Are you struggling to choose the best social media management tool for your business?
Since there are so many options to choose from, it can be a bit daunting to find the one that gives the significant value indeed.
In case you are one of the readers, then most probably you have heard of Hootsuite- but in the case of its pricing and plans in 2025.
The fact is that social media management is one of the most important things you need to perform for your brand to be recognized, achieve customer satisfaction, and stay competitive.
On the other hand, you might be asking yourself, “Is Hootsuite the right choice for me, or am I just throwing money away on something I don’t need?”
The first thing is to decode it. In this case, we will carefully scrutinize Hootsuite’s pricing, its features, and if they are genuine or top-notch.
At the end of the day, you will have a clear viewpoint on whether this will suit the kind of user you are and will fit your budget perfectly.

Ready to Boost Your Social Media Management Without Breaking the Bank?
Make the switch to Social Champ and unlock the smarter way to grow your social media. Try it now!
Short Summary
- Hootsuite has significantly raised its pricing, leaving many users frustrated.
- The new pricing model no longer offers a free plan.
- The monthly billing option for Hootsuite’s plan is hidden, and prices are higher than expected once.
- Hootsuite’s lack of a free plan and significant price hikes have led many users to seek alternatives.
- Social Champ offers a free plan with premium features and no hidden charges, unlike Hootsuite’s new pricing structure.
- Social Champ’s plans are more affordable, with the Champion plan offering more value for less money than Hootsuite’s Professional plan.
Old vs New Hootsuite Pricing: Key Differences You Should Know in 2025
So here is the main thing!
The rage over discontinuing or changing the free plan is entirely justified.
Hootsuite has increased its pricing, leaving us all speechless.
Now, first things first. Hootsuite only shows the annual pricing of all plans, so you have to contact support if you want to get billed monthly.
Hootsuite has three different pricing plans and no free plan.
The three plans are Professional, Team, and Enterprise.
This is the old pricing plan!


The asterisk states, “All the prices displayed are in USD, based on annual billing.”
And this is their latest pricing plan:

On top of all this, you need to pay tax as well.
You are under the false pretense that your plan will cost around $99 per month, but it will actually cost you more.
This means that all plans are more expensive if you get the monthly ones.
No toggle bars or action buttons on the Hootsuite pricing page will show you the monthly price. It will only show when you sign up!
Furthermore, the prices have taken a whopping hit of more than 40% increase!
Holy crap, @hootsuite just sent me an email informing me that they're more than DOUBLING the price of their professional plan, going from $241 to more than $588. I've never seen a price increase this large for a service. pic.twitter.com/PzbdiBU8jy
— Simon Owens (@simonowens) January 18, 2022
Check your subscriptions! My @hootsuite account went from $6 to $75/month mid year! Talk about inflation!! This decade long customer is OUT! Can anyone suggest an alternative?? #whysomuch #inflation
— Denise Hoyle (@sdenise) January 6, 2022
And their free plan has changed into the professional one, so what you were getting for free is now $99!
So how much does the Team plan cost now?
The business plan has 20 accounts, three users, and unlimited scheduling, which is actually not that much.
Many other social media management tools offer the same for a much lesser cost!
The team plan at Hootsuite costs $249 per month if you get it annually!
Why Has Hootsuite Increased Its Pricing?
So there is obviously no explanation for such a big change in the Hootsuite pricing plans, and there has been no formal statement by any spokesperson.
Therefore, there is no way to tell why they actually did that. I mean, it did make their customers furious, so maybe they were going for negative marketing?
But, it looks like their old customers weren’t too happy with it:

The comments were also brutal.

Not going to lie; if they were going for that, they did actually succeed.
Numerous articles, tweets, Facebook posts, and more talk about the sudden jump in these prices.
But here is what we think is the case; when they first started out, they focused on small clients who could pay $5.99 per month!
However, like any other typical business, as their company grew, they wanted to target companies that could afford the higher plans.
Maybe they don’t want the customers who were paying them such a lower amount?
Whatever the case might be, they sure did lose quite a few loyal customers!
Whoa, @hootsuite.
I get raising pricing but from $15 to $75/mo?
"On June 1, 2021, your current base plan will increase to $75/month."
— Bridget Willard (@BridgetMWillard) April 13, 2021
https://twitter.com/mikeeedwards/status/1488181842234724356
Did you find a better alternative for your business within that particular pricing range?
— Ashmal ur Rehman (@AshmalurRehman) February 24, 2022
Featured Article: Authentic Marketing: Myths, Truths, and Tips for Success
Hootsuite vs Social Champ: A Side-By-Side Pricing Comparison
Hootsuite has three paid plans and no free plan, whereas Social Champ has four paid and one free plan.
However, the price difference is pretty apparent.
Let’s compare the annual plans.
Hootsuite pricing plan starts from $99 per month when billed annually, whereas Social Champ plans start from $4 per month on yearly plans.
And if we compare the offerings, then Social Champ definitely comes up on top.
Social Champ’s Starter Plan, available at $4, offers 1 user, unlimited post-scheduling, and 1 social account, with the option to add more accounts as you scale.
The Professional plan from Hootsuite offers ten accounts and only one user with unlimited scheduling. So the Starter is definitely more value for money.
The next plan in the Hootsuite pricing model is $249 per month, and Social Champ is $8 per month.
And if we switch to monthly plans, the price difference is even higher.
Lastly, both Social Champ and Hootsuite choose to keep their last plan’s pricing hidden.
This is due to the nature of that plan. If you wish to sign up for an Enterprise plan at Social Champ, you can request pricing and a demo with one of our customer advocates.
We would be happy to guide you according to your needs and find you the best possible deal.
Why Is Social Champ’s Free Plan the Ultimate Choice? – Hootsuite’s Free Plan vs Social Champ’s Free Plan

