Thankfully there are options like Hootsuite that can help us streamline the process.

While this tool provides more free time for daily business operations, it does come at a cost.

Therefore, knowing what Hootsuite alternatives are available can allow you to make an informed decision before entering into a paid plan.

The Best Hootsuite Alternatives at a Glance

With all of the social media management platforms available, we highlight the best options below.

While all of these options have their own set of characteristics, we find them to be quite comparable to Hootsuite.

What Is the Best Alternative to Hootsuite?

Out of all the products available, we have determined that CoSchedule is the best Hootsuite alternative.

Not only are there many free resources, but its interface is user-friendly and streamlined.

What Is the Best Free Alternative to Hootsuite?

In finding the best free alternative to Hootsuite, we believe TweetDeck desires that place for recognition.

While it is specific to Twitter, it provides appropriate assistance for staying active on the platform.

An Overview of Hootsuite

When looking for a service that helps you organize and schedule social media posts for your website, business, or online profiles, one of the first options you are likely to come across is Hootsuite.

Below we outline more information about the popular program.

What Is Hootsuite?

When you are looking for a comprehensive tool for creating and scheduling social media activities, Hootsuite has you covered.

With the service, you can easily manage various platforms and messages of all needs and set them up to post on specific days.

Additionally, the service will automate the best times to post on social media.

Where Does Hootsuite Excel?

One of the best features of Hootsuite is that it allows you to access over 150 applications within the program to create excellent social media posts that catch the attention of your visitors.

Whether it’s Canva, Shopify, or Zendesk, you can formulate your content with a specific purpose and flair.

Where Does Hootsuite Fall Short?

While there are many advantages to Hootsuite, some shortfalls make their way into the conversation.

Our Hootsuite review outlines several limitations, but ultimately the cost of the service is a significant barrier to more people being part of the paid plans offered.

Best Hootsuite Alternatives: Our Top 3 Options [Ranked & Reviewed]

With the rise in companies offering similar services to Hootsuite, we took the time to research and review the various options available.

We rank and review our top three options below to help others select the best fit for their website or online presence.

CoSchedule: Our Pick

Not only does CoSchedule offer social media planning, but they also include many free resources that you can utilize without a paid plan.

CoSchedule helps you to create attention-worthy social media posts, including attractive headlines to reel in readers.

Another top perk to CoSchedule is its easy-to-use interface.

Onboarding into the program can happen without a steep learning curve, which isn’t the case with all management programs.

Many users find it a simple process to navigate the platform and to take the steps needed to boost their content.

Key Features of CoSchedule

You’ll find several perks that come with CoSchedule, some of which include:

• Headline Analyzer: With CoSchedule, you can input your headline, and the algorithm helps you to tweak it to perfection based on which social media platform you’re posting on.
• Message Analyzer: Another benefit to the program is using the social media message analyzer. This perk grades your message and gives pointers on how best to change it to meet the needs of the specific platform.
• Marketing Calendar: As a paid user of CoSchedule, you can create a calendar for future posts and share it with others on your team.
• Marketing Suite: Knowing the best ways to get the job done, CoSchedule provides users with a database of agile marketing options to help with productivity tools and success. This option also allows for larger teams to work together on projects through the application.
• Learning Resources: For paid members who want to learn more about the marketing industry and how best to tailor their content for a positive response, CoSchedule offers an arsenal of resources you can use anytime.

Hootsuite vs CoSchedule: How They Compare

While there are many areas in which the two competitors overlap, some key differences come with a paid user.

First and foremost, using Hootsuite appears to be the same as tapping into each social media platform’s standard scheduling outlet.

The main difference is that they are all located inside the same site instead of separate.

Why Is CoSchedule a Great Alternative to Hootsuite?

When comparing the two options, you’ll find that CoSchedule is an excellent Hootsuite alternative due to the similarities in the primary service they both offer.

If the ultimate goal is to have a central location for scheduling, then CoSchedule provides that similarly to Hootsuite.

Pros of CoSchedule

• Multiple Services: With CoSchedule, you will have scheduling as well as content optimization and the best social media tools to utilize.
• Simple Interface: CoSchedule is a simple program to adjust to when you’re a new user due to its streamlined layout.
• Learning Resources: For those wanting to expand on their marketing knowledge, CoSchedule provides a library of learning material to boost your intellect in the area.

Cons of CoSchedule

• 24/7 Online Help: Unlike Hootsuite, CoSchedule doesn’t provide around-the-clock assistance to users.
• In-Person Training: While Hootsuite offers an in-person training setup for large groups and corporations, CoSchedule does not provide that service.
• Plan Cost: While the price of CoSchedule is lower than Hootsuite for a monthly paid plan, it still comes at a significant amount.

CoSchedule Pricing

• Marketing Calendar: You will pay nothing for the marketing calendar only, which allows you to see all of your future posts in one central location. This service comes free for all users.
• Marketing Calendar Pro: While the marketing calendar is free, the additional integrations and benefits you can use in conjunction come at $29 per month, billed annually.
• Marketing Suite: For those with large teams who need access for many individuals, you should reach out to CoSchedule to get a custom quote for marketing suite services.

Can You Try CoSchedule for Free?

You can request a demo for those interested in CoSchedule services that go beyond the free marketing calendar.

This opportunity will permit you to check out all the different features and decide if they fit your particular need or not.

Conclusion: Should You Choose CoSchedule Over Hootsuite?

While Hootsuite is a popular content scheduling and creation option, CoSchedule is a fantastic alternative.

With a lower price point, a free marketing calendar, and a multitude of learning resources, you will likely find yourself just as happy, if not more satisfied, with CoSchedule as you would Hootsuite.

SocialPilot: Runner-Up

SocialPilot is a suitable Hootsuite alternative due to the significant number of services they offer to paid users.

With SocialPilot, you will find standard social media creation and scheduling options, but it also comes with the ability to make RSS feeds and browser extensions.

Key Features of SocialPilot

You will find a wide range of amenities with a paid version of SocialPilot.

• Social Media Scheduling: This streamlined calendar layout lets you quickly and efficiently plan out your social media posts.
• Bulk Scheduling: In addition to being able to plan out your social media posts, you can also engage in bulk scheduling. This method allows you to complete many tasks in one swoop.
• Content Curation: For those who struggle to come up with unique posts that catch the attention of their followers, the SocialPilot content curation services will help you get to the level you desire.
• Facebook Ads Management: Besides standard social media posts, you can oversee your ads and boost content through SocialPilot.
• Social Inbox: Instead of having to visit each platform to read and respond to messages, you can receive them all in one spot through SocialPilot.

Hootsuite vs SocialPilot: How They Compare

While both companies offer similar features, the social media platforms they integrate with vary.

Additionally, you’ll see that the price plans are wide in range.

However, at its base, you will have two companies with similar goals in mind: to help individuals and businesses streamline their online marketing in one central location.

Why Is SocialPilot a Great Alternative to Hootsuite?

When selecting a Hootsuite alternative, you are looking for a platform that offers similar services at a quality similar to the original option.

SocialPilot gives many of the same features and has proven to be at the same level of quality as Hootsuite, if not higher.

Pros of SocialPilot

• Multiple Plans: With SocialPilot, you can choose from several different paid plans. Therefore, finding one that fits your need and style is highly probable.
• High-End Content: SocialPilot works to give its users a leading edge in content creation, and the company includes multiple resources to get the content to the next level.
• Unique Avenues: What sets SocialPilot apart from its competitors is its ability to schedule on the TikTok application and to manage Google Business profiles.

Cons of SocialPilot

• Limited Support: As with CoSchedule, SocialPilot doesn’t offer its users around-the-clock support.
• Instagram Functionality: Unfortunately, while SocialPilot allows users to schedule on TikTok, they cannot smoothly transition posts to Instagram without using a third party.
• Interface: Compared to CoSchedule and Hootsuite, SocialPilot doesn’t have the same streamlined platform that its competitors do, which makes the learning curve a bit more complicated.

SocialPilot Pricing

• Professional: This plan is for one user and can connect ten social media accounts. The monthly rate is $30.
• Small Team: With this plan, you can integrate 20 social media accounts with up to three users. The rate is $50 per month.
• Studio: When you choose this plan, you are allowed 30 social media accounts and up to six users. This plan comes with a rate of $100 per month.
• Agency: As the most prominent package option, you are given a white-label service with up to 50 social media accounts and nine users. The cost for this plan is $125 per month.

Can You Try SocialPilot for Free?

As a unique benefit to SocialPilot, you can opt to get a free 14-day trial of any of the four plans.

To participate in this, you don’t need to enter any credit card information, and you can opt to enroll in a paid program at the end of the trial.

Conclusion: Should You Choose SocialPilot Over Hootsuite?

While SocialPilot isn’t as polished as Hootsuite when it comes to its platform interface, they have many positive attributes and a more affordable monthly plan than Hootsuite.

As a Hootsuite alternative, many perks are suitable for various websites and social media profiles.

Therefore, it’s a viable option for many, especially those looking for a lower-cost opportunity.

Sendible: Budget Pick

As a Meta business partner, Sendible knows a thing or two about social media.

The creation of Sendible was done to provide a cost-friendly option for those looking to incorporate social media scheduling and marketing tools into their websites and businesses.

Key Features of Sendible

There are many valuable features with Sendible, with some of the top listed below.

• Publishing: Sendible offers various tools to help you publish your social media content to the proper platforms.
• Analytics: With your custom dashboard, you can monitor the activity and engagement on your respective channels.
• Collaboration: The team tools on the Sendible platform allow you to work alongside your colleagues on joint projects.
• Mobile Access: Sendible works on mobile devices as well as computers. Therefore, you can plan and create content while on the go.
• Mentions: The Sendible program monitors the times your social media handles are mentioned and compiles them for your review.

Hootsuite vs Sendible: How They Compare

Right off the bat, you will notice that the monthly cost for Sendible is much less than the rates that Hootsuite advertises.

However, the services from Hootsuite are of a higher quality than what you will find with Sendible, so it’s a bit of give and take.

Both companies have a predominant audience of small businesses.

Still, Sendible offers fewer restrictions on how many social media profiles you can post to, which is a significant selling point for prospective customers.

Why Is Sendible a Great Alternative to Hootsuite?

While there are a few variations between the two companies, Sendible acts as a great Hootsuite alternative due to being a partner of Meta and having a greater understanding of the needs associated with social media.

With competitive pricing and multiple plans that fit various needs, many find that Sendible performs at a similar level to Hootsuite.

Pros of Sendible

• Comprehensive Dashboard: You can monitor a wide range of data through the custom dashboard given to you at signup.
• Time Analytics: Sendible offers you specific time frames to take into consideration when it comes to posting your social media content. The platform will post at the best times for engagement.
• Surplus of Platforms: With Sendible, you are less restricted in where you can post and schedule your content and how frequently.

Cons of Sendible

• Team Collaboration: While Sendible offers the ability to work alongside colleagues, the tools to do so aren’t as extensive as Hootsuite.
• Plan Variation: The Sendible plans vary in what they offer. However, the price differences between each of the programs are a considerable amount, which makes it difficult to upgrade.
• Limited Customization: Compared to their competitors, Sendible offers minimal customization for the content that users post.

Sendible Pricing

• Creator: With this plan, you can manage one brand and up to seven networks. The cost for this option is $29 per month.
• Traction: The Traction plan allows you to control four or more brands and up to seven networks. This option runs for $89 per month.
• Scale: For agencies or those with multiple brands, the Scale option permits over seven brands and networks. The cost for this comes in at $199 per month.
• Custom: The most extensive package allows unlimited brands across all the allowable networks and requires you to participate in a demo to create a plan that caters to your needs. After the demo, you will receive a quote for services.

Can You Try Sendible for Free?

As one of the most extensive free trials in the industry, Sendible provides new users with a 30-day opportunity to try out all the features for no cost.

During this time, you can roll over into a paid plan or cancel the service altogether.

Conclusion: Should You Choose Sendible Over Hootsuite?

There are many benefits to both Sendible and Hootsuite.

However, if you’re looking for a more negligible monthly cost and features that resemble that of higher platforms, Sendible may be the best fit for you.

Its partnership with Meta means it will likely expand over time and accommodate further needs.

The Best Free Hootsuite Options

There’s no greater price than free when it comes to finding services and resources for your website.

While you can often get what you pay for with these options, some are beneficial, and you should take the time to explore them.

TweetDeck

With the explosion of Twitter in recent years, the addition of TweetDeck has brought forward more deliberate messaging for users.

With this service extension, individuals and companies can produce and schedule their tweets for no additional cost.

Why Is TweetDeck a Great Option?

If you rely heavily on Twitter for social media marketing, you know the struggles of needing to post consistently to garner attention for your products and website.

Using TweetDeck to schedule this content in advance frees up your time to be creative in other areas.

Drawbacks to TweetDeck

While TweetDeck is great for planning content, it is specific only to Twitter.

You can’t utilize the service for other social media profiles.

Therefore, while it is helpful, it is also extremely limited in what it provides.

Tailwind

As another scheduling service that also implements email marketing, Tailwind is quickly gaining traction in the social media world.

While it was previously only known for its Pinterest capabilities, that has changed to incorporate other avenues.

Why Is Tailwind a Great Option?

When you sign up for Tailwind, you can use your account to schedule content for your Pinterest and Instagram profiles.

Additionally, you can now utilize email marketing strategies from the same account.

This layout helps you to keep on top of everything without things falling through the cracks.

Drawbacks to Tailwind

While Tailwind comes with a free option, it’s severely limited in functionality compared to its paid version.

Although you can use many of the services within the application for no cost, it’s at a lesser amount with strict caps.

Notable Mentions: Other Alternatives to Hootsuite

While the best of the best Hootsuite alternatives are listed above, there are far more considerations that shouldn’t be left out.

If you aren’t sold on the companies above, check out the notable mentions we list below.

Sprout Social

Many haven’t heard of the Hootsuite alternative Sprout Social as it’s newer to the scene of social media management.

However, its features look promising and may be just what you’re looking for in an application.

Why Is Sprout Social a Great Option?

As a company, Sprout Social is leading the way in new technology that centers around content management.

They offer various products and cater to your specific needs instead of a generic approach for all prospective customers.

Drawbacks to Sprout Social

The most significant drawback to Sprout Social is its cost.

The monthly cost of the lowest package is $99, which is a considerable price for those just starting out.

Buffer Publish

As another lesser-known option for social media marketing, Buffer Publish offers a few services to help those get their business online and appropriately marketed.

They work with all forms of social media, including TikTok and Shopify.

Why Is Buffer Publish a Great Option?

As a company, Buffer Publish offers a free plan to help those who are just starting in marketing and looking for an option to get a leg up in the field.

Their paid plans are very reasonable and start at just $5 per month.

Drawbacks to Buffer Publish

Compared to other options, Buffer Publish is a barebones service.

You only have a few tools to utilize instead of the more considerable amount that the higher-end applications offer customers.

eClincher

It’s not often that you hear about the social media management company eClincher.

The company has researched extensively how many hours website owners and businesses spend marketing their services and has made it their mission to help reduce that number.

Why Is eClincher a Great Option?

As an up-and-coming company, eClincher is experimenting with new ways to help novice websites and business owners succeed in marketing.

They spend a considerable amount of time researching the ins and outs of the industry to help those who depend on it for growth.

Drawbacks to eClincher

The eClincher service cost is relatively high compared to other companies offering similar products.

Additionally, the interface appears a bit dated and can be hard to navigate.

Even More Options To Check Out

You are mistaken if you thought that was the end of the list! In our research to find the best, we came across a few that we didn’t feel right leaving out of the roundup.

Emplifi

Some in the industry are aware of Emplifi from when it was called Socialbakers.

The company has merged to offer multiple services under the umbrella of one organization.

With Emplifi you can create and schedule online content.

Another perk is that you can dabble in influencer marketing and live commerce, among other features available.

You’ll find that there are a lot of avenues to explore as an Emplifi user and that the amenities will help boost your social media marketing in a powerful way.

Agorapulse

Agorapulse offers fewer features than some of the more well-known companies but has the basics that many need.

They also offer a free plan for one user and up to three social media profiles.

The next option is the Pro plan, which comes at $79 monthly.

This plan allows you to add more users and market to more social media profiles than the free version.

However, many find the price tag associated with this ability hard to swallow.

MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is another new company on the market that offers a unique twist to the services routinely provided.

With MeetEdgar, you can perform all the scheduling and content creation you need.

Still, they also provide the ability to quickly update evergreen content to keep your website updated and relevant.

As a new company, MeetEdgar will likely continue to grow and expand.

The organization seems to have the drive to create top solutions for its users, which sounds promising.

Being an early adopter of the program may be beneficial now as well as in the long run.

Other Alternative Roundups (Similar to Hootsuite)

When starting up a new website or business, you often look for more than one service to help maintain your content.

For those who blog, you may want a social media management tool and also need graphic design.

Below we offer suggestions for those requirements.

• Canva Alternatives: For your graphic design needs, Canva can help you create banners, icons, logos, and more. However, the cost can be a bit high for some budgets. Check out these Canva alternatives to see what is available.
• Shopify Alternatives: E-commerce is a trendy way to earn money online and market your products worldwide. While Shopify is often the company of choice when it comes to these needs, there are several Shopify alternatives that you should check out first.
• Semrush Alternatives: As an umbrella company for all things marketing, you can find every online tool needed to boost your rankings and SEO integrations. If Semrush isn’t in your budget, don’t fret. These Semrush alternatives will help meet the need.

Frequently Asked Questions

The amount of work involved can be overwhelming when you are just starting to market your business or website through social media.

Here are some of the top inquiries we receive about Hootsuite and its services.

Wrapping Up

When researching effective Hootsuite alternatives, you can easily and quickly go down a rabbit hole.

The sheer number of companies that provide similar services is high, but comparing each of the various nuances can prove to be too much.

In our extensive research, we have found the most suitable option to be CoSchedule.

As a viable alternative to Hootsuite, it gives the same quality and many of the same services.

Additionally, you’ll find the layout and functionality to be seamless.

If CoSchedule isn’t your program of choice, another top option is SocialPilot.

This company tends to fly under the radar, but you shouldn’t push it to the side.

They are comparable to both Hootsuite and CoSchedule in what they provide and with a lower cost.

While Hootsuite is the application of choice for many, it doesn’t always check all the boxes.

Therefore, it’s necessary to do your research and explore what Hootsuite alternatives there are on the market to get the job done.

Social media tools are a primary aspect of modern content and marketing campaigns for many businesses, but which are genuinely valuable for your business?

Google Analytics is the most important for reasons we’ll get into later, but social media tools operate in different categories and can do many things.

In this guide, we’ll take a quick look at some basic information about using social media tools, then review the best options across four main categories.

An Overview of Social Media Tools

Social media tools are programs that make it easier to create, post, and track content performance on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Most tools specialize in different things, so businesses often end up using several tools in order instead of relying on just one.

