Product Comparison: Vista Social vs. Hootsuite

As a social media manager you have many choices when it comes to a social media management platform. Picking the best social media management platform is quite difficult as all platform come with lots and lots of features, they look quite different and all claim to be the best. If you are a user of Hootsuite social media management platform or if you are thinking of using it, Vista Social is not just a great Hootsuite alternative but is also a more powerful one while costing a fraction of what Hootsuite will cost you.

We’ve decided to create a series of articles that compare Vista Social to all leading social media management solution and do so objectively. You may have read similar articles and it is quite easy to tell that the objectivity is lacking in most of them. To be objective we have spent good amount of time understanding Hootsuite, one of our team members even went as far as paying for Hootsuite for a few weeks to give it a thorough spin.

Hootsuite is certainly one of the top tools that social media managers use on a daily basis. Built over 14 years ago it has significant adoption. If, however, you dig a little deeper you will quickly realize the following: Hootsuite is certainly not the most advanced, fast or inexpensive platform out there. In this article we compare Vista Social to Hootsuite and not only make a case for Vista Social as a Hootsuite alternative but I think we will make it very clear that switching to Vista Social from Hootsuite is a no brainer.

As we compare Vista Social and Hootsuite we will do so by focusing on the following:

• General aspects of the platform such as support social networks.
• Scheduling features as this is the most important aspect of any social media management platform.
• Inbox and ability to respond/engage with followers.
• Reports and analytics – types of available reports, ability to customize and automate them.
• Pricing. We will break down the true cost of ownership for both platform.

Before we get started we should say that Vista Social and Hootsuite have many features in common: both platforms allow users to schedule content, respond to conversations from inbox and run reports. In this article, however, our focus is on important features that social media manager can’t really do their job well that are offered by Vista Social and not available in Hootsuite

Account setup

Vista Social	Hootsuite
Free account offers 3 social profiles, 1 user and all features	Free account offers 2 social profiles, 1 use, very limited features and only 5 posts per month
No credit card required for paid plan trial	Credit card is required to try paid plans

Supported networks

Vista Social and Hootsuite offer support for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter. Vista Social however goes a few steps further by also supporting:

Network	Vista Social	Hootsuite
Facebook groups	Yes	No
Google business	Yes	No
Pinterest	Yes	Limited
Reddit	Yes	No
TikTok	Yes	No

Content scheduling

Vista Social and Hootsuite offer plenty of options to schedule content to multiple social profiles at once. The few key advantage of Vista Social that we have listed below can generally be summarized as follows: Vista Social offers more through, more detailed support for various network features (i.e. organic targeting, tagging of users in photos, etc), more power features like bulk publisher and support for more platforms to publish to (i.e. Pinterest, Reddit, TikTok)

	Vista Social	Hootsuite
Post previews for each profile	Yes	No
Instagram grid preview	Yes	No
Tagging of users in photos	Yes	No
Organic post targeting	Yes	No
Post first comment and like	Yes	No
Bulk schedule with rss and csv	Yes	No
Smart auto publishing	Yes	No
Post queues	Yes	No
Post labels	Yes	No
Hashtag templates	Yes	No

Reporting and analytics

Analytics and reporting is not a side bar in Vista Social, it is the endgame! All plans that we offer has access to all reporting features that is easy to follow, easy to understand and easy to present. All Vista Social users have unlimited reports, ability to customize and automate report delivery. This is in sharp contrast to Hootsuite that offers very limited reporting to lower paying customers and limited flexibility when it comes to customizing the reports.

	Vista Social	Hootsuite
Save customize reports	Yes	No
Include cover letters	Yes	No
White label	Yes	No
Competitor reports	Yes	No
Unlimited reports	Yes	No*

* Depends on your Hootsuite plan

Inbox

Both Vista Social and Hootsuite offer an inbox feature that enables users to respond to incoming messages across social profiles. There are several features that Vista Social offers that will take you beyond Hootsuite.

