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[Comparison] How do you choose your Social Media Management tool?

[Comparison] How do you choose your Social Media Management tool?

By Jérémie Clément

Published: 12 May 2025

A comparison of Social Media Management solutions is essential if you are to choose the right tool for your social networking strategy. Social Media Management is an ultra-competitive market in which many publishers are positioning themselves either specifically or by offering a dedicated brick within a suite. As a result, there is a very broad and comprehensive offering for all businesses, ranging from freemium tools to solution suites designed for deployment within international groups.

For these players, the aim is to provide an "all-in-one" solution for managing their presence and strategy on social networks. In this article, we take a look at the market in order to establish a framework for classifying the different solutions according to their value proposition.

Content strategy before Social Media tools

The need for a Social Media Management tool may arise from the need to manage several social accounts on several networks simply and optimally, or to improve collaboration and workflow within a team of Community Managers (or Social Media Managers).

Whatever the situation, you need to adopt the right strategy with the right tool(s)!

Social Media Management tools organise the "noise" of social media into a structured flow, enabling Social Managers to carry out their daily tasks with peace of mind and efficiency, and to evaluate them: mainly publishing relevant and appropriate messages on different networks and responding to questions and comments.

The 3 key features of the solutions

  • Engagement: A single dashboard where you can monitor all the messages on the social networks and respond, engaging in dialogue with your audience (comments, mentions, private messages, etc.). The tools generally offer 2 engagement features depending on your preferences and habits: " streams " like TweetDeck or Hootsuite, or " inboxes " (AgoraPulse or Sendible).

  • Planning: A system for planning and scheduling your future messages.

  • Reporting: various performance KPIs (likes, shares, engagement, reach, etc.) and insights (keywords most used by my communities, influencers, etc.) that can be exported to automated or customisable reports.

In this article, we propose to focus on tools dedicated to Social Media Management.

Larger companies, out of habit, scalability or a desire to make maximum use of their tools, may turn to more comprehensive Solution Suites that include a Social Media Management component.

These include Sprinklr Social Cloud, Falcon.io (recently acquired by Cision), HubSpot's social media management tools, the essential Salesforce Social Studio, part of the Suite Marketing Cloud platform, Spredfast, SocialBackers, and NUVI, which focuses on Directions and Dataviz.

Our selection: focus on 5 tools dedicated to Social Media

We're going to start by looking at the specific Social Media Management tools. The following tools are listed in alphabetical order.

1. Agorapulse

We start with the only French player in this segment! Another notable feature is that the company has grown without raising any funds and has a MRR (Monthly Reccurring Revenue) of €600K.

In terms of engagement, AgoraPulse was the first player to offer a Social Inbox. This brings together all the content from social networks in a single place, and is designed in the same way as an email inbox: you tick the messages to assign an action to a colleague or take action (reply), with the aim of ensuring that your inbox is empty. AgoraPulse also offers automated spam moderation options.

The tool performs the functions of scheduling content in advance (pre-selected date and time) and recycling (permanent content sharing on several occasions).

Finally, the performance reports are detailed and can save a great deal of time compared with a network-by-network check. They include Listening options (to highlight the main keywords used by the community) and can be exported via PowerPoint for further processing, and the tool offers a white label option for agencies.

Pricing is based on 4 packs and ranges from €39/month to €239/month. The company is offering a free 28-day trial.

Saas Advisor's verdict: AgoraPulse is a very easy-to-use, intuitive tool that's quick to learn and has all the essential functions. For example, the main social networks are covered (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin and Youtube), but the tool does not offer any others. With the exception of Bitly, it does not offer interconnections with other tools. It offers the essential collaborative features, and is ideally suited to small and medium-sized organisations.

Key references: Deliveroo France, Skiset, Pierre Fabre, Bouygues Energies, etc.

2. eClincher

Not the best known, particularly in France, eClincher is a comprehensive tool offering both an Inbox and streams for engagement features. There's either a single space where messages arrive, which disappear from the list once they've been processed, or real-time streams for replying, liking or subscribing. The best part is that as soon as you log in, you'll see all your notifications.

For planning functions, eClincher also offers a choice of calendar or list view. Here, too, it offers a comprehensive range of options, including shortcut links, an image editor (Canva) and publication recycling. The End-date Queue option is ideal for campaigns.

Finally, in terms of reporting features, eCLincher lets you combine Google Analytics data with data from the social networks in its own module. You can monitor the performance of your Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts in real time. Reports can be customised using drag-and-drop, and there is a white label option for agencies wishing to add their client's logo.

Pricing is based on 4 packs and ranges from $49/month to $199/month (for agencies), with special rates available for larger organisations. The company offers a free 14-day trial.

Saas Advisor's verdict: eClincher is a very comprehensive tool, ideal for campaigns. It also offers publishing via RSS feeds, listening and influencer detection functions. As well as the main social networks, the tool covers Pinterest and Yelp. However, the fact that it incorporates an Inbox and streams can be seen as both a strength and a weakness (confusing, and not the best on the market). It's perfectly suited to agencies and medium-sized organisations, and has already found a home with a number of US media outlets. The company is American, so the question of support in French arises.

Main references: Forbes, Fox News, ABC, The Huffington Post

3. Hootsuite

Without doubt one of the best-known tools on the market. When it comes to engagement, Hootsuite has opted for streams rather than Social Inbox. You can create your own dashboard with numerous streams, depending on your priorities, and assign tasks to one or more people (department or country).