Social media tools focus on businesses because that’s where the real money comes from, but most are also suitable for individual users.

Single users usually get all of the main features at a lower price than companies, who have to pay extra for teamwork and collaboration functions.

What are Social Media Tools in Marketing?

Social media tools include everything you can use to create and understand content on social media.

These tools include software for making posts, but also scheduling systems, graphic design, analytics, and more.

Why Do We Use Social Media Tools?

We use social media tools because they can significantly improve the return on investment (ROI) for social media marketing campaigns.

Each social network has different functions and expectations, and tools make it easier to create content that will perform well on a specific platform.

What are the Four Main Types of Social Media Tools?

There are four main types of tools: curation, creation, analytics, and management.

Curation tools focus on finding existing content and opportunities to create new content.

Creation tools emphasize making the posts, especially as it pertains to meeting the guidelines and expectations of each platform.

Some creation tools use AI to help generate content or suggestions.

Analytics tools help track performance, especially when people leave social media and visit your website.

However, analytics options also tend to show up on other platforms, so companies don’t necessarily need to get this separate from everything else.

Analytics tools also help produce reports to explain marketing performance on social media to others.

Finally, management tools include options like content schedulers that make it easy to collaborate and schedule posts.

These tend to be the most robust tools and also the most expensive.

Best Social Media Tools for 2022

Here are our favorite social media tools in 2022, divided into sections based on what they do.

Notes on Pricing: While the prices mentioned below were accurate when we made this guide, businesses can change their pricing anytime.

Also, prices are for monthly subscriptions (when available).

Many businesses with social media tools have annual plans at a discount, averaging 10% to 20% off the monthly price.

Some also have lower-cost or free versions of their platform for qualifying nonprofit organizations, educational organizations, and similar public-service groups.

Content Curation Tools

Content curation tools help you find and share content that may be relevant.

Depending on your needs, these can help you find quality material to link to or help inspire creating your content.

Buzzsumo

Overview

Buzzsumo is a data-based service that helps teams discover content, research marketing plans, identify influencers, and monitor trends.

It supports sorting results by time, location, language, types of writers, and more.

Buzzsumo can also track common reactions to content, such as laughter or anger.

Our Rating: 4.5/5

Best For

Topic generation and discovering trending content

Notable Features: 

• Robust Discovery System: Buzzsumo can suggest keywords, content ideas and analyze competitor strategies to help you figure out what content to make next.
•  Content Analysis: Buzzsumo can analyze high-performing content to help determine why it works, allowing you to use the same strategies.
• Influencers: Influencers matter on social media, and Buzzsumo can help find the most active and engaging people talking about any typic.

Pros:

• Flexible: Buzzsumo is suitable for most companies, including small businesses, and it has enough features to mesh with different marketing plans.
• Real-Time Information: Buzzsumo tracks millions of new articles per day.
  It’s an effectively real-time insight into the workings of social media.
• Alerts: Buzzsumo can provide timely alerts for relevant content, including tracking backlinks and letting you know when someone important is talking about a topic.
• Beginner-Friendly: Buzzsumo has guides written for newcomers to content marketing. You don’t need a lot of experience to use it.
• Facebook and YouTube Systems: Facebook and YouTube are valuable places for content, and Buzzsumo has special features for each.

Cons: 

• Broad Focus: Buzzsumo does a lot well, but it’s so expansive that it doesn’t perform quite as well at specific tasks as some other programs.
• Expensive: Buzzsumo is more expensive than most of its competitors, and doesn’t offer as much data unless you get their higher-tier plans.
• Tricky Interface: Some people find the interface hard to use.

Is Buzzsumo Hard to Use? 

Buzzsumo isn’t specifically hard to use, but it does take some time to get used to its interface and controls.

It also tends to show information that may not be relevant, so you have to understand what to look at and what you can ignore.

Pricing & Plans:

• Trial: 30-day free trial, available for Pro, Plus, and Large tiers.
• Pro: Basic plan, $99/month. Supports five users, ten custom feeds, and one year’s worth of data.
• Plus: $179/month, with 20% off if you buy yearly.
  Best for smaller agencies and growing businesses, supporting ten users and twenty custom feeds.
• Large: $299/month, with 20% off if you buy yearly.
  It supports 15 users and increases its data log to two years of information.
• Enterprise: Customized plans for large corporations.
  No set price, scales the number of users and alerts, and includes up to five years of data.

Our Take: 

Buzzsumo is a good option for most businesses.

It offers a lot of information and insights that other companies don’t, and the 30-day trial gives you enough time to test the system and learn how it works.

It’s great for research and finding influencers, but it’s pricey enough that you need to be investing a lot into marketing to get your money back.

Small businesses won’t see as much value here, as Buzzsumo ultimately works better for medium and up.

Google Trends

Overview:

Nobody knows content like Google.

Google Trends is a simple resource that shows what people are searching for and how many searches are happening.

This provides a more neutral look at actual search performance, including on social media.

Our Rating: 3.5/5

Best For:

Tracking Overall Interest

Notable Features:

• Google’s Analysis: Google Trends displays some of the information Google has about searches.
  By volume, it’s among the biggest search analysis systems in the world.
• General And Specific: Google Trends shows overall search interest and information for any specific topic you want to research.
• Related Queries: Google Trends suggests topics and queries which can help you identify things your audience will like.

Pros: 

• Easy To Use: Google Trends is easy for anyone to use, regardless of marketing skill.
• Geographical Interest: Google Trends can show interest in topics by region, including specific cities.
• Interest Over Time: Google Trends can show interest over many different timeframes, from a single hour back until 2004.
• Search Types: Google Trends can narrow topics by specialized categories, including news and shopping results.
  These can help show companies what interests translate to product sales.
• Subscriptions: Google Trends allows users to make subscriptions for getting more information on particular topics.
  This is helpful for anyone who needs information regularly.

Cons:

• Limited Detail: Google Trends is good for overviews but doesn’t provide much detailed information.
• Comparative Details: Google Trends shows interest as a percent value rather than specific numbers.
• Limited Comparisons: You can’t compare too many terms simultaneously with Google Trends.

Is Google Trends Hard to Use?

No.

Google Trends is intentionally easy to use.

This is intentional, as Google usually tries to be as accessible as possible to its audience members.

It’s arguably too easy to use, as adding more features would increase its complexity.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Google Trends is free.
  It’s one of the many services and support options Google offers to help companies perform better on the internet, thereby driving consumer engagement and ad revenue.

Our Take:

Google Trends knows what it’s doing and does its job well.

It’s great for researching interest over time and seeing if a subject is increasing or decreasing in value.

However, it doesn’t offer much granular detail, so it’s not as helpful as many other programs.

That said, it is free, and it can be a good starting point for research before you move on to something else.

Feedly

Overview: 

Feedly is an advanced content feed, sourcing the most relevant articles and posts from around the internet.

Its primary purpose is to cut down on information overload and let you focus on the material that’s most likely to be relevant.

The system uses AI to learn and grow over time, improving its performance the more you use it.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For:

Staying in touch with industry developments

Notable Features:

• AI Engine: Feedly uses an AI engine named Leo to learn what matters to you and sort content more effectively.
• Privacy: Feedly supports user privacy, with its funding coming entirely from customers.
  It does not sell data.
• Sharable: Feedly can share content with other team members so you can keep people on the same page.

Pros: 

• Excellent For Research: Feedly helps with regular research into relevant topics while minimizing duplicate articles and unnecessary extras.
• Suitable For All Companies: Feedly can work well for companies of any size, from individual users to multinational businesses.
• Alternative To Email: Feedly can help you track articles from specific sources without needing to give them your email.
• Better Over Time: Feedly is constantly improving, especially as its AI learns more about your preferences.
  The people behind it also tune up the AI occasionally to increase performance for all users.
• Everything Stays Together: Feedly keeps all information feeds in one place.

Cons: 

• It Takes Time: Feedly needs time to learn your preferences and adjust to your tastes.
  You can’t rush this process, so you have to keep using it.
• Pay Points Can Feel Arbitrary: Pay points don’t make sense the same way across all companies, so you may end up paying more than you want for features.
• Limited Team Support: It’s hard to set up different teams or groups to share insights.

Is Feedly Hard to Use?

Feedly isn’t particularly hard to use because the important thing is that you keep using it.

Its AI-driven software learns more about your preferences as you engage with it.

However, this does mean that all customers start with the worst experience using the product and have to stick around as it gets better.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Feedly has a free plan that lets you follow 100 feeds and sort them into three folders.
  This plan does not have a time limit.
• Pro: The Pro plan is $6/month and includes many additional features, including up to 1000 feeds, highlights, and sharing to sites like LinkedIn.
  It does not include AI curation.
• Pro+: The Pro+ plan is $12/month, discounted in the first year.
  It supports up to 2500 feeds and has basic AI integration.
  This plan is where Feedly’s real value starts becoming apparent.
• Enterprise: Feedly’s Enterprise level supports up to 7500 feeds, custom newsletters, personalized training, and advanced AI features.
  Pricing is variable depending on your company’s use and needs.

Our Take: 

Feedly is a good tool for minimizing interference and focusing on the most helpful articles on the internet each day.

However, it takes time to set up, and you need at least the Pro+ plan if you want to use the AI features and maximize its performance.

It’s not quite worth it below that point.

Consider trying the free version, then upgrade if you like using it.

Flipboard

Overview: 

Flipboard is a news and social media aggregation tool that helps curate articles from reputable outlets.

Once it has content, it arranges it in a magazine-like format for intuitive reading of its material.

Back in 2010, shortly after its release, Apple named Flipboard the iPad App of the Year.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: 

Reading articles and social media posts

Notable Features: 

• Mobile-Friendly: Flipboard works particularly well on mobile devices like tablets, where its magazine-like design feels more natural than on a mouse-and-keyboard.
• Multi-Source Design: Unlike most curation apps, Flipboard can source content from social media alongside traditional news and blog posts.
• User-Created Magazines: Flipboard lets users create and share magazines.
  This can be ideal for marketing to customers and sharing relevant information within a business.

Pros: 

• Extremely Polished: Flipboard is a well-established app that’s gone through many improvements over its lifespan. It’s much more solid and complete than many newer products.
• Content Across Time: Flipboard has plenty of recent magazines, but its content can also include older material that’s still relevant.
• Cross-Platform: Feedly works across many different platforms, including regular internet browsers.
• Narrower Feeds: Feedly can focus on specific, narrow topics.
  This setup is better than trying to follow everything at once.
• Frequent Updates: Flipboard still gets regular updates and fixes most problems quickly.

Cons:

• Ad-Heavy: Flipboard relies on ads for revenue, and there’s no real way to get rid of them.
• Low-Quality Sources: Many of Flipboard’s news sources aren’t reputable.
• Information Overload: It’s easy to follow too many magazines or social sources, making it challenging to keep up.

Is Flipboard Hard to Use?

Flipboard is easy to use, especially if you’re reading content on a tablet.

However, it will take a little training if you want to make your magazines and have them look good.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Flipboard is free for all users, including for creating and publishing your magazines.
  It gets revenue by running advertisements inside magazines that users make.

Our Take:

Flipboard is an excellent source for news if you learn to manage its feed.

They claim more than 100 million monthly active users, and the ability to create magazines about specific topics helps them stand out from other news sites.

For businesses, the best use is either in subtle advertising or in creating magazines for employees to read.

Scoop.it

Overview: 

Scoop.it is a content curation service that helps locate new, high-quality material on specific topics across the internet.

Individuals can publish topic pages with crafted content, while businesses can create websites, newsletters, and more.

Our Rating: 3.5/5

Best For:

Internal Business Support

Notable Features: 

• Rapid Publication: Scoop.it allows you to create and share web pages with content on various topics.
• Email Support: Scoop.it allows for creating and sending emails, including within an organization.
• Social Network Support: Scoop.it works well with most social networks, including SSO and intranet options.

Pros:

• Good for Small/Medium Businesses: Scoop.it is particularly effective for smaller companies, though not as valuable for larger organizations.
• Finds Quality Content: Scoop.it is good at finding content that performs well, and curating this can create higher-quality pages.
• Internal Company Support: Scoop.it works well for sharing content within a company to keep people on the same page.
• Supports Thought Leadership: Scoop.it is effective at promoting thought leadership by focusing on quality content.
• Multi-Network Support: Scoop.it can help publish to multiple networks simultaneously.

Cons:

• It Takes Time To Learn: It can take a few weeks to truly master this system, which significantly adds to the investment of using it.
• Limited Share Frame: It can be challenging to find content that’s too new, which can give the impression of being slower or more out-of-touch than competitors.
• Bad For Niche Markets: Scoop.it isn’t nearly as effective for smaller markets as larger ones.

Is Scoop.it Hard to Use?

Scoop.it is harder to use than some of the other options on this list.

It takes time and practice to learn how to use it effectively.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: The free plan has an unlimited duration, but it’s limited to one user for creating topic pages and can’t distribute content, create newsletters, or get analytics.
  For companies, the free tier is just to look at the system, not use it.
• Pro: The Pro tier adds several features for $17.99 a month, including adding custom branding, sharing to social channels, and basic analytics.
• Plus: The Plus tier is pricier at $79/month but supports up to five users with additional social support, WordPress access, newsletter creation, and access to Google analytics.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise tier has custom pricing but gives access to the entire list of features.
  This tier includes secured topics, API support for website distribution, automated newsletter creation, personalized training, and more.

Our Take: 

Scoop.it is most effective if you want to reshare high-quality content to build a reputation or create newsletters to share within an organization on a relevant topic.

It’s not as good for researching specific topics, and its inability to work with hot new content is a noticeable limit.

It’s not a bad service, but its use case is narrower than other options on our list.

Sniply

Overview: 

Sniply is an advanced link shortener.

In addition to making links more attractive, it allows you to add customized messages and designs to links and overlay content on destination sites.

Our Rating: 5/5

Best For: 

Linking to Other Content

Notable Features: 

• Adds Calls to Action: Sniply allows you to add a call-to-action to a link, which is fundamentally better.
• Conversion Optimization: Sniply can track users through making a purchase, which ensures you’re making informed decisions for optimization.
• Customizable Link Boxes: You can select colors, text, icons, and more for each link.

Pros:

• Excellent Customization: Sniply allows for an impressively large amount of customization for each link.
• More Calls to Action: Having more calls to action helps improve conversion rates.
• Great Support For Free Users: Some services heavily limit what free users can do, but Sniply is powerful even before you upgrade to a paid plan.
• Excellent Social Media Links: Sniply offers better links on Social Media than most other services.
• Quality Analytics: Sniply includes robust analytics to track performance and help you optimize links.

Cons: 

• Banned on Some Sites: Sniply is blocked on some websites, and you can’t control this from your end.
• Limited Text Space: Sniply has minimal space for customized text, which limits what you can do with it.
• Expensive: While the free version is decent for small users, the paid plans are fairly expensive for what they offer.

Is Sniply Hard to Use?

No.

Sniply is easy for most people to use.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Sniply’s free plan supports 500 clicks and 20 links per month.
  All of its other plans have a 14-day trial.
• Basic: The Basic plan is $29/month and supports up to 5000 clicks across 1000 links.
  It also adds another brand profile.
• Pro: The Pro plan is $79/month, supporting 20,000 clicks across 5000 links.
  It also adds four brand profiles and two team member slots.
  They claim this is the most popular plan.
• Business: The Business tier supports 50,000 clicks and 10,000 links a month, plus adding another four brand profiles and two team member slots.
• Agency: The Agency level supports 250,000 clicks across 50,000 links, with more brand profiles and team member slots.
  Notably, there is no unlimited-clicks tier.

Our Take:

Sniply is excellent at what it does, which is improving linking to other sites.

Though moderately expensive, it can pay for itself with a higher return on investment, and its free tier is a great way to start learning it.

UpContent

Overview:

UpContent is a content curation system for discovering and distributing content.

It also supports conversion systems to help improve ROI.

Our Rating: 4.5/5

Best For:

Extra Features

Notable Features: 

• Extensive Analysis: UpContent analyzes millions of articles per month, with its algorithm helping find the best for each topic.
• Easy Content Sharing: UpContent also makes it easy to share content with coworkers or an audience.
• Flexible Automation: UpContent allows creating specific automation rules for content.
  This automation can simplify a single step or the entire process, giving you more control over when and how to engage with the content.

Pros:

• Flexible Scanning Range: UpContent can focus on new or old content.
  Most of its competitors have a single timeframe for curating content.
• Efficient Curation: UpContent analyzes enough content to produce good results on most subjects.
• Include Own Content: UpContent’s browser extension support allows you to add more of your content to what you share.
• Solid Integration: UpContent integrates well with many other tools.
  This integration ensures a smoother workflow at most companies.
• Excellent Customer Support: UpContent has a great customer support team.
  They’re usually responsive to problems, and the system has a lot of documentation.

Cons: 

• Best In English: UpContent isn’t as effective for non-English articles, which inhibits its use for many international companies.
• Tricky Setup: Getting the exact topics you want can be a challenge. It takes time and testing to set up the parameters for each query.
• Limited Video Support: UpContent isn’t particularly good for integrating and sharing videos, which are an important part of advertising for many businesses.

Is UpContent Hard to Use? 

UpContent is a little tricky to use.

It works quite well, but it takes practice and testing to ensure you’re using the right queries.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: UpContent has a free mode, offering curation for one topic to one user.
  his is essentially a test for its functions and is not good enough for businesses.
• Sharer: At $15/month, the Sharer tier supports following ten topics.
  It has limited integration for partners but does include basic support and custom summaries for articles.
• Curator: The Curator tier is $49/month and includes all partner integrations, RSS support, custom website support, and premium onboarding.
• Engager: The Engager level is $95/month and supports up to 50 topics across 3 collections.
  It also has custom calls to action, email integration, and custom article images.
  This is the best option for most mid-size businesses.
• Orchestrator: This tier is $265/month and allows for up to 100 topics across 9 collections.
  Its actual features aren’t much different than Engager, but it supports additional collections at a lower price.
• Enterprise: Like most of these companies, UpContent has a custom business tier with personalized pricing for particularly large organizations.

Our Take: 

UpContent is an excellent content curation tool.

It has both the scale and the features to be meaningfully valuable to businesses of all sizes, and at a reasonable price point.

It takes some practice to set queries right, but the premium onboarding at higher levels helps a lot.

Content Creation Tools

Content creation tools help make the content you’re going to post on social media.

The more you can simplify this process, the better.

Venngage

Overview:

Venngage is an infographic-creation tool.

It includes over 7500 templates with easy customization options to display data, with a simple interface that doesn’t require a degree in graphic design.

Our Rating: 5/5

Best For:

Infographic Production

Notable Features: 

• Automated Branding: Venngage supports automated branding with things like color templates that allow for consistency in your images.
• Flexibility: Although focused on infographics, Venngage also allows for making visuals like diagrams. This flexibility makes it even more powerful.
• Stock Photos: Venngage has stock photos through Unsplash, which adds to the variety of image types you can include.

