Hootsuite alternative
Hootsuite's current plans are $99, $199, and $399 per user per month on annual billing. Advanced is the first current tier with team approval workflows. Hootsuite also generates posts and images with AI and includes its Wisdom assistant. Here is the source-backed comparison for a small team.
Our verdict
If you run a social department across publishing, care, and listening, Hootsuite is built for you. If you are a small team focused on reviewed, brand-grounded publishing, compare FlyingToast Growth with Hootsuite Advanced.
Why teams switch
These are three material differences in the current published plans.
Post approval workflows are excluded from Standard ($99 per seat) and Professional ($199 per seat). The lowest published plan that includes them is Advanced at $399 per user per month on annual billing.
Every current plan includes Wisdom, and Hootsuite documents AI generation for posts, captions, ideas, and images. OwlyWriter remains documented separately in current Enterprise materials; Hootsuite does not publish a universal 100-credit allowance on the current plans page.
The Social OS spans publishing, a care inbox, listening, analytics, and employee advocacy. That breadth is relevant to social departments, while a small team focused on content production may not need every module.
Capability by capability
Each row reflects Hootsuite's published plans and pages after the June 2026 relaunch, and a shipping capability in FlyingToast.
| Feature | With Hootsuite | With FlyingToast |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | With Hootsuite: Per seat, billed annually: Standard $99, Professional $199, Advanced $399 per user per month, Enterprise custom. Three people on the cheapest tier with approval workflows (Advanced) is $1,197 a month. | With FlyingToast: Flat plans: Starter $49, Growth $149, and Scale $399 a month for the workspace. Team approvals from Growth, $119 a month billed yearly for up to six people. |
| Where posts come from | With Hootsuite: Hootsuite documents AI generation for post ideas, captions, hashtags, and images, while Wisdom answers questions and recommends actions across Hootsuite data. Current public plans do not show a universal AI-credit quota. | With FlyingToast: FlyingToast plans include up to 30, 120, or 300 generated posts monthly. Image generation has its own separate allowance. |
| Brand voice depth | With Hootsuite: Wisdom draws on social data and workflows. Hootsuite also supports approved asset libraries and uploaded brand guidelines; its public pages do not describe the same inspectable nine-category knowledge profile as FlyingToast. | With FlyingToast: Upload PDFs, paste text, point it at your website. Nine categories of brand knowledge become a profile you can see and edit, and every generation draws on it. |
| Approvals and guardrails | With Hootsuite: Hootsuite documents post approval workflows on Advanced ($399 per seat on annual billing) and Enterprise. Standard and Professional do not include them. | With FlyingToast: Every plan lets you review every post before it publishes. Team approvals start on Growth, the first plan built for teams: teammates draft, and owners or members approve. Growth and Scale also add a configurable brand-score threshold; Starter uses a fixed one, and Scale adds broader configurable brand guardrails. |
| Platform coverage | With Hootsuite: Ten native networks including WhatsApp and Bluesky, plus a directory of 100+ app integrations. No Reddit, no Google Business Profile natively. | With FlyingToast: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X, Threads and Bluesky, with what each network supports shown before you connect. |
| Analytics and listening | With Hootsuite: Hootsuite documents cross-network reporting and Lumen by Talkwalker for Enterprise-tier social listening with 13 months of history. The insights still require a team to interpret and act on them. | With FlyingToast: Learns every week from your strongest and weakest posts of the last 30 days, and feeds the winning patterns into your next drafts. |
What it actually costs
A three-person marketing team at a professional services firm. They need internal review before anything publishes. Hootsuite prices are per user, billed annually.
Worked example
Side by side
Hootsuite earns its price in these situations:
FlyingToast is built for a different problem:
Commercial disclosure: FlyingToast is the product making this comparison. We benefit if you choose us. How we compared: Hootsuite facts were checked on 29 August 2026 against its current official plans, Standard, Advanced, integrations, and approval pages. Spotted something that has changed? Tell us and we will correct it.
Straight answers
As of 29 August 2026, approval workflows require the Advanced plan at $399 per user per month billed annually; Standard ($99) and Professional ($199) do not include them. Three people needing approvals pay $1,197 a month. FlyingToast team approvals start on Growth, $119 a month billed yearly for up to six people and 8 channels; every plan lets you review every post before it publishes.
Hootsuite's current plans are Standard at $99, Professional at $199, and Advanced at $399 per user per month on annual billing. Every plan includes AI content creation and the Wisdom assistant. Advanced is the first current tier with team approval workflows.
Plenty, at its intended scale. Enterprise social listening through Lumen by Talkwalker, a routed care inbox, employee advocacy, and deep cross-network reporting are real capabilities FlyingToast does not ship. If your team runs those daily, Hootsuite is built for you.
Yes. Both offer 14-day trials without a credit card. Hootsuite applies its own trial posting limits; FlyingToast provides defined allowances for posts, images, ideas, website analysis, and brand sources.
Keep exploring
If FlyingToast sounds like the right fit, here are the capabilities that make it work, and what teams in your industry are doing with it.
Start this week
Try FlyingToast free for 14 days, no card required. Upload your brand materials, connect a channel, and review your first generated posts today.
