Hootsuite is a social media management platform founded in Vancouver in 2008. It gathers post scheduling, a shared inbox, listening and analytics for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, Pinterest and YouTube, with the OwlyWriter AI assistant drafting captions along the way. It targets marketing teams, agencies and community managers. There is no free plan: after a 30-day trial, subscriptions start at $99 per seat per month, billed annually.
Hootsuite brings Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, Pinterest and YouTube into one dashboard, with a publishing calendar, a team inbox and performance reports. Monday morning, you line up the week: every post slides onto its slot across all accounts, and replies land in a single queue instead of five separate apps.
The Talkwalker acquisition in 2024 beefed up the listening side: brand monitoring, conversation analysis, competitor benchmarks. In 2025, G2 ranked the platform first in its category, a solid run for one of the oldest names among AI assistants for social media.
OwlyWriter AI, launched in April 2023, writes captions from a prompt, a link or a plain topic, then sends them straight to the scheduler. Since 2025, OwlyGPT rounds it off: it studies your past posts to match your tone and can generate images, a feature still in beta (the holiday post generator, frankly, rescues a few Sunday evenings).
Here is what each mode asks for, and what it hands back.
| Feature | You provide | You get back |
|---|---|---|
| Caption writing | A prompt and a tone | Several variations ready to schedule |
| Post from a link | An article URL | A summary sized for the chosen network |
| Idea generation | A topic or keyword | A list of post angles to explore |
| Repurposing | Your top-performing posts | Fresh rewrites ready to publish again |
Three plans exist, billed annually: Standard at $99 per seat per month, Advanced at $249, Enterprise on quote. The old free tier is gone, replaced by a 30-day trial. Every extra seat costs full price, worth budgeting before onboarding a whole team. These figures shift often, so treat the official pricing page as the final word.
No, Hootsuite no longer has a free plan. You can test the platform for 30 days, then the Standard subscription starts at $99 per seat per month, billed annually. The old free tier with three social accounts was removed, so smaller budgets should make the most of the trial before committing.
Buffer bills per channel and suits freelancers who mostly publish, while Hootsuite bills per seat and adds social listening, a team inbox and approval workflows. Agencies and teams running several brands get more value from the wider platform, since Hootsuite can replace several separate tools at once.
Google Business Profile is not among the networks Hootsuite supports. The platform covers Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, Pinterest and YouTube. To keep a Google listing active, you will have to go through Google's own interface or add a dedicated companion tool.
OwlyWriter AI comes with Hootsuite's paid plans at no announced extra cost. The assistant opens from the Create button in the dashboard and feeds the scheduler directly. OwlyGPT, added in 2025, draws on your past publications to match the tone of whatever it writes for you.
Verdict: Seven networks covered, social listening thrown in: agencies and multi-brand marketing teams gain a true command post, while a freelancer with two accounts should let the 30-day trial settle the question.