Pros:

• Outstanding Templates: Venngage has templates for almost any conceivable need, complete with variations to display more or less information than usual.
• User-Friendly: Venngage is easy for most people to use, with or without training in art and graphic design.
• Excellent Auto-Saving: Venngage has frequent auto-saves to help avoid losing content, especially with the precision required for many infographics.
• Easy Customization: It’s easy to edit most parts of any template, including the colors in different areas.
• Team Support: Venngage supports teams, allowing multiple users to access and edit content as necessary.

Cons: 

• Relatively Expensive: Venngage is more expensive than many other services, especially if you want to access its full suite of features.
• Tricky Controls: Some of the controls aren’t as intuitive as they could be, which slows down the graphic production process.
• Frequent Similarities In Templates: Some templates are only a little different from others, which minimizes their value compared to a single easily-editable option.

Is Venngage Hard to Use?

No.

Venngage is user-friendly and easy to get started with, though it may take some time working with their tools to get a fully custom infographic.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Venngage’s free plan supports up to five designs at once, with access to diverse icons and widgets. It allows up to six image uploads.
  Images can only be shared publicly at this tier.
• Premium: The Premium tier is $19/month/user, offering unlimited designs, private sharing, PNG exports, and up to 50 image uploads.
• Business: The Business tier is $49/month/user, supporting teams of up to 10 members.
  It mainly adds collaboration tools, such as folder organization, real-time collaboration, a brand kit, and phone support.
  This tier supports up to 500 image uploads.
• Enterprise: The customized enterprise tier starts at $499/month and goes up from there.
  Its primary features are the same as the Business tier but this level comes with a dedicated account manager, live onboarding, team training sessions, and an opportunity for custom-built features.

Our Take:

Venngage is quite expensive because its pricing at lower tiers is per-user.

However, its power and versatility make it a valuable tool for companies that need to produce a lot of custom graphics, and that’s where it shines.

Having a few accounts at the Business tier is probably the best option for mid-size businesses.

The free tier isn’t particularly good, but it is a nice way to test their software before you buy.

Unsplash

Overview: 

Unsplash is a database of millions of freely-usable images.

Most content is donated by photographers and operates under the Unsplash license, which allows for commercial use (though not selling them as photos without significant modification).

Unsplash does not require attribution, though companies can voluntarily credit photographers.

Our Rating: 4.5/5

Best For:

Free Photographs

Notable Features: 

• Free Use: Unsplash has a free, business-friendly license that makes it ideal for any company looking for high-quality stock images.
• Huge Database: Unsplash has millions of images available for use.
• Variety: Unsplash’s gallery includes a lot of variety, from different types of backgrounds to high-quality wallpapers and more.

Pros: 

• Hand-Curated: Each image on Unsplash is hand-selected to help ensure a basic level of quality throughout the gallery.
• Community Favorite: Unsplash is easily among the best sources for free photographs on the internet. It also listens to its community and has been working on ways to highlight particularly good artists.
• Great Way To Find Photographers: Outside of its existing stock art, Unsplash is an excellent way to find photographers worth hiring.
• No Account Necessary: Unsplash doesn’t require users to have an account, although this can help save images.
• Multiple Image Formats: Many pictures on the site are available in several image formats, which is a must for producing high-quality content.

Cons: 

• Can Be Hard For Business: Much of Unsplash’s gallery is artistic or abstract.
  These aren’t always good images for business purposes.
• Finding Individual Images Can Be Heard: Unsplash has a huge database.
  If you don’t already have a clear image in mind, it may take some time to find the right keywords to describe what you want and narrow down your options.
• Limited Monetization: Unsplash has been operating for years, but makes money primarily through ads and isn’t quite as stable as some other services.
  It’s possible a market disruption could shut them down.

Is Unsplash Hard to Use?

No.

Unsplash is primarily an image gallery with an attached search engine, so it’s easy to use as long as you can describe what you’re looking for.

However, it may take a bit of trial and error to find images suitable for a business

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Unsplash is completely free for users.
  All of its images are available under its license for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.
  The only things it doesn’t allow are making a competing service and selling the photos without major modifications.

Our Take: 

Unsplash is an outstanding resource for high-quality photographs.

It would be worthwhile with a paid plan, but being free makes it even better.

Its only real flaw is that many images are too abstract for businesses, so you may need to get creative in how you search the database.

Jasper

Overview: 

Jasper is an AI-powered writing assistant. It can help produce content, ideas, and variations on existing articles while avoiding plagiarism.

It’s particularly effective at creating drafts that you can modify.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: 

Drafting Content

Notable Features: 

• Flexible Idea Generation: Jasper can help create anything from blog post outlines to entire frameworks for marketing.
  It can also suggest paragraphs or summarize text to help you scan content better.
• Excellent Ad Generation: Jasper is excellent at writing ad copy for places like Facebook and Google.
• Video Script Support: Although mainly focused on writing, Jasper can also help produce scripts, ideas, and descriptions for video content.

Pros: 

• Huge Variety Of Features: Jasper has many specific features and settings, from simplifying text to responding to reviews.
  It’s particularly good for users who aren’t confident in their writing.
• Natural Language Interface: Jasper has an AI-based assistant that can work with a natural language interface, making it easier to describe what you want and get help.
• Generally Accurate Content: Jasper usually produces factually-accurate content, which is important when you want to publish something on the internet.
• Grammarly Integration: Jasper can interface with Grammarly to double-check spelling and sentence structure.
• Simple Interface: Jasper has a user-friendly interface that works well for anyone that isn’t used to writing.

Cons:

• Not As Flexible As Human Writers: Despite its value, Jasper can run out of ideas quickly and can’t expand on things as well as a capable human writer.
  It also tends to perform significantly worse on complex or technical topics.
• Bad Results Still Cost You: Jasper uses a per-word model for pricing.
  If it produces unusable content, which it does regularly on many topics, you’re still paying for that.
• It’s Hard To Verify Quality In Other Languages: Jasper has support for languages besides English, but unless you’re natively fluent in them, it can be hard to understand the output quality.
  With its tendency for unusable results, that’s an issue.

Is Jasper Hard to Use?

No.

Jasper’s basic features are easy to use, though mastering advanced elements like its AI integration will take practice.

Pricing & Plans:

• Starter: Jasper’s Starter plan begins at $29/month for 20,000 words.
  It comes with chat support for help using the system.
• Boss Mode: Jasper’s Boss Mode starts at $59/month for 50,000 words.
  It includes a Google Docs-style editor, full access to the AI, better templates, and priority chat support.
• Business: Jasper has a variable-price business mode that offers support for custom word amounts and users.
  This tier comes with flexible pricing, an account manager, onboarding sessions, and better technical support.

Both Starter and Boss modes can have different prices depending on how much content you want to produce.

The company offers a money-back guarantee if you don’t like the results and want to stop using Jasper.

Our Take: 

Jasper is an excellent service for generating ideas and producing basic content for the web.

It’s fast and powerful on generic topics.

However, it does break down many complicated ideas, and readers will often notice if the copy you write seems too artificial.

Consider this a supplement for a human writer, not a replacement.

Canva

Overview: 

Canva is a template-based graphic design tool that supports many needs, from enhancing images to trimming videos, adding text to photos, or creating infographics for business presentations.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: 

General Image Editing

Notable Features: 

• Huge Suite of Features: Canva has an exceptionally wide suite of features, ensuring it can meet almost any regular graphic design needs.
• Includes Video Editing: Unlike other services, Canva allows for complex video editing instead of limiting itself to still images. This includes sound effects.
• Team Support: Canva has options for collaborative production.

Pros: 

• Suitable For Most Media Production: Canva’s support for images and videos makes it an outstanding choice for creating almost any type of media your business may need.
• Brainstorming Tools: Canva supports brainstorming sessions to find new ways to produce content. This is a feature most competitors are severely lacking in.
• Easy Templates: Canva has thousands of templates that serve as a starting point for creating good-looking content.
• Brand Support: Canva’s Brand Kits can help ensure people are always using the right colors and fonts for consistency across your social media posts.
• SSO: Canva supports Single Sign-On, allowing people to access multiple applications with a single username and password.
  At larger organizations, this can significantly reduce the amount of tracking necessary.

Cons: 

• Image Editing Hiccups: Canva sometimes makes errors with image editing, such as not aligning things quite perfectly.
  It may also fall short for resizing elements in templates.
• Limited Text Options: Many of Canva’s tools have strictly limited text editing tools, which can make them much harder to use if you have specific needs.
• Irregular Uptime: Canva goes down regularly, which can be problematic if you need to use it right away.
  Stability is essential for many businesses.

Is Canva Hard to Use?

Most of Canva’s tools are intuitive for people who know a little about image editing and graphic design.

However, it has so many tools that it can take time to figure out the right one for a scenario.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Canva’s free plan gives access to its drag-and-drop editor, over a quarter million free templates, and over a million free photos.
  However, it doesn’t have many organization or business-oriented features.
• Canva Pro: Canva’s regular premium tier, Canva Pro, is $12.99/month.
  It adds folders, better support for resizing, scheduling social media posts, 1 TB of cloud storage, 100 brand kits, and more features for businesses.
• Canva for Teams: Canva’s group-oriented plan starts at $14.99/month for five people, with the price going up if you add more users.
  This adds many collaborative functions, including activity logging, approval workflows, team reports, and paying as you go.

Outside of its regular plans, Canva has special free modes available for students and teachers below the college level, as well as free access to Canva for Teams for nonprofit organizations.

Our Take: 

Canva is a powerful and flexible graphic design tool, ideal for creating both images and videos for social media.

It’s quite affordable, too, especially for the features available.

However, only people who are familiar with making images can get the most from this system, so it’s harder for anyone else to produce the best results.

Unfold

Overview: 

Unfold is an app-based photo and video editor for posting to social media, particularly image-based ones like Instagram and Snapchat.

It also supports making a hub page for linking out to your other content.

Our Rating: 5/5

Best For:

Instagram Stories

Notable Features: 

• Outstanding Templates: Unfold offers templates for uploading to social media.
  These are usually high-quality options, to the point that many larger accounts use them.
• Easy Image Editing: Unfold allows adding text, filters, and other effects to both still images and videos.
• Feed Planning: Unfold can make it easier to see how your feed on Instagram will look after adding planned content.

Pros: 

• Professional Quality: Unfold is one of the highest-quality image management and editing services for Instagram.
  Both Apple and Google consider it a Best of the Year application, which is no minor feat.
• Personal Site Creator: Unfold can help you create a customized personal website that links elsewhere on the web. Although not a full website creator, it’s a great touch.
• Easy Editing: Unfold has a user-friendly image editing system.
  Graphic design is hard, and editing photos with people is even harder, so this is a valuable inclusion.
• Template Selection: Unfold has several hundred templates, each carefully designed to produce the best results.
  Their performance so far demonstrates that this approach works.
• Exclusive Material: Unfold has some exclusive content, including fonts and tools that can be hard to find elsewhere.

Cons:

• Limited Free Mode: The free mode is extremely limited, with strict limits on what you can do.
  You can purchase some things like templates individually, but this isn’t nearly as powerful as the subscription levels.
• Hard To Use In Groups: Unfold can be difficult to use in groups or help collaborate on content.
  You may find it easier to have a single account that one person manages.
• Limited Customer Support: It can be hard to get in touch with the developers if you’re having a problem.

Is Canva Hard to Use?

No.

Canva is a user-friendly app, and it should feel familiar to anyone who has experience on Instagram or similar sites.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Unfold’s free tier includes basic features and a small handful of templates.
  Users can buy additional templates for a small price.
• Unfold+: The basic paid tier, Unfold+ is available at $2.99/month.
  It provides access to all template collections and some other exclusive content, including fonts and stickers.
• Unfold Pro: The advanced plan, Unfold Pro is $12.99/month and is oriented toward businesses.
  It has support for additional customization and features, including Brand Kits, web dashboards, custom fonts, and more.

Our Take: 

Unfold is a great tool for Instagram, and its record of success is so high that it’s almost harder to find serious accounts that aren’t using it.

This is easily a top choice for Instagram specifically and other photo-based social media sites generally.

However, it’s not necessary for any companies who aren’t using those networks.

Animaker

Overview: 

Animaker is a video-creation platform.

It’s particularly good at creating simple animated videos thanks to its huge catalog of assets, but it can also work with photos and existing videos in up to 4k quality.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: 

Making Video for Any Platform

Notable Features: 

• Huge Asset Library: Animaker’s library includes icons, backgrounds, images, animated character parts, videos, and much more.
• Excellent Performance: Animaker runs on HTML5, which has extraordinarily broad support across browsers and ensures good performance on most devices.
• Professional Video Templates: Expert-designed templates provide a good framework for creating videos, which is important.
  Videos are fundamentally far more complicated than still images, and every bit of assistance matters.

Pros: 

• Excellent for Beginners: Animaker is beginner-friendly and has features in place to guide users through the video-making process.
  It’s possible to create a character, add some text, and then put in some animation to make a basic explanation video in just a few minutes.
• Outstanding Movement Options: Animaker supports a large variety of movement options for animations, which makes it much easier to create anything you can envision.
• Not Limited To Cartoons: Animaker specializes in cartoon-style videos, but it can also work with other types of content to meet your needs.
• Automatic Lip-Sync: Animaker’s system supports lip-syncing to existing audio, which is a huge time-saver for creating talking characters.
• Huge Library Of Stock Assets: Animaker has access to over a hundred million stock assets through services like Getty and Giphy, plus royalty-free music and sound effects.
  Functionally, this is all the stock assets anyone could need.

Cons: 

• Slow Rendering: Animaker can take longer to render output than some other services.
  Making a video may require rendering several times to check for errors, so this adds up.
• Not As Good On Older Machines: Animaker will work on almost anything that supports HTML5, but performance is noticeably worse on older computers.
• Only Available Online: Animaker doesn’t have an offline mode, which can be annoying for anyone expecting inconsistent internet access.

Is Animaker Hard to Use?

Animaker is as easy to use as a robust video editor can realistically be.

It’s not as simple as many of the other tools on this list, but that’s inevitable in video production.

Expect to spend some time mastering its functions.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: The free plan includes up to five video downloads (with watermarks) a month, as well as only the most basic editing features. This isn’t suitable for businesses or serious users but can be a good way to test the service.
• Basic: The Basic tier is available at $20/month and supports five premium video downloads (with no watermarks).
  It also has automatic video resizing and background removals but does not include commercial rights.
• Starter: The Starter tier has 10 premium video downloads each month, and is the first tier to offer commercial rights for users.
  It upgrades the resolution to Full HD (1080p), but aside from the quality and commercial rights is otherwise similar to the Basic tier.
  This level is $35/month.
• Pro: The Pro plan is $79/month, with 2K resolution videos up to 30 minutes long.
  It also has support for custom fonts and other enhancements.
• Enterprise: The custom-price Enterprise plan ups the maximum quality to 4k video, with unlimited video downloads a month.
  This tier adds special features, including a reselling license, the ability to save templates, and time-saving priority rendering on their system.
  API integration and custom reports are also available here.

Our Take: 

Animaker is an excellent tool for any business that wants to add video content. It’s best for making cartoon-style animations. While it can handle up to 4K videos, any company producing at this quality level is probably using other video editing software already.

Infogram

Overview: 

Infogram is a visualization tool for creating graphics, charts, and similar information. It can easily add data from spreadsheets to create real-time updates and results, with drag-and-drop positioning to make editing each image easier.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: 

Business Graphics

Notable Features: 

• Numerous Template Categories: Infogram has templates for a wide selection of business categories, including infographics, slides, maps, and social media visuals.
• Interactive Content: Infogram can produce interactive materials, including charts and maps. This is a step beyond preset animations and can drive powerful engagement on social media.
• Excellent Branding: Infogram offers a solid brand guideline system that can keep everyone on the same page.

Pros:

• Excellent Collaboration: Infogram supports teamwork by allowing multiple users, letting administrators set permissions for team members, and even saving previous versions of graphics so it’s possible to restore content from backups.
• Internal Analytics: Infogram has built-in analytics for things like viewer demographics and engagement with interactive elements.
• Mobile-Friendly: Infogram produces mobile-friendly content that adjusts well to smaller devices.
• Wide Use Scenarios: Outside of business, Infogram also works well for nonprofits, schools, and even government agencies.
• User-Friendly Editor: Infogram runs on a drag-and-drop editor that simplifies the image-making process.

Cons:

• Best For Simple Images: Infogram isn’t very good at most complex visualizations. It does better with basic charts and graphics.
• Moderately Expensive: Infogram is relatively expensive despite the simplicity of most of its visuals. In fairness, the ability to create interactive charts is still valuable.
• Imperfect Output For Social Media: Infogram won’t always save content in the right format for social media sites. You may need to resize it after downloading it.

Is Infogram Hard to Use?

No. Infogram is user-friendly and doesn’t require much technical knowledge. However, like all image editors, it can take some practice before you get good at using it.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Infogram’s Basic tier is free, offering interactive charts, ten projects, and 13 map types. It supports importing data but has limited saving and publishing options.
• Pro: The Pro tier is $25/month and supports up to 100 projects, with access to premium templates, hundreds of map types, advanced image editing, and a huge database of stock images and icons.
• Business: The Business tier is $79/month and supports up to 1000 projects. This level also adds branding and logo features, plus analytics, additional integrations, version history, and more.
• Team: The Team level is $179/month and supports up to 3000 projects. It’s largely similar to the Business tier, but with added collaboration features like commenting and real-time updates.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise tier has custom pricing, with support for over 10,000 projects. It adds a branded public profile, support for multiple teams, priority customer support, training, and a dedicated account manager. They also offer custom design implementation and development services at this level.

Outside of its regular tiers, Infogram has special rates for startup companies, nonprofits, and schools. These are often set on a case-by-case basis.

Our Take: 

Infogram is relatively expensive, but quite powerful if you want to make the types of graphics it can produce. The interactive charts are the standout feature here, but the rest of Infogram is also solid and worthwhile for most users.

Analytics and Tracking Tools

Analytics tools can help track the performance of your social media campaigns. Most social media networks have some built-in analysis, but if you want cross-traffic results, you’ll need to use something else.

Google Analytics

Overview:

Google Analytics is the heavyweight system among analytics tools, capable of uncovering a great deal of information on practically any website you own. Most businesses use this to track the performance of marketing campaigns after people get onto their site.

Our Rating: 5/5

Best For: 

All Businesses (Best Overall)

Notable Features: 

• Excellent Campaign Measurement: Google Analytics can track individual campaigns to see the exact performance and how well they convert users into customers. It uses five main parameters to sort this information.
• Track Nearly Everything: Google Analytics can track almost anything a user does on your website, from filling out a form to downloading a white paper. It’s not limited to tracking purchases like some other systems.
• Reporting Options: Google Analytics has many reporting options, from charts showing activity over time to flow visualization tools that show how people are behaving and moving around the site.

