HootSuite vs ActiveCampaign

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Our analysts compared HootSuite vs ActiveCampaign based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Marketing Automation Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

HootSuite Software Tool

Product Basics

Hootsuite, a social media management platform, empowers users to oversee multiple social media accounts from a centralized hub. Its array of features encompasses scheduling posts, tracking analytics, and fostering follower engagement. Catering primarily to businesses and organizations striving for effective social media management, Hootsuite offers user-friendly tools that simplify the complexities of social media marketing.

Notable advantages include its intuitive interface, comprehensive feature set, and cost-effective pricing structure. Plans commence at $29 per month, rendering it an attractive option for budget-conscious entities. Hootsuite's popularity is evidenced by its widespread adoption among diverse businesses and organizations, including industry giants like Coca-Cola and Nike.

While Hootsuite garners praise for its ease of use and affordability, it's essential to acknowledge that alternative social media management platforms exist, each presenting unique strengths and weaknesses. Discerning users often compare features, pricing models, and user experiences to determine the optimal solution aligned with their specific requirements.

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ActiveCampaign provides cloud-based marketing services, with robust capabilities ranging from automation and reporting to lead scoring and contact segmentation. It’s ideal for businesses of any size, as it offers a flexible, device-agnostic deployment model. It also functions as a marketing-oriented CRM with different integrations and exporting options to assist sales.

It provides machine learning that can be used on data including phone calls, emails and sales. Machine learning enables predicting win probability and using predictive sending. Customers can also take advantage of a consultant directory with certified consultants from different countries.
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$99 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
$9 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Insights

