A good social inbox tool is the foundation of an effective social messaging strategy, and a handy tool for keeping followers, customers, and prospects happy.
Keep reading to learn about the different types of social inbox tools and pick the best one for your business.
Key takeaways
- A social inbox tool brings all your comments, DMs, and mentions into one clean dashboard, so your team isn’t bouncing between apps.
- The best social inbox tools include features like smart routing, CRM integration, advanced tagging/sorting, and reporting.
- The right tool depends on your team’s size, budget, and where your audience hangs out most.
- Hootsuite goes beyond basic messaging. It connects to your CRM, automatically routes conversations, includes AI-powered chat support, and offers built-in reporting, turning your inbox into a customer engagement hub.
A social inbox tool is an online tool designed to manage messages from multiple social media platforms in one place.
With this type of software, you can manage social interactions and reply to public comments, direct messages, comments on social ads, questions, mentions, hashtags, and social customer service requests.
Bonus: Get a free, easy-to-use Customer Service Report Template that helps you track and calculate your monthly customer service efforts all in one place.
Key features of a social inbox tool
A good unified social inbox tool has additional features that help your team respond faster, collaborate better, and actually learn from the conversations happening every day.
Here are the features that make the biggest difference:
- Automatic message routing that sends incoming messages to the right person or team.
- Chatbot capabilities that handle common customer queries (e.g., “What’s your return policy?”).
- Integration with your CRM so you can see customer history at a glance and respond with context.
- Advanced tagging, sorting, and filtering to prioritize urgent messages, flag customers, or separate complaints from general questions.
- Tracking and reporting to help you measure response time, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction.
All of these features can turn a simple social inbox tool into a true management system for social messaging and social customer support.
Here’s a look at some of the top social inbox platforms at a glance:
| Tool | Best for | Private + public messages | Automation / AI | CRM integration | Standout feature |
| Hootsuite | Large teams and enterprises | Yes ✅ | Smart routing and AI chatbots | Yes ✅ (two-way CRM sync) | Combines inbox, scheduling, analytics, and social listening in one platform |
| Sprout Social | Large teams and enterprises | Yes ✅ | Inbox filtering, limited chatbot capabilities | Yes ✅ | Clean conversation history |
| Agorapulse | Small businesses and solopreneurs | Yes ✅ | Saved replies | Yes ✅ (Salesforce, HubSpot) | Free plan available and strong entry-level pricing |
| Buffer | Brands focused on public engagement | Public comments only ⚠️ | Sentiment detection | No ❌ | Keyboard hotkeys |
| SocialPilot | Small teams and agencies | Yes ✅ | Basic AI capabilities | No ❌ | Intuitive tags and filters |
| Sendible | Agencies and multi-client teams | Yes ✅ | Inbox sorting, sentiment detection | Yes ✅ | Dual inbox views |
For large teams managing high message volume, they need automation, reporting, and smart routing are essential. Here are our top picks:
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite Inbox is a powerful social media inbox tool that equips your social team with all the resources they need to provide your social audience with fast, effective replies that build customer loyalty.
Each social contact becomes part of a customer’s social conversation history with your brand, so you can tell at a glance whether this is their first contact with you or their 15th. And since Hootsuite Inbox has two-way communication with your CRM, your customer service and sales teams are always updated, too.
Hootsuite Inbox has built-in language detection and smart routing features that automatically assign incoming messages to the most relevant team member. But you can override those settings or manually change assignments with a couple of clicks.
Say you’ve finished your initial conversation with a customer and need to pass them on to billing or technical support for more specialized care. Rather than asking them to contact the other team themselves, you can assign the message to the appropriate person for immediate follow-up.
All of those team members can draw from a library of saved replies that help standardize your brand voice and reduce manual work.
For even faster responses, you can set up an AI-powered chatbot to handle standard customer queries and hand things over to a human only when necessary.
Hootsuite is a comprehensive, all-in-one social media management tool. It includes social media scheduling, in-depth analytics, automated reporting, and easy social listening — everything you need to handle your social media marketing and customer service from one place.
Reduce response time (and your workload)
Manage all your messages stress-free with easy routing, saved replies, and friendly chatbots. Try Hootsuite’s Inbox today.
2. Sprout Social
Source: Sprout Social
Sprout Social offers an integrated social inbox that includes tagging and filtering functionality. For example, you can hide completed messages, helping you organize and optimize your inbox.
The messaging view shows a history of customer conversations, along with customer relationship information.
