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Buffer charges five dollars a channel and nothing per person. Agorapulse charges seventy nine a person and holds every paid tier to ten profiles. Hootsuite starts at ninety nine a seat and caps the entry plan at ten accounts. Sprout Social runs to three hundred and ninety nine and quotes the listening on top. On all four, the software turns out to be the cheap part.
Before you pick one and start filling it
All four of these will publish on schedule and report on it afterwards. They diverge on what they meter and where each plan stops, and the gap only shows up on the day you connect an eleventh profile or a comment has to reach another system. Three questions are worth settling before you commit.
1
Buffer meters channels and nothing else, so colleagues are free. Hootsuite meters seats and caps accounts at ten on the entry plan. Sprout meters seats and caps profiles at five until the third tier. Agorapulse meters seats and holds every paid tier to ten profiles. Those are four different questions about your business, and the cheapest answer changes depending on which one you are.
2
Hootsuite holds unlimited accounts for Professional at one hundred and ninety nine and approvals for Advanced at three hundred and ninety nine. Sprout holds unlimited profiles for Professional and sells its listening as an unpriced add on. Agorapulse holds unlimited profiles and custom roles for a quoted Custom plan. Work out which tier you actually need first, then compare prices, or you will compare the wrong two numbers.
3
Every vendor here ships a composer and a calendar and all four of them are good. The real question is whether anybody in your business has the time to decide what is worth saying, write it so it sounds like you, and answer what comes back. A scheduler publishes whatever you put into it. It does not notice that nobody has put anything into it since March.
This is the rare category where everybody prints a figure, and it still does not help much, because they are not printing the same figure. Buffer prices a channel. The other three price a person and then cap the channels differently. Hootsuite renders its numbers in the browser rather than in the page. Sprout quotes its listening apart from the seat. The comparison you are actually making is about who does the posting rather than what the software costs.
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Ten Accounts On Standard
Ninety Nine A Seat A Month
Approvals On Advanced Only
Hootsuite is the most recognised name here and the one most people try first. Standard is ninety nine dollars a user a month, Professional one hundred and ninety nine and Advanced three hundred and ninety nine, all on annual billing by their own footnote. Standard connects ten social accounts, so the eleventh account means Professional, and approvals do not arrive until Advanced.
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Five Dollars A Channel
Free Plan For Three Channels
Unlimited Team Members
Buffer is the cheapest thing on this page by an order of magnitude, and on price it beats everything here including us. Essentials is five dollars a channel a month, Team is ten and adds unlimited team members, and the free plan covers three channels with ten scheduled posts on each. It meters channels rather than people, which is the fairest arrangement here for a small team.
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Seventy Nine To Three Ninety Nine
Five Profiles Until Professional
Listening Is A Quoted Add On
Sprout Social has the strongest reporting on this page and prices four tiers openly, from seventy nine dollars a seat on Essentials to three hundred and ninety nine on Advanced. Essentials and Standard each connect five social profiles, so unlimited profiles means Professional at two hundred and ninety nine. Listening and Premium Analytics are add ons from Standard upward and neither carries a published price.
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Ten Profiles On Every Paid Tier
Seventy Nine A User A Month
Unlimited Profiles Need A Quote
Agorapulse publishes the clearest grid of the four and the cheapest seat, at seventy nine dollars a user a month on annual billing rising to one hundred and forty nine on Advanced. The unusual part is the ceiling. Standard, Professional and Advanced all connect ten social profiles, so paying more buys reporting rather than capacity, and unlimited profiles exist only on a quoted Custom plan.
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What the flat five hundred covers, and what it does not
Five hundred dollars a month, per organization, to decide what each channel is for, build and fill the calendar, set the approvals, monitor the streams, triage the inbox, run the listening and revise the whole thing as your priorities change. Your Zoho Social subscription stays in your name and you buy it from Zoho directly. We do not resell it and we do not mark it up.
Here is the qualification, and it is a blunt one. Buffer runs three channels for nothing and ten for fifty dollars. One Agorapulse seat is seventy nine. Our fee is five hundred on top of a licence you are also paying for. If somebody in your building will genuinely own the posting, buy the cheap tool and keep your money. What we sell is the writing and the answering, not the software.
A calendar full of posts about nothing in particular is a chore nobody signed up for. We start from what the business wants to sell or be known for this quarter, work back to the handful of things worth saying about it, and write each one so it sounds like you rather than like a template.
Every paid vendor on this page meters something, whether that is seats or channels or connected profiles, so the cost tracks your growth. Ours does not. Five hundred a month covers the work whether you run six profiles or twenty six, and the only metered cost you carry is the one you pay Zoho.
A social account does not fail loudly. Nothing errors, the scheduler keeps working, and the next post simply does not get written because everybody was busy. We hold the calendar, answer what arrives, and close the channels nobody has posted to since the quarter they were opened.
