three of the most popular social media platforms in the market. 

Apart from their social marketing features, we’ll also factor in their pricing plans, unique tools, and a few weaknesses.

Bottom line: Vista Social is the BEST in features and pricing

Whether you’re an established brand or still learning how to start a digital marketing agency with no experience, Vista Social is the clear choice if you need a sophisticated social media management platform that does it all for a fraction of the price.

Vista Social leads today’s SMM space in innovations.

We are the first to offer direct publishing to Instagram Reels, direct publishing to TikTok, and TikTok trending audio suggestions. 

Not only that, we are consistently hard at work to roll out new features described in our busy product roadmap.

Some of our most recent platform upgrades are: 

• Two-factor authentication. Use mobile authenticator apps to secure your social media management dashboard. 
• Direct publishing to Facebook reels. Schedule and auto-publish Facebook reels to leverage the power of short-form videos with wider general and target audiences.
• Manage your TikTok community. Automate post comments, enable or disable TikTok features, and manage TikTok conversations in one platform. 
• Publish Twitter threads. Schedule and publish a series of connected tweets as a thread by automating up to five comments. 
• Weekly and monthly email reports. Configure automated social media reports to send automatically on a weekly or monthly basis. 

Our platform also has automated post scheduling features, analytics, reporting, team collaboration tools, and a selection of other functionalities that make other SMM tools seem outrageously overpriced.

Overview: Loomly vs. Hootsuite vs. Vista Social

Bold prediction: this is NOT your first comparison or listicle about social media marketing tools. In fact, you probably already went through dozens of posts about Instagram tools, content planners, and whatnot. 

With all that being said, you’re probably familiar with how this goes. 

Before anything else, here’s a quick look at our top contenders: 

Loomly 

Loomly markets itself as a “brand success platform,” but it’s really all about social media management. It lets you schedule posts, manage your content assets, track social media analytics—pretty much everything you’ll find in a competitive social media marketing platform. 

Loomly Supported Platforms

• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Twitter
• YouTube
• TikTok
• Google Business Profile
• Snapchat

Hootsuite

Undeniably, Hootsuite is probably the oldest name in this post. It is a social media marketing platform that lets you manage every aspect of your campaign straight from your browser. 

Hootsuite Supported Social Media Platforms

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest

Vista Social

Last but definitely not least, Vista Social is a modern, user-friendly, and feature-packed social media management software. 

Regardless of company size, Vista Social is ALWAYS the most cost-effective way to manage and grow your social accounts.

You don’t need to pay for additional multiple users or higher-tier features. Even with the minimum amount required, most of our enterprise-level features are available right out of the box, including:

• Short-form video publishing
• Priority customer support
• Product and location tagging (where it’s supported)
• Audience targeting (where it’s supported)
• In-app image and video editing
• Font customizations
• Hashtag suggestions
• TikTok trending audio suggestions
• Automated comments
• Advanced and robust analytics (including competitor analysis)

Of course, you can also use Vista Social for all the basic stuff. Come up with post ideas, schedule multiple posts via an automated calendar, stay on track of social media messages, measure engagement metrics, and many more.

Vista Social Supported Social Media Platforms

• Facebook
• Google Business Profile
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Reddit
• Twitter
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• Bitly
• TrustPilot
• Yelp
• TripAdvisor
• OpenTable

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Social media marketing software features comparison

To kick things off, here’s a quick, side-by-side comparison of our contenders’ features. Take note that, for some features, we’re looking at the entry-level, standard plan of each platform. 

Looking at the basics, it’s clear that Vista Social provides the best bang for your buck. 

Not only does Vista Social offer everything at a ridiculously low starting price, it also allows access to unlimited users—for less than a tenth of what Loomly and Hootsuite charge.

That’s not even considering the advanced features Vista Social brings to the table, which we’ll discuss shortly.

Loomly pros and cons

Loomly is a popular Hootsuite alternative in terms of functionality. It even offers a few extra features that put it slightly ahead of Hootsuite. 

Loomly pros

• Good user experience: Use a single dashboard to quickly access Loomly’s advanced features. 
• Team workflows: Configure approval and content planning workflows for any digital marketing team structure.
• Post ideas and content library: Generate ideas for social media posts and manage assets in one place. 
• Hashtag suggestions: Spice up any post with hashtags on the fly using Loomly’s hashtag suggestions. 