Pros: 

• Outstanding Insights: Google Analytics offers excellent insights into users, including information on where they’re coming from. This can help you decide where to focus marketing efforts.
• Live Performance: Google Analytics offers nearly-live tracking of people currently on your site.
• User Sorting: Google Analytics can sort users by various demographic information.
• Access to Google’s Database: Google Analytics benefits from Google’s overall knowledge about each user, which makes it easier to understand what they’re doing and why.
• Highly Customizable: It’s possible to customize Google Analytics so it displays the information that’s most relevant to your needs.

Cons: 

• Information Overload: Google Analytics has so much information that it can be hard to figure out what to pay attention to and what’s important.
• Manual Setup: Many features in Google Analytics require manual setup and configuration for the best results.
• Cluttered Feed: The displays on each page are relatively cluttered and can be hard to sort through.

Is Google Analytics Hard to Use? 

Yes. Google Analytics is extremely powerful, but it takes more time to learn than most of the other options on this list. You may want to hire someone to set this up for you or participate in classes to learn how to use this system effectively.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Most individuals and businesses use the free version of Google Analytics, which is suitable for tracking up to several hundred thousand visitors per month. The free version has access to most features.
• Google Analytics 360: The enterprise-level version of Google Analytics starts at $12,500 per month, but uncaps most restrictions. It also allows more customization and better integration with other tools, plus personal account managers and support from the developers.

Our Take: 

Google Analytics doesn’t have the kind of slick, simple display system that many other social media tools do, but it’s hard to overstate the sheer power here.

It’s worth using despite the complexity, and even better, it’s free. If you’re large enough to need the paid version, then you’re making enough money that its price doesn’t matter.

Also, many other reporting systems rely on information from Google Analytics but filter the results to display content that’s most relevant to your needs. If you don’t install this, you can’t use other systems to their full potential.

Rival IQ

Overview: 

Rival IQ is a social media-focused analytics tool with features like head-to-head analysis of competitors and integration with all of the most popular networks. It includes analysis of posts, audits, reports, and more.

Our Rating: 4.5/5

Best For: 

Comparative Analysis

Notable Features: 

• Competitive Alerts: Rival IQ can alert you to the actions of competitors so you can try to focus users back on your content.
• Multi-Channel Tracking: Rival IQ offers a single location to track performance on multiple networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
• Google Analytics Integration: Rival IQ can access data from Google Analytics and produce clear, simple reports.

Pros: 

• Excellent Reports: Rival IQ offers clear, actionable reports to guide future marketing strategies.
• Social Media Focus: Rival IQ isn’t trying to be everything for everyone like Google Analytics. It focuses on social networks, which is why it’s one of the best social media tools in 2022.
• Competitive Analysis: Rival IQ offers an impressive amount of data on competitors, which is something many other tools lack.
• Easy Comparisons: Rival IQ can simplify comparisons across different timeframes, allowing users better insight into how their campaigns are working.
• Real-Time Responsiveness: Rival IQ can help you see your performance in real-time, including showcasing opportunities for interaction.

Cons: 

• Small Network List: Rival IQ is powerful, but only works on a few major social networks. It can’t help with smaller or newer networks.
• Limited Instagram Features: Rival IQ isn’t quite as good on Instagram as it is on the other networks it supports.
• Aggressive Pricing Structure: Rival IQ tries to encourage people to move up in its pricing tiers, which can make it more expensive than it initially appears.

Is Rival IQ Hard to Use?

No. Rival IQ is user-friendly and easy to use with little training. It also helps simplify the display of information from complex sources like Google Analytics.

Pricing & Plans:

• Trial: Rival IQ has a 14-day free trial for testing its services. However, it does not have a fully free tier.
• Drive: The Drive tier is $239/month and allows tracking up to 10 companies at a time. It provides six months of data but does not include some analytics or reports.
• Engage: The Engage tier is $329/month and lets you track 20 companies at a time. It increases the data history to 12 months and offers significantly more reports and connectivity than the previous tier.
• Engage Pro: Rival IQ’s Engage Pro tier is $519/month and allows tracking up to 40 companies with 24 months of data history. It also has a customer account manager who can help provide training, onboarding, and system customization.
• Enterprise: Like most social media tools, Rival IQ has a customizable enterprise tier for larger companies that want to get more.

Our Take: 

Rival IQ is an expensive tool for social media analytics, but its specialization and outstanding competitive analysis make it a good option for companies trying to grab any advantage.

Analisa.io

Overview: 

Analisa.io is an AI-based analytics tool for Instagram and TikTok that works for everything from small to enterprise-level companies.

Once set up, it can provide reports on things like hashtags, profiles, and followers to better understand how content is performing.

Our Rating: 3/5

Best For: 

Instagram

Notable Features: 

• Competitor Analysis: Analisa.io can analyze competitors on Instagram and TikTok to help companies get a better sense of how to get ahead.
• Demographic Information: Analisa.io can collect valuable demographic information about followers, including verifying authenticity to help cut down on potential fraud.
• Content Optimization: Analisa.io’s optimization services can provide real-time information on the top hashtags, posts, and even posting times.

Pros:

• Excellent Insights: Analisa.io offers a surprisingly high level of insight into competitors at a low price.
• Good Before And After Campaigns: The research tools here are suitable for both planning campaigns and reporting on the results.
• Posting Data: Analisa.io offers information on posts, including the specific times that content gets the most interaction.
• Dedicated Service: Analisa.io focuses entirely on Instagram and TikTok, which allows it to adjust to the unique setup of these platforms.
• Easy Report Generation: Analisa.io’s reports are easy to make and use for presentations.

Cons: 

• Limited Audience Information: Analisa.io can gather information from publicly-accessible accounts, but its real data only goes so far and doesn’t have as many insights as other analytics tools.
• Limited Collaboration Tools: Although some parts of the system are good for multiple users, Analisa.io doesn’t have the kind of team-focused integration that others do.
• Pricing: Despite its relatively limited performance, Analisa.io is expensive as a monthly service. It’s mainly worthwhile to buyers trying to find any edge on TikTok and Instagram.

Is Analisa.io Hard to Use?

No. Analisa.io is a relatively simple and straightforward system, so most people can use it well with little training.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Analisa.io’s free plan has daily limits on profile and hashtag analysis, with information available only for recent posts.
• Premium: The Premium tier is $69/month and removes the daily limit on profile analysis. It also checks up to 5000 posts per profile or 1000 posts per hashtag, with PDF exports for reports. This tier unlocks most of the activity and performance analysis systems.
• Plus: The Plus tier is $149/month and adds additional exporting options for results and the option to analyze several thousand more posts. However, the primary value at this tier is the addition of dedicated and priority support in case you run into problems.
• Pro: The Pro tier is $239/month and mainly offers additional post analysis to increase the accuracy of reports.

Our Take: 

Analisa.io is an excellent analytics program for anyone using Instagram or TikTok.

However, its narrow focus isn’t as good for companies that are posting content on multiple platforms, where a single dashboard tracking everything is more helpful.

This is a specialized tool, so whether it’s valuable or not depends on a company’s situation and goals.

Storyheap

Overview: 

Storyheap is a combination of analytics and publishing services that works across all major social networks.

It can track more metrics than many other providers, includes media editing tools, and even offers AI-based suggestions to help increase conversions.

Our Rating: 4.5/5

Best For: 

Multi-Channel Use

Notable Features: 

• All-in-One Service: Storyheap offers media editing, post scheduling, content analytics, and more in a single platform. It has more capabilities than most other software on this list.
• Collaboration Tools: Storyheap has collaboration tools that make it easier for teams to work on the content together.
• Automated Structuring: Storyheap makes it easier to automate many processes for Social Media, allowing users to spend more time on other things.

Pros: 

• Excellent Management Features: Storyheap is better at managing features than most other services. This is particularly valuable for larger teams.
• Unusual Analytics: Storyheap can track some metrics you usually can’t see in-platform, which is a major improvement.
• AI Suggestions: Storyheap’s AI suggestions can provide input and advice when people need it most.
• Solid Reports: Storyheap offers an excellent selection of reports for users, each of them optimized to display the kind of data it collects.
• Wide Reach: Storyheap works well on many major social media platforms, and the developers aim to expand this over time.

Cons: 

• Smaller Service: Despite its features, Storyheap isn’t as well-known as many other companies. Its smaller customer base makes its future less certain.
• No Specialization: Storyheap does many things well, but by spreading itself broadly, it won’t perform in specific categories as well as dedicated services.
• Expensive: Storyheap is significantly more expensive than most competitors, which may be part of why far fewer people use it.

Is Storyheap Hard to Use?

Sort of. Storyheap isn’t fundamentally difficult, but it has so many different features that it will take time to learn all of them and integrate them into your workflow.

Pricing & Plans:

• Trial: Storyheap has a 14-day free trial. The company recommends starting this after a personalized demo, which will help ensure you have the correct settings.
• Starter: The Starter plan begins at $750/month and offers analytics, reports, and campaign scheduling.
• Professional: The Professional tier starts at $2950/month and adds team management and collaboration tools. Storyheap also offers custom development at this tier, which some companies will need to get the most use from the system.
• Enterprise: The custom-price Enterprise tier adds additional integrations, full access to the media studio, and a tailored onboarding process to help people learn the system.

Our Take: 

Storyheap is a high-quality service offering many of the functions that modern companies are looking for.

It’s broad enough to replace some other services, but the price tag will be a sticking point for many businesses.

Make sure to get a customized trial as that’s the best way to understand if Storyheap is the right choice for you.

Shortstack

Overview: 

Shortstack is a contest-focused analytics tool. It supports creating contests, giveaways, websites, email campaigns, and more, while simultaneously providing excellent analytics for people who participate in them.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For:

Businesses Running Contests

Notable Features: 

• Large Variety Of Contests: Shortstack supports many types of contests, allowing users to pick the format that works best for their marketing needs.
• Wide Usage: Shortstack works on most major social media platforms, as well as the user’s website.
• Reliably Fair: Shortstack uses a fair decision system to help determine winners, which can help companies avoid any appearance of favoritism.

Pros: 

• Highly Flexible Contests: Shortstack’s templates are flexible and easy to adjust so you can match branding guidelines or edit contests as necessary.
• Marketer-Focused: Shortstack caters to marketers, not programmers, and is much easier to use than some other analytics platforms.
• Solid Customer Service: Shortstack has good customer service and responds to most issues quickly.
• Multiple Integration Options: Shortstack uses a webhook system that can link with most email and CRM services.
• Extra Automation: Shortstack can provide additional marketing automation, such as scheduling follow-up emails to contest entrants.

Cons: 

• Expensive Unless You Run Contests Regularly: Shortstack is relatively pricey, so you need to set up and run contests frequently to get the most value from it.
• Limited Guidance: It’s not always clear what types of contests will be the most effective for your business. You may have to spend weeks or months experimenting to find out the best option for your company.
• Tricky UI: Shortstack’s user interface can be complicated, and some of its features aren’t easy to find.

Is Shortstack Hard to Use?

Shortstack is moderately complex.

It has several features and will take time to learn, but it’s oriented towards marketers and doesn’t have the complexity that developer-focused systems do.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Shortstack’s free version is technically a trial, but has no time limit. It supports 20 entries into contests and 100 views every thirty days, plus most features of the Agency tier.
• Business: Shortstack’s Business tier is $99/month and allows up to 10,000 entries into contests. It supports giveaways, photo contests, essays, and numerous other options, but doesn’t allow for video uploads, hashtag/retweet contests, or campaign analytics.
• Agency: The Agency tier is $249/month and supports up to 50,000 contest entries. This tier unlocks most of the remaining contest types, plus analytics and custom landing page domains.
• Brand: The Brand tier is $499/month and allows up to 500,000 contest entries. This tier is similar to the Agency level but adds digital rights management, collaboration features, and an account manager who can provide personal assistance.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise tier is nearly identical to the Brand tier, but supports more team members, larger videos, and custom templates for sites.

Our Take: 

Shortstack is only relevant if you plan to run contests, but it’s easy to use and an excellent choice for any company that does.

As a marketer-oriented platform, it minimizes the need for custom development and allows users to create contests in minimal time.

The analytics on top of this help clarify which contests are worth repeating.

TapInfluence

Overview: 

TapInfluence is an influencer-focused campaign manager and analytics platform.

It constantly analyzes potential options and can deliver tailored suggestions in seconds to help you get a comprehensive understanding of your choices and how they may be able to help you.

Our Rating: 3.5/5

Best For: 

Influence Marketing

Notable Features: 

• Robust Influencer Discovery: TapInfluence offers quick assessments for potential influencers, including data and insights into their audiences. It allows sorting into lists, checking by keywords, and even matching locations.
• Automated Processing: TapInfluence helps automate many aspects of influencer marketing campaigns, from direct offers to scheduling posts.
• Solid Analytics: The internal analytics systems can track performance, detect some types of fraud, and export reports. TapInfluence can link with Google Analytics and most large social media platforms for more information.

Pros: 

• Searchable Database: TapInfluence allows searching its huge database of influencers to find the right partners, rather than limiting itself to AI-generated suggestions.
• Good Filters: TapInfluence rates influencers on multiple metrics, then compare them to each user’s business portfolio to see which candidates are the best fit.
• Easy Communication: TapInfluence simplifies the process of contacting influencers and makes it easier for users to evaluate responses.
• High ROI: Influencer campaigns that go through TapInfluence often have a high return on investment, which is the main reason anyone should consider using it.
• Good For Niche Cases: TapInfluence works for niche markets, not just the most popular categories.

Cons: 

• Limited Customer Service: It’s not always easy to get ahold of TapInfluence’s customer service team.
• No Contracting: TapInfluence supports communication, but does not support directly contracting with influencers. You must find another way to do that.
• Expensive: TapInfluence is quite expensive for the services it offers, though its tendency to provide a high ROI offsets this.

Is TapInfluence Hard to Use?

TapInfluence is moderately challenging to use.

The searchable database and contact functions are easy enough, but some of its other campaign management systems will take time to learn.

Pricing & Plans:

• Standard: TapInfluence’s Standard tier is usually $1999/month, but they don’t make the current numbers available on their website. You may need to contact them directly to verify if this information is still accurate. The Standard tier includes access to their platform, including analytics and data on past performance.
• Enterprise: The custom-price Enterprise tier is largely the same system, but allows for direct contact with TapInfluence to hand-select influencers and develop marketing plans.
• Agency: Unusually, TapInfluence also has a custom plan for agencies as an integration for other services. This tier provides personalized guidance for pitching things to clients, calculating ROI, and scaling marketing through influencers.

Our Take: 

TapInfluence is a good choice for companies looking to expand into influencer marketing.

However, it’s a high cost just to find people to work with and doesn’t include what you’ll be paying for the actual marketing. It works, but only larger companies can justify the costs here.

Also, we don’t like it when companies hide their pricing behind walls, as that’s inherently suspicious.

We dropped their score, despite the quality of their platform, because they’re not transparent with their customers on pricing.

Keyhole

Overview: 

Keyhole is an analytics and reports production platform.

It collects data from social media platforms and other websites, then processes that information to provide useful insights.

Although best at producing reports, it does evaluate and compares some data internally.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: 

Generating Reports

Notable Features: 

• Influencer Authentication: Keyhole has an authentication system for influencers that can confirm their data and provide real-time updates on their performance.
• Flexible Monitoring: Keyhole monitors many types of information, from brand performance to social listening and individual marketing campaigns.
• Easy Report Generation: Keyhole’s primary value is how it makes fast, easy reports about performance on social media.

Pros: 

• Comprehensive Dashboard: Keyhole has a fully-featured dashboard with plenty of information available with minimal clicks.
• Competitive Pricing: Keyhole’s pricing tiers are competitive and business-friendly.
• Sentiment Analysis: Keyhole’s sentiment analysis helps track opinions about content, not just interactions. This provides significantly more accurate reports.
• Trustworthy Sources: Keyhole relies heavily on trustworthy and verifiable data sources, particularly the official APIs for major social media sites.
• Tracking Modification: Keyhole allows users to adjust reports and reanalyze data to get more information.

Cons: 

• Limited Exports: Some of Keyhole’s report exports, especially to PDFs, will miss information you may want to include.
• Slow Support: Keyhole’s customer support isn’t very fast, especially for users at the lower price tiers.
• Limited Analysis: Keyhole doesn’t check as many social media posts as some other companies, which limits the accuracy of their results.

Is Keyhole Hard to Use? 

No. Keyhole is a user-friendly platform with a lot of potential, but most people can learn to use it without much difficulty.

Pricing & Plans:

• Custom: Keyhole has moved to custom pricing for clients of all sizes. Previously, they had a basic plan for $49/month and advanced plans at $99 and $199. Nowadays, they may offer different options and limits depending on your company’s size.

Our Take: 

Keyhole is a robust and powerful platform, especially if you want to integrate with other systems and generate reports.

Many large companies use it, which speaks favorably of its performance, and its flexibility is appealing.

However, we don’t like that they have no transparency on their current pricing and we reduced their score because of that.

We believe potential customers should know what kind of price range to expect before contacting a company, not after opening themselves up for a sales pitch.

Management & Automation Tools

Management and automation tools help schedule and control the content you post.

This provides an extra margin of safety and reduces the risk of human error disrupting your schedule.

Buffer

Overview: 

Buffer is a brand-development company with support for publishing, analytics, and user engagement.

Its main focus is looking at user performance, helping plan content, and supporting engagement with customers.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For:

Brand Building

Notable Features: 

• Centralized Analytics: Buffer offers a central analytics platform to track performance on social media.
• Easy Replies: Buffer lets users respond to comments straight from a desktop dashboard. This makes it faster and easier to reply to praise, questions, and complaints.
• Engagement Tracking: Buffer can help managers check engagement with content and see which posts from customers are still unanswered.

Pros: 

• Well-Established: Buffer is more than 10 years old and is still operating, which means it’s much more proven than many competing services. Companies that have been around this long are much more likely to keep operating.
• Excellent Scheduling: Buffer makes it easy to schedule content so it goes up exactly when you want it to.
• Role-Based Access: Buffer can limit accounts so people can only access the part of the software they need to use.
• Centralized Control: Buffer operates as a single platform for posting to multiple social media accounts, saving on time and complexity.
• Desktop Access: Buffer has a desktop access system, rather than requiring traditional web access like most services.

Cons: 

• Doesn’t Give Suggestions: Buffer isn’t a good tool for figuring out what’s trending or what might perform the best at a specific time.
• Limited Analytics: The internal analytics aren’t good compared to most competitors, so there’s little point in using Buffer for that.
• Post Failures: Buffer sometimes fails to post to social media accounts correctly, so you need to verify each post.

Is Buffer Hard to Use?

