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Looking for a social media scheduler? Want to see how SmarterQueue and Hootsuite compare?
Both are great options for being able to schedule social media posts in advance. This means you don’t accidentally neglect one of your social media accounts – but you also don’t have to be tied to your phone or computer!
Both SmarterQueue and Hootsuite allow for scheduling to the following platforms:
So how do you choose between the two? Let’s take a look at a few different features and how the two scheduling tools compare.
Recurring Social Media Posts
One of my favorite features of SmarterQueue is the ability to, well, requeue posts.
Now, there are a lot of ways you can set this up, including having social media posts constantly being added to the end of your queue so that you are always updating your social media accounts. (You can even set it up so that you use different images or captions each time it posts again.)
While this can be extremely helpful, I actually like the option of manually requeueing a post even more.
For example, let’s say I already pinned something to a board about home decor, but then I add a kitchen decor board and I want to schedule the pin to the new kitchen decor board for tomorrow morning.
I can go to my past posts section in the SmarterQueue dashboard, find the pin I want, and choose the Re-Queue option. I can then pick the board and the time and that’s it!
This isn’t limited to pins, and I do have the option of changing the text, etc.
Unfortunately, Hootsuite doesn’t have any features like this. If you want to pin or post something again, you have to add it to the scheduler all over again (including uploading any graphics all over again).
Schedule at a Glance
Another thing I love about SmarterQueue is how easy it is to see, whether you’re glancing at your schedule or glancing at your past posts, what board each pin went to.
For Hootsuite, you can’t see this.
If the pin is currently scheduled but hasn’t been pinned yet, you have to edit it to be able to see that information.
If it’s already been pinned, you’re out of luck.
If you have a lot of pins and a lot of different boards, then this is an important difference.
Pricing
So comparing SmarterQueue and Hootsuite when it comes to pricing is a bit tricky – it really depends on your needs.
Here are some of your options and the highlights of what they offer (with what the monthly cost breaks down to if you pay for it annually):
- Hootsuite – 3 social profiles, 30 scheduled posts – Free
- SmarterQueue – 4 social profiles, 10 posts per profile per day, 500 scheduled posts – $16.99/month
- Hootsuite – 10 social profiles, unlimited scheduling – $29/month
- SmarterQueue – 10 social profiles, 20 posts per profile per day, 1,000 scheduled posts – $33.99/month
- SmarterQueue – 25 social profiles, 40 posts per profile per day, 2,500 scheduled posts – $67.99/month
- Hootsuite – 20 social profiles, unlimited scheduling – $129/month
- Hootsuite – 35 social profiles, unlimited scheduling – $599/month
Choosing the best plan with the best price really depends on things like:
- How many social profiles (ex. Pinterest/Facebook/Instagram/etc accounts) you want to schedule to
- How many posts you want to schedule a day to each profile
- How many posts you want to have in your schedule at any given time
For most social networks (such as Facebook or Twitter), you’re probably not going to post dozens and dozens of times a day to it. (There are always exceptions – it might work for your particular business model – but it’s not that common.)
Pinterest is the exception – while the recommended number of pins you should pin a day varies depending on who you ask, many people find great success pinning anywhere from 50-100 pins a day. Testing can be extremely helpful with this – increasing your average number of pins a day by 5 or 10 over a period of time (as well as decreasing if necessary). Unfortunately, you could only do 40 pins per day with SmarterQueue’s standard plans.
Luckily, SmarterQueue also has a custom option where you can choose how many social profiles, how many posts per profile per day, how many queued posts you can have at a time, as well as a few other features. Now, there aren’t an unlimited number of options, but you do have several options.
So, for example, if you decided you wanted to have 4 social profiles with an unlimited number of posts per profile per day and up to 1,000 scheduled posts, that would cost you $21.24/month.
The other great thing about SmarterQueue’s pricing is that you can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time, so if you find yourself scheduling more (or less) than expected, you can change your plan. I love not having to pay for features I don’t need!
YouTube Scheduler
In addition to the social media platforms that both Hootsuite and SmarterQueue cover (Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), you can also schedule videos to YouTube with Hootsuite. SmarterQueue doesn’t have YouTube integration, so if scheduling YouTube videos in advance is an important part of your social media strategy, you might want to choose Hootsuite for that capability alone. (Alternately, you could opt to schedule your YouTube videos directly in the YouTube platform itself.)
So, SmarterQueue vs Hootsuite – who wins?
If you’re debating between SmarterQueue versus Hootsuite, I recommend SmarterQueue for ease of use – but definitely see how these different factors relate to what you want to accomplish (use of YouTube, how much you want to pay, etc).
