Hootsuite Pricing in 2026: Real Costs, Hidden Fees & a Cost-Effective Alternative

Hootsuite pricing has changed significantly in recent years, leaving many businesses re-evaluating whether the long-standing industry leader still delivers value for money. Hootsuite has long been a titan in the social media management space – and will likely remain one in the foreseeable future.

But its pricing landscape has recently shifted, and for many companies, the trusted standard now comes with a much steeper price tag and complex per-seat costs.

If you’re a marketer or business owner trying to navigate the new pricing tiers, this guide breaks down Hootsuite’s 2026 costs, identifies the features locked behind its most expensive plans, and introduces a flexible, cost-effective alternative in case you need it: NapoleonCat. So, let’s get into it.

• TL;DR: An overview of current Hootsuite pricing vs. NapoleonCat pricing 
• Hootsuite pricing tiers and features explained 
• NapoleonCat – pricing tiers and features
• Feature comparison: Hootsuite vs. NapoleonCat
• Which tool is right for you?

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• Monitor ad comments from multiple accounts.
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• Auto-delete spam comments.
• Schedule posts to multiple accounts, on desktop.
• Analyze your social media performance.
• Keep track of your competition.
• Create or schedule in-depth reports in seconds.

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TL;DR: An overview of current Hootsuite pricing vs. NapoleonCat pricing 

If you’re looking for a quick Hootsuite vs. NapoleonCat pricing summary, here are the most important things you should know:

• Hootsuite’s current per-seat model means your bill literally doubles or triples every time you add a teammate
• NapoleonCat’s usage-based plans include multiple users by default, offering a significantly lower entry point for teams
• Both platforms have several plans to choose from: Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise for Hootsuite and Standard, Pro, Expert, and Enterprise for NapoleonCat. The higher up you go, the bigger the difference in price between the two platforms.
• With both platforms, you can save up by paying annually instead of monthly.
• The lowest price with Hootsuite is $199 per user per month, paid annually, with up to 10 social accounts.
• You can get 10% off Hootsuite by skipping the 30-day free trial. 
• The lowest price for NapoleonCat starts at $79 a month for 2 users and 5 social media profiles.

Which one’s more suitable obviously depends on your needs and a simple calculation. Here’s a quick table to help with that.

Now let’s get into more detail of each of the plans in both platforms, shall we?

Hootsuite pricing tiers and features explained 

Hootsuite’s long been the higher-end social media management platform, leaning heavily towards enterprise needs, which certainly is reflected in the pricing structure. 

Let’s take a closer look at the different pricing tiers in Hootsuite and what you actually get with each one.

Standard Plan (formerly Professional)

Designed for individual power users, this plan starts at $199/month (billed annually) or $249/month (billed monthly).

What’s included: 

• Management for 10 social accounts
• Unlimited scheduling
• An AI assistant for captions
• An Inbox for all interactions
• DM automations
• Competitive analysis (5 competitors included)

Note: This pricing supports one user. Each additional seat costs another $199-$249 (paid annually or monthly), with no bundled discounts.

What’s not included:

• Content approval workflows
• Bulk scheduling
• Advanced reporting and analytics
• More than 7 days of search history for brand and competitor mentions

Advanced Plan (formerly Team)

This tier jumps to $399/month (annual) or $499/month (monthly) per user, which is quite the jump 👀.

What’s included: 

• Unlimited social accounts
• Bulk scheduling (up to 350 posts)
• Team approval workflows
• Customizable reports and templates
• Benchmarking against 20 competitors
• Search the past 30 days for brand and competitor mentions
• Custom user access permissions

Again, while the plan adds team features, the price is still per user. A team of five on this plan would spend nearly $2,000/month.

Enterprise Plan

For large organizations, Hootsuite offers custom Enterprise pricing, which usually starts around $15,000 to $16,000 per year (according to a bit of online research, as you won’t find prices for this tier on the official pricing page), and requires a minimum of 5 users. 

What’s included:

• Unlimited users
• SSO
• 24/7 priority support
• Extra tools, including social listening, employee advocacy, genAI chatbot, social selling, and Salesforce integration

Note: Some add-ons are still available for an extra fee, despite the Enterprise plan. The plan is also billed annually up front and requires a demo call for the details.

