Since blogging about
our post-HootSuite options back in August I've been keeping a low profile on the subject. That's because, admittedly rather sneakily, I realised that if I neither up-graded not went free then when I exceeded the 7 days grace period colleagues I'd registered as administrators for the accounts could still access it. I couldn't access it but that didn't matter because I'd devolved responsibility for the updates (although, rather pleasingly I was still able to access it via the iPhone ap). Anyway, as of 15 March Hootsuite are, quite rightly, closing that particular loop hole. My email from them read...
Hello Stuart Johnson,
We have you listed as the account owner of the "uolsd" profile on TWITTER on HootSuite. To ensure continued service, we require you to migrate to a current HootSuite plan. We're here to help and are emailing you to encourage you to take action and migrate your account.
For some background, since the new HootSuite plans were announced in August of last year, we grandfathered your account until November 2010, then provided a 7-day grace period to ensure time to decide on how you'd like to proceed. Further, our business sales team unsuccessfully attempted to contact your organization to provide assistance in choosing a plan. To continue using HootSuite, the listed owner of uolsd needs to sign-in to HootSuite [...] then migrate the account to a Pro plan or downgrade to the Basic (free) plan. Otherwise, we will disable HootSuite access to your social networks on March 15th.
Which is completely fair enough. So currently I've downgraded and have simply shared the password with colleagues. But this is very limited as it provides no workflow - which is the most useful aspect for us as it enables us to see who has replied to what. Also there are no analytics on the free account and they're useful too. So I need to think about whether we want to pay for their pro-plan - $5.99 per month for pro and then $15 per month per additional team member. Which is a considerable improvement on their original price plan - I wish I'd taken a screenshot at the time but I'm sure we were going to have to pay $99 per month which was simply prohibitive. Maybe they've listened to feedback from customers and come up with something more reasonable - or am I not remembering that correctly?
HootSuite certainly seem to have cornered the market. Of the
options I blogged about back in August only
MediaFunnel seemed like a goer for us but when we experimented with it we found it quite slow and limited (although it may have improved since then). With an reliable platform rich in useful features HootSuite have done an excellent job. What do you think? Should I upgrade? Or are there any other platforms out there that I don't know about?
Hootsuite is the best (and cheapest) of the options in this area that I'm aware of. Other than that, I guess it's down to password sharing, which is quite unsatisfactory. It all depends on your budget and priorities I suppose.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Will think about whether or not to spend the $$
ReplyDeleteI think it might be worth going pro and adding team members, but maybe being cautious with who gets added, to make sure it's people that use it often. And maybe people that contribute occasionally can do so through asking someone who is added to do it on their behalf?
ReplyDeleteGiven it's something that we do a lot on and have quite a lot of followers etc, I think it might be worth the 25 odd $ to go pro and add a couple of people.
I'll check out Media Funnel to see if there's been any changes!
Thanks for the comment. Let me know re MediaFunnel and we'll think about the budget :)
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ReplyDeleteI just stumbled across your HootSuite posts while looking for a free alternative... and it looks like we're just going to try password sharing for now. It's not a huge project, and it doesn't involve many people. We'll give it a shot...
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your experiences! It's very helpful!
Hi Rich. I decided to go pro in the end They changed their pricing see http://goo.gl/hyXwy where we were looking at $19.99 per month and this post where a v similar package is $5.99. It's a good service and at this price much more reasonable. Hope you get on well with whatever you use though!
ReplyDeleteI also work with students & we have a growing team of social media junkies. I'm curious how many people comprise your social media/Twitter team?
ReplyDeleteAs HootSuite's "limited permissions" and moderated postings are only available for their Enterprise package, I am searching for the best way to collaborate with others (particularly for Twitter) while retaining some level of control over what others (particularly students) might tweet. Do you mind sharing a bit on how your collaboration model works?
I'm currently testing a combination of HootSuite Pro (for analytics & ow.ly URL use) & a Premium GroupTweet account (collaborators can post to our Twitter account from their own Twitter through DM).