Most people looking for Hootsuite alternatives are looking at the bill. Hootsuite's paid plans start at $99 a month and there is no free plan, which is a lot for one person posting to a Facebook Page and an Instagram account.
Below are six tools worth considering, with the prices taken from each company's own pricing page. Some of them are better than BlinkPost for some jobs, and this page says so where that's true.
What does Hootsuite actually cost?
Hootsuite's own plans page lists paid plans starting at $99 for Standard, $199 for Professional, and up to $399 for Advanced. There is no free plan; every tier comes with a 14-day free trial and no card required.
One thing to watch: the plans page shows those figures under an annual-billing label and doesn't spell out the monthly-billed rate, so check what you'd actually pay before committing. Standard covers 10 social accounts and Professional moves to unlimited.
Why do small businesses leave Hootsuite?
Price is the first reason and features you never open are the second. The third one is quieter.
The price
Paid plans start at $99 a month and there is no free tier. That is a lot for one person posting to a Facebook Page and an Instagram account.
Features you never open
Approval workflows, a shared inbox and team reporting are real features. If you are the whole team, you are paying for a seat at a table you do not sit at.
It assumes you already have the post
Schedulers solve the posting, not the writing. Plenty of owners do not have a scheduling problem at 9am on a Tuesday — they have a blank box.
Six Hootsuite alternatives worth a look
1
BlinkPost
— if writing the post is the hard part
BlinkPost generates the post and then schedules it, rather than the other way round. During onboarding it reads your business website and builds a profile — your industry, audience, voice, services and a description — and that profile shapes what it writes afterwards. You review it before anything is generated.
It publishes to Facebook Pages, Instagram Business accounts and LinkedIn personal profiles. Free is $0 for 2 posts a month, Pro is $19.99 for 30 and Agency is $59 for 120. No credit card to start.
Not for you if you need X or Pinterest, a shared team inbox, or approval workflows. BlinkPost does none of those. TikTok support is coming soon.
2
Buffer
— if you want the cheapest honest scheduler
Buffer's free plan covers up to 3 channels, and paid plans are priced per channel: Essentials at $5 a month per channel and Team at $10. If you post to three accounts and write your own copy, this is hard to beat on price.
Buffer does have an AI Assistant for drafting and rewriting copy, so “Buffer has no AI” is not a fair line. It writes text; it does not make the image.
3
Metricool
— if you want analytics without an agency price
Metricool has a genuine free plan covering 1 brand with one profile per network, though LinkedIn and X are excluded from it. Paid starts at $20 a month billed annually, or $25 billed monthly, for up to 5 brands.
Its reporting is the strongest part, and it is the obvious pick if you care more about what happened after you posted than about what to post.
4
Publer
— if you want a free plan that lasts
Publer's free tier is more generous than most: 1 user, 1 workspace, 3 social accounts, 10 scheduled posts per account and 25 saved drafts. X accounts cannot be connected on the free plan.
Its paid pricing is not published on the pricing or plans pages — both show a “/month” label with no figure — so you will need to start a plan to see what you would pay.
5
Later
— if Instagram is the whole business
Later starts at $18.75 a month billed yearly for one social set of 8 profiles and one user, rising to $37.50 for Growth and $82.50 for Scale. There is no free plan, just a 14-day trial.
The visual planner is the reason to pick it. If you care how the grid looks before you post, nothing else on this list does that as well.
6
Hootsuite itself
— if you have grown into it
If you have a team, several brands and someone whose actual job is social media, Hootsuite earns its price. Unlimited accounts on Professional and the approval and inbox tooling are real features, not padding.
Leaving a tool you have outgrown is a different decision from leaving one you never grew into.
The six compared
Prices checked against each company's own pricing page on 14 October 2026. Check before you buy — these move.
Tool
Free plan
Entry price
Writes the post?
Best for
BlinkPost
Yes — 2 posts/mo
$19.99/mo
Yes, copy and image
Owners who don't want to write
Buffer
Yes — 3 channels
$5/channel/mo
Text only
Cheapest straight scheduling
Metricool
Yes — 1 brand
$20/mo annual
Text only
Analytics on a budget
Publer
Yes — 3 accounts
Not published
Text only
The most usable free tier
Later
No — 14-day trial
$18.75/mo annual
Text only
Instagram-first brands
Hootsuite
No — 14-day trial
$99/mo
Text only
Teams with a social manager
Is there a genuinely free Hootsuite alternative?
Yes — three of them. Buffer gives you 3 channels free, Publer gives 3 social accounts with 10 scheduled posts each, and Metricool covers 1 brand free with LinkedIn and X excluded.
BlinkPost's free plan is a different shape: 2 generated posts a month rather than unlimited scheduling. That's a trial of the writing, not a free scheduler, and it's worth being clear about which problem you're trying to solve for free.
How do you move off Hootsuite without losing your calendar?
Export or screenshot your scheduled queue first, because you lose access to it when the plan lapses. Then reconnect your accounts in the new tool and rebuild the next two weeks before you cancel.
Reconnecting Instagram is the step that catches people. It has to be an Instagram Business or Creator account linked to a Facebook Page — a personal Instagram account can't be scheduled to by any third-party tool, including every one on this list.
What moving looked like in practice
When migrating accounts from Hootsuite, the single gotcha wasn't the calendar queue—it was Meta's permissions cache. Hootsuite holds active Page access tokens inside Facebook Business Manager. If you let a plan lapse before connecting a new scheduler, Meta occasionally throws an OAuth conflict error when linking your Instagram Business account. The fix took about four minutes: go to Business Manager → Integrations, revoke Hootsuite's stale permissions, and re-authorize through BlinkPost. What to do differently: clear the old tool's permissions in Meta first, then connect the new tool, and your accounts link on the first click.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free version of Hootsuite?
+
No. Hootsuite's plans page lists no free plan; the paid tiers start at $99 and each comes with a 14-day free trial with no card required.
What's the cheapest Hootsuite alternative?
+
Buffer at $5 a month per channel, if you only need scheduling. If you need the posts written as well as scheduled, BlinkPost's Pro plan is $19.99 a month for 30 posts.
Which Hootsuite alternative writes posts with AI?
+
Several write text — Buffer, Metricool and Hootsuite all have AI writing assistants. BlinkPost generates the caption, hashtags and a matching image together, from a profile built by reading your website.
Can I schedule Instagram posts without Hootsuite?
+
Yes, with any tool on this list, provided you have an Instagram Business or Creator account linked to a Facebook Page. That requirement comes from Instagram, not from the tool.
Does BlinkPost support X, TikTok or Pinterest?
+
TikTok is coming soon. Today BlinkPost publishes to Facebook Pages, Instagram Business accounts and LinkedIn personal profiles. X and Pinterest are not supported, so if you need them, pick a different tool on this list.
Try BlinkPost free
If the thing you actually dread is the blank box rather than the scheduling, start on the free plan. Two posts a month, no credit card.