Hidden costs and limitations in Hootsuite

Beyond the sticker price, several factors make Hootsuite a high-cost commitment:

• Choosing monthly billing increases your costs by approximately 20-25% compared to the annual rate, which is pretty high compared to some alternatives.
• Because there are no bundled user rates on Standard or Advanced plans, costs scale linearly, making the pricing truly prohibitive for smaller agencies.
• Basic needs like automated moderation or a full-featured customer service inbox are often locked behind the Enterprise wall or paid add-ons.
• Hootsuite also discontinued its free plan, so your starting point is the Standard plan. There is a 30-day free trial for the Standard and Advanced plans, and if you skip it, you’re offered a 10% discount – only if you decide to pay annually, though.

Though you’re certainly getting a reputable product, the price might be a deal-breaker for a lot of smaller businesses and social media agencies. So, let’s take a look at NapoleonCat as a lower-cost but still high-value alternative.

NapoleonCat – pricing tiers and features

Let’s take a look at how NapoleonCat’s plans work. The first difference you’ll see is that NapoleonCat uses a usage-based model rather than charging per seat. This means adding a teammate won’t automatically double your monthly bill. (And the lowest plan actually includes two users already).

Also, each of the plans comes with customer support that NapoleonCat’s clients really appreciate for always being responsive. So, unlike many software platforms these days, you don’t have to pay extra to talk to a human about your potential issues with the tool (not that there are many).

And if you look at NapoleonCat’s pricing page, you’ll see that you can tailor each plan based on the number of users and social media platforms.

Each higher plan includes what’s in the lower plan plus new features. Here’s a more detailed breakdown of each pricing tier for you.

Standard Plan 

The standard plan starts at $79/mo (annually)

What’s included: 

• 2 users and 5 social profiles. Taking it a step further to 5 users and 10 social profiles would cost you $129.
• Unlimited scheduling
• Team collaboration tools
• Competitor benchmarking (within your social profile number limit)
• Automated reporting tools

Note: Some of the features available in the lowest plan in NapoleonCat are what you’d only get in the Enterprise plan at Hootsuite. 

Pro Plan

The Pro plan starts at $89/mo (annually), and is NapoleonCat’s most popular tier for community managers, as it includes the unified Social Inbox. 

What’s included: 

• Everything you get in the Standard plan
• A full Social Inbox to manage comments and DMs across platforms
• Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok ad comments moderation
• Saved replies
• Email consultations with NapoleonCat experts
• Team performance reports
• Sentiment tagging

Expert Plan

The Expert plan starts at $119 per month for 2 users and 5 profiles.

What’s included: 

• Everything included in the Pro plan
• Auto-moderation for replying to common questions, hiding and deleting offensive comments and spam
• AI‑supported sentiment analysis 
• Advanced search

Compared to Hootsuite, you’re getting some powerful AI-driven tools to protect your brand reputation for a fraction of the price.

Enterprise Plan

Custom pricing starts at $465 per month.

What’s included: 

• AI Reply (currently in beta) 
• API access
• Custom reporting and compliance solutions
• Custom agreements and payment options
• SLA support
• Priority onboarding

This plan is heavily customizable, and you can negotiate what it looks like for you – without hidden add-on fees. And even then, you’ll likely be paying less than a mid-sized team using Hootsuite.

The pay‑as‑you‑grow model

As you’ve probably seen already, the pricing in NapoleonCat progresses in two ways:

• Number of users and social media profiles within a single plan
• Based on features across plans.

This way, you can customize your pricing to fit what you actually need at the moment. Plus, you can upgrade and downgrade any time.

There’s a 14-day free trial for you to test out the features – and you don’t even need a credit card to sign up.

Feature comparison: Hootsuite vs. NapoleonCat

Let me focus on a few key areas for a social media management tool like Hootsuite and NapoleonCat, and how they compare. 

Social Inbox & CRM

• NapoleonCat includes a unified Social Inbox and Social CRM across plans, starting from the Pro plan. 
• The Social Inbox works for organic comments, DMs, and ad comments, and also includes Google reviews.
• The Social CRM brings comment history and customizable tags into a coherent user profile.
• Hootsuite’s Standard plan offers a basic inbox and no CRM.
• Advanced inbox and CRM features in Hootsuite are available in the higher tiers.
  

Auto‑moderation & AI Reply

• NapoleonCat offers AI‑based Auto‑moderation (spam/hate removal, sentiment tagging) in Expert and Enterprise plans. 
• The AI Reply is currently available in beta on request via the Enterprise plan.
• An AI Assistant that helps you write post captions in the publisher is available in all NapoleonCat plans.
• Hootsuite automation rules are either limited or available only via add‑ons. 
• The AI Reply in Hootsuite is available only in Enterprise plans and at a much higher cost than what it would be using NapoleonCat.
  

