Honestly, I've come to believe that most approval workflows in social tools are a band-aid for a broken process. Everyone obsesses over finding the perfect tool, but the real issue is usually too many stakeholders with no clear ownership. hootsuite's approval system is painful, I'll give you that-but I've seen teams swap it for something slicker and still have the same bottlenecks because the problem was organisational, not technical.
That said, if you're set on an alternative, I've used OneUp with a couple of clients. Their approval flow is dead simple-shareable calendar link, client clicks approve or reject, leaves feedback. No back-and-forth in email threads. It works well for smaller teams who want to keep things lean. not perfect, but way less friction than Hootsuite. Just don't expect it to fix a chaotic sign-off culture.