No. Buffer is relatively straightforward and most users can learn it without much trouble.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Buffer’s Free plan supports up to three channels. It includes some basic publishing tools and a landing page creator, plus post scheduling and integration with many third-party systems. They also have a 14-day trial for the advanced features.
• Essentials: The Essentials plan is $6/month per channel, with up to 2000 posts scheduled at a time. This tier adds analytics and reporting, including a Google Analytics integration for more data.
• Team: The Team tier is $12/month per channel. It allows unlimited users on the account, plus access to draft post management, access permissions, and approval workflow systems.
• Agency: The Agency plan is $120/month for 10 channels, which is the same price per channel as the Team tier. However, it reduces the cost for channels beyond that, making it a better price for agencies that want to manage posts for many clients.

Our Take: 

Buffer is a solid content management system, offering a robust set of features for teams and individuals.

The mix of a landing page builder and some analytics tools make it more valuable than systems that only schedule posts, but it’s most effective at the Team or Agency tiers thanks to the collaboration-management controls.

CoSchedule

Overview: 

CoSchedule is a work-management platform with several components to help boost performance.

Although individuals can use it, most of its functions are geared toward teams in larger organizations, including its marketing suite and calendar.

Unusually, it also has a training system to help develop marketing skills.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For:

Organizing Teams

Notable Features: 

• Large Selection Of Options: CoSchedule offers support for everything from approval workflows to project templates, marketing campaign management, and content optimization.
• Robust Calendar: The Marketing Calendar includes task management, social media publishing, and numerous integrations.
• Training Center: CoSchedule’s training center offers training in many marketing courses, not just its own controls.

Pros: 

• Excellent Schedule View: CoSchedule makes it easy to find gaps in content coverage and look for ways to fill them.
• Great For Large Teams: Most of CoSchedule’s products are geared towards large and complex teams. Most competing products can only handle small teams.
• Regular Updates: CoSchedule is actively developing new services and adds additional tools and options regularly.
• Highly Customizable: Most of CoSchedule’s tools are easy to customize to your needs.
• Read-Only Systems: CoSchedule allows some read-only reports that stakeholders, leaders, and other people can reference as needed.

Cons: 

• Slows Down Occasionally: CoSchedule can slow down when you have too many people using it simultaneously.
• No Retroactive Templates: Task templates aren’t retroactive, so if you change something in a format after making it, you have to go and change all of the other tasks to match.
• Relatively Expensive: CoSchedule is more expensive than some competing services, especially with their focus on custom pricing.

Is CoSchedule Hard to Use? 

No. CoSchedule is relatively straightforward and they’ve been able to iterate most of the rough spots since their launch.

However, they do have a lot of features, so expect to spend some time if you want to master their platform.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: CoSchedule offers the basic version of their Marketing Calendar for free. It includes unlimited marketing projects, publishing tools, personal project management, and several other features. They also have a 14-day trial for the advanced features.
• Marketing Calendar Pro: The Pro version of the calendar is $29/month per user, which can add up quickly at larger companies. It adds numerous collaboration options, including team task management and access to priority support.
• Marketing Suite: CoSchedule’s marketing suite has entirely custom pricing, and this is also where most of their features are. Some reports indicate that they have several main tiers for pricing, but they don’t advertise the costs on their website.

Our Take:

CoSchedule is an impressively robust marketing platform for larger teams.

Its focus on larger groups makes it a valuable option for enterprises in an industry that usually caters to smaller marketing teams.

However, we don’t like the opaque pricing for the majority of its features, and CoSchedule has a lower score than it would otherwise get due to this lack of transparency.

HootSuite

Overview: 

HootSuite is a social media marketing platform.

It includes content scheduling, direct posting to social media, and a centralized inbox for messages and other important content.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: 

Posting Content

Notable Features: 

• Excellent Planning: HootSuite has an excellent content planner, letting you see your scheduled posts with a single glance. It also has a suspension system letting you pause your posts if you need to react to an opportunity or crisis.
• Content Creator: HootSuite’s Composer system helps create posts for different social media platforms. Notably, it can auto-adjust videos to match the height, width, and bitrate requirements for each platform.
• Internal Monitoring: HootSuite’s internal monitoring can help you understand things like how fast employees are responding to customers and who’s performing the best.

Pros: 

• Easy Posting to Multiple Accounts: HootSuite uses a simplified posting system to manage accounts and let you post in multiple places at once.
• Access to Media: HootSuite has easy access to images and other material you can use when planning posts for different platforms.
• Flexible Management: HootSuite’s robust software allows companies to use it for one or more categories, including analyzing content and controlling workflows.
• Well-Established Company: HootSuite has been operating since 2008, making it one of the most well-established and reliable platforms for managers.
• Suitable for All Sizes: HootSuite works well across all company sizes, from individuals to corporations.

Cons: 

• Requires Good Devices: HootSuite performs best on computers with more than 4 GB of RAM. This isn’t a concern for most personal computers, but it can struggle on many smartphones and tablets.
• PST Default: The scheduling system defaults to Pacific (United States west coast) time, and may require adjustments for other timezones.
• Limited Training: There isn’t much opportunity for one-on-one training to learn the system.

Is HootSuite Hard to Use?

No. HootSuite is relatively simple, which is helped in part by its age.

It started in a time when social media was much smaller, and they’ve carefully managed its complexity in the years since.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: HootSuite’s free plan gives one user access to two social accounts and five scheduled posts at a time. It’s good for testing HootSuite, but not enough for long-term use. The Professional and Team tiers have a 30-day free trial, while the Business and Enterprise tiers have customized demos.
• Professional: HootSuite’s introductory Professional tier costs $49/month. It supports 10 social accounts, bulk scheduling, message monitoring, and support for post boosting through social media ad systems.
• Team: The Team level costs $179/month and gives support to three users across 20 social media accounts. This tier adds custom branded URLs, suspending scheduled posts, team assignments, and user access permission controls
• Business: The Business tier is $739/month and supports up to five users natively, with additional users available at an extra cost. It also adds departmental organization, message approvals, campaign management, and security compliance integrations.
• Enterprise: The custom-price Enterprise tier supports up to 50 social accounts. It also offers team productivity reports, Single Sign-On, and customized training for users.

Our Take: 

HootSuite is deceptively simple looking from the outside.

Although it seems like it focuses on scheduling posts, it has numerous other features and benefits that become obvious for teams. It’s an excellent content scheduler for businesses of all sizes, but especially so for large companies.

MeetEdgar

Overview: 

MeetEdgar is an automated posting system designed to minimize the amount of work users put in.

It works on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but in an unusual step also allows posts to Pinterest.

Our Rating: 4/5

Best For: 

Content Automation

Notable Features: 

• Automated Scheduling: MeetEdgar can create a schedule for posts for you, drawing ideas from a user-made content library.
• Flexible Time Slots: You can select time slots that MeetEdgar will fill with content.
• Excellent Testing: MeetEdgar supports A/B testing to see which types of content are most engaging across different social media networks.

Pros: 

• Content Production: MeetEdgar emphasizes content production, usually posting things on a last-in-first-out setup to ensure the newest material gets posted first.
• Content Variation: MeetEdgar can generate variations on content to ensure a steady supply of new material.
• Categorize Material: MeetEdgar also lets you categorize types of posts and adjust the frequency of each.
• RSS Integration: MeetEdgar allows adding material to your queue through a standard RSS feed.
• Account Management: MeetEdgar can control multiple accounts simultaneously.

Cons: 

• Limited Reporting: MeetEdgar doesn’t provide as many reports as most other management platforms.
• Limited Picture Controls: You may not be able to use multiple photos for Facebook posts, which can limit the content you create.
• AI Quality Can Be Suspect: MeetEdgar can generate new ideas based on the things you add to your content library, but it may hiccup occasionally due to limits in the algorithm.

Is MeetEdgar Hard to Use?

No. MeetEdgar is easier to use than most of the other options on this list, especially because it automates most of the workload.

Pricing & Plans:

• Trial: MeetEdgar has a 14-day free trial for its features, but no free mode.
• Eddie: The Eddie plan is the lower-tier option, available for $29.99/month. It supports five social media accounts with unlimited scheduled posts, but just ten weekly automations and four content categories. However, it does allow up to 20 team members.
• Edgar: The higher-tier Edgar plan is $49.99/month. It allows connecting up to 25 social media accounts, with 1000 weekly automations and unlimited categories.

Unlike most other services on this list, MeetEdgar does not have an Enterprise tier for larger teams and companies.

Our Take: 

MeetEdgar is most valuable for individuals and smaller companies.

Its ability to automatically schedule posts and generate content from a library removes a lot of the burden of marketing, but it can’t hold up to the needs of larger businesses.

HubSpot

Overview: 

HubSpot is one of the largest Customer Relationship Management platforms in the world

It has sections that cover marketing, sales, customer service, content management, and daily operations. It is easily one of the most powerful and versatile options for businesses of any size.

Our Rating: 5/5

Best For: 

Marketing and Customer Operations (Best Overall)

Notable Features: 

• Extraordinary Support: HubSpot has almost six thousand employees and offers outstanding support to its customers.
• Complete CRM: HubSpot is the closest thing to a complete CRM system, which means it has more features and functionality than anyone else.
• Flexible Setup: It’s possible to use HubSpot for almost everything, but you can limit yourself to specific sections if you prefer.

Pros: 

• Excellent Integration: HubSpot is so big that many other platforms can integrate with it. That improves the reach and flexibility of an already top-tier choice.
• Robust Education System: The HubSpot Academy has dozens of courses for marketers and anyone else using the platform. They’re big enough to have heard what people most need to learn, and design courses accordingly.
• Scalable: HubSpot can scale with your growth and continue functioning however large your company gets.
• Outstanding Analytics: HubSpot has great monitoring for the performance of your marketing tools. It also allows segmentation so you can check data in different ways.
• Good Automation: HubSpot has a lot of automation for common tasks, particularly through their Workflows tool.

Cons: 

• Expensive: HubSpot can get expensive fast, though its setup as an all-in-one platform means it can replace several other services.
• Setup Time: There’s more to learn on HubSpot than practically any other platform, so expect a longer setup.
• Limited Automation Templates: While the Workflows system can automate many tasks, you’ll have to build a lot of it from scratch or copy what others users make. This is flexible, but it does take some expertise to build up.

Is HubSpot Hard to Use?

No. HubSpot is relatively easy to learn and use, but there’s so much material that it takes time to master.

You can learn most of the basics in a day or two, but people who are new to marketing and CRM may need a month or more to fully learn its ins and outs.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: HubSpot has free marketing and managing tools, including some that work with ad management, emails, live chats, ticketing, email scheduling, and more. There’s no time limit, but you’ll hit a hard limit once your business grows past too many contacts.
• CMS: The CMS tools range from $25/month to $1200/month for website hosting, domain security, dynamic personalization, A/B website testing, and similar features.
• Customer Service: The Customer Service system ranges from $50/month to $1200/month for meeting scheduling, email management, ticket pipelines and automation, and customer feedback surveys.
• Marketing: The Marketing hub ranges from $50/month to $3200/month for form and email automation, dynamic personalization, A/B testing, video hosting, social media support, custom reports, and team management.
• Operations: The Operations hub goes from $50/month to $2000/month for tool syncing and connectivity, managing multiple currencies, list segmentation, access to webhooks and scheduled workflow triggers, and data quality automation.
• Sales: The Sales hub ranges from $50/month to $1200/month for chat systems, meeting scheduling, sales analytics and automation, and team management.

Most of HubSpot’s plans will increase in price based on the number of additional users or contacts you need.

Our Take: 

Despite its high pricing, HubSpot is one of the most powerful and scalable CMS options in the world. It doesn’t have as much customization as some other systems, but it will work for practically any company and remain usable at any size.

Sprout Social

Overview: 

Sprout Social is a social media management platform.

Its sections offer support for media managers, marketing, analysis, and customer support, which work together to improve a company’s overall performance.

Our Rating: 4.5/5

Best For: 

Small and Mid-Size Organizations

Notable Features: 

• Employee Advocacy: Sprout Social makes it possible to share content through employees’ accounts and create a more unified brand strategy.
• Listening: Sprout’s Listening tools help monitor conversations about social media, including specific brands, to develop actionable information.
• Engagement Tools: Sprout’s engagement system helps smooth and automate customer engagement to increase satisfaction and sales.

Pros: 

• User-Friendly Systems: Sprout Social has accessible and user-friendly management tools, so people don’t have to be expert marketers to sit down and get started.
• Excellent Reports: Sprout Social has well-made, easy-to-understand reports to help explain performance to leaders.
• Solid Customer Service: Sprout’s customer service team is responsive and attentive, which is particularly valuable when you’re first setting up.
• Scheduling Suggestions: Sprout Social can make suggestions about when to post content on social media to maximize results.
• Social Media Monitoring: Sprout Social has solid monitoring for social media, including checking for company mentions and posts with certain keywords.

Cons: 

• Unnecessary Scaling: Sprout Social occasionally auto-scales pictures even when that’s not strictly necessary, which can be an issue on networks like Instagram.
• Limited Onboarding: There aren’t too many options for onboarding and learning the system.
• Costly: Sprout Social is relatively expensive for the services it offers.

Is Sprout Social Hard to Use? 

Sprout Social is not hard to use, but like all management platforms, it will take some time to get used to.

Pricing & Plans:

• Trial: Sprout Social offers a 30-day free trial to learn their system. This is about twice as long as most other platforms that allow a trial.
• Standard: The Standard tier is $99/month per user, supporting five social profiles and an all-in-one inbox. It also includes a post scheduler, a content calendar, review management, keyword monitoring, and multi-level reporting.
• Professional: The Professional plan is $169/month per user, adding support for ten social profiles and competitive reports on the biggest platforms. This level supports custom workflows to allow multiple approvals, response rate analysis, trend analysis, and additional integrations with other software.
• Advanced: The Advanced tier is $279/month per user. It keeps the same number of social profiles, but adds message spike alerts, a digital asset library, chatbots, suggested replies, automated link tracking, and a rule builder for further automating actions.
• Enterprise: The custom-price Enterprise tier is largely the same as the Advanced tier, but offers better pricing for a high number of users at one company.

Our Take: 

Sprout Social is a surprisingly powerful platform with plenty of capability for monitoring social media and turning trends into action.

It’s not quite all-in-one like HubSpot, but it’s a solid choice for businesses that can handle the price tag.

Zoho Social

Overview: 

Zoho Social is a brand management platform for social media. Its primary functions include scheduling posts, monitoring performance, collaborating within a company, and analyzing the results of marketing campaigns.

Our Rating: 4.5/5

Best For:

Small Marketing Teams

Notable Features: 

• Robust Publishing Calendar: Zoho Social offers a comprehensive scheduler that lets you preview, reschedule, and manage content from a single screen.
• Live Tracking: Zoho Social supports a live feed of engagement in a dedicated window. This makes it faster and easier to respond to questions and conversations.
• Team Support: Zoho Social works well for small teams, particularly with collaboration features that support chat, audio, and video communications.

Pros: 

• Affordable: Zoho Social is significantly more affordable than many competing services.
• Excellent Social Listening: Zoho Social’s social listening tools are quite robust and can provide a lot of information about topics currently trending on social media.
• Good Exports: Zoho Social can export calendars into PDFs for easy use elsewhere. This is faster and easier than working with spreadsheets.
• Great Customer Service: Zoho Social usually has live service agents available, which tends to result in faster solutions than email.
• Good Analytics: Zoho Social’s analytics and reports are comprehensive but easy to understand, with a solid selection of customization options.

Cons: 

• Limited Plugins: Zoho Social doesn’t integrate with all major platforms. However, it is working on expanding them.
• Expensive: Zoho Social is relatively expensive and often charges per user, which can add up fast at larger companies. That makes Zoho Social better for small-to-medium size businesses.
• Bad For Small Businesses: Although theoretically usable by individuals, the combination of price and features mean Zoho is only best for companies that are managing robust social media campaigns.

Is Zoho Social Hard to Use? 

No. Zoho Social is comparatively easy to use, with friendly dashboards.

The Smart Inbox is particularly valuable for keeping track of conversations.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free: Zoho Social’s free tier allows managing one brand across seven channels. It’s essentially a light version of the Standard plan, but with significantly fewer features. There is no time limit on the free plan.
• Trial: Zoho Social has a 15-day free trial to test out its advanced features. It automatically converts to a free plan if you don’t upgrade to a paid level.
• Standard: The Standard tier is $15/month and supports one user, covering one brand and seven channels. It allows content scheduling, checks recent posts, provides summaries, and even offers an image editor for making better posts.
• Professional: The Professional tier is $40/month, with additional users at another $12 each. It has one more channel by default, plus notifications, a media library, the ability to block and mute accounts, bulk scheduling, and information on popular posts.
• Premium: The Premium tier is $65/month, with three team members by default. It supports content approval, collaboration systems, internal discussions, custom reports, and better analytics.
• Agency: The Agency tier is the first of the plans for companies managing social media for others. It’s $320/month but allows five team members to manage 90 channels across ten brands. It also provides free logins and custom portals for clients so they can check on performance.
• Agency Plus: The Agency Plus tier is $460/month, offering 180 channels across 20 brands. It’s otherwise largely the same as the previous tier.
• Enterprise: Zoho Social’s Enterprise tier is primarily for agencies managing 50 or more brands, offering customized pricing for its services.

Our Take: 

Zoho Social is a robust and flexible platform, with a surprisingly high number of options and services.

However, its pricing structure can make it prohibitively expensive for larger companies, so it works best for smaller businesses.

Features to Look for In Social Media Tools

Here are the main things to look for when buying social media tools.

1. Ease of Use

Ease of use covers things like how much training people need and how well they can use it on a day-to-day basis.

Platforms that are easy to use are better for larger teams but may lack some of the power and customization of systems like Google Analytics.

2. Price & Affordability

Pricing varies greatly between platforms, with the most expensive options costing thousands of dollars per month.

Good social media tools will provide a positive return on investment, but it’s important to avoid scaling up too quickly.

3. User Seats & Team Access/Collaboration

Most social media tools have options for additional users and collaboration.

However, some platforms are significantly better than others for collaboration.

This is particularly important at larger companies, whereas smaller companies can get away with users sharing an account.

Wrapping Up

There are plenty of social media tools out there, many of which perform several roles at once.

HubSpot and Google Analytics are the best services overall, but other services like Infogram, HootSuite, and Zoho Social can provide compelling alternatives.

Companies have different needs and workflows, so consider testing several platforms before making a final decision.

This takes time, but selecting the best fit for your company (whether you’re an individual or part of a team of hundreds) will make a huge difference in your final ROI.

The sooner you start, the better, so start writing down which platforms seem like the best fit and begin testing them as soon as you can.

Instead of trying to use your calendar app or alerts on your phone, consider some of the best tools.

The right tool has the features you need to plan your content.

It can also offer insights into the content that performs the best for you.

Read on to learn more about platforms for scheduling Instagram content.

An Overview of Scheduling Instagram Posts

If you want to stay on track with your Instagram posting schedule, you should consider scheduling Instagram posts.

Then, you can prepare the content in advance so that you don’t have to worry about it later.

You may still need to upload the post at the scheduled time.

However, you can get right back to your task at hand.

