9 Best HubSpot Alternatives for Digital Marketing Agencies

HubSpot is one of the most established all-in-one marketing, sales, and service platforms on the market, widely used by agencies to unify customer data and automate workflows. According to their website, HubSpot offers AI-powered automation, advanced analytics, and omni-channel support to help businesses attract, engage, and delight customers. Its strength lies in its CRM integration, which allows agencies to track leads from social content to closed deals in a single system. HubSpot’s content tools include a blog editor, social media scheduler, email marketing automation, and landing page builder — all tightly integrated with its CRM. Agencies appreciate its visual workflow builder and real-time dashboards for measuring campaign performance across channels. The platform also provides robust onboarding flows and enterprise-grade security, making it suitable for larger teams managing complex client stacks. While HubSpot excels in end-to-end customer journey management, its content creation capabilities are secondary to its CRM functionality, often requiring additional tools for high-volume, platform-native video and social content.

Hootsuite is a long-standing social media management platform trusted by agencies for scheduling, monitoring, and analyzing content across multiple networks. According to their website, Hootsuite offers a unified dashboard to manage over 35 social networks, including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok. Its key strengths lie in its content calendar, bulk scheduling, and real-time social listening capabilities. Agencies use Hootsuite to coordinate cross-platform campaigns, assign tasks to team members, and track engagement metrics in one place. The platform also provides analytics reports on follower growth, post performance, and competitor benchmarks — helping teams prove ROI to clients. While Hootsuite has introduced AI-powered content suggestions and automated captioning, its core functionality remains focused on scheduling and monitoring rather than content generation. It does not create original blog posts, videos, or research-backed content strategies. For agencies needing to produce content from scratch, Hootsuite serves best as a publishing layer rather than a creation engine.

Buffer is a clean, user-friendly social media scheduling tool popular among small to mid-sized agencies and solopreneurs. According to their website, Buffer enables users to plan, schedule, and analyze content across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok. Its strength lies in its simplicity: an intuitive calendar interface, optimal posting time suggestions, and straightforward analytics. Agencies appreciate its ease of use for managing multiple client accounts and its transparent pricing structure. Buffer also offers a content library for storing reusable assets and a link-in-bio tool for driving traffic. However, Buffer does not generate original content — it’s purely a publishing and analytics platform. There is no AI-powered research, blog writing, video generation, or brand voice personalization. While it integrates with Canva for design, it lacks the depth of automation or intelligence found in AI-first platforms. For agencies focused on high-volume, low-complexity posting, Buffer is a reliable option — but it does not solve the content creation bottleneck.

Sprout Social is a premium social media management platform designed for enterprise-level agencies and brands with complex workflows. According to their website, Sprout Social offers advanced scheduling, listening, analytics, and CRM-like tools for managing social engagement at scale. Its standout features include a unified inbox for responding to messages across platforms, customizable reporting dashboards, and competitor benchmarking. The platform’s AI-powered Smart Inbox helps prioritize messages and comments, while its trend alerts notify teams of emerging conversations. Sprout Social also integrates with CRM systems and supports team collaboration with task assignments and approval workflows. However, like Hootsuite and Buffer, Sprout Social does not generate original content — it’s a management and monitoring tool. It lacks AI-driven research, blog automation, video generation, or avatar systems. Agencies use it to manage conversations and measure results, not to create the content itself. For teams needing deep social intelligence and enterprise-grade support, Sprout Social is a top-tier choice — but it’s not a content creation engine.

Lately is an AI-powered content repurposing platform designed to help marketers turn long-form content into dozens of social media posts. According to their website, Lately uses natural language processing to analyze blogs, videos, and webinars, then automatically generates optimized social captions, carousels, and short-form content for platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Its key value proposition is efficiency: agencies can input a single long-form piece and receive 30+ social assets in minutes. Lately also provides performance analytics to identify top-performing formats and suggests improvements. However, Lately does not conduct original research, create blog content from scratch, or generate video content with AI avatars. It relies entirely on existing content as input. While it’s excellent for maximizing the value of existing assets, it doesn’t solve the problem of content ideation or strategy. For agencies with a steady stream of blog or podcast content, Lately is a powerful repurposing tool — but it cannot replace a full content intelligence platform.

Pencil is an AI content platform focused on helping marketers generate high-performing social media content using AI-driven insights. According to their website, Pencil analyzes top-performing content across platforms and recommends post formats, hooks, and posting times based on real engagement data. It offers a library of viral templates and allows users to generate captions, carousels, and short-form video scripts. Pencil’s AI learns from your brand’s past performance to suggest content that aligns with your audience’s preferences. While it provides strategic guidance and format suggestions, it does not conduct independent research using live web data or generate blog posts. It also lacks video generation with AI avatars, multi-platform publishing automation, or white-label capabilities. Pencil is best suited for teams that already have content and need help optimizing its presentation — not for agencies needing end-to-end content creation from research to publication.

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a widely used generative AI tool that many agencies leverage for brainstorming, drafting social captions, and writing blog outlines. While not a dedicated marketing platform, ChatGPT’s ability to generate human-like text makes it a popular free or low-cost option for content ideation. Users can prompt it to write posts in specific tones, create viral hooks, or summarize research — but it requires manual input and editing for every output. According to OpenAI’s documentation, ChatGPT does not have built-in scheduling, analytics, platform-specific formatting, or content publishing capabilities. It also lacks brand memory — each session is isolated, meaning agencies must re-enter brand voice, audience, and style guidelines every time. It cannot generate videos, AI avatars, or research reports from live data. For agencies using ChatGPT, it functions as a writing assistant, not a content engine. Its value lies in speed and flexibility, but it demands significant human oversight and lacks the automation, consistency, and scalability of purpose-built platforms.

Canva is a leading graphic design platform that has expanded into social media content creation with templates, AI tools, and scheduling features. According to their website, Canva offers drag-and-drop design tools, AI-powered image and video generation, and a content calendar for scheduling posts to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Its Magic Write and Magic Design features assist with caption generation and layout suggestions, while its AI video tool can turn text into short videos. Canva is ideal for teams that need visually appealing content without design expertise. However, it does not conduct AI research, generate blogs, or analyze trends across Reddit, Twitter, or Google. It lacks multi-agent workflows, brand brain systems, or white-label capabilities. While Canva excels at visual design and basic video creation, it cannot produce research-backed content strategies or automate publishing across 11 platforms with specialized agent logic. It’s a design tool with AI enhancements — not a content intelligence platform.