Sprout Social is more expensive than Hootsuite, so it may not be the best choice for smaller teams. It does offer some chatbot support, but only for Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
For more details, check out our full comparison of Hootsuite and Sprout Social.
3. Sprinklr
Source: Sprinklr
Sprinklr’s social inbox tool is a robust message-management offering with a price tag to match. While it’s not suitable for solopreneurs or small social teams, Sprinklr offers good social inbox capabilities powered by AI automations.
One unique feature is the system’s ability to identify mentions as engageable versus unengageable (like a simple link), so you know where to focus your efforts.
This social media inbox tool includes detailed reporting features that can help improve your team’s customer engagement over time.
The biggest barrier to Sprinklr use is its price tag. Plans start at $299 per user per month. See how Sprinklr compares with Hootsuite.
Agencies need clear client separation, collaboration tools, and flexible assignment workflows to avoid crossed wires. These platforms make it easier to manage multiple brands from one dashboard:
4. Sendible
Source: Sendible
Sendible’s social inbox tool offers two views of your social messages.
First, the priority inbox shows messages from your social profiles in chronological order, plus an indication of sentiment. Second, the social feeds view offers a real-time look at messages, organized by social media account.
The priority inbox is an interesting tool, but it has some significant limitations. Messages are delayed by up to two hours, and it only pulls in comments that come in within four days of the original post. It will not notify you of engagement with older posts.
That said, if you tend to get most of your engagement within a few days of posting, it could be a handy way to make sure you answer messages in the order they come in. If you focus more on evergreen content, you’ll need to rely on the social feeds view.
One notable feature of Sendible is the ability for agencies to use it as a white label tool.
5. eClincher
Source: eClincher
eClincher’s social inbox tool is built with team collaboration in mind. For example, you can create notes and tasks, and assign messages to other team members. You can also use automation rules to auto-assign or auto-tag incoming messages.
All paid plans include eClincher’s social media inbox tool, but only the more expensive plans include AI-suggested replies.
eClincher’s social inbox works with WordPress and Yelp in addition to standard social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and TikTok.
Small teams need organization and efficiency without enterprise-level complexity or pricing. These tools offer strong tagging, saved replies, and collaboration features at a more accessible level:
6. Agorapulse
Source: Agorapulse
Agorapulse offers a social inbox tool for managing organic and paid comments and messages. For very small businesses or solo operators, there’s a free plan with basic inbox features, though it’s capped at 100 messages or comments per month.
Agorapulse also offers a solid entry-level pricing plan, but again, the limit on messages and comments (5,000) may be a challenge for brands with a more engaged audience.
On higher-end plans, you can assign messages to other team members, label your conversations for easy tracking, and generate reports. Saved replies cut down on manual response time.
Agorapulse integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, and GIPHY.
7. SocialPilot
Source: SocialPilot
SocialPilot is a solid social media inbox tool for managing private and public messages across social channels. One caveat: it doesn’t include messaging for X (Twitter), so it’s ideal for brands who don’t have a presence on that platform.
SocialPilot’s inbox has basic team collaboration features, letting you invite team members to review interactions. However, it doesn’t automatically route messages to the best team member. Therefore, it may work best for smaller teams.
8. NapoleonCat
Source: NapoleonCat
NapoleonCat’s social inbox tool is one of its primary features, meaning the inbox has an extensive feature set.
One standout capability: you can manage app store reviews and Google Business Profile reviews right alongside your social messages. It’s also one of the few inbox tools that supports engagement on both organic and paid TikTok content, which is huge if TikTok is part of your strategy.
While NapoleonCat doesn’t integrate with an existing CRM, it does allow you to build user profiles for people who reach out on social. For smaller teams without a dedicated CRM, this is a handy way to track notes and other customer details.
Its smart filtering and auto-moderation tools are also strong time-savers, helping lean teams stay responsive.
9. Content Studio
Source: Content Studio
Content Studio social inbox is simple, clean, and built for teams that want the essentials without a lot of extra layers.
When team members view their inbox, they can see whether anyone else is currently viewing or responding to a message. This can prevent two people from working on the same case.
Saved replies speed things up for common questions, and internal notes make it easier to keep context straight, especially if multiple people are involved.
Like NapoleonCat, Content Studio allows you to create a profile for each person you communicate with on social media, which can be useful for teams that don’t have access to a CRM.
