Hootsuite, a social media management giant, was developed by Ryan Holmes in 2008. It was founded in Vancouver, Canada, where it is headquartered. To date, there are more than 10 million users worldwide and spans 175 countries.
Buffer, although a newbie in social media management, has clucked up 2 million users, since 2010, when it was founded. It was designed by a group of European ex-pats headed by Joel Gascoigne and Leo Wildrich in San Francisco.
Ease of Use – Hootsuite vs. Buffer
Buffer has enough features, but still, has only those which are important enough. The user is able to add RSS feeds from saved blogs directly and also share the content with ease. Any analytical data can be simply refreshed with a single click. There are loads of keyboard shortcuts to fasten the processes.
In Hootsuite, one can easily create tasks and collaborate with team members straight from the workstream. Numerous streams can be viewed at the same time, thus reducing the time taken to toggle between pages.
Reliability – Hootsuite vs. Buffer
Buffer is more mobile optimized compared to Hootsuite. Support and help are available over the phone and in chat. They treat every customer’s tweets, replies, comments, etc. anywhere across the web very “happily”.
There are loads of questionnaires and FAQs available at Hootsuite. One may have to consult numerous help documents online or even visit Hootsuite University to get more sense out of dashboards.
Hootsuite comes in with a very large support team though, which supports over the phone, email, chat, and the like.
Speed – Hootsuite vs. Buffer
It takes lesser time in Buffer in connecting with social pages and letting the user stick to the business straight away. Content can be brought in from various sources in a single place. Moreover, extensions are available for Google Chrome and Safari.
Hootsuite also has the same speed in placing all the reports and contents at one table. It has a Hootlet extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari as well as Internet Explorer. Users can create paid ad campaigns by not moving from their dashboards.
Features – Hootsuite vs. Buffer
Cloud has been a bandwagon in creating custom controls for organizations and more importantly for start-ups. Both Hootsuite and Buffer have done a tremendous job in collating all the information about a business in the social realm and serving analytics on the management’s table. One look and you are through.
The most amazing of the features is Scheduling. The auto-scheduler in Hootsuite is by far, the touchstone for measurement across any social management system.
The maximum character for a tweet is 140. As soon as you touch 140, Hootsuite will automatically break your tweet and will not allow you to continue further. This may make your tweet look incomplete. The auto-scheduler also selects an optimal impact time, self-judging, when your post can reach maximum people.
There is a manual scheduler as well. Users can upload around 350 scheduled messages vide a CSV file.
In buffer, no such auto-scheduler exists. Although it does come in with a manual or a custom schedule wherein users can set up tweets at designated times. Coupled with its Chrome Extension, it becomes easier and faster, to schedule posts or tweets.
It can check up to 5,000 of your previous interactions to find the optimal time to engage with the masses. Image sharing is a major boon for Buffer. Users can easily schedule retweets by uploading it or right-clicking on the picture in their browser or re-tweeting someone else’s image.
These tweets will come up as an embedded pic. twitter
The images uploaded or shared across Hootsuite may retain their original size and not expand or contract based on the recipient platform.
Up to 5,000 of your previous interactions to find the optimal time to engage with the masses. Image sharing is a major boon for Buffer. Users can easily schedule retweets by uploading them or right-clicking on the picture in their browser or re-tweeting someone else’s image.
These tweets will come up as an embedded pic. twitter
The images uploaded or shared across Hootsuite may retain their original size and not expand or contract based on the recipient platform.
Hootsuite has the ability to create multiple streams, allowing users to monitor various sources on the internet at once. Wherever your company or brand has been mentioned, it has the ability to pinpoint the traffic.
It also comes with an out-of-the-box keyword search facility that can fetch traffic from hashtags, mentions, geo-locations, and whatnot. Buffer loses out big time as it misses out on this train. There is no such feature available; it has stuck to its scheduling factor very tightly.
You will also need a third-party app to create a search stream. With analytics comes insight. Hootsuite has a wide variety of reports in its kitty. The Pro version starts from $9.99 per month. The reports are downloadable and printable and support teamwork actions as well.
Security – Hootsuite vs. Buffer
Hootsuite uses a secured Public Key to keep messages safe and secured. They have a team of security to take acknowledgment of your issues within 24 hours.
Even for the security team, data is accessed by SSH / Kerberos keys across all environments. Offending IP addresses are blocked as soon as they are in the firewalled network.
A first-level GPG key encryption is required to confirm emails from Buffer. OAuth’s weaknesses are taken good care of by its in-house technical team.
Summary – Hootsuite vs. Buffer
Each system has its own shortcomings and merits. The scheduling tool in Hootsuite is unbeatable. It has a wider reach in terms of listening to traffic anywhere
The weighing scale turns over to Hootsuite, with its large support team, stable solution, and huge integration capabilities. We stick our neck for Buffer as well but would need to wait for the time being, until stability arises.