Why Is Hootsuite So Expensive? (10 Reasons)

 

If you have a lot of personal social media accounts or handle accounts for others, then you know how difficult it is to stay on top of everything.

Hootsuite is a social media manager that helps you plan and post across all your social media accounts in one place.

However, you’ll quickly discover that using Hootsuite comes at an expensive price.

 

Why Is Hootsuite So Expensive? (10 Reasons)

 

Hootsuite offers a few different plans based on your needs.

Its two main plans cost $99 and $249 a month.

Hootsuite is expensive because of the features it offers, the fact that it grants you money toward ads, its various operational costs, its free trial costs, and its custom subscription plans.

Let’s look at these factors in more detail.

 

1. Provides Ad Spend

 

Depending on the plan you choose, Hootsuite offers you a certain amount of ad spend money.

The money goes toward boosting your social media platforms.

The professional plan at $99 a month gives you $500 worth of ad spend.

The team plan at $249 a month gives you $2,000 worth of ad spend.

That’s a considerable amount of money that Hootsuite offers to each new subscriber.

If a ton of subscribers were to join all at once, however, Hootsuite could be stuck giving out tons of money.

It could potentially hurt the business.

In order to avoid that scenario, the company charges a high price for its subscription plans.

This ensures that the company always has enough money to offer the ad spending bonus to customers.

Having ad spend is also a great incentive to get brands to join Hootsuite.

It can help those brands start off strong on various social media platforms so they gain a following quickly.

From there, the brand only has to worry about publishing quality content to keep its users engaged.

As such, the high subscription plan prices likely seem worth it to many companies.

Hootsuite is expensive because of the costs incurred by offering generous ad spend bonuses.

 

2. Offers Free Integrations

 

Although Hootsuite enables you to connect and control your various social media platforms in one place, it also offers free integrations.

You can integrate a number of different platforms and types of software.

Hootsuite’s goal is to allow you to make posts and edits and do the research that you need all in one place.

To accomplish that feat, the company allows you to integrate a number of different services or platforms for free.

Other Hootsuite competitors sometimes charge for each integration.

The company might give you a set number of platforms you can integrate for free, but then it charges you after you’ve reached that number.

Hootsuite doesn’t do that.

Instead, it relies on expensive subscription plans to cover its costs.

That allows it to offer free integrations.

That can be quite convenient for certain businesses that use a variety of different platforms and services for their social media strategy.

However, because Hootsuite isn’t receiving money through that part of its business, it instead has to charge high prices on its subscription plans.

Hootsuite is expensive because it offers free integrations which keep the company from earning more profits.

 

3. Live Chat Support

 

Another great benefit that Hootsuite offers is live chat support.

Both of its main subscription plans include live in-dash chat support.

This means that while you’re working in Hootsuite’s dashboard, there’s someone from its support team right there waiting to help you.

All it takes is a click of a button to activate chat support.

A real human will be available to answer your questions.

The individual can help troubleshoot some problems you might be facing.

They can also help you make sense of what you’re looking at if the dashboard isn’t immediately clear to you.

Having a representative available 24/7 costs money.

Since Hootsuite is an online service, it doesn’t have strict business hours.

The company is aware that businesses across the world are going to be using its services at all times of the day.

As such, it always needs a representative on hand to help its customers.

Since there always needs to be a person available to run live chat, it means Hootsuite is paying its customer support team a good amount of money.

The company isn’t able to save money by having its customer support only available during certain times of the day.

Since it has higher labor costs, it needs to offset those costs with higher subscription prices.

Hootsuite is expensive because of the costs of having a live in-dash chat representative.

 

4. Analytics And Reports Costs

 

Each tier of the subscription plan also offers some form of analysis and reporting.

The professional tier allows users to discover the best time to publish certain genres of social media posts.

You might find that productivity posts are viewed more often during the morning hours than in the evening hours.

The opposite may be true of entertainment-focused posts.

By knowing the best time to publish certain things on social media, you increase the chances of user engagement.

The more advanced subscription plan—the team plan—offers even more in-depth analysis and reporting.

You can see many different performance statistics for your posts.

This can help you determine which posts your particular audience has an interest in.

It allows you to focus on those topics and keep your users engaged with your content.

These types of analytics and reports are part of the subscription plans, but it still costs Hootsuite some money to offer them.

It needs to have powerful software capable of crunching the data and providing it in simple reports that anyone can read.

Not only does this require more money, but it also means that Hootsuite needs to employ certain engineers and other individuals who can compile those reports.