10. Simplified
Source: Simplified
Simplified’s social inbox is built with small teams and social media managers in mind, especially those juggling multiple clients. Its account grouping feature keeps brands or departments neatly separated, so you’re not second-guessing which voice to use.
You get full conversation context through post history, plus manual team assignments so the right person handles each message. You can also add internal notes to conversations to improve your ability to respond appropriately.
An interesting feature of this tool is the built-in AI assistant that can summarize a conversation or adjust the tone of your response.
One limitation to note: Simplified doesn’t support messaging on X (formerly Twitter). That makes it a stronger fit for brands focused primarily on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
11. Pallyy
Source: Pallyy
Pallyy’s social inbox is built to feel familiar, with a layout that mirrors a traditional email inbox. You’ll find folders, labels, and other organizational tools that make it easy to sort and navigate conversations. It also supports a wide range of social networks, including TikTok comments.
With bulk actions, you can assign groups of messages to other team members, apply labels, and resolve message threads en masse. Color-coded labels make things easy to track visually.
Pallyy does offer automations for things like assigning incoming messages to teammates, but they rely on manual rules you set up rather than AI-powered filtering.
Pallyy offers a free plan, but it doesn’t include the social inbox tool.
If your focus is public engagement rather than direct messages, you may not need a full unified inbox.
12. Buffer
Source: Buffer
Buffer’s social inbox is a useful tool for those focused on managing public engagement. It uses a grid view to show the number of unanswered comments for each post, so you can see where comments are coming from.
Using filtering and machine learning, this social inbox tool indicates whether those comments include details like questions or negative sentiment.
One unique feature is the ability to use keyboard hotkeys for quicker responses.
Unlike Hootsuite, Buffer does not include private messages in its social media inbox tool. And it only includes messages for Facebook and Instagram. Check out our full breakdown of how Buffer compares to Hootsuite.
Best add-ons & specialized inbox tools
While these tools don’t compete head-to-head as full unified inboxes, they offer niche strengths.
13. Streamchat
Rather than a standalone social media messaging inbox, Streamchat is a tool you can add to Hootsuite to integrate chatbots on Facebook Messenger and Line. You can use it to create rules-based automatic responses when people contact you on these platforms.
For Facebook Messenger, this tool can hand chats over directly to Hootsuite Inbox.
14. Lucidya
Source: Lucidya
Lucidya is best known as a leading Arabic-focused social listening tool, but it also has a social inbox tool. If a significant portion of your audience communicates in Arabic, this might be the most useful social media inbox tool for you.
With a saved responses library and built-in knowledge base, Lucidya ensures your social team always has the information they need at their fingertips. The tool learns from your previous interactions to evaluate which saved response is most likely to apply in each situation.
Lucidya’s social media inbox tools use automatic assignments to streamline workload. A standout feature is the built-in two-way translation so the customer and your social team can communicate without language barriers.Some of Lucidya’s features integrate with Hootsuite.
FAQ: Social inbox tools
What are social inbox tools and how do they work?
Social inbox tools are online tools that manage messages from social media platforms in one place. Instead of jumping between Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok (and everything else), you get one centralized dashboard for DMs, comments, mentions, and questions. From there, teams can see what needs a reply, assign conversations to the right person, and respond quickly.
How do social inbox tools improve response time and engagement?
Social inbox tools improve response time by removing chaos. Instead of switching between apps, every message lives in one organized dashboard. Automatic routing sends conversations to the right person instantly, and chatbots handle common questions on the spot. The result: faster replies, fewer missed messages, and customers who actually feel heard.
What are the best social inbox tools for managing customer conversations?
Hootsuite stands out for larger teams because it goes beyond basic messaging. It connects with your CRM, supports smart message routing, includes chatbot capabilities, and offers built-in tracking and reporting. In other words, it’s built for teams managing real volume.
What is the difference between a social inbox and a social media management tool?
The difference between a social inbox and a social media management tool is that a social inbox focuses mainly on messages and conversations. It’s designed to help teams reply to comments, direct messages, and mentions. A social media management platform, on the other hand, typically includes a broader set of features, like scheduling posts, running analytics reports, and social listening. Some platforms combine both, like Hootsuite.
What features should enterprises look for in a social inbox tool?
Enterprise-ready platforms like Hootsuite combine these features, making it easier to manage high message volumes without losing speed or security.
Save time building an efficient customer support system on social media with Hootsuite. Respond to questions and complaints, create tickets from social conversations, and work with chatbots all from one dashboard. See it in action.