	Vista Social	Hootsuite
Instagram messages	Yes	No
YouTube comments	Yes	No
Internal notes	Yes	No
Assign messages	Yes	No
Engagement options	Yes	No

Review management

This is something that Vista Social offers and Hootsuite does not. Vista Social users are able to track and manage reviews on Facebook, Google Business, Yelp, TripAdvisor, TrustPilot and Opentable.

	Vista Social	Hootsuite
Facebook reviews	Yes	No
Google business	Yes	No
Opentable reviews	Yes	No
Yelp reviews	Yes	No
TripAdvisor reviews	Yes	No
Trustpilot reviews	Yes	No

Pricing

Vista Social offers countless features beyond Hootsuite’s offering to give your brand or agency the ability to scale your work and achieve even higher results.  As you are looking for a Hootsuite alternative it is also important to realize that Vista Social will cost a fraction of what Hootsuite will cost you.

Understanding the TRUE cost of a social media management platform can be confusing. Vista Social makes it super simple by having 1 (yes ONE) plan. Other tools offer a multitude of plans that differ in price and features.

We’ve decided to showcase the cost difference between Vista Social and HootSuite by creating a few example scenarios of what your team may need.

These pricing examples are created using Vista Social pricing and Hootsuite pricing page that you can visit as well.

Just you, managing 3 profiles or less?

Vista Social is free with all of its features!
Hootsuite will run you $49/month (no team management, no tasks system, no 24/7 support) 

Just you, managing 5 social profiles?

Vista Social will cost you just $15/month with all features.
Hootsuite will run you $49/month (no team management, no tasks system, no 24/7 support)

Team of 3, managing 20 profiles?

Vista Social will cost you just $60/month with all features.
Hootsuite will run you $189/month (to publication workflows, no team permissions, no 24/7 support)

Team of 5, managing 35 profiles?

Vista Social will cost you just $105/month with all features.
Hootsuite will run you $739/month (no team permissions)

Larger team and more than 35 profiles?

If you manage more than 35 profiles and/or have more than 5 team members, your cost for Vista Social will remained balanced – simply multiple number of profiles under management by $3/month. Your cost of Hootsuite will be in the thousands. We wish we were making this up. We aren’t – just check out their pricing.

Social media management should not be expensive

Social media management platforms should not be as expensive as they have become. Most of these price increases are from few big tools cornering the market, locking users into long term contracts and misleading them on features by charges for countless addons.

We made it our mission to keep our product affordable and pricing simple. This is why Vista Social simply offers 2 plans: free plan for those just getting started on social media and a paid plan for folks that are needing social media management for managing their brands or clients.

Vista Social pricing is simple – you pay on the basis of how many profiles you manage. That’s it. You get all the features and it does not matter how many team members you have. 

There are no gotchas, no add-ons, no ‘premium’ services. Both plans that we offer have the same features.

All of our users have the same, fanatical, 24/7 customer service with limitless ability to always get on a screen sharing session with our support team.

Why Vista Social?

Vista Social is not just a tool that does scheduling really well, or reporting or listening. Our mission to have every tool that a social media manager needs. This means that our relentless pursuit of becoming better and better will continue to add to our already obvious advantage over our competitors both in terms of features and pricing. Not only is Vista Social a great Hootsuite alternative, I think putting the two products in the same category will not do justice to all the features Vista Social offers to its customers and the amount of care we take of our users and their feedback.

Vista Social is a Hootsuite alternative

We hope that you are already seeing that while Vista Social is a great Hootsuite alternative it is by far a more powerful, more modern and more affordable tool.

If you found that Vista Social is a great alternative to Hootsuite – getting started is very simple. Head over to our home page and click on ‘Get Started Now’.

Not ready to switch yet?

We get it, these decisions are not that simple. If you like, we can schedule a screens sharing session with you and your team. Please pick the time that works for you from our calendar.