The scheduling features make it easy to maintain a continuous presence (24/7) on social media. The tool features a Hootlet for scheduling posts based on content found while browsing the web, or bulk uploading upcoming posts via a CSV.

Hootsuite offers default reporting (with the main KPIs), as well as the option of building more customised reports, which can be exported in the main formats (CSV, PPT, PDF).

Pricing is extensive, with 4 packs ranging from €25/month to €599/month, with special rates available for larger organisations. The company is offering a free 30-day trial.

Saas Advisor's opinion: Hootsuite is an ideal tool for scaling up, because it offers basic functionality and is customisable through a number of options. The ability to set up multiple streams is a big plus if this is the system that suits you better than Inbox. Finally, the tool offers the main social networks and Wordpress, as well as the best integration on the market with a very open API and over 100 partner applications. The tool is Canadian, but well established in France. Note that statistics export is only available with the €599/month package.

Main references: Visa, AccorHotels

4. Sendible

Also less well known in France, Sendible has chosen Inbox for its engagement features, where unanswered messages arrive in a single stream. It is then possible to filter these messages according to different criteria in order to organise responses (identify important messages and take action).

On the programming side, the tool offers an interactive calendar based on the drag-and-drop model (with the option of publishing individually or in blocks), a curation engine to recommend the best content, and functions via your blog's RSS feeds.

As far as reports are concerned, the tool offers basic ones (ready to use, offering an interesting big picture), but is very comprehensive if you want to customise them (several predefined templates in terms of design, over 250 modules that can be added).

Pricing comes in 4 packs from €20/month to €274/month. The company offers a free 30-day trial.

Saas Advisor's verdict: The tool integrates the main social networks and Pinterest, as well as engagement functions on WordPress, blogger and Tumblr. It's ideal for agencies managing a large number of social accounts and for influential bloggers. It offers a number of advanced collaborative features at an affordable price.

The tool is in English, and has a strong presence in the United States and Australia.

5. Sprout Social

One of the market leaders, Sprout Social has opted for an Inbox for engagement where users can carry out their own actions and have to manually indicate that a message is being processed. The tool is ideal for team leaders, who will be able to view the actions of each member on each message.

The tool also has all the programming features, with a ViralPost module that determines the best time to post your messages and maximise engagement. It features an app with advanced options and validation options, again ideal for team leaders.

Sprout Social offers a comprehensive suite of analysis and reporting tools (basic or customisable). Here again, it stands out for its features dedicated to team leaders, who will be able to measure the performance, responsiveness and commitment of each member.

Pricing is based on 3 packs from $99/month/user to $249/month/user. The company is offering a free 30-day trial.

Saas Advisor's verdict: With its advanced collaborative and managerial features, this tool is ideal for medium-sized and large organisations (agencies of a certain size). It also stands out for its high-quality data and reports and integrated Social CRM. The tool is very comprehensive, but its pricing based on the number of users can go up.

Main references: Glassdoor, Vice, Edelman

Tips for choosing your Social Media Management tool

To sum up, all the tools on the market offer a free trial period, which generally allows an initial one-month test, but will not replace, if necessary, a more in-depth POC* over a longer period. It is important for a company and its marketing department to choose the right tool based on its price, the size of its organisation and its ability to make the most of it.

* POC= Proof of concept, this is a period of paid testing of a tool (generally 3 months) on a restricted scope before more extensive deployment.

Bonus tools to add to your benchmark

Among the other Social Media Management tools, we could mention :

  • Buffer (ideal for scheduling with a high-performance calendar),
  • MavSocial (which offers advanced image management and editing functions),
  • TweetDeck, the free Twitter management tool acquired by Twitter in 2011 (ideal for this network and the 'streams' view),
  • Tailwind (specialising in Instagram and Pinterest, probably the best tool for this network),
  • or Social Pilot, Edgar or Kontentino, a Slovakian solution that is starting to make a name for itself...

Consider the size of your company

AgoraPulse, eClincher and Sensible are more focused on small and medium-sized organisations.

These publishers offer similar pricing via scalable packs, tailored to the size of the organisation, offering more users and more network accounts, as well as a few extra features or even enhanced support.

Hootsuite and Sprout Social appear to be geared more towards medium-sized and large organisations.

Observe your uses and objectives

It is essential that the main features (strengths) of the tool correspond to the uses and needs defined beforehand.

The value propositions of the tools are therefore criteria for choice:

  • Designed more for agencies or advertisers.
  • Has a support service 'in my language' or premises nearby.
  • Its R&D roadmap matches my future needs.
  • Offers a maximum number of sources on which to publish.
  • Offers an Inbox or Streams.
  • Offers the best calendar (the most intuitive, the most complete).
  • Facilitates large-scale teamwork.
  • Offers the best reporting features.
  • Offers the best integration with other tools.
  • Offers relevant additional functions (Social CRM, image manager, etc.).

Expert or beginner?

What's right for one organisation and one user won't necessarily be right for another, so it's important to remember that a tool should help you, not hinder you. If they are designed to make it easier to work on social networks, the amount of data on the screen can be frightening.

  • A good test might be to start with TweetDeck , which is free.
  • Hootsuite allows you to get off to a good start and expand your options as you go along, and is also suitable for larger organisations.
  • Sprout Social offers very good data, and advanced reporting and collaboration features (especially for managers), but it is expensive.
  • If you're a blogger or you manage several social accounts (for clients or several brands) and you're looking for collaborative features at affordable prices, AgoraPulse, Sendible, eClincher and MavSocial seem to be good choices.

Article translated from French