What Is an Instagram Post Scheduler?

An Instagram post scheduler is a tool that lets you prepare your posts ahead of time.

You can load the photo and write the caption right in the program.

Some tools will then auto-post certain types of content.

Other tools will send you a push notification on your mobile device so that you can share the post within a few seconds.

Why Should You Use Tools to Schedule Instagram Posts?

You should use tools to schedule Instagram posts to save yourself time and stay on track with your content calendar.

Each week or month, you can sit down and plan out and create your content and not have to think about it later.

Best Tools to Schedule Instagram Posts

Consider a few tools to schedule Instagram posts.

Then, you can select a tool that meets your needs.

Here are some of the most popular social media management tools for Instagram.

Buffer

Buffer is an excellent social media scheduling tool because it works with Instagram and other social networks.

You can plan your content for multiple platforms in one dashboard. It also gives you a lot of analytics to help track your account’s success.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5

Best For: Ease of Use

Notable Features:

• Scheduling across platforms
• Detailed analytics
• Engage from your desktop

If you want to schedule Instagram posts, Facebook posts, and Tweets, Buffer has what you need.

You don’t have to use a separate tool for each platform, but you can use it only for Instagram.

The scheduler gives you analytics as well to help track the success of your posts.

And if you can’t stand using a small screen, you can engage with your audience from a computer.

That’s also helpful if your phone needs to charge but you still want to work.

Pros:

• Flexible pricing model
• Easy to use
• Features a photo editor
• User interface is transparent
• It can be used personally and professionally

The flexible pricing is excellent for new and growing businesses to get the features they need.

And Buffer is easy to use, so you can jump right in and schedule posts.

If you need to do a small touch-up, you can do so with the photo editor right in Buffer.

The user interface is also nice for beginners.

Plus, you can use Buffer for your business or personal social media accounts.

That makes it a great choice for people with a personal brand as well as a separate business.

Cons:

• Primary Pinterest and Instagram features
• Requires other tools to supplement
• Can get expensive

Buffer works well for Instagram and Pinterest, but it’s not the best for other platforms.

So you might need to use other tools to get the most out of social media scheduling.

And if you supplement with other paid tools or add multiple social accounts, it can easily get quite expensive.

You’ll want to evaluate your budget for social media tools to determine how many accounts to connect.

But it’s affordable if you only need it for Instagram.

Is Buffer Hard to Use?

Buffer makes it easy to create and plan your social media content.

You can access everything you need from one dashboard to help save time.

There might be a small learning curve, but it gets easier with practice.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free
• Essential at $5/month per social channel
• Team option at $10/month per social channel
• Agency at $100/month for ten social channels

Buffer has multiple plans to suit your needs, including a free option.

Sadly, you’ll need to pay to access analytics, and the cost is per channel, including per Instagram account.

Fortunately, you can pay annually to get two months free each year.

Buffer also offers a free 14-day trial for you to test the features and decide which tier you need.

Our Take

Buffer is an excellent tool to schedule Instagram posts, especially if you use other platforms.

You can manage your content for Instagram and Facebook in one place.

The analytics also make it easy to track the success of your posts so that you know what to share more of.

Hootsuite

Another tool to consider using for Instagram scheduling is Hootsuite.

You can view everything in a calendar format to see when posts go live.

The tool is great for responding to messages and for managing social media ads.

Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Best For: Scheduling and Posting

Notable Features:

• Calendar view
• Social media streams
• Real-time audience insights

When you use the calendar view, you can see when specific posts will publish and where.

That can help you manage upcoming promotions and other events.

The social media streams also let you pay attention to specific accounts and message threads.

You don’t have to use your phone to monitor and reply to messages.

And as you use the tool, you can get access to insights to help plan future posts.

Pros:

• You can respond to messages in one place
• Quick scheduling and posting
• Easy monitoring
• Tracks trends and competition
• Combines all social metrics

Responding to messages is much easier when you can go to one dashboard.

And when you’re ready to schedule a new post, you can do that from the same place.

Hootsuite also helps you monitor audience activity and trends in your industry.

You can then see what your competitors are doing to stay ahead of them.

Finally, the various metrics help you track the success of your content.

Cons:

• Expensive
• A limited number of platforms
• Aimed at Twitter

Compared to other tools to schedule Instagram posts, Hootsuite is quite expensive.

You also can’t use it for just any social platform.

However, it does work with popular networks like Instagram, Facebook, and even TikTok.

Another issue is that Twitter is the best platform to use with Hootsuite.

You can use it for Instagram, but you might not get the best results.

Is Hootsuite Hard to Use?

All of the features can be overwhelming to beginners.

If you’re not very good with technology, you might struggle to get the most out of the tool.

However, practice can help you learn the basics.

Pricing & Plans:

• Professional at $49/month
• Team at $129/month
• Business at $739/month
• Enterprise negotiable

Most of the Hootsuite plans cost a lot more than similar tiers from other tools.

However, you do get a lot of features, including unlimited posts and 10 social accounts on the Professional tier.

If you have a tight budget, you can try the free plan, but that comes with a lot of limitations.

It’s not the best for serious social media scheduling.

Our Take

Hootsuite is a suitable tool to schedule Instagram posts.

It seems like the tool better suits activities such as social listening and audience engagement.

The streams feature is also better for a platform like Twitter.

Give the free trial a shot to see if Hootsuite is for you.

Sendible

Sendible claims to help you manage your social media as you scale your business.

It can help you attract new potential customers and grow your overall audience.

The tool is also a Meta business partner, so it works well with Instagram and Facebook.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5

Best For: Tracking Analytics

Notable Features:

• Auto-post Instagram Reels
• Collaboration tools
• Show off analytics to investors and more

If you use Instagram Reels as part of your strategy, Sendible lets you schedule and auto-post them.

That way, you don’t have to publish Reels at the best times yourself.

You’ll get access to collaboration tools so that you can approve posts that your team creates.

And you can show off various analytics to investors and stakeholders.

If you don’t have investors, you can keep the analytics for your reference.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Offers reports hub for tracking analytics
• Real-time audience interaction
• It makes engagements easily visible
• Quick-posting features

Sendible is an amazing tool for beginners.

Once you start using it, you can track the success of your various posts with analytics.

You’ll also be able to interact with your audience from the tool.

That can help you engage more with people.

You don’t have to pull out your phone and use the Instagram app to respond to comments or messages.

Finally, the quick-posting features can help you save time on social media.

If you struggle to post on social media and get back to other tasks, Sendible could help.

Cons:

• No tagging features
• A real-time monitoring option could be better
• Can get expensive

Unfortunately, if you want to tag people in your posts, you’d need to use Instagram directly.

You also don’t get the most up-to-date information when monitoring your account.

If you want to build a team, you’ll need to pay quite a bit each month.

The cost goes up for adding multiple users, so keep that in mind before you sign up.

Is Sendible Hard to Use?

Like any tool, there’s a bit of a learning curve.

But Sendible is generally easy to use.

You can do a lot with it once you learn more about the features.

Pricing & Plans:

• Creator at $29/month billed monthly
• Traction at $89/month billed monthly
• Scale at $199/month billed monthly
• Expansion at $399/month billed monthly
• Creator at $25/month billed yearly
• Traction at $76/month billed yearly
• Scale at $170/month billed yearly
• Expansion at $340/month billed yearly

Sendible offers four plans you can choose from.

The Creator plan is perfect for individuals, while teams can choose from the higher tiers.

You can save 15% if you pay for a year at once, and you can change plans as necessary.

Even then, the plans can still be costly and out of your budget.

If you want more features, you might find other tools with more economical plans.

Our Take

Sendible has flexible plans to fit your needs, and all plans have fantastic features.

It’s particularly useful for posting to an Instagram Business account.

While there are limits, they’re high enough that most people won’t hit them.

You can test it out with a free trial.

SproutSocial

SproutSocial is an excellent tool to schedule Instagram posts and manage your entire account.

It has a unified social inbox to help you manage messages and comments.

You can also use it for social listening to learn more about your industry.

Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Best For: Easy Navigation

Notable Features:

• Employee brand advocacy
• Post to multiple platforms at once
• SproutLink (link in bio)

SproutSocial allows your employees to share about your brand on their profiles to help expand your reach.

And if Instagram isn’t your only social network, you can share content with other sites at the same time.

The tool also offers SproutLink so that you can organize multiple links for your Instagram bio.

If you don’t want to change your bio link all of the time, you can edit the SproutLink from your dashboard.

Pros:

• Downloadable and robust reports and analytics
• User-friendly
• Easy navigation
• Flexible
• Amazing social listening tool

You can download the analytics you see in SproutSocial to share them with others.

The tool itself is also easy to use as a beginner, and you can navigate it without a ton of practice.

SproutSocial is flexible to support your social media needs as your business grows.

Plus, the social listening tool helps you stay on top of trends.

Cons:

• Expensive
• Unreliable response
• Can’t edit posts after approval

SproutSocial is probably one of the most expensive tools out there.

It’s a bit overkill if all you need is to schedule Instagram posts.

Also, getting a response from customer service can be hard when you need help.

If you use SproutSocial, the tool has to approve your posts before publication.

But if you catch a mistake after that, you can’t edit your posts and have to start over.

Is SproutSocial Hard to Use?

Using SproutSocial is easy, and you can get started in minutes.

However, learning some of the advanced features can be tricky.

Pricing & Plans:

• Standard at $89/month billed annually
• Professional at $149/month billed annually
• Advanced at $249/month billed annually

While all of the SproutSocial plans are expensive, you get plenty of features.

Even the Standard tier has a content calendar, message inbox, and more.

Sadly, you’ll need to pay extra to add features like social listening and employee advocacy.

You can add those features to any plan you select, though.

Our Take

SproutSocial is best for businesses that have more revenue and larger teams.

If you’re just starting, you probably won’t have the money to cover the plan.

Either way, you can test the tool with a free trial to see if it meets your needs.

Sked Social

Sked Social focuses on Instagram when it comes to scheduling content.

You can schedule anything from standard posts to stories.

It also lets you repost your Instagram posts on other platforms, like Facebook and Twitter.

Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Best For: Saving Time

Notable Features:

• Auto-post to multiple platforms
• Comprehensive analytics
• Social inbox

You can schedule Instagram posts to share on other platforms at the same time.

Then, you won’t have to spend time resharing content all over the internet.

Sked Social also provides you with detailed analytics for Instagram and Facebook.

You’ll be able to see data from up to two years ago.

Reels insights are also available to help you see what videos are doing well.

While it’s a newer feature, you can review all of your social media messages in one place.

And you don’t have to use your phone to respond to people.

The feature should get better with time since it’s currently in beta mode.

Pros:

• Saves on time
• Friendly interface
• Allow for story scheduling on Instagram
• Regular improvements
• Intuitive

The option to schedule content and share it in multiple places can cut down on the time you spend managing social media.

Plus, the interface is easy to use and good for beginners.

If you have a hard time keeping up with stories, you can even schedule those out.

Sked Social also updates its system regularly, so there’s always something new.

You can get used to those new features quickly since the program is intuitive.

That makes it a great choice if you need to hire social media help since training doesn’t have to take forever.

Cons:

• Manages limited social channels
• Not robust enough
• Somewhat complicated

While you can manage various channels, you can only manage one Instagram account on the most basic plan.

You’d need to pay much more to add a second or third account.

This tool also isn’t the most robust for overall social media scheduling and management.

And the features that do exist are complicated.

Some people have had trouble adding their Instagram accounts to Sked Social.

That could delay your ability to start using the tool.

Is Sked Social Hard to Use?

Sked Social can be hard to use for beginners, and approving accounts can take a while.

You might also get a lot of emails about the tool rejecting an account.

However, once you learn how to get going, the tool can become easier.

Pricing & Plans:

• Fundamentals: $25/month billed monthly
• Essentials: $75/month billed monthly
• Professional: $135/month billed monthly

Sked Social has plans for every budget and social media team.

You can save on any plan if you pay for a year upfront.

Of course, the plans offer different features, so you can find one that meets your needs.

All plans come with some analytics, but the Essentials and Professional tiers have more features.

They’re better for teams, while individuals can get by on the Fundamentals plan.

Our Take

Sked Social is an excellent option to schedule Instagram posts.

The tool puts Instagram at the forefront of what it does, so it’s not just another feature.

You can also schedule link stickers in your stories, which other tools don’t always offer.

All plans come with a free seven-day trial so that you can give the tool a test drive.

Later

Later is a tool that you can use to schedule Instagram posts and other social posts.

You can use it to plan your Instagram feed and even set up a link in your bio.

There’s also a Reels scheduler and a Stories scheduler, but you’ll still need to post Stories manually.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5

Best For: Visual Planning

Notable Features:

• Find user-generated content
• Instagram feed planning
• Link in bio tool

If you ever struggle to find content to post, Later lets you search for user-generated content.

Then, you can easily reshare the content and tag the users who created the original post.

That can also help you build trust with your audience.

You can also use Later to plan out your visual Instagram feed.

If you want to maintain a specific aesthetic, it’s an excellent choice.

It also works well for other social networks, from Facebook to TikTok.

Pros:

• Affordable
• Easy to navigate the platform
• Intuitive
• Instagram focus
• Best time to post

Some of the Later plans are expensive, but others are affordable.

They even offer a free plan with limited features for you to get started.

The platform is easy to navigate and intuitive for beginners.

But it also works well for people with experience scheduling Instagram posts.

When it comes to scheduling, Later can tell you the best time for your account.

That way, you can reach more of your audience.

You also don’t have to think about your posting schedule to help connect with current and potential customers.

Cons:

• Limitations on the free plan
• Only email support
• Post count applies to all posts

If you choose the free plan, you can’t schedule many posts per month.

You also won’t get some of the features at all, such as analytics.

Next, the only way to get customer support is through email, which can be slow and inconvenient.

Another downside is that the post count limit includes posts, stories, and other types.

That means you can’t post 30 stories and 30 feed posts in a month if 30 is the limit.

So if you want to be very active on Instagram, you may need a more expensive plan.

That way, you’ll have a higher post count limit.

Is Later Hard to Use?

Later is relatively easy to use, especially after some practice.

The dashboard is intuitive, and you can upload media and create posts quickly.

You can also use the mobile app if you want to schedule posts on the go or use Later to notify you of when to post.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free
• Starter: $18/month
• Growth: $40/month
• Advanced: $80/month

The free plan is great for testing Later over a long period.

However, you’ll want to explore the paid plans for more and better features.

Luckily, the Starter plan has everything you need to start managing your Instagram.

You can upgrade as your business grows.

With any plan, you’ll get access to an app and a desktop version.

That allows you to work on whichever device you prefer.

Our Take

Later is an excellent tool for Instagram and other social media networks.

You can schedule and plan out content in one place.

Plus, you can try any of the paid plans for 14 days without having to pay to make sure you select the right tier.

Iconosquare

Iconosquare makes it easy to schedule Instagram posts and other content.

You can schedule posts, carousels, and stories.

Upload images in bulk to help choose pictures to use in the future as well.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5

Best For: Compiling Data

Notable Features:

• Schedule different types of content
• Store images for future posts
• Account and location tagging

Some tools only let you schedule Instagram posts of individual pictures.

However, you can also schedule carousel posts with multiple pictures.

Iconosquare even lets you schedule Instagram Stories so that you can keep up with that every day.

Pros:

• Compiles data in comprehensive reports
• Shows the number of likes
• User-friendly
• Fairly fast
• Tracks Instagram analytics

If you want to watch your account grow, you can take advantage of the reports.

Then, you can share them with your business partners or investors.

Iconosquare shows you how many people have liked your content so that you don’t have to go to Instagram.

The tool is also easy to use, which can help you grow, and it works quickly.

You can use your analytics to figure out what content to post and what to avoid.

That will help you save time and maybe even increase your growth rate.

Cons:

• Data manipulation is difficult
• Accesses only Instagram and Facebook analytics
• Difficult setup process

Sadly, you can’t do just anything with the data Iconosquare provides.

You’ll have to use it as-is, and you can only get analytics for Instagram and Facebook but not other platforms.

When you first create your account, it can also take a while to get going.

You have to do a lot of back and forth with the company.

They also aren’t in the US, so many of the responses happen outside of traditional work hours.

Is Iconosquare Hard to Use?

Iconosquare is easy to use, and it can help you build a social media team.

That way, you can schedule more content in less time.

However, some users may need a bit of training to start using the platform, so keep that in mind before hiring people.

Pricing & Plans:

• Pro at $49/monthly billed annually
• Advanced at $79/month billed annually
• Enterprise price is custom
• Pro at $59/month billed monthly
• Advanced at $99/month billed monthly

While it’s not the most expensive, Iconosquare costs more than some other tools.

The different plans let you pay monthly or annually, and you can save on a yearly billing cycle.

If the plan you select doesn’t come with enough profiles, you can add more for extra money.

That way, you can customize the plan to suit your situation.

Our Take

Iconosquare is fantastic for Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

While it works with platforms like TikTok and LinkedIn, it has limited support for them.

If you want to give it a try, you can start a free trial or request a demo to learn more.

CoSchedule

If you want something to plan all of your content, even for your website, CoSchedule is great.

You can plan your entire marketing calendar and also receive marketing training.

The headline tool helps you craft titles to help attract visitors.

Our Rating: 4 out of 5

Best For: Content Calendars

Notable Features:

• All-in-one marketing calendar
• Full marketing suite
• Marketing training

CoSchedule launched a free marketing calendar to help you plan all of your content.

That way, you won’t forget to share posts on time.

Meanwhile, the marketing suite helps you manage your marketing resources.

And if you want to learn more, you can get training through the tool.

The training is for the tool, so you can make better use of it, and it can be better than general marketing training.

Pros:

• Scheduling is conveniently easy
• The mobile app works well
• Convenient content calendar
• Tracks your task
• Has simple SEO hints

If you want to streamline social media scheduling, CoSchedule is great.

You can schedule posts on your desktop or using the mobile app.

Plus, you’ll see when posts are going to go live with the content calendar.

The tool will track the tasks that you perform.

And if you want to also improve your website content, CoSchedule can help you with search engine optimization (SEO).

That makes it the perfect tool for all of your digital marketing needs.

You won’t have to use one platform for social media and another for your website.

Cons:

• Expensive
• Overwhelming panel
• Has glitches

While the marketing calendar is free, the other features can cost a lot based on your needs.

You’ll want to talk to CoSchedule to see how much you’ll have to spend.

That can also make it hard to turn down the offer, especially if you speak with a good salesperson.

The panel can also be overwhelming to some users.

You should set aside time to learn how it works before you jump into CoSchedule, and that’s not always worth it, especially if you just need to schedule Instagram content.

If you use CoSchedule, you could also experience some glitches.

And if you aren’t using it for website content, it’s a bit more complex than what you need.

Is CoSchedule Hard to Use?

CoSchedule can be difficult to use, especially as a beginner.

You should plan for a significant learning curve.

However, it can get easier with practice, so don’t give up if you like the features it can offer.

