TweetDeck (X Pro): what it is, what it costs and how to use it

TweetDeck is the old name for what is now called X Pro, a multi-column dashboard used for managing X (formerly Twitter) accounts. Since 26 March 2026, X Pro is only available with Premium+ subscription, which is priced at £31 a month in the UK. This guide will help explain what X Pro is used for, how to set it up on your account and whether it is worth the subscription.

The X Pro dashboard is best for people who use X for work. Whether it is a marketing manager running several brand accounts or a small business connecting with customers and answering their questions. A tool like that can only pay off when it’s part of a wider marketing plan, where the business knows what it wants to say and to whom. If your business is located in Northern Ireland and you want a plan like that built for you, Profile Tree can help you plan and run social media is an efficient way as explained in our social media marketing Belfast page.

What happened to TweetDeck

TweetDeck spent over a decade as the column-based dashboard that journalists and social media managers kept open all day, because it showed several live feeds side by side on one screen. After Twitter became X, the tool was renamed X Pro in 2023 and moved behind a paid subscription, which ended free access for good.

The layout survived the rebrand. You still build a workspace from columns, each showing a live feed like your notifications, a list of accounts or a saved search, and you can keep several workspaces for different jobs. What changed was the price of entry, and later the subscription tier needed to reach it.

The move to Premium+ in March 2026

On 26 March 2026, X removed X Pro from its standard Premium plan and made it available only on Premium+ and higher plans. Premium subscribers lost access with no warning, according to MacRumors’ report of the change, and those who opened the dashboard saw a message saying it was only available on Premium+. Basic and Premium accounts now have no route into X Pro at all.

Older guides, including earlier versions of this page, say a standard Premium subscription is enough, and that advice is now out of date. If your business renewed Premium last year to keep the dashboard, check what the account actually includes before the next payment goes out.

What X Pro costs in the UK

X Pro has no price of its own. It comes with Premium+, and X sets the UK web price at £31 monthly or £313 annually on its Premium+ price page. Those prices took effect in February 2025. X changed its Premium pricing more than once in the months around that update, and some UK reports at the time quoted £35 a month, so confirm the figure at X’s own checkout before you set a budget.

Buying through the Apple or Google app stores can cost more, because app store prices are set separately from the web price. Subscribing on X’s website is usually the cheaper route for a business account.

The subscription covers other features besides the dashboard. Premium+ also carries the other paid features on X’s top plans, so the useful question is whether the person holding the account will use those extras or whether X Pro alone has to justify the cost. For most business users it is the second case, and the decision comes down to the time the dashboard saves.

Paying for it as a business

A Premium+ subscription used wholly for work is normally treated as a business expense, and the invoices are available from the billing section of the account settings on X. The supplier is X Corp, a US company, so ask your accountant how VAT should be recorded on your returns before you assume the usual UK treatment for a domestic supplier.

Each team member opens X Pro with their own X account, so check which plan each person needs before you budget for a team. X also offers a Delegate feature on X.com, which lets colleagues post to a shared account from the standard website, and for some teams that covers the people who do not need the full dashboard.

Setting up X Pro: columns and decks

X Pro runs in a desktop browser at pro.x.com, so there is nothing to install. Sign in with your X account and the dashboard opens with a few default columns, which you can add to, remove and reorder from the panel on the left. Every account you connect is reachable from the same login, so switching between brands does not mean signing out and back in.

The column types and what each one shows

Each column is a live feed that updates as new posts arrive. Home mirrors the timeline you see on X, Notifications gathers replies, reposts and new followers, and Messages holds your direct messages for the connected account.

The columns that make X Pro worth having are the ones you configure yourself. A Search column runs a saved query and keeps it running, so a search for your brand name becomes a permanent watch on what people say about you. A List column shows posts only from a set of accounts you have grouped, such as local journalists or suppliers, which is the cleanest way to follow a small circle without the noise of your full timeline. A User column follows a single account, for instance a regional news outlet whose posts often need a quick response.

Each column also has its own filters. You can hide reposts, show only posts with images or video, or set a minimum level of engagement, and on a busy keyword those settings decide whether the column is readable or a blur of repeated posts.

Decks for clients and for a crisis

A deck is a saved set of columns, and moving between decks takes one click from the left-hand panel. Most teams begin with one deck per account or client, holding that account’s notifications, messages, brand searches and a column watching rivals.

A setup that works well adds decks by job as well as by client. A morning check deck holds mentions, messages and a few key searches, so the first look at X each day takes a few minutes and covers everything that needs a reply. A crisis deck holds unfiltered brand searches and a column on the accounts involved in a story, and it should be built before anything goes wrong, because putting it together in the middle of a problem uses up the time you need for replies.

A third deck for publishing, with the Scheduled column next to each account’s own feed, gives whoever plans content a view of what is going out and when. With these in place, X Pro stops being a long scroll of columns and becomes a set of workspaces, each one matched to a task.

Scheduling and team access

X Pro can schedule posts from its composer. You write the post, choose a date and time, and the post waits in the Scheduled column, where you can edit or delete it until it goes live. The scheduler has no bulk upload, so a business publishing a handful of posts a week will find the built-in scheduler enough, while one posting several times a day across platforms will want a dedicated scheduling tool.

Team access lets up to 200 people work on one account from their own logins, so the password never changes hands. X sets three roles: the owner controls the password and security settings, admins can invite and manage other members, and contributors can post, schedule and send messages but cannot manage the team. For an agency or an in-house team, the sensible arrangement is the owner or a senior admin on each account with freelancers and junior staff set as contributors, and an owner or admin can remove someone’s access at any time from the account’s security settings on X.