Social Champ offers a free plan, while Hootsuite doesn’t.
Social Champ’s free plan is incredibly powerful with no limitations.
We have unlocked all premium features for our free plan and all users.
Therefore, if you only need to manage three accounts, you can use Social Champ for free all year long; no hidden charges and no credit card required!
Furthermore, the free plan offers unlimited scheduling for all three accounts on any supported social media networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Business Profile, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky.
No such free plan is offered in the market right now.
The old Hootsuite’s pricing model also had a powerful free plan; however, now there is no free plan.

Want a Better Social Media Management Tool Without the High Cost?
Sign up for Social Champ today to save time and grow your social media effortlessly. Try now and see the difference!
Hootsuite vs Social Champ: A Detailed Feature Comparison
A social media management tool is designed to make your life easy when it comes to social media.
Therefore, the tool should allow you to save time and automate tasks that you would otherwise do manually.
Furthermore, it should be easy to use with a clean UI.
Here are a few more features that a social media management tool must have.
After this, we shall compare these 6 Hootsuite features with Social Champ’s.
Let’s see if the current Hootsuite pricing can be justified with the features.
- Supported Social Media Integrations: A social media manager has multiple accounts that they need to manage each day; this is why your preferred social media tool should at least support the major social platforms.
- Publishing or Scheduling: A good social media management tool should have as many functions in its scheduler as possible so that you can manage everything from the dashboard. Having other small supporting features, such as tagging and hashtags, is always a plus.
- Robust Analytics: After posting, it is essential to monitor how well the posts perform. Each social media management tool should have analytics and monitoring features for this.
- Social Inbox: A brand is nothing without its customers; therefore, engaging with them regularly is important.
- Social Media Calendar: Lastly, a powerful social media calendar is a must to plan all your campaigns to the T.
- Customer Support: Good customer care can make or break your brand, so a comprehensive social media management tool should always have hands-on customer support.
-
Supported Social Media Networks
- Hootsuite supports Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Pinterest, YouTube, Threads, and WhatsApp Business.
- Social Champ supports Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, Blusesky, Mastodon, Google Analytics, and WhatsApp Business.
Social Champ supports thirteen social media networks, while Hootsuite supports nine.
This means you get an even larger number of integrations with Social Champ at almost half the price.
-
Publish and Schedule
Both Social Champ and Hootsuite support scheduling via a single dashboard.
However, Social Champ has multiple features that make scheduling a breeze. From account tagging to a hashtag manager, we have it all.
Furthermore, both tools offer bulk scheduling, saving time and automating posts for a longer period.
You can also schedule posts on custom time slots with a queue other than bulk scheduling. Besides this, you get post preview, custom content curation, location tagging, save drafts, sentiment analysis, in-app editors, repeat posts, recycling campaigns, and more with Social Champ.
However, both tools have a powerful Auto RSS integration, royalty-free image library, video posting, GIFs support, and teams.
The team feature is a rather powerful one to help you work as one with your team.
You can share the workload and assign custom tasks with post approvals for an easier and more centralized workflow.
Social Champ also has Workspaces, making it super easy to manage multiple clients simultaneously.
You can group frequently used accounts together and assign a customized team to the Workspace.
This allows you to use multiple accounts under one freely. You can set your preferred timezone and tailor the Workspace according to your and the client’s requirements.
With almost similar features in both tools, the Hootsuite pricing model cannot really be justified with this feature.
-
Analytics & Monitoring
Both Social Champ & Hootsuite allow you to track analytics for all social media networks with specific metrics.
Both features are powerful enough to create custom reports with white labeling options and downloadable reports.
The analytics feature further allows you to identify the best time to post, shows the data in charts and graphs, and has multiple filtering options.
We tried them both and found them pretty similar to each other.
So this feature can also not justify the new Hootsuite pricing plan.
-
Engage and Social Inbox
Social Champ has only recently launched its full Engage feature and removed beta from it, so it is safe to assume that Hootsuite must have a more powerful Engage feature.
However, even though Social Champ recently revamped it, it still is a powerhouse.
With replies to direct and private messages along with communication filters, tags, and custom replies, you can stay up to date with your inbox.
Apart from messages, the powerful Social Inbox from Social Champ also allows you to reply to reviews, comments, and mentions.
You can also set up a custom team for Engage for easier workflow.
Hootsuite does pretty much the same, except it allows you to monitor WhatsApp messages as well.
-
Social Media Calendar
Hootsuite and Social Champ both have a versatile social media calendar, which allows the users to view posts in a grid view.
Both tools allow you to either create or edit, publish, and reschedule posts from within the calendar.
Furthermore, the social media calendar also filters posts according to published, failed, and deleted, making monitoring accounts easier.