  • User-Friendly: It’s easy to create immediate or scheduled posts using the point-and-click interface. Upload media files or choose from a built-in library. 
  • Time Savings: Publish a post to multiple networks at once rather than doing each individually. 
  • Effective Advertising: Automate ad solutions in one place as well as create and launch simple campaigns quickly. Teams can collaborate directly from Hootsuite Ads. 
  • Improved Social Reach: Securely share content to boost social reach with scalable advocacy solutions. The clean mobile-first environment also boosts employee management. 
  • Better Market Understanding: Gain improved insights from organic and paid social media content with social analytics. Customized dashboards help understand what drives conversions, leads and sales. Connect with Adobe Analytics and other BI tools as well. 
  • Real-Time Social Analytics: Stay up-to-date with information about competitors, measure risks and opportunities, and set alerts for unusual spikes in volume or brand sentiment. 
  • Accessibility: Easily manage and maintain a social media presence by refining content and handling the content schedule on the go, from any device. 
  • Integration: Seamlessly integrate with third-party tools like Salesforce, Zendesk, Canva, Adobe, Brandwatch, Panoramiq Multiview, Talkwalker and more for effective brand management. 
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  • Take Back Your Time: Save time from otherwise arduous tasks with a robust suite of features including email automation, contact exportation and automatic campaign driving. 
  • Save Money: Reduce costs with an application that has a full suite of tools and features, helping cover all technological bases for less. 
  • Qualify Leads: Automated email delivery, blog scheduling and social media monitoring features help turn reluctant or uninformed leads into brand advocates. 
  • Assist Sales: Built to nurture leads to close, the system makes the sales team’s job much easier. 
  • Message Targets at Pivotal Stages: Schedule messages to target leads at crucial stages in the buyer’s journey. Offers numerous ways to contact and engage users. 
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  • Content Creation: Create, curate, review and publish content seamlessly from a single dashboard. Efficiently develop media-rich content and streamline post scheduling with Auto Scheduler for a strong social media presence. 
  • Audience Engagement: Monitor trends and post performances across profiles and manage customer messages from different networks in a single stream with Hootsuite’s Inbox. Efficient chatbots respond to straightforward audience inquiries quickly. 
  • Advertise: Leverage tools to create and manage ad campaigns with ease. 
    •  Boost organic Facebook content with the Hootsuite Composer. 
    •  Promote organic posts as Sponsored Content ads to target audiences on LinkedIn. 
    •  Oversee campaigns, review results, collaborate and launch creative campaigns with Hootsuite Ads. 
  • Monitoring: Understand key topics, track post performances and brand mentions, and monitor competitor activities from a single dashboard. Hootsuite Insights provides an instant overview of online conversations in real time. 
  • Analysis: Customizable reports enable setting and monitoring performance benchmarks. Calculate the real return on social media investment using Hootsuite Impact. 
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  • Dynamic Content: Keep content fresh and personalized by automatically changing email content depending on where a lead is in the buyer’s journey. 
  • Email Marketing: A robust and fully-featured suite offers broadcasting, triggered and targeted emails, funnels, and robust integrations with popular social media and e-commerce platforms. Also offers: 
    • Drag-and-Drop Builder: Create and automate campaigns with ease. 
    • Scheduled Emails: Enables scheduling emails for specific dates and times. 
    • Email Autoresponders: Enables sending welcome emails, starting a welcome series or delivering lead magnets automatically. 
  • Segmentation: Target specific groups within the contacts list to be more personal in emails and engage people with the right information. 
  • CRM: Notify the sales team, update deals, create tasks and nurture leads automatically. Scores leads, passes off highly-qualified targets to sales and integrates with popular email providers. 
  • Advanced Reporting: Offers custom reporting features, including custom KPIs, sales reporting, tag counting and robust segmentation. Gives insights into email performance. Split testing can also be used to get email opens, clicks and buys. 
  • Fast Training: Schedule one-on-one appointments with the company’s customer service team to help teams get up to speed with training. A series of robust webinars and user docs are available. 
  • Migration Services: Receive assistance migrating from another marketing automation product. Services include contact list and tag import, form recreation, workflow recreation, and email template recreation. 
  • Powerful Integrations: Integrates with PayPal, Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Facebook, Google Analytics and more than 250 other apps including payment processors, membership websites and e-commerce stores. 
  • Audience Segmentation: Allows personalized messages by adding tags to segments. Tags can be based on purchase history, geographic location, time since last purchased, personal interests and more. 
  • Geo-Tracking: Automatically capture a contact’s location for geo-targeted email marketing campaigns. 
  • Site Tracking: Pulls data in from other websites to assist in tracking the customer’s activity. 
  • Social Sharing: Gives insights into performance on social platforms and enables greater audience engagement. 
  • Split Testing: Try different email subject lines, body copy and more to increase and optimize campaign conversion rates. Add up to five variations for a single campaign. 
  • SMS Marketing: Automate SMS marketing to send notifications and campaigns such as appointment reminders, flash sale notifications and more. 
  • Conversation Features: Provides: 
    •  Live chat to facilitate capturing leads and creating contacts from the website. Includes customizable auto reply, custom branding, contact creation and triggered automations. 
    •  A unified inbox to connect conversations with customers. 
  • Predictive Sending: Automate emails using machine learning algorithms. It ranks the hours in a day based on a contact’s open time and uses these recommendations to schedule an optimal send time. 
  • Contact and Lead Scoring: Sends notifications when leads are getting hot, with automatically triggered email notifications and task assignments based on lead score changes. Helps follow up with deals that are most likely to close. 
  • Win Probabilities: Calculates the conversion chance for a specific lead, giving foresight into lead behavior. 
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Product Ranking

#27

among all
Marketing Automation Software

#2

among all
Marketing Automation Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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AI-Based Capabilities Campaign Management Compliance And Data Security Dashboard And Reporting Email Campaign Management Lead Generation Lead Management Lead Nurturing Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Social Media Campaign Management Text Campaign Management 57 93 83 81 95 75 100 100 62 95 88 76 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 6045 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 6420 reviews
83%
of users recommend this product

HootSuite has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 83% when considering 6045 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

92%
of users recommend this product

ActiveCampaign has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 92% when considering 6420 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

4.1 (2919)
4.6 (5328)
4.3 (2516)
4.6 (800)
4.3 (81)
n/a
3.9 (529)
4.5 (292)

