Moving from one platform to another can be confusing, and there is always a steep learning curve as you work out the new system. To help you smoothly transition from Hootsuite to Sendible, we’ve prepared this guide to help you hit the ground running.

Connecting profiles

As you know, it is challenging to find where to add new social accounts on Hootsuite. Either hidden in Publisher and requiring you to click on Social Accounts or pushing you to navigate to My Profile and then click Manage accounts and teams.

Sendible, on the other hand, lets you easily navigate to a whole section of the dashboard dedicated to managing your social media profiles.

Add profiles

Add new profiles, including Facebook Pages, Groups, and Ads, as well as Instagram Business accounts, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, Pinterest, and YouTube.

For Instagram Business profiles, you must authenticate your account through Facebook. Check out this resource for more information on how to add Instagram to Sendible.

My profiles

View how many profiles you’ve connected out of your total account allotment. Manage your profiles by sharing or transferring the profile to another dashboard. Plus, you can see if there are any profiles in need of reconnection, which will ensure that your posts continue to go out smoothly.

Profile Lists

Profile Lists are a valuable way to save time when posting to the same sets of profiles in a dashboard.

Shared with me

If you’re working as part of a team, we want to ensure that you’re not needlessly using up your profile allotment. Rather than adding the same profiles to each dashboard, all you need to do is share profiles with other teammates. You can see all the profiles shared with you in the “Shared with me” view.

To share profiles, you’ll need to head to the “My Profile” view. Here is a resource to guide you through.

Publishing

Smart Posts to customise messages per social platform

One feature that Hootsuite lacks but that Sendible provides is the ability to customise posts per network in the same view. This makes it simple to create a universal message that you can then add hashtags and emojis to.

Canva designs

Unlike Hootsuite’s third-party Canva add-on, Canva is directly built into Sendible’s Smart Compose Box.

Post previews

In Hootsuite, post previews appear on the right side of their composer. In Sendible, all you need to do is click on the eye icon in the bottom toolbar.

Video thumbnails

Whereas you can only select thumbnails for Facebook in Hootsuite, Sendible lets you select thumbnails for both Facebook and Instagram, as well as custom titles for YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Plus, add tags and a category for YouTube videos!

Scheduling times

While Hootsuite does have an auto-scheduling feature, it doesn’t show you the optimal times or let you have any sort of control.

Sendible lets you select an optimal time to publish right from the Smart Compose Box. No need to navigate to the Analytics section like Hootsuite.

Calendar

Like Hootsuite, Sendible has a content calendar where you can see all upcoming scheduled messages. Easily drag and drop posts to different days or filter by profile or team member.

Plus, you can also download an HTML file of your filled-out calendar or print a PDF copy to showcase results to clients if you’re an agency or to stakeholders if you’re an in-house marketer.

Content Library

Whereas Hootsuite only provides a content library on their plans starting at $599, you have access to a content library of the previously posted content on all plans. From the $199 Scale plan and up, you can also add new assets to your Content Library.

Queues

Sendible offers more flexible scheduling options than Hootsuite, including the ability to create preset schedules based on your optimal times for posts to publish.

Bulk Compose

Hootsuite makes it challenging to locate their bulk composer. With Sendible, you can easily access it from anywhere in the dashboard. Easily upload CSV files and then edit them visually with our Bulk Compose feature so you can save even more time scheduling social media posts.

Social feeds and monitoring keywords

This is likely going to be the biggest difference that you’ll experience when migrating over from Hootsuite to Sendible. While Hootsuite allows you to customise the social feeds you are viewing on different boards, Sendible’s approach to feeds is much easier to view, navigate, and engage with.

With Sendible, we also separate out keyword monitoring into its own section, so there is less noise.

Priority Inbox

The Priority Inbox aggregates messages from all your social media channels so you can see exactly what comments you need to respond to. Plus, we even provide sentiment analysis so you can monitor positive or negative brand feedback.

Social Feeds

A major difference between Hootsuite and Sendible is that you cannot customise the social feeds view in Sendible.

However, you will still have access to the same sorts of engagement like the home feed and messenger for Facebook, interactions on your posts for Instagram Business profiles, and multiple Twitter feeds, including Home, Messages, @ Mentions, Tweets, Retweets, and Followers.

Monitor

Sendible lets you set up keyword alerts for Twitter so you can monitor any of your brand mentions or whenever a competitor is mentioned to track industry trends.

Reports

Access quick reports for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google Analytics on every single plan with Sendible. You can also explore an Engagement Report that shows engagement across all your connected social media accounts. Explore this resource to learn more.

Depending on your plan, you can build custom reports, add your own branding, and share a live link with clients and stakeholders.

Managing users

Hootsuite uses Organizations to organise their users and social accounts. With Sendible, each user has their own dashboard to which you add social accounts. You can then set up user hierarchies to allow users to access different dashboards, assign different roles, and manage content.

Content approval: tasks vs assignments

Content and message approval are only available on Hootsuite’s plans starting at $599. Sendible provides approvals on our Traction plan (and up) starting at $89.

In Hootsuite, you’ll find assignments in their own tab. In Sendible, we call them tasks, and you can find them in your Publish view under Tasks.

Easily filter tasks assigned to you, tasks you assigned to others, and tasks that are done.

Subscription plans and add-ons

Hootsuite doesn’t allow for flexibility when managing plans or adding additional users and profiles. They require you to request upgrades and make it exceedingly difficult to downgrade your account.

Sendible allows you to easily add additional users and profiles if you need more but are not ready to upgrade to the next plan. You have complete control over your account in the Subscription view.

We also don't lock users into contracts. So whether you choose to pay annually or monthly for our standard plans, you can change this frequency at any time.

Content and RSS auto posts

Hootsuite does not provide content suggestions within its app. With Sendible, though, you can find relevant topics to your industry or interest, so you never run out of content to post.

You can also set up auto posts from RSS feeds, so the latest posts go out to your social media channels without interruption.

Support and customer success

Unlike Hootsuite, you will receive support from real people, not bots or hard-to-reach call centres. Live chat is available on every plan, and we even offer to troubleshoot over calls to help you resolve issues faster. To access live chat, just click on the help button in the bottom-right corner of any page of the Helpdesk, type in your question, and then select 'Live chat', which will display if an agent is available.

We offer weekly group training sessions and for customers on the $199 Scale plan and up, you’ll have a dedicated customer success manager.

In-app guidance

Like Hootsuite, Sendible also offers in-app guidance. In Sendible, you can easily access support articles, video tutorials, product walkthroughs, and announcements, including weekly live deep dive training webinars right from your dashboard.

Wrap up

Have any questions that weren't covered in this guide? Please leave us a message here, and we'll get back to you shortly!