How do you compare four social tools when they all meter different things?
You work out your own numbers first, then price against them. Decide how many profiles need connecting, how many people need a seat, and whether comments have to reach another system. Buffer is five dollars a channel, or ten on Team. Agorapulse is seventy nine, one hundred and nineteen or one hundred and forty nine a user, ten profiles throughout. Hootsuite is ninety nine, one hundred and ninety nine or three hundred and ninety nine a user. Sprout is seventy nine to three hundred and ninety nine a seat plus quoted add ons. Price each at your real numbers and compare the totals rather than the headlines.
How does a social tool decision go wrong?
Almost never on the software. It goes wrong on ownership and on follow through. The first fortnight of posts goes out and does well, the next batch is late, the one after that never gets written, and the comments under the good posts are unanswered. Six months later the account is a page a customer finds and assumes you have closed. The tool did not fail. Nobody was running it.
Who owns the account and the subscription if you set this up?
You do, entirely. You hold your own Zoho Social subscription in your own name and you pay Zoho directly for it. We work inside it as administrators. If you end this tomorrow the account, every connected profile, the whole posting history and all the reporting stay exactly where they are, and we hand back the administrator seat.
Should we simply use one of these instead?
For a lot of businesses, yes, and we would rather say it here than after you have signed. If somebody will genuinely write and answer, Buffer runs three channels free and ten for fifty dollars, and one Agorapulse seat is seventy nine. Use those. Come back if that person turns out not to exist, or turns out to be too busy by March.
Which one actually comes out cheapest?
Buffer, always, and it is not close. Five dollars a channel means ten channels for fifty a month, with a free plan for three underneath that. After Buffer it depends on your shape. For one or two people inside ten profiles, Agorapulse Standard at seventy nine a seat is the cheapest of the three that charge per seat. For many profiles and few people, Hootsuite Professional buys unlimited accounts at one hundred and ninety nine a seat. We are more expensive than all of them. Five hundred a month is a management fee sitting on top of a licence you are already paying for.
What happens when the posting stops after the rollout?
On a subscription, first somebody has to notice, and that is the part that fails. No vendor support tier covers it, because nothing is broken. Hootsuite puts approvals on Advanced and priority support behind Enterprise. Sprout sells Professional Services separately. Agorapulse puts a dedicated Customer Success Manager on the Custom plan. All of that helps your people work the tool. With us, holding the calendar is part of the fee, so the noticing is ours rather than yours.
Do we have to hand over every channel at once?
No, and it usually goes better if you do not. The normal order is the one or two channels where customers actually talk to you, then the ones tied to a campaign that is running now, then the long tail nobody has posted to in months. Most of the value sits in the first group and most of the tidying sits in the last.
Can you take over channels somebody else was running?
Often, and it is real work rather than a tidy up. We read what is there, find the two accounts saying slightly different things about the same product, identify the ones that quietly stopped, and settle which voice wins. Expect that last part to be the bulk of it. Inherited accounts are usually accurate about what was posted and silent about why any of it was posted.
How long does this actually take to set up?
Four to eight weeks for most businesses, and longer where profile access is spread across people who have since left. Connecting the accounts is an afternoon. The time goes on agreeing what each channel is for, on finding who actually holds the logins, and on the first month of posts, which has to be written before it can be scheduled.
We already have somebody who runs our social. What is left for you?
Possibly nothing, and that is a fine answer. Somebody who owns this properly will do it better than a monthly retainer, because they are there every day and they know the business. The question is whether it is actually on their list. Writing next month's posts when this month went fine is the work that is always reasonable to postpone until next week.
When would you tell us to walk away?
Two cases, and both are common. If you post once a fortnight and nobody comments, Buffer costs five dollars a channel and the money is better spent elsewhere. And if your business genuinely comes from referrals and nobody has ever found you through a social account, that is worth saying out loud rather than paying to fix.
What if the posting turns out not to be the problem?
We say so up front rather than after the first invoice, and the fit review is where it comes up. Often the real problem is that the product page nobody links to is why nothing converts, or that two departments disagree about who the customer is, or that the business has nothing new to say this quarter. Those deserve attention before the tooling does, and no amount of posting fixes any of them.
What does this cost through you, stated plainly?
Five hundred dollars a month, per organization. The number is published on the Managed Zoho Social service page and it holds whether you run three profiles or thirty. Your Zoho Social licence sits with Zoho, in your name, and we never take possession of it.
What happens if we decide to leave?
Thirty days notice ends it. Everything stays exactly where it is, because the subscription was always yours. We hand back the administrator seat, write up what each channel is for and why the voice is what it is so the next person is not guessing, and list the posts we would keep running.
What do you need from us to start?
A rough list of every social account anybody has ever opened in the company's name, and an honest account of what you want people to know about the business this year. Neither list is ever complete and neither needs to be. They tell us the shape of the problem, and the fit review finds the rest.
