Salesforce recently announced the retirement of its social media management tool Social Studio. Customers will lose access on Nov. 18, 2024, or at the end of their contract, whichever comes sooner.

Luckily, you won’t have to look far to find the best Social Studio alternative. Hootsuite does everything Social Studio does and more for a fraction of the cost. Plus, Hootsuite has a free Salesforce integration and many customer relationship management (CRM) tools to make your migration painless.

Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about the Salesforce Social Studio retirement — and what to do next.

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your own strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.

What is Salesforce Social Studio?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio is a tool for managing, scheduling, and tracking social media posts across multiple social platforms.

Like Hootsuite, Social Studio lets you plan and measure the performance of both paid and organic social marketing campaigns. Social Studio supports publishing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Source: Salesforce

Social Studio is also built for social media listening. It allows you to monitor mentions, keywords and hashtags, and track conversations across social media platforms.

Hootsuite’s social listening tools offer the same brand monitoring capabilities and more to help inform strategy across your business.

When is Social Studio shutting down?

Salesforce will officially shut down Social Studio on Nov. 18, 2024, but some users will lose access before then. If your contract ends before Nov. 18, 2024, you’ll lose access as soon as your agreement is up.

Salesforce has already stopped selling licenses to the product. They’ve also stopped updating and enhancing Social Studio. That means you need to start the hunt for an alternative social media management tool now. The sooner you can replace Social Studio, the sooner you can start crushing your social strategy.

Note: As part of the sunset, Salesforce plans to delete all Social Studio customer data. We recommend downloading your data from Social Studio soon to make migrating easier.

Source: Salesforce

Hootsuite vs. Social Studio: feature comparison and pricing

Looking to quickly and easily replace Social Studio with an all-around better social media management dashboard? Hootsuite offers all the most popular Salesforce Social Studio features and more.

Here’s a quick breakdown of Salesforce Social Studio vs. Hootsuite.

Cost

One great thing about Salesforce Social Studio being discontinued? You’ll probably save your organization some money. Social Studio plans start at $1,000 per month and go all the way up to $40,000 per month for larger organizations.

With some plans, you’ll also have to pay extra to publish on your social media networks. Plus, Social Studio’s basic plan only lets you connect two social media accounts. That means if you want to post and analyze your social media performance, the basic plan won’t cover your needs.

Hootsuite plans start out at just $99 per month. Even our entry-level plan lets you connect up to 10 social media accounts. On top of that, all Hootsuite accounts let you publish on social media with no extra fee.

Publishing

Not all Social Studio plans come standard with posting capabilities. For its entry-level plan ($1,000 per month), Salesforce charges an extra $500 per month for publishing. This plan doesn’t even include access to third-party integrations, such as stock photo apps or digital asset management systems. Hootsuite includes these features in every plan.

When it comes to publishing features, Hootsuite beats Social Studio by a mile. Use it to schedule posts to all the same social media platforms as Social Studio and more. Post to popular social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Google My Business, WhatsApp, Tumblr, and more.

Like Social Studio, Hootsuite lets you view paid and organic social posts in a calendar view. You can also see how your posts will look across social media channels before you hit “publish.”

If you need a tool for publishing and analyzing social media, Hootsuite offers many more capabilities than Social Studio. Here’s a quick sampling of what we offer:

• Design eye-catching posts in seconds with Canva templates
• Write more engaging captions with Grammarly Pro for free
• Get integrations to post to Google My Business, Tumblr, and more
• See the exact best time to post based on your audience
• Capture more reach with an AI hashtag generator

Analytics

Hootsuite’s social media analytics are deeper and more customizable than Social Studio’s. While Social Studio has impressive tools for social listening, they fall short when it comes to measuring the performance of social media posts.

Social Studio makes it difficult to retrieve and analyze post performance. The platform also doesn’t allow you to customize social media performance reports.

Hootsuite analytics allow you to watch hundreds of metrics, see how you’re performing against competitors, and track your team’s performance in the Hootsuite dashboard. When you’re ready to report on your results, you can edit almost every aspect of your reports — pick and choose your metrics, add logos, and customize visuals.

Here are a few more of the top features you’ll find in Hootsuite Analytics.