Loomly cons

• No social media listening: Loomly doesn’t have a built-in listening tool for social media accounts. 
• No review management: You can’t use Loomly for anything outside of social media management. 
• No free plan: Although Loomly offers a time-limited trial, it doesn’t have a free plan you can use indefinitely. 

Hootsuite pros and cons

Hootsuite is a social media marketing platform with loyal customers consisting of agencies, social media managers, and individual brands. But in recent years, the platform started lagging behind new platforms in terms of innovative features. 

It does, however, come with essential features that still make it relevant. 

Hootsuite pros

• Third-party integrations: Thanks to Hootsuite’s age, it supports integrations with third-party service providers. 
• Employee advocacy tools: Hootsuite Amplify is a value-added service that consolidates employee advocacy efforts. 
• Hootsuite Impact: Measure the ROI of your social media campaigns using analytics. 
• Good customer support: Hootsuite offers multiple ways to contact and connect with them for support. 
• Recommended posting scheduling times: Hootsuite automatically presents the recommended posting times for social channels based on historical post performance and user engagement.

Hootsuite cons

• Expensive: The Hootsuite “Professional” plan, which is the standard plan, is already more expensive than other platforms.
• No team access for entry-level users : The standard plan is only good for one user and a limited number of social accounts. 
• No review management: Despite the high pricing, Hootsuite lacks in the reputation management department. 

Vista Social pros and cons  

Finally, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of Vista Social—the platform designed to disrupt the social media management market. It is designed for social media managers, marketing agencies, individual brands, and even regular users.

Backed by a talented and inventive development team, our platform is ahead of the SMM race with features like direct short-form video publishing, font customization, and trending audio suggestions.

Vista Social also supports the posting of different types of media, including images and videos. 

Vista Social pros

• Wide range of supported platforms: Vista Social supports several social networks (more than any other platform), including video-sharing sites like YouTube and review service sites like TrustPilot.
• Create posts in bulk: Quickly switch between creating posts for YouTube, Instagram, Facebook page, and everything in between while using the same editor.
• Most streamlined social media calendar to date: Schedule and track unlimited posts for all social profiles in one interactive calendar. 
• Manage reviews: Vista Social lets you manage and use customer reviews as user-generated content to enhance your content marketing. 
• Track tasks: Easily message members, approve posts, and assign flexible team tasks like brainstorming funny things to comment on Instagram and communicating with leads. 
• Extremely affordable: Pay only $39 per month to add 8 social media profiles, schedule unlimited posts, get 500 AI writing assistant credits, etc.
• Smart publishing: Automate content curation by specifying content sources and configuring distribution channels. 
• Hashtag suggestions: Generate popular and trending hashtag suggestions through the content publisher. 
• Direct posting to Instagram reels: Vista Social is one of the few social media management software that lets you post directly to Instagram reels. 
• Posting time suggestions: Vista Social shows you the optimal posting times for your client’s social channels by analyzing the performance of your previous posts.
• Priority customer support. Send your query and one of our product experts will assist you via live chat, video call including social media support.

Vista Social cons

• No ads manager: Vista Social’s current version doesn’t have advertising campaign management. 

Loomly vs. Hootsuite vs. Vista Social: Creating a Social Media Calendar

To help you observe these social media marketing software up close, here’s a walkthrough of their social media calendar planning process.

1. Loomly 

On the Loomly dashboard, click ‘Add New Calendar.’

Loomly calendars can be used per brand with one or more social media accounts. As an agency, the ideal route is to create one calendar per client.

The setup involves five steps: 

Step 1: Set the calendar details like the brand photo, time zone, and industry. 

Step 2: Connect the associated social media accounts.

Step 3: Build a calendar workflow (content editing and approval process).

Step 4: Set up an RSS feed for automatically importing content ideas. 

Step 5: Invite team members and assign their roles. 

On the calendar view, schedule posts by hovering over the correct data and clicking ‘Add Post.’

Create a “Quick Post” by simply adding a content publication’s subject and time. Or, click ‘Build Post’ to enter more details about your post.  