Since the company is taking on more costs to provide that service to its clients, it’s going to have high subscription plans to cover the costs.

Hootsuite is expensive because of its extensive analysis and reporting features.

 

5. Provides Social Media Marketing Certifications

 

If you don’t know anything about social media marketing, then Hootsuite can help with that, too.

It provides a social media marketing course that you can take to become certified as a social media marketer.

Through its course, you’ll understand the various aspects of marketing on social media.

Since each social media platform has a slightly different way in which its algorithms work, taking a course can help you understand how best to market your business for each platform.

For professionals, it means you can potentially make yourself more hirable.

If you have social media marketing certification from one of the industry leaders in social media marketing, then you might be more appealing to businesses.

Your unique insights could be what it takes to help a business grow and expand.

Offering such a course isn’t cheap.

Hootsuite has to use quite a few resources to provide the course and certification.

Since it takes on higher costs to provide the course, it has to make up for those costs with high subscription plans.

Hootsuite is expensive because it offers a social media marketing certification course as part of its subscription plans.

 

6. Professional Tool

 

There’s no question that Hootsuite is primarily geared toward businesses.

Unless you happen to earn a lot of money through your personal social accounts, it’s unlikely that you’re going to use Hootsuite for your own needs.

Hootsuite is a business tool.

Its focus is on making social media management easier.

Not only can subscribers use it to make posting on social media platforms easier, but they can also use it to track engagement and popularity.

Businesses will find this helpful since it saves time and helps them understand their audiences better.

Because Hootsuite primarily serves businesses, it knows that businesses have higher budgets than most individuals.

As such, it can charge higher prices on its subscription plans since it knows most businesses can likely afford the price.

Hootsuite is expensive because it’s geared toward businesses that typically have high marketing budgets.

 

7. Free Trials

 

Another big reason that Hootsuite is expensive is that it offers free trials.

Hootsuite is confident in its services.

It knows that the majority of people who sign up for its free trial are likely to convert to a subscription plan after using its services.

However, there’s always a risk that people will simply use the free trial, get what they need out of the service, then never use Hootsuite again.

Essentially, there’s a chance that Hootsuite may expend certain resources on a user but never make up for those costs.

Hootsuite doesn’t offer a mere 7-day trial either.

You’re able to try the program out for a full month before deciding whether you want to pay for a subscription plan or not.

This allows you to use the features extensively before you need to start paying for them.

Users may glean all the information they need during that time.

To reduce the risk of people using its services and then leaving the platform, Hootsuite has expensive subscription plans.

It helps the company build a cushion it can use when times are a bit tough.

Hootsuite is expensive because it offers a generous 30-day free trial which adds to its costs.

 

8. Offers Tons Of Features

 

One of the reasons so many people enjoy using Hootsuite is that it has a lot to offer.

Even its cheapest subscription plan, the $99-a-month professional plan, has a lot of useful features.

You can see all messages sent to you across different platforms in one inbox on Hootsuite.

You can even respond to those messages in one place.

You can also schedule a bulk number of posts for release throughout the week or month.

The more money you’re willing to spend on Hootsuite, the more features you unlock.

Features make Hootsuite expensive because it costs the company to offer those features.

The more features you take on, the more you’re having Hootsuite work for you.

As a result, Hootsuite charges more to cover its costs.

Hootsuite is expensive because of the extensive number of features it offers and the associated costs.

 

9. Custom-Made Subscription Plan

 

One of the most expensive subscription plans Hootsuite offers is the custom plan.

Hootsuite is aware that its standard subscription plans won’t fit everyone’s needs.

For businesses that have unique needs, Hootsuite offers a custom subscription plan.

The business can contact Hootsuite to discuss its customized plan.

The more services or features it chooses, the more expensive its subscription plan becomes.

Some features the custom subscription plan offers include:

• Social advertising
• Social customer care
• Employee advocacy
• Priority support and training

All these features can help a business stand out from others and focus on elevated engagement with its audience.

Hootsuite is expensive because its custom subscription plans often come with premium services.

 

10. Research And Development Costs

 

Finally, Hootsuite is expensive because it spends a lot of money on its research and development team.

Hootsuite isn’t the only social media management service out there.

Others offer the same sort of features at lower prices.

To ensure that Hootsuite remains an industry leader, it has to continuously develop new ideas and new features.

That costs money.

The more money that Hootsuite pours into its research and development team, the faster and better the team’s ideas become realized.

Hootsuite is expensive because of its research and development costs.