Awards

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SelectHub research analysts have evaluated ActiveCampaign and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Lead Management. ActiveCampaign stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award
Lead Management Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Planning: All users who mention scheduling of posts noted that the ability to plan posts ahead of time is the key benefit of this solution.
Monitoring: The solution offers easy capabilities for analysis, according to all reviews referencing this aspect.
Multiple Accounts Access: All users referring to this element noted the ability to access different social media accounts from one platform as an important advantage.
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User-Friendly: Everyone referencing this aspect states the software is easy to use.
Automation: It helps run customer and lead campaigns, triggered automatically based on set specifications, note 98% of reviewers referring to this feature.
Customer Support: The support team is easy to reach and very responsive, according to 93% of reviewers talking about this aspect.
Functionalities: Every user mentioning features states the system offers robust capabilities including client onboarding, lead funnels, newsletters, contact tracking and more.
Email Campaigns: In the view of 85% of reviews about this feature, it’s easy to send weekly emails, replicate earlier emails and develop templates for other uses.
Integration: Connecting with Zapier and other platforms makes it easy to transfer leads, according to 88% of reviewers referencing integration.
Help Resource: Everyone mentioning training reports there are helpful tutorials and webinars.
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Instagram: The product doesn’t offer many tools to integrate well with Instagram, according to all the users who mention this aspect.
Glitches: All reviews about downtime and bugs noted that the solution is prone to glitchy behavior.
Learning Curve: All users talking about setup and implementation reported that the product takes some time to get used to.
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Learning Curve: According to 77% of reviewers talking about training, it’s tough and time consuming to learn the platform.
Glitches: Every user mentioning this aspect notes it can be glitchy at times and quite slow to load during peak business hours.
Interface: The interface is slow and not very intuitive, according to 62% of reviewers referencing this aspect.
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HootSuite helps businesses of all sizes manage their social media presence from one convenient platform. It allows users to schedule posts, track analytics, and engage with followers across multiple social media platforms. HootSuite is praised for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features, making it a popular choice for businesses looking to streamline their social media management. However, some users find the pricing to be on the higher side, especially for larger teams or businesses with extensive social media needs. Additionally, while HootSuite offers integrations with various tools, it may not have the same level of integration with other marketing automation platforms as some competitors, which could be a drawback for businesses with complex marketing workflows. HootSuite's strengths lie in its ease of use, scheduling capabilities, and analytics tools. Users appreciate the ability to schedule posts in advance, ensuring a consistent social media presence. The platform's analytics provide valuable insights into audience engagement and campaign performance, allowing businesses to optimize their social media strategies. HootSuite's ability to manage multiple social media accounts from a single dashboard is a significant advantage, saving time and effort for social media managers. Compared to similar products like Sprout Social and Buffer, HootSuite offers a wider range of features and integrations, making it a more comprehensive solution for businesses with diverse social media needs. However, Sprout Social is often lauded for its superior customer support and user interface, while Buffer is known for its affordability and simplicity. Ultimately, the best choice depends on the specific requirements and budget of each business. HootSuite is well-suited for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. Its scalability and flexibility make it adaptable to different social media strategies and team structures. For businesses looking to improve their social media efficiency and gain valuable insights into their audience, HootSuite is a powerful tool that can help them achieve their social media goals. However, it's essential to consider the pricing and integration options before making a decision. Businesses with extensive marketing automation needs may want to explore alternative platforms that offer more robust integrations. Overall, HootSuite remains a leading social media management platform, providing businesses with the tools they need to succeed in the ever-evolving social media landscape.

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ActiveCampaign provides cloud-based marketing services to businesses of any size. It’s easy to use and offers a wide range of features, along with robust automation and campaigning capabilities. The system integrates with all major platforms. Most users also find the customer support team as well as the training materials to be helpful. However, it takes time to learn the intricate features thoroughly. Reviews also state the system suffers from glitches and the interface could be more user-friendly. Businesses that need a system that caters to CRM as well as marketing needs, and that have the ability to leverage its complex functionality effectively, should consider this as a solid choice.

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