The learning curve is worth it for full marketing use but not always for Instagram alone.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free
• Pro at $29/month billed annually
• The marketing suite is custom

You can test out the marketing calendar without paying anything.

However, if you want more features, like unlimited social publishing, it will cost you.

For better or worse, CoSchedule customizes the marketing suite cost.

That means you can’t plan for the cost ahead of time.

You’ll have to contact the sales department to learn more about the tool and for them to discover your needs.

Our Take

CoSchedule is best for teams that want to manage all aspects of digital marketing.

It’s unnecessary if your main purpose is to schedule Instagram posts.

You can find more economical options.

However, you can use the marketing calendar for free to learn if it’s for you.

Combin Scheduler

Combin Scheduler is a free tool that lets you schedule Instagram posts and stories.

You can also edit image sizes, tag locations, and use hashtags.

Uploading stories in bulk is also available to help you save time.

Our Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Best For: Automation

Notable Features:

• Scheduling posts
• Edit image sizes
• Tag locations

Combin Scheduler makes it easy to schedule feed posts and Instagram Stories.

You can also use the tool to create posts to go live immediately.

If your photos don’t have the right aspect ratio, you can edit them in the app as well.

To help gain visibility, the tool even lets you tag locations without having to post from Instagram.

Other tools don’t have that option, so you’d need to manually publish the posts through the social network.

Pros:

• Easy to schedule posts
• Nice interface
• Great functionality
• Works well with Instagram
• Automates most tasks

If you’re new to Instagram scheduling, this tool can be a great option.

The interface looks good and offers plenty of functions.

Plus, Instagram works well with Combin Scheduler to help you manage your account.

Some tools are for social media overall, so they don’t work as well with Instagram.

To further help you manage everything, you can automate a lot of tasks.

That’s particularly helpful if you’re a solo entrepreneur and don’t have a team to help.

Cons:

• Slow
• Lacks convenient statistics
• Bad follow/unfollow feature

Unfortunately, the tool can be somewhat slow at times, so it might not save as much time as it could.

You also won’t get as many analytics with it as you would with other tools.

Combin can follow and unfollow accounts for you.

However, it might unfollow accounts that you want to continue to follow.

It’s unclear how to control that, so you should probably avoid that feature if you use the tool.

If you want to use the feature, you should monitor its activity.

Then, you can make sure you don’t unfollow the wrong people.

Is Combin Scheduler Hard to Use?

Combin Scheduler is easy to use and has some good features even on the free plan.

If you want to make the most of the app, you might need to spend some time learning how it works.

Like any tool, it may become second nature after some time.

Pricing & Plans:

• Free starter
• Personal at $15/month
• Business at $30/month

Not every tool to schedule Instagram posts offers a free plan, so that’s a great advantage.

The paid plans offer more things like analytics and more accounts that you can connect.

Luckily, even the most expensive tier is still relatively affordable.

That makes Combin Scheduler a fantastic option for new business owners.

Our Take

Combin Scheduler is suitable for Instagram scheduling but not much else.

It offers some data, but you won’t get as much insight as you would with other platforms.

The Scheduler is completely free though, so you can test it out right now.

SocialBee

SocialBee is another amazing choice for scheduling Instagram posts.

It lets you create, schedule, and publish on various social platforms.

You can also integrate it with Canva and other tools to help with content creation.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5

Best For: User Interface

Notable Features:

• Create, schedule, and publish
• Multiple integrations
• Concierge services

You can do all of your content creation and posting from SocialBee to help save time and reduce the number of tools you use.

If you use other tools, though, it can integrate with link shorteners and tools to find images.

When you’re ready to hire social media help, SocialBee offers Concierge Services.

You can work with a social media specialist.

That way, they’ll be able to help you grow your Instagram account and online presence.

Pros:

• Equipped with handy features
• Nice clean UI
• Convenient auto-scheduling
• Creation of several workspaces
• Well-managed content

SocialBee offers plenty of services to help you manage your Instagram content.

The user interface is clean and easy to use as well.

Scheduling posts automatically is easy to do once you learn to use the tool.

And you can create workspaces to help separate content.

Meanwhile, SocialBee makes it easy to manage your content across your account.

That can help you determine when to post what content so that you can reach your business goals.

Cons:

• Beginners might find it difficult at first
• Frequent integration reconnections can be annoying
• Poor link shorteners

When you first start using it, you may need to spend more time on SocialBee to complete tasks.

But it can get easier with time and practice.

If you want to use the integrations, that’s convenient.

However, you may need to reconnect those programs often, which is frustrating.

SocialBee works with link shorteners, which is great.

Some users have found that the links don’t work at all, and that can cost you your customers.

Is SocialBee Hard to Use?

SocialBee is a bit hard to use when you first give it a try.

The more you use it, the more you can understand how it works, so it could get easier after a while.

Be sure to give it a good trial run to learn if it works well for you.

Pricing & Plans:

• Bootstrap at $19/month
• Accelerate at $39/month
• Pro at $79/month

The SocialBee plans are great because they work for different budgets.

You can connect to anywhere from five to 25 social accounts.

It works with platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and even Google My Business.

All tiers are available at a discount if you pay yearly, but you’ll have to contact the company to set that up.

Consider trying the tool for a month to make sure it’s for you.

While it’s a general social media tool, that means you don’t need to pay for more stuff.

You can manage all of your accounts from one dashboard.

Our Take

SocialBee is an excellent tool for Instagram and other social networks.

You can use it to schedule content and monitor the analytics of your posts.

When you need help, you’ll be able to hire SocialBee experts.

Start a free trial to test out the platform before you select a plan.

Features to Look for In Tools for Scheduling Instagram Posts

When choosing the best tool to schedule Instagram posts, you have a lot to consider.

Here are some features you’ll find in a good platform.

Tailored Posts With Previews

Being able to preview a post before you finalize it is essential.

Consider finding a tool that also lets you view how the image will look in your Instagram feed.

That way, you can make sure it will look good before the post goes live.

Bulk Image Uploading

Another excellent feature is the option to upload multiple images at once.

Then, you can grow your image library and choose from various photos when creating posts.

You can also save images for later and track which photos you’ve used.

Image Editor

Along with uploading, you’ll want the option to edit images in the tool.

If you find a flaw after uploading, you won’t have to edit the image elsewhere and upload it to your library again.

You should be able to make minor changes right in the app.

Video Editor

A video editor can also come in handy, especially if you want to schedule Reels.

You can plan the video and make sure it looks good before you plan to post it.

The right tool has a video editor that’s easy to use.

Hashtag Suggestions

Doing hashtag research can help you choose the right tags to add to your posts.

While you can use other tools, a scheduler with suggestions can save you a lot of time and stress.

You can take the suggestions or ignore them if they don’t make sense.

Analytics & Reporting

Instagram offers analytics for only 30 days at a time.

Meanwhile, the best tools to schedule Instagram posts let you view the analytics for much longer, sometimes up to two years.

If you want to track your data, you need a tool with that feature.

Frequently Asked Questions

When looking at the best tools for Instagram scheduling, you may still have questions.

Consider the following queries people have about this topic.

Conclusion

Buffer is the best tool to schedule Instagram posts because it has the features you need.

Other options to try include Later and Sked Social, which focus on Instagram over other platforms.

All of the tools offer analytics, so you can keep track of your content performance.

You can also plan out your feed with Later, and you can set up a link in your bio as well.

Being able to plan and review your content can help you with future posts.

Having analytics can help guide you when deciding what to post next.

Be sure to give these tools a try to choose which you prefer.

Both platforms offer users a way to manage their social media accounts effectively, but which one is the better choice in 2022?

It’s hard to say, but we’re going to take a shot at it.  

While they both have a lot to offer, there are some key differences that users should be aware of before making a decision and some features to focus on that might sway your opinion from one to the next.

Not to mention, both platforms have their pros and cons.

So, which one is the best for your business? Let’s find out below.

Hootsuite vs Buffer: An Overview

Hootsuite and Buffer are two of the most popular social media management tools on the market.

Both tools offer a similar set of features, including scheduling and publishing content, tracking analytics, and engaging with followers.

However, there are some critical differences between the two platforms.

So let’s take a deeper look into what each platform is and offers below.

Is Buffer the Same as Hootsuite?

There are a lot of misconceptions out there about Buffer and Hootsuite.

For starters, people often assume that they’re the same thing.

But while they both offer social media management tools, they have quite different features and purposes.

Buffer is primarily focused on helping users schedule and publish content.

It’s great for managing a large volume of content, as well as for monitoring post-performance.

On the other hand, Hootsuite is more geared towards helping users track conversations and engage with their audience in real-time.

It also offers more advanced features, like team collaboration and social listening.

So while they may seem similar at first glance, Buffer and Hootsuite are quite different.

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that allows users to post and schedule updates, track analytics, and monitor conversations across multiple networks.

In short, it’s a one-stop-shop for all your social media needs.

Hootsuite was founded in 2008 by Ryan Holmes, and today it boasts over 16 million users.

The platform is particularly popular with businesses and organizations as it helps them save time and optimize their social media presence.

While Hootsuite offers a free basic plan, some more advanced features are only available with a paid subscription.

Overall, Hootsuite is helpful for anyone who wants to streamline their social media activity.

What is Buffer?

Buffer is a tool that helps you better manage your social media accounts.

For example, it lets you schedule posts in advance to make sure your content is being published at the best times.

It also helps you track your social media analytics to see how well your posts are performing.

In addition, Buffer offers a variety of helpful features, such as the ability to share content from other people and the ability to create custom graphics.

Overall, Buffer is a valuable tool for anyone who wants to better their social media presence.

Whether you’re a small business owner or a busy mom, Buffer can help you save time and increase your reach.

Hootsuite vs Buffer Features

While the two social media management platforms seem very similar, they offer different benefits.

Hootsuite Features

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that enables users to schedule posts and integrate several apps to streamline their processes.

Social Scheduling

One of the most valuable features of Hootsuite is its social scheduling feature, allowing you to schedule your posts in advance, so you don’t have to worry about posting in real-time.

You can also use the social scheduling feature to post your content at different times throughout the day automatically.

This feature is beneficial if you have a large following on multiple social media platforms.

With Hootsuite, you can easily manage your social media presence and ensure that your audience is seeing your content.

Analytics

Hootsuite’s analytics feature lets users see how their posts are performing, who is talking about them, and what kind of engagement they’re getting.

Users can also track their activity and compare it to other users.

The analytics feature is a great way to see how effective your social media strategy is, and it’s also a great way to get insights into your audience.

Integrations

One of the most useful aspects of Hootsuite is its ability to integrate with other popular platforms and apps, allowing users to manage their social accounts concerning their other marketing, project management, or content creation platforms.

Hootsuite has over 150 app integrations available.

Some include:

• Adobe
• Canva
• Google My Business
• Shopview
• Dropbox

Buffer Features

Buffer is a social media management platform that allows users to integrate other applications to streamline processes, schedule posts, and measure content engagement.

Apps  

Buffer offers various app integrations, including Canva, WordPress, Zapier, IFTTT, and Microsoft.

However, it also connects with Zapier to provide users access to upwards of 4,000 other apps, such as:

• Google calendar
• Facebook pages
• Twitter
• Airtable
• Google Sheets

Measuring Engagement

Measuring engagement is essential for any business owner who wants to get an accurate sense of how their audience responds to their content.

Buffer’s measuring engagement feature is an excellent tool for doing just that.

With it, you can see how many people are engaging with your content, where they’re coming from, and what kind of devices they’re using.

This information can be invaluable for understanding your audience and tailoring your content to them.

In addition, the measuring engagement feature can also help you troubleshoot issues with your content strategy.

If you do not see the results you want, you can use the data from Buffer to figure out what’s not working and make changes accordingly.

Hootsuite vs Buffer Social Networks

Both Hootsuite and Buffer are great tools for managing your social media accounts.

However, there are some critical differences between the two platforms.

For one, Hootsuite supports a broader range of networks.

Hootsuite Supported Social Media

Hootsuite supports:

• Facebook and Instagram
• Twitter
• Youtube
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest

Buffer Supported Social Media

Buffer supports the same social media accounts as Hootsuite, except for Youtube.

You cannot use Buffer to schedule content for Youtube.

Hootsuite vs Buffer Posting

Both Hootsuite and Buffer offer post scheduling as a way to help users better manage their social media accounts.

However, the two features work in slightly different ways.

Hootsuite Posting and Scheduling

Users simply need to connect their social media accounts to Hootsuite to get started.

Once accounts are linked, users can create posts and schedule them for future publication.

Hootsuite offers several features that make scheduling simple and efficient, including the ability to add posts to a queue, bulk upload content, and set up publish times in advance.

Buffer Posting and Scheduling

When you create a post on Buffer, you can schedule it for later or post it immediately.

If you choose to schedule it, you can select the date and time that you want it to go live.

Once you’ve created your post and selected a date and time, Buffer will automatically post it for you.

You can also use Buffer’s scheduling feature to create a queue of posts that will go live at predetermined times, which is useful if you want to ensure that your content is being published regularly, even when you’re not around to do it yourself.

Hootsuite vs Buffer User Experience

Hootsuite and Buffer differ in terms of their user experience.

Buffer has a more straightforward interface that is designed to be easy to use.

In contrast, Hootsuite offers a more complex interface with more features and options.

Hootsuite User Experience

Hootsuite’s user experience is pretty straightforward.

Once you sign up for an account, you’re taken to a page where you can enter the URL of the website or social media platform you want to track.

After that, you’re given a dashboard with all relevant information for that platform.

You can see how many followers you have, how many people are talking about your brand, and so on.

The interface is simple and easy to use, which is one of the reasons why Hootsuite is so popular.

Buffer User Experience

Buffer’s interface is clean and easy to use, and the features are straightforward and effective.

Scheduling posts is a breeze, and you can easily see when each post will go live.

Plus, Buffer integrates with various other tools, which makes it even more convenient to use.

Overall, the user experience is positive.

Hootsuite vs Buffer Marketing

As social media management platforms, Hootsuite and Buffer offer various similar social media marketing solutions.

Hootsuite Marketing

Social media marketing is one of the most efficient and effective ways to connect with customers and promote your brand.

And Hootsuite is one of the best social media marketing platforms out there.

With Hootsuite, you can quickly and easily connect with customers on various social media networks.

You can also schedule posts, track your brand’s social media performance, etc.

Plus, Hootsuite offers a variety of helpful tutorials and support resources to help you make the most of their platform.

Buffer Marketing

Buffer is a social media management platform that helps companies with their online marketing efforts.

The platform offers a suite of tools to help businesses with tasks such as scheduling posts, analyzing engagement, and measuring results.

Buffer also provides a blog with marketing tips and advice.

In addition to its marketing features, Buffer also offers a tool to help businesses manage their social media accounts.

Hootsuite vs Buffer Pricing

Here is a breakdown of the differences between pricing for Hootsuite and Buffer.

Hootsuite Pricing

Hootsuite offers a free 30-day trial for prospective users.

After that, you can choose from a few different paid plans that increase in price depending on how many users you want to add to the account and advanced features.

For instance, if you can choose either the professional, team, business, or enterprise plan.

Professional

Hootsuite’s professional plan is $49 per month and offers:

• Access for one user
• Connect ten social media accounts
• Advanced and multiple post scheduling
• Unlimited posts

Team

Hootsuite’s team plan includes the same as the professional plan, is $129 per month, and offers:

• Access for three users
• Connect 20 social accounts
• Manage team access
• Assigning tasks and comments

Business

Hootsuite’s business plan is $739 per month and offers the same as the previous plan with the addition of:

• Access for five users
• Connect 35 social accounts
• Review messages before publishing
• Premium apps
• Priority support connection

Enterprise

For Hootsuite’s enterprise plan pricing, you must contact the company directly.

However, you can expect:

• Access for more than five users
• Connect over 50 social accounts
• Quarterly business review
• Team performance reports
• Social advertising

Buffer Pricing

Unlike Hootsuite, Buffer offers a free plan instead of a temporary free demo.

However, if you want access to advanced features, the platform offers paid plans too.

Essentials

The essentials plan is $5 per month per social channel and offers:

• Analytics
• Engagement
• Landing page builder
• Planning and publishing tool

Team

Buffer’s team plan offers the same features as the essentials plan, is $10 a month per social channel, and offers:

• Unlimited team member and client access
• Exportable reports
• Draft collaboration tools

Agency

The agency plan with Buffer is $100 per month for ten social channels.

If you need to add more, you can pay $5 per extra channel.

The plan offers the same as those before it, along with custom access and permissions and agency-friendly pricing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are you still unsure which social media management tool is for you?

We’ve answered a frequently asked question about Buffer below for your consideration.

Hootsuite vs Buffer: Conclusion

So, which should you choose for your business?

The answer depends on what you need.

If you’re looking for a social media management platform with all the bells and whistles, Hootsuite is probably your best bet.

But if you just want to schedule posts and manage a couple of accounts, Buffer might be more than enough.

No matter which tool you choose, make sure to test it out and see how it works for you.

The bottom line is that both Hootsuite and Buffer can help take your social media marketing to the next level.

So, test them out.

Which one do you think is better?

But the right tool for one company might not work for you.

Before you choose which one to use, compare a few options.

Then, you narrow your search based on your needs and preferences.

An Overview of Social Media Management Tools

The right social media management tools can help tremendously.

Here’s what you need to know about this type of program.

What Is a Social Media Management Tool?

A social media management tool is a tool you use to create or schedule social media content.

Some social media tools let you post to multiple social platforms.

Others only work with a few popular social networks.

You can use most tools on your desktop through a browser, and some offer mobile apps.

Why Are Social Media Management Tools Important?

Social media management tools are important because they help you save time.

You can create and schedule content in batches, and the content will go out when you want.

Then, you won’t have to stop what you’re doing to post something on a social account at the right time.

Best Social Media Management Tools

When developing a social media marketing strategy, you must use the right tools.

Here are some popular options that you need to know.

Sprout Social

Our Pick

Sprout Social is an excellent tool that can help you with scheduling, engagement, and analytics.

You can use it to discover trends to help with your social media marketing.

This tool also lets you view and respond to messages easily.

You’ll also get plenty of data regarding the performance of your account and posts to help produce better results.

Visit Sprout SocialRead Sprout Social reviews

Sprout Social is an excellent tool that can help you with scheduling, engagement, and analytics.

You can use it to discover trends to help with your social media marketing.

This tool also lets you view and respond to messages easily.

You’ll also get plenty of data regarding the performance of your account and posts to help produce better results.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Best For: All-in-one social media marketing

Notable Features

• Ability to collaborate
• Turn messages into tasks
• Chatbots to help with communication

Sprout Social features tools that teams can use to collaborate on social media content.

You can make sure to address all messages from customers.

The tool helps you automate customer service.

Pros

• Great for team collaboration and communication
• Robust social media analytics
• Easy to use platform
• Integrates with a variety of other platforms
• Insights into your audience’s behavior

Teams can work together to manage your brand’s social media account.