• Export, customize, and white-label reports in seconds
• See exactly when to publish based on your unique audience and goal
• Get a glimpse into how you’re performing against your competitors
• See post-by-post performance and track hundreds of metrics in one place

Inbox and community engagement

Turn conversations into sales with a more customer-centric inbox. Hootsuite allows you to manage and reply to messages and comments across your social media networks. Use it to reply to private messages and comments on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more.

While Social Studio does allow you to reply to messages on Facebook and Instagram, its functions are limited. For example, it does not allow you to reply to Instagram messages that are more than six days old. In Hootsuite, your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram conversations stay in your inbox for six weeks.

Here are a few of the inbox features we have that help us beat Social Studio.

• Connect Salesforce, WhatsApp, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and more to your inbox
• Integrate chatbots to take care of messaging for you
• Delight customers and improve with easy customer satisfaction score (CSAT) surveys
• Respond to private messages and public comments across social media in one place
• Respond to mentions on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube right from your dashboard
• Use saved replies and automated responses to save time responding to messages

Social listening

Hootsuite offers more bang for your buck than Social Studio when it comes to social listening. Salesforce charges based on mentions per month, so the more mentions you want to monitor — and the more popular your brand — the more you’ll pay. Hootsuite doesn’t limit tracking or charge extra to monitor more mentions.

Every Hootsuite plan comes with Streams that let you track hashtags, mentions, conversations, and competitor activities.

Want to go deeper? Get the Hootsuite Insights add-on. With Insights, you can track brand sentiment, emotion, mentions, demographics, and more. Easily monitor trends and dig deep on consumer research with advanced search options.

Employee advocacy

Social Studio does not offer an employee advocacy tool, while Hootsuite offers the industry’s best. Take your engagement and reach to new heights with Hootsuite Amplify.

Create on-brand posts for your employees to share and send your message further. This helps you grow your brand’s reach while reducing risk and making it easy for your team to blast company news, wins, and more.

Compliance

If you’re in an industry with stringent social media compliance rules (or you simply want to be extra diligent), Hootsuite can help. Like Social Studio, Hootsuite offers custom access permissions and approvals to ensure that the right eyes see content before it goes live. Users can also create libraries of pre-approved content to ensure compliance.

Hootsuite has achieved compliance with the Cyber Essentials program and is Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) approved. You can read more about how Hootsuite helps brands stay compliant here.

Why Hootsuite is the best Social Studio alternative

Salesforce Social Studio sunset: FAQs

Is Salesforce Social Studio being discontinued?

Yes. Salesforce announced in 2022 that it would be retiring its Marketing Cloud Social Studio products. Social Studio users will lose access to their accounts on Nov. 18, 2024. If your contract ends before then, you’ll lose access on the final date of your agreement.

What is replacing Salesforce Social Studio?

To our knowledge, Salesforce does not plan to replace Social Studio with another social media management tool. Instead, the company recommends using “third-party alternative products,” such as Hootsuite.

Hootsuite is the overall best Social Studio replacement. No Salesforce Social Studio competitors offer the same features across community engagement, publishing, social listening, and analytics as Hootsuite.

What does Salesforce Social Studio do?

Social Studio is Salesforce’s answer to a social media marketing and social listening tool. It allows you to create a social media calendar and schedule posts across the most widely used social media platforms. It also offers social monitoring tools to help users track mentions, hashtags, keywords, and conversations about their brand and industry.

How much does Salesforce Social Studio cost?

Note: Salesforce is no longer selling licenses to Social Studio, and it is not currently available to buy.

Salesforce Social Studio pricing starts at $1,000 per month and goes all the way up to over $40,000 per month. For the most basic Social Studio plan, there’s also an added fee of $500 per month for publishing. There are four Social Studio plans with monthly fees starting at $1,000, $4,000, $12,000, and $40,000.

Salesforce sets their prices based on “monthly mentions,” or how many mentions you want to track and analyze per month. They also price based on how many social media accounts you want to add. You’ll pay a premium with Social Studio if you want to connect more than two social media accounts.

There’s no better Salesforce Social Studio alternative than Hootsuite. Publish, track, engage, and sell more with Hootsuite’s industry-leading social media management tools. Try it for free today.

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