Use Loomly’s post ideas panel to get fresh ideas or use your own. You also have to complete the following steps to schedule your post:

Step 1: Specify the posting time, label, and subject (for internal tracking only).

Step 2: Select the social media channels you want to publish the post on.

Step 3: Write the default post caption and upload attachments (videos, photos, URL, etc.)

Step 4: Fine-tune the content for each social media channel.

Step 5: Choose what to do with the post (save draft, submit for approval, schedule, or publish immediately).

2. Hootsuite

Click ‘Planner’ in the Hootsuite main menu to view your content calendar.

To schedule a post, click on any available time slot and choose the content type you want to publish.

After selecting the post type, you’ll be taken to a streamlined post editor where you can add media, write a caption, choose hashtags, and more. 

Refer to the preview panel to see what your post will look like when published.

3. Vista Social

Go to ‘Calendar’ from the main Vista Social dashboard to view your content calendar. However, it’s recommended to create your automated posting times first to streamline the entire scheduling process. 

To do this, click ‘Settings’ and select ‘Publishing Settings.’ 

Under “Publishing Queues,” choose your entity and select the account you want to build an automated schedule for in the drop-down menu.

Going back to the calendar page, click ‘Publish’ in the upper-right corner and choose any of the following options:

• Publish a single post: Create a single post from scratch for specific social media channels.
• Bulk publishing/Find content: Import and schedule content from a CSV file, blog, news site, Instagram hashtag search results, Instagram user account, or other media sources.
• Smart publishing: Create an automated content curation tool to continuously import and schedule posts. 

Choosing ‘Publish a single post’ fires up Vista Social’s unified content editor. 

Here, you can select the profiles you want to use, write your post caption, import media, and more—all in one place. 

You also get to choose between saving your post as a draft, adding it to your automated posting queue, specifying a custom schedule, and publishing the content immediately.

Here are a few other cool things you can do with Vista Social’s top-tier post editor: 

• Publish Twitter threads. If you need more than Twitter’s 280-character limit, schedule them on Vista Social by stringing and scheduling a thread of up to six tweets. You don’t have to plan and schedule each thread tweet one by one. 
• TikTok trending audio suggestions. Make TikTok posts more discoverable with trending audio suggestions available right from the post editor. This option works well with our direct-to-TikTok video publishing features.
• Edit images and videos. Use the Canva integration to design and edit custom images, be it image quotes, photography, data visualizations, and so on. For in-app video editing, launch Vista Create from the post editor. 
• Font customization. Create attention-grabbing captions with Vista Social’s font customization tool. Combine different styles so the audience knows where to focus. 

Pricing: Loomly vs. Hootsuite vs. Vista Social

It’s true that every social media management platform has its own pros and cons. 

That brings us to another important factor to consider, especially if you’re searching for ways how to grow a digital marketing agency on a budget: the pricing. 

Looking for a free version?

Vista Social is the only platform on this list with a free version, making it an excellent choice for users who want to explore our tool before investing.

Loomly currently does not offer a free version. It does offer a 15-day free trial plan—no credit card required.

Hootsuite does not offer a free version, but you can start a 30-day free trial. However, you need to provide your billing information, be it your credit card details or PayPal account. 

Vista Social offers a free version for up to 1 user. You can add 3 social profiles and get access to key features such as post scheduling (15 posts per user monthly), conversation management via the social inbox, review monitoring for Facebook and Google My Business, and basic reporting.

Paid subscriptions

Hootsuite’s pricing plans:

• Professional: $99 per month
• Team: $249 per month
• Enterprise: Custom

Loomly’s pricing plans:

• Base: $32 per month
• Standard: $64 per month
• Advanced: $131 per month
• Premium: $277 per month
• Enterprise: Request a quote

Vista Social:

• Free
• Standard: $39 per month
• Professional: $79 per month
• Advanced: $149 per month
• Enterprise: $379 per month

Summary: Loomly vs. Hootsuite vs. Vista Social

In terms of features, pricing, and team collaboration, Vista Social is the clear winner. 

Vista Social does everything that heavy hitters in the market do. You can also access all of its features for a significantly cheaper price. 

You don’t need to break the bank to see these features for yourself. Get started today by creating your free account.