The more accounts one person handles, the higher the risk of posting to the wrong one. Check the selected account in the composer before every post, give each client’s deck a distinct name, and ask a second person to read anything sensitive before it is published. A post on the wrong brand’s account is one of the most visible mistakes a social media team can make, and these checks cost seconds.

Using X Pro on a phone or tablet

There is no X Pro app, and the standard X app for iOS and Android does not include the column dashboard. The workaround is to open pro.x.com in your phone’s browser and request the desktop version of the site: in Safari this sits in the page menu in the address bar, and in Chrome on Android it is the Desktop site option in the three-dot menu.

On a phone the result works but is cramped, so it suits checking a column more than running a full session. A tablet turned on its side fits two or three columns comfortably, which is enough to monitor an event or reply to customers while away from a laptop.

Search operators that find the right conversations

The Search column accepts the same operators as X’s advanced search, and they turn a broad keyword into a precise feed. The table shows the ones worth learning first, with examples written for a UK business.

Operators are most useful in combination. A brand search such as YourBrand OR “Your Brand” -filter:retweets min_faves:1 shows real conversation about you without the repost noise, and it ignores posts nobody has engaged with.

The same approach finds problems and opportunities early. Pairing your brand name with words like problem, broken or disappointed brings complaints to your screen before they gather replies. Pairing a rival’s name with the same words shows you people who are unhappy with their current supplier, and a helpful, honest reply to them is ordinary customer service, never a sales pitch.

Regional monitoring for Northern Ireland businesses

Location searches are useful and incomplete. X only knows where a post came from when the person has shared a location, and many people do not, so a near:Belfast column is a sample of local conversation and never a full record.

Back it up with a second column that searches for the local place names, streets and landmarks your customers mention in the text of their posts. Together the two columns catch far more local conversation than either one alone, and they let a Northern Ireland business join a discussion while it is still live.

When X Pro is worth paying for

X Pro earns its cost when X is a main channel for the business and someone opens it every working day. Four tests settle most decisions, and a business that passes two or more of them will usually find the subscription pays for itself.

The first test is volume. If you post several times a week or look after more than one account, the column view removes the constant switching between tabs and profiles. The second is response: if customers raise problems with you on X, live columns for mentions and messages show them as they arrive and not on the next scheduled check. The third is listening, because in a sector where conversation moves fast, saved searches let you join a discussion while it matters. The fourth is the rest of your mix, and here the test works the other way; if X is one of four platforms of equal weight, a multi-network tool will probably serve you better.

Run the sums with your own figures. Note the hours your team spends on X in a normal week, estimate how many the column view would save, and set that time at its real cost against £313 a year. If the saving clearly beats the subscription, keep it, and if X brings in little engagement and no enquiries, the money is better spent on the platforms where your customers are; our list of the main social media platforms can help you decide which those are.

How much time you save also depends on how well the team uses the tool. A short session of practical digital training on columns, decks and saved searches can make as much difference as the subscription itself.

TweetDeck alternatives for multi-platform teams

The main alternatives are multi-network management tools, and the right one depends on how many platforms you run and how you report on them. Hootsuite and Sprout Social cover X alongside Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and others, with approval workflows and cross-platform reporting that X Pro does not offer. Buffer concentrates on straightforward scheduling for small teams and solo operators. Our guide to how Buffer and Hootsuite compare goes through those two in detail.

What none of them offers is X Pro’s place inside X itself. Because it is X’s own product, X Pro gives you the full set of live columns and operators described above, whereas third-party tools can only show what X makes available to them through its paid API (the connection X sells to outside software).

X Pro is built for live monitoring and posting, not reporting. Teams that need monthly figures for a manager or a client usually pull them from X’s analytics or from a separate reporting tool, and many businesses run X Pro for live monitoring next to a scheduler for planning and reports.

Turning what you hear on X into content

Listening is the most underused part of X Pro. When the same question keeps appearing in your search columns, about a price, a process or a local problem, customers are telling you they want an answer they cannot easily find. A page on your website that answers it properly will keep earning search traffic and enquiries long after any post about it has dropped out of view.

Our guide to social listening tools covers how to set this up across platforms, so the questions you spot on X feed the same content plan as the ones coming from Facebook, LinkedIn and your own inbox. Listening across every channel also shows you which questions are local and which are national, and that tells you whether the answer belongs on a location page or a general guide.

If you draft posts with AI tools before scheduling them in X Pro, have someone who knows the business read each one first. They should check the facts and make sure the post sounds like the way you actually speak to customers, because a feed of polished but generic posts is easy for people to scroll past.

ProfileTree is a Belfast web design and digital marketing agency, founded in 2011 and based at the McSweeney Centre, and social media sits within the content work we do for businesses across the UK and Ireland. Our team plans the posts, runs the listening and reports on what each platform brings in for the business.

“ProfileTree does not sell paid advertising, and that is deliberate,” says Ciaran Connolly, founder of ProfileTree. “The organic social media marketing we do for businesses in Northern Ireland is meant to keep working after the invoice is paid, which on X means an account the business owns and a team that knows how to run it.”

Get help running X as part of your social media

If X matters to your business but nobody has the time to run it well, our team can plan and manage it alongside your other channels, from the searches you monitor to the posts you publish. See how ProfileTree delivers organic social media management for UK and Irish businesses, and get in touch through the page to talk about what your accounts need.

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