Sentiment & competitor benchmarking 

• NapoleonCat includes AI‑supported sentiment tagging that you can also connect to Auto-moderation and monitor via the analytics and reporting features.
• It also offers comprehensive competitor benchmarking, with profile limits based on your selected number of social media slots in your plan.
• Hootsuite offers basic sentiment analysis across plans.
• The competitor benchmarking is limited to 5 profiles in the Standard plan, then jumps to 20 in the Advanced plan.
  

Multi‑language support & training: 

• NapoleonCat provides English and Polish customer support with 1:1 onboarding and training across all plans. 
• Hootsuite provides English-only support, and training is restricted to Enterprise plans.

GDPR & data residency: 

• NapoleonCat is EU‑based and GDPR‑first.
• Hootsuite is Canada‑based with data held outside of the EU.
  

Pricing model: 

• NapoleonCat uses mid‑market, value‑based pricing starting at $79 per account
• The pricing grows depending on the number of users and profiles within a plan and also across plans.
• Hootsuite’s pricing is user-based, with a high cost per user. It also progresses across the three available plans. 
• Both platforms offer customizable Enterprise plans, with Hootsuite starting at much higher rates, though. 

Oh, you wanted a neat table? Here you go:

Hootsuite vs. NapoleonCat feature comparison

Which tool is right for you?

Of course, the quick answer is: it depends. On your needs, team size, social media presence, etc.

But let me give you a little more context to help you make the right decision.

Solo entrepreneurs or freelancers

If you need a few profiles and a single user, Hootsuite’s Standard plan could technically work. Compared to other alternatives for solo business owners, it does feel excessively expensive, though, with some platforms like Buffer even providing free accounts (with some limitations you might still be fine with).

NapoleonCat’s Standard plan will be enough if you only want to use the publishing feature, while the Pro plan provides helpful features for customer engagement for only $89/mo – and you get two user slots by default if you want to work with someone else. It’s definitely a strong option if you’re looking for inbox features in addition to publishing content.

Small teams & agencies

When you add more users, Hootsuite’s per‑seat costs quickly become prohibitive for smaller teams. A team of three would pay $747/month on the annual Standard plan or $1,247/month on the monthly Advanced plan.

NapoleonCat’s Standard/Pro/Expert plans, on the other hand, allow 2 users by default, and adding additional users or profiles is way less expensive. A 5‑person team on the Pro plan will pay $159/month (on the annual plan), and $209 on the annual Expert plan. The math here is pretty simple.

Essential agency‑focused features like multiple workspaces, real-time user collaboration, analytics, and automated moderation are also included earlier in NapoleonCat’s tiers, so the platform becomes much more affordable than Hootsuite at the same level of advancement.

Enterprise companies

As I already mentioned, both platforms have customizable Enterprise plans.

Hootsuite’s Enterprise plan might be great for companies that need advanced integrations, such as Salesforce, and large-scale social media listening. (Be aware of the possible extra costs, though.)

NapoleonCat’s Enterprise plan starts at $465/mo and offers advanced AI features and API access, with custom agreements and compliance solutions. So it really depends on how advanced you need your social media management be in terms of the entire organization’s marketing strategy.

Let me also remind you that NapoleonCat includes multi‑language support and 1:1 training across plans. And it offers GDPR compliance by default – so, if you’re based in the EU, it might be the smarter choice in terms of compliance.

Choose the tool that fits your social media needs and budget

If you’re choosing between Hootsuite and NapoleonCat for your social media management needs, I hope this article helps shine some light on some of the finer print and the available pricing options.

You can try NapoleonCat for free for 14 days, no questions asked (and no credit card), so testing it before making the jump is a good idea. If you do want to ask some questions, though, you can also book a demo and get all the answers.

Simplify Social Media
Management with One Tool

• Manage & reply to comments and DMs in one place.
• Monitor ad comments from multiple accounts.
• Automate answers to repetitive questions.
• Auto-delete spam comments.
• Schedule posts to multiple accounts, on desktop.
• Analyze your social media performance.
• Keep track of your competition.
• Create or schedule in-depth reports in seconds.

Try 2 weeks for free (no credit card required)