Hootsuite vs ICONS Social: which should a real estate agent use?

Hootsuite vs ICONS Social is a choice between a scheduler and a content writer. Hootsuite schedules, approves and publishes posts you bring, with paid plans from $99 per user as of October 2026. ICONS Social, free for ICONS guests, writes about 10 posts from your ICONS podcast episode, in your own words, and publishes them once you approve.

Hootsuite and ICONS Social side by side

Hootsuite and ICONS Social both publish to an agent’s social accounts, but only ICONS Social writes them from your episode. The Hootsuite column was read off its plans page, FAQ and help center on October 19, 2026.

	Hootsuite	ICONS Social
What it does	Schedules, approves and publishes posts you create	Writes posts from your ICONS episode, then publishes them after you approve
Where the content comes from	You, your team or its AI assistant, Wisdom	The episode transcript, in your own words
What you get	Unlimited scheduled posts on Standard	A pack of about 10 posts per episode: quote images, carousels and short video clips
Price	Paid plans start at $99 (Standard), $199 (Professional), up to $399 (Advanced), sold per user; Enterprise custom	Free
How you get it	Sign up on hootsuite.com; 14-day free trial, no credit card	Guest on an ICONS show, or use ICONS DIY Podcast
Approval step	Content approval listed on Advanced and Enterprise	Built in: you edit and approve before anything posts
Networks	Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, WhatsApp, Pinterest	LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok
Compliance checks	We found no mention of fair-housing checks	Fair-housing and disclosure checks; consent checks before using a guest’s face or voice
Who can use it	Anyone who signs up	Agents who guest on an ICONS show, and ICONS DIY Podcast users

What is Hootsuite, and what does it cost?

Hootsuite is a social media management platform: you create posts, schedule them on one calendar and publish to many networks. Its home page sums the job up as creating and scheduling “posts across all your social networks from one calendar.”

As of October 2026, the plans page lists four tiers:

• Standard: up to 10 social accounts, unlimited scheduled posts, post and image generation with AI, one inbox and brand and competitor monitoring.
• Professional: unlimited social accounts, plus inbox reply automation, workflow automation and custom reports.
• Advanced: everything in Professional, plus “Review and approve content with your team,” message assignment and team performance measurement. Advanced is the first tier that lists approvals.
• Enterprise: custom pricing through sales.

Hootsuite’s plans page FAQ gives the prices. Paid plans “start at $99 for a Standard plan, $199 for a Professional plan,” and go up to $399 for Advanced. Plans are sold per user, and the FAQ says annual billing gives a lower per-user monthly rate than paying month to month. The plans page says these prices are per user per month, based on annual billing. Standard, Professional and Advanced each come with a 14-day free trial.

On the publishing side, Hootsuite’s publishing page lists bulk scheduling of up to 350 posts at once, recommended times to post and Canva and Adobe Express templates inside the post composer.

What is ICONS Social?

ICONS Social is an ICONS tool that writes a guest’s social media posts from the ICONS podcast episode they appeared on. Once the agent approves the posts, ICONS Social publishes them to the agent’s own accounts.

Your job is one step: review and approve. The rest of the flow is laid out on the ICONS Social page.

The point is a month of professional social content promoting you and your episode, without anyone at ICONS writing it by hand. ICONS Social is free for agents who guest on an ICONS show and for ICONS DIY Podcast users; for production clients, the ICONS team does everything for them. The ICONS Social page has the details.

Hootsuite vs ICONS Social: who writes the posts?

The biggest difference between Hootsuite and ICONS Social is authorship. Hootsuite publishes what you give it; ICONS Social starts from the conversation you had on the show and turns it into posts.

With Hootsuite, the content comes from you. Its AI assistant, Wisdom, can “instantly generate social media posts and on-brand images for any network,” per the publishing page. That gives you a draft from a prompt, not from something you actually said. We found no mention on Hootsuite’s plans, publishing or FAQ pages of a feature that turns a long video or podcast episode into short clips. Its FAQ covers scheduling and publishing videos such as YouTube videos and Reels, which means clips made elsewhere.