The calendar is similar for all tools, which means that even in this regard, the new Hootsuite pricing plans fail to justify themselves.
-
Customer Support
In 2020, three out of five consumers reported that they are more likely to be loyal customers if they receive good customer support.
This number quickly grew to 96% of the consumers in 2022, who said that customer support plays a huge role in brand loyalty.
Both of these statistics show that no matter how big of a business you run if you cannot provide adequate customer service, your brand is bound to go down.
This is why Social Champ has round-the-clock customer support with a dedicated email address to solve all your queries.
You can also check out a fully loaded help desk guide to get answers to all FAQs.
Here is how they have optimized their customer support and built it from the ground up!
On the other hand, Hootsuite only provides support to business and enterprise customers.
A Customer’s Review on Hootsuite Customer Support Other Reviews on Hootsuite By a Customer Therefore, you cannot get priority support even after paying a hefty sum annually.
So, the new Hootsuite pricing plans cannot justify themselves here, either!
Featured Article: Threads vs Bluesky: A Detailed Comparison for 2025
Top Hootsuite Alternatives for 2025 That Are Easy on the Wallet
Multiple other tools in the market function the same or better than Hootsuite does and will not break the bank.
We found three alternative tools that come nowhere near the Hootsuite pricing model and offer the same services.
All these tools support major social media networks, have a functional dashboard, show comprehensive analytics, and even support a Social Inbox.
-
Social Champ
Social Champ’s Dashboard Of course, Social Champ is our first Hootsuite alternative, as it offers more social media networks and has the finest customer support.
Social Champ has thirteen networks onboard, and you can schedule unlimited posts on ALL of them using any of the plans the tool offers.
Starting from a free plan and going up to the enterprise model, Social Champ has a plan for all.
Furthermore, all plans are pocket-friendly and have little to no limitations.
Smart automation features, such as bulk upload, Auto RSS, queue, repeat, recycle, and content suggestions, make your social media marketing much more manageable.
Other features integrated within the dashboard, such as hashtag manager, account tagging, save drafts, visual editor, first comments, locations, custom thumbnails, and more, enable you to be as creative with your posts.
The Workspace is an agency-centric feature to increase accessibility.
It allows you to group frequently used profiles to post to them quickly. You can also assign a custom team to each Workspace to increase productivity.
The analytics feature is another power-packed dashboard within the tool.
You can compare monthly and weekly progress with beautiful charts/ graphs, and download PDF/ PPT reports.
Lastly, the Social Inbox lets you bring all social conversations under one roof by replying to comments, DM/PM, reviews, and mentions together!
Social Champ also has unmatched customer support with live chat to talk to an agent, a demo facility to find the best plan for yourself or to solve your queries immediately, and a Facebook group for quick assistance.
The tool also has a fully loaded helpdesk guide with FAQs and tutorials on using Social Champ.
You can also leave an email at [email protected] and receive a reply within 24 hours.
And the cherry on top? Social Champ’s pricing model is nowhere as expensive as Hootsuite’s pricing model.
-
MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar’s Landing Page MeetEdgar is one of the best choices for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs with automated publishing solutions for scheduling and organizing content.
Using MeetEdgar, you can schedule posts for multiple networks, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
The tool offers content suggestions, monitor analytics, fantastic customer support, and an affiliate program.
MeetEdgar has only two pricing plans; Eddie & Edgar (cute, right?), which are priced at $29.99 and $49.99 per month!
-
Buffer
Buffer’s Dashboard Buffer is one of the oldest contenders when it comes to social media management tools.
They started almost simultaneously as Hootsuite; their pricing models were comparable.
However, the new Hootsuite pricing plan is nowhere near Buffers.
The tool offers a one free and two paid plans supporting Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, X (Twitter), and Instagram.
Buffer also has a pretty transparent financial record, so you can check it out on their website.
To sum it up, the new Hootsuite pricing plans cannot justify its extravagant prices, whereas the competitors offer the same if not better plans for much less!
Conclusion
In conclusion, the fierce increase in Hootsuite pricing has bothered most users, primarily those who have been used to low-priced plans before.
The new pricing model of Hootsuite has completely shifted to the era of the old days with its cheaper and more affordable plans, thus causing a lot of moral questions from the users’ side.
Although a robust tool, the substantial price increase could render the offered features unattractive, particularly in light of less costly alternatives like Social Champ.
Social Champ allows its users the option of not only having a more economical pricing model but also getting a FREE plan with premium features that make it an attractive selection for companies that want quality service and, at the same time, save money.
If you are looking for a social media management tool that is not very expensive but fits all your needs, Social Champ can be a perfect match because of its good quality for a low price.
Therefore, check your options before you choose between Hootsuite with the latest prize and Social Champ in 2025.