ICONS Social uses the episode as the source. The quotes on the images are lines you said on the show. The clips are cut from the episode. For a real estate agent, that matters: posts in your own voice sound like you at a listing appointment, not like a caption generator.

How do the approval steps compare?

Hootsuite and ICONS Social both have an approval step, but they approve different things. Hootsuite’s approvals are for teams: one person writes, another signs off. ICONS Social’s approval is for the agent: the tool writes, and you sign off.

On Hootsuite, content approval appears on the Advanced plan card and in the help center article on setting up an approval process, which applies to Advanced and Enterprise. Admins can add approvers in sequence, one after another, or in parallel, where “the post publishes only after every approver has approved it.” For a brokerage marketing team or a large agent team, that’s useful.

For a solo agent who writes their own posts, Hootsuite’s approval workflow is less relevant: you are the writer and the approver. On ICONS Social, the approval step is the core of the product. Nothing goes to your accounts until you have read it, edited what you want and clicked approve.

What compliance checks do Hootsuite and ICONS Social run?

ICONS Social runs fair-housing and disclosure checks on the posts it writes, plus consent checks before using a guest’s face or voice. We found no mention of fair-housing checks on Hootsuite’s plans, publishing or FAQ pages.

Those checks are a safety net, not legal advice. Real estate advertising still falls under your broker’s rules and fair-housing law, whichever tool posts it. The real estate podcast compliance guide covers the main risks for podcast content, and your broker decides what needs their sign-off.

Where Hootsuite does more

Hootsuite does more as an everyday social media tool for content from any source. For an agent who posts several times a week, these are real advantages:

• Any content, any day. Listings, open houses, market updates and reposts all go through one calendar. ICONS Social only works from an ICONS episode.
• More networks. The FAQ lists X, Threads, WhatsApp and Pinterest alongside the five networks ICONS Social posts to.
• An inbox. Standard includes one inbox for replies to comments and messages, and higher plans add automation and routing.
• Analytics and monitoring. Standard includes analytics, reporting and competitor benchmarking.
• Team workflows. Advanced adds approvals, message assignment and team performance measurement.
• Open sign-up. Anyone can start a 14-day free trial today.

A scheduler only helps if you have something worth posting. The guide to real estate content and lead generation covers what to post between episodes.

Where ICONS Social does more

ICONS Social’s advantages sit before the scheduling step, in the content itself:

• It writes the posts. You don’t brief anyone or prompt an AI; the episode is the brief.
• Your own words. Quotes and clips come from what you said on the show, so the posts sound like you.
• Mixed formats in one pack. Quote images, carousels and short video clips arrive together.
• Checks built in. Fair-housing, disclosure and consent checks run before anything posts.
• Promotion for the episode. Each post promotes you and the ICONS episode, which keeps the show working for you after release. The guide to repurposing a podcast guest appearance covers what else to do with an episode.

The catch is access. ICONS Social is for agents who guest on an ICONS show and for ICONS DIY Podcast users, not a tool anyone can sign up for.

Hootsuite or ICONS Social: which should you choose?

Choose Hootsuite to run your everyday posting calendar, and get ICONS Social by being a guest on an ICONS show. Most agents who qualify for ICONS Social will use both, because the two tools do different jobs.

• Solo agent with no podcast plans: Hootsuite, or any scheduler you like. ICONS Social needs an episode to work from.
• Agent who has guested on an ICONS show: ICONS Social for the episode’s month of posts, and your scheduler for listings and everything else.
• ICONS DIY Podcast user: ICONS Social is free with it. Use it for episode posts and keep a scheduler for the rest.
• Team or brokerage marketing department: Hootsuite’s Advanced plan if several people write posts and someone must sign off before anything goes out.

If you’d like a month of posts written from your own words, the route is to apply to be a guest on an ICONS show. The guide to podcast guesting for real estate agents explains what a guest spot does for your business beyond the posts. If you run your own show, ICONS DIY Podcast is the other way in.

Hootsuite may be more than a solo agent needs. Cheaper options are in our scheduling tools roundup for agents, and in Buffer vs ICONS Social and Later vs ICONS Social.