It’s easy to assign tasks to users so that you don’t miss anything.

Sprout social automates analytics and makes them easy to review.

You can integrate the tool with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTub.

The social listening feature helps you discover what your audience wants from you.

Cons

• Can be expensive, depending on the plan you choose
• Limited customization options
• Not the best for beginners

Even the most basic plan is more expensive than what you’ll find from other tools.

And at that price, you should be able to customize things, but you can’t.

So while you get a lot of features, it can be overwhelming for beginners.

Is Sprout Social Hard To Use?

Sprout Social can be hard to use, especially when you’re new to it.

However, once you get over the learning curve, it can be easy.

Pricing & Plans

• Standard: $89 per month
• Professional: $149 per month
• Advanced: $249 per month

Most of the plans have enough features for basic social media marketing.

But you can upgrade to access more social profiles and features like optimal scheduling.

A free trial is available for all three plans.

Our Take

This social media tool is an excellent choice for agencies or mid-size businesses.

If you want to control different accounts in one place and implement social listening, you should request a demo or trial.

HeyOrca!

Runner Up

HeyOrca offers unique features that you can’t get from other social media tools.

You can plan and schedule content and get approvals from your clients before posting.

It also comes with fantastic support if you ever have questions.

Visit HeyOrca!Read HeyOrca! reviews

HeyOrca offers unique features that you can’t get from other social media tools.

You can plan and schedule content and get approvals from your clients before posting.

It also comes with fantastic support if you ever have questions.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Best For: Managing social media and clients in one place

Notable Features

• Facebook post promotion
• TikTok scheduling
• Custom branding

You can use HeyOrca to create and schedule Facebook posts that you want to boost.

And if you want to be more active on TikTok, you can set up post-approval and scheduling.

Social media agencies can use custom branding when working with clients.

Pros

• Platform allows you to create content calendars easily
• You can track post performance and see which posts are approved, need review, or need edits
• Schedule to platforms like TikTok
• Easy to use interface
• Allows you to create mockups to send to your clients before publishing

Creating content calendars is essential when you manage social media for multiple clients.

And you can use HeyOrca to have clients approve your work.

Not only can you schedule to more traditional social media platforms, but you can do so with TikTok to fuel account growth.

The interface is easy for social media teams and clients, and you can track successful posts to inform your strategy.

Cons

• Limited reporting options compared to similar tools
• The mobile app currently has limited features
• Not for individuals

You’ll only get social media reports with the top two plans. Even then, the reports don’t offer as much detail as others.

If you want to use HeyOrca, prepare to work from a computer to access every feature.

But you may want to choose something else if you just need a tool for your social media.

Is HeyOrca Hard To Use?

HeyOrca can be difficult to use at first.

Fortunately, the website features a blog that shares new updates to the tool, and there’s a training section you can use to learn the basics.

Pricing & Plans

• Basic: $35 per month
• Standard: $59 per month
• Pro: $77 per month

The plans look pretty affordable, but that pricing is per calendar, and it’s the bulk rate.

Pricing is higher for one to four calendars.

Also, the basic plan doesn’t offer much in the way of features.

Our Take

HeyOrca is the best social media tool for social media agencies.

Companies looking to manage their social media in-house may find the tool overwhelming.

But there are plans that you can choose from to meet most businesses’ needs.

Zoho Social

Also Great

Zoho Social is the social media leg of the greater Zoho company.

If you already use the tool for sales or your phone system, it’s a great choice.

You don’t need to learn a new platform to manage your social posts.

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Zoho Social is the social media leg of the greater Zoho company.

If you already use the tool for sales or your phone system, it’s a great choice.

You don’t need to learn a new platform to manage your social posts.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Best For: All-in-one tool

Notable Features

• Direct scheduling to Instagram
• SmartIQ to help with post schedules
• Social listening dashboard

Not all social media tools let you schedule and post automatically to Instagram.

Zoho Social can save you a lot of time in this area.

With SmartIQ, you don’t have to think about when to publish content.

The system will detect the best posting times to help increase your reach.

Meanwhile, your dashboard can help you listen to your audience and interact with them.

Pros

• Can post updates and track performance on multiple social media platforms
• Allows you to monitor competitors’ social media activity
• Easy to use interface even for those who are non-tech-savvy
• Technical support resolves any issues in a timely manner
• Pricing plans are cost-effective

If you don’t want to use different tools for all social networks, this tool is great.

You can also use it to track your competitors, and you don’t need to be good with technology.

You can contact support to get the help you need whenever you have questions.

Also, the affordable plans make this one of the best options for a social media marketer on a budget.

Cons

• Can’t post high-quality images due to size restrictions
• Does not integrate with TikTok
• Not specific to social media management

Zoho doesn’t allow you to upload the best possible images, which can hurt your branding on social media.

And if you want to schedule TikTok videos, you’ll need to choose a different tool.

While Zoho Social is great, it’s a bigger company.

It doesn’t just focus on social media management, so it can be overwhelming.

Is Zoho Hard To Use?

Zoho isn’t that hard to use, especially if you already use the other tools they offer.

However, it may take a bit of time to learn how to access everything in your account.

Pricing & Plans

• Standard: $10 per month
• Professional: $30 per month
• Premium: $40 per month

Compared to many other content marketing tools, Zoho is affordable.

You can access quite a few features even with the most basic plan.

But you’ll need to commit to an annual subscription to get the best deal.

Our Take

Zoho Social is a fantastic choice for brands looking to manage their own social media.

It’s not as costly as some options, but you can do a lot with the tool.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media tools.

It’s easy to use, and you can customize your dashboard to see what you want.

Consider what this marketing software can do for you and your business.

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Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media tools.

It’s easy to use, and you can customize your dashboard to see what you want.

Consider what this marketing software can do for you and your business.

Our Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Best For: Small businesses who need robust reporting and analytics

Notable Features

• Manage organic and paid content
• Engage quickly and easily
• Learn about market trends

With Hootsuite, you can manage both organic posts and paid posts.

So if you want to run and track a Facebook ad and a Twitter ad, it’s a good choice.

You can also respond to comments and messages across platforms from your dashboard.

The tool helps you learn about market trends to keep up with your competitors.

Pros

• Very user-friendly and easy to navigate
• Excellent customer service
• Offer a free plan
• They provide robust reporting features
• Comes with multiple integrations

When you need to manage social media, you need a program that’s easy to use.

Plus, customer service is quick to help you when you have a problem.

If you aren’t sure if Hootsuite is for you, the free plan lets you test it out for a while.

And you can use the analytics to track the success of your efforts.

With all of the integrations, you can use Hootsuite with social media and other business software.

Cons

• Plans can be costly
• Free plan has a limit of two social media accounts
• No TikTok integration

If you want to use Hootsuite, you may need a significant marketing budget.

All of the plans are expensive for what you get, and the free plan isn’t a great option.

Regardless of the plan you select, you won’t be able to use the tool to post to TikTok.

Is Hootsuite Hard To Use?

Hootsuite is relatively easy to use, and you can customize it as much or as little as you want.

So you could start off with the default settings and change things as you go.

Pricing & Plans

• Professional: $49 per month
• Team: $129 per month
• Business: $739 per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Hootsuite offers a variety of plans to suit your needs.

Most plans offer plenty of features for businesses managing their own social accounts.

Our Take

This tool is great for business owners who don’t have a social media manager.

It’s easy to use and can help you scale your efforts with more features.

Falcon.io

Social media teams will love using Falcon.io for their clients.

It integrates with BrandWatch to give you access to AI to help view your analytics.

The tool is a bit much for just scheduling, but it offers most features you could need.

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Social media teams will love using Falcon.io for their clients.

It integrates with BrandWatch to give you access to AI to help view your analytics.

The tool is a bit much for just scheduling, but it offers most features you could need.

Our Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Best For: Ease of use

Notable Features

• Monitor the web
• Automate social ads
• Track campaign performance

The tool lets you track activity across the web to help inform your social strategy.

That way, you can automate social ads to help get conversions.

And you can track the performance of each social channel to determine which is the most successful.

Pros

• Provides detailed insights
• Engage with your audience in real-time
• Can publish content across platforms
• Includes social media listening
• AI-powered analytics

You can review insights about your own social media activity.

Use the tool to interact with followers all in one place and schedule your content the same way.

Social listening helps you track mentions of your brand, and the analytics offer even more data.

Cons

• Have to schedule each platform separately
• Pricey compared to similar tools
• Not for individuals

This tool won’t save you much time if you want to cross-post content.

Plus, it’s not the best for businesses or social agencies with tight budgets.

It’s also not a good option for individual entrepreneurs or people managing their own social media.

Is Falcon.io Hard To Use?

Falcon.io may not be difficult, but it can be overwhelming to use.

You have to get used to all of the features to make the most of your account.

Pricing & Plans

• Essentials: $108 per month
• Full Suite: contact Falcon.io

The only plans available start at over $100 a month, which is very expensive.

And even then, you only get one seat for that price.

If you want more seats or access to all features, you need to speak to someone at the company.

Our Take

Falcon.io seems to have all of the features you could want in a marketing tool.

However, the cost is quite prohibitive, so it’s not worth it for most businesses.

MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is one of the only tools that will schedule social posts for you.

Once you fill your content calendar, the program will go through the list and post content.

It lets you build a massive library of evergreen posts to share so that you always have something to publish.

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MeetEdgar is one of the only tools that will schedule social posts for you.

Once you fill your content calendar, the program will go through the list and post content.

It lets you build a massive library of evergreen posts to share so that you always have something to publish.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Best For: Smaller brands or smaller agencies

Notable Features

• Automatic publishing
• Evergreen content library
• Human support

Unlike other tools, MeetEdgar doesn’t require you to always produce new posts.

Instead, you can build your library at first and keep pulling from it.

And if you have questions or problems, you can contact a human to get help.

Pros

• Automates your social media sharing
• Unlimited content library
• Can pull content from RSS feed and other sources
• Allows you to recycle old content easily
• Save a lot of time

If you’re tired of creating new social posts, you’ll love MeetEdgar.

You can add as many posts as you want to your library and pull content from elsewhere.

That way, you’ll always have new stuff to share on social media.

But you can also save time and focus on other tasks in your business.

Cons

• Can’t post directly to Instagram
• A bit of a learning curve
• No free plan

While MeetEdgar works with Instagram, you’ll have to post there manually.

And as a beginner, it can take time to learn how the program works.

You also need to pay quite a bit of money to use the software for more than the week-long trial.

Is MeetEdgar Hard To Use?

MeetEdgar is hard to use initially, especially as you fill your content library.

However, it can be as easy as you want after you have plenty of posts to cycle through.

Pricing & Plans

• Eddie: $29.99 per month
• Edgar: $49.99 per month

To really take advantage of the tool, you need the full Edgar plan.

The Eddie plan only allows you ten automations a week, so it might not save you that much time.

And sadly, the free trial for either plan only lasts a week.

Our Take

MeetEdgar is perfect for anyone looking to set it and forget it.

You can use it to manage your own social media or work with clients.

Loomly

Loomly is one of the best tools for social media, thanks to its variety of integrations.

You can connect to social platforms and other business tools.

Major brands like BMW and L’Oreal Paris trust Loomly with their social media management.

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Loomly is one of the best tools for social media, thanks to its variety of integrations.

You can connect to social platforms and other business tools.

Major brands like BMW and L’Oreal Paris trust Loomly with their social media management.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Best For: Analytics

Notable Features

• Notifications of activity
• Gives you post ideas
• Easy to manage your assets

If you run a social media team, you can get notifications whenever someone updates the content in your account.

Loomly also helps you get content ideas using RSS feeds and other sources.

Plus, you can manage all of your social assets in one place so that you don’t lose images or videos.

Pros

• Advanced analytics and metrics
• Great for collaboration
• Supports TikTok
• Easy to use
• Access to client dashboards

Loomly provides a lot of details to help you track post success.

You and your team can also collaborate due to the program’s workflow.

If you want to use TikTok, this tool is one of the few options that support that.

The tool is also easy to use, and you can create separate dashboards for each of your social media clients.

Cons

• All the plans have an ad spend limit
• Interface can be confusing to navigate
• Limited features on the basic plan

Regardless of the plan you select, you can only spend so much on ads total.

And if you get the basic plan, you’ll have even more restrictions on features.

So at first, you may struggle to use the tool.

Is Loomly Hard To Use?

Loomly can be confusing, and the interface has a learning curve.

After some practice, though, you may find it gets easier.

Pricing & Plans

• Base: $26 per month
• Standard: $59 per month
• Advanced: $129 per month
• Premium: $269 per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Loomly offers a variety of plans, but they can quickly get expensive.

The more affordable plans don’t have that many features, so you might need to upgrade.

Plus, if you pay monthly, each plan will cost more per month than if you pay yearly.

Our Take

Loomly is a good tool for social media managers and teams.

You can choose from multiple plans to get the features you need.

SocialPilot

SocialPilot offers schedule tools that work with a variety of social networks.

Reports let you give your clients a good look at their social performance.

There are also tools for engagement and collaboration to handle everything in one place.

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SocialPilot offers schedule tools that work with a variety of social networks.

Reports let you give your clients a good look at their social performance.

There are also tools for engagement and collaboration to handle everything in one place.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Best For: Managing marketing campaigns

Notable Features

• Bulk scheduling
• Client management
• Browser extension

With bulk scheduling, you can upload and schedule as many as 500 posts at a time.

The tool also allows clients to share their accounts with you without giving away their login details.

You can also use the Chrome or Firefox extension to create posts with a few clicks.

Pros

• Can bulk schedule up to 500 posts at once
• They offer team collaboration
• Provide extensive support
• Can export reports with your company logo
• Integrates with most popular platforms

Scheduling a ton of posts is easy with SocialPilot.

Plus, the team collaboration allows you to assign tasks to individuals to get more done.

If you ever have questions, you can contact the company for help.

And if you manage social media for clients, you can send them reports with your branding.

The tool works with platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and TikTok.

Cons

• The calendar layout isn’t user-friendly
• It doesn’t upload videos over a certain size
• Professional plan has limitations

Scheduling a social media post using the calendar layout may be difficult for new users.

Plus, you can only upload videos of a certain size, which can further restrict your options.

And if you go with the Professional plan, you won’t get things like reports or a social inbox.

Is SocialPilot Hard To Use?

SocialPilot is relatively easy to use, thanks to the dashboard.

However, it can have a bit of a learning curve, so you should take time to learn how it works.

Pricing & Plans

• Professional: $29.75 per month
• Studio: $63.75 per month
• Agency: $127.50 per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

All of these prices apply when you pay annually.

If you choose to pay monthly, you’ll pay an extra $6 to $23 per month.

You can get a free 14-day trial of any plan to see which one meets your needs the best.

Our Take

SocialPilot is best for social media management agencies.

The tools help you manage client work and collaborate with your team.

While you can use it for in-house social media, other tools may be a better fit, especially since this tool is relatively expensive.

Sendible

Another one of the best social media tools is Sendible.

It can help you grow your audience and get new customers, and you can simplify the process.

There are tons of integrations to help you create and publish content.

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Another one of the best social media tools is Sendible.

It can help you grow your audience and get new customers, and you can simplify the process.

There are tons of integrations to help you create and publish content.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Best For: Solopreneurs

Notable Features

• Google Analytics integration
• Monitor brand mentions
• Unified dashboard

Thanks to Google Analytics, you can track how social media turns followers into website visitors and customers.

You can also track mentions of your brand and get keyword alerts to know when you should engage.

Meanwhile, the dashboard lets you view everything in one place.

Pros

• Extensive focus on automation
• Integrations with almost every social platform
• Integrates with LinkedIn
• Intuitive tool that is easy to learn
• Works with Canva

Sendible can help you automate your social media, which is essential if you like working for yourself but not having a team.

You can connect to platforms from Facebook to LinkedIn to YouTube.

As you start using the platform, you can quickly learn how to use it.

And it works with tools like Canva, Google Drive, and Dropbox.

Cons

• Reporting and analytics are not as robust as other tools
• Gets expensive quickly
• Not the best for new agencies

The reports and analytics don’t offer as many details as some social management tools.

You’ll also find the tool is quite expensive for a decent amount of features.

The basic plan is enough for business owners, but new agencies may want a more affordable tool.

Is Sendible Hard To Use?

Sendible isn’t too hard to use, but that can depend on the features you need.

Like any tool, you may need a bit of time to manage everything, but it gets easier over time.

Pricing & Plans

• Creator: $29 per month
• Traction: $89 per month
• Scale: $199 per month
• Expansion: $399 per month

If you want to have a team manage your social media, you’ll need at least the Traction plan.

But all of the plans have something to offer when it comes to managing your digital content.

You can commit to a yearly billing cycle to save 15% on whichever plan you select.

Our Take

Sendible is a good option for individual business owners and marketing agencies.

But to make the most of the tool for your agency, you need to get a higher-cost plan.

That can be difficult when you first start, but this platform is still a good choice for many businesses.

Buffer

Buffer is a fantastic tool for scheduling and planning your social media.

You can schedule content, engage with your audience, and view your analytics.

Then, you can help grow your reach and overall business.

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Buffer is a fantastic tool for scheduling and planning your social media.

You can schedule content, engage with your audience, and view your analytics.

Then, you can help grow your reach and overall business.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Best For: Budget option – smaller brands on a tighter budget

Notable Features

• Create content for multiple platforms in one place
• Reply to comments on your desktop
• Set up a landing page

You can use Buffer to create and schedule content using one dashboard.

That way, you don’t have to switch between apps and websites.

The tool also helps you reply to comments and keep from missing important comments.

And you can create a landing page to use as your link in bio on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

Pros

• Simple, straightforward user interface
• Analytics in real-time
• Can integrate with Google Analytics
• Includes a free image creation tool
• Quick responses from the support team

If you want to make managing social content easy, Buffer is great.

You get access to analytics that update often, and you can integrate the tool with Google Analytics.

The tool also has a feature called Pablo to help you create social media images.

And if you have any questions, the support team can assist you.

Cons

• Free plan is limited
• Can quickly get expensive
• Doesn’t integrate with Instagram Creator or personal profiles

The free plan only offers basic publishing tools, so you may need to upgrade at some point.

Even then, pricing is per social channel, not an overall rate.

So you may need to spend a lot of money if you have different social accounts.

If you want to schedule to Instagram, you’ll need a business profile to connect.

Unfortunately, you can’t connect a creator account to Buffer.

Is Buffer Hard To Use?

Buffer is pretty easy to use, and it’s much easier than other social tools.

You can manage everything in your dashboard to save a lot of time.

Pricing & Plans

• Free: $0 per month
• Essentials: $5 per month per channel
• Team: $10 per month per channel
• Agency: $100 per month

When looking at the pricing, think about how many social accounts you have.

Then, you can add them up to get a good idea of how much each Buffer plan will cost.

But keep in mind that the Agency tier includes up to ten accounts at no extra cost.

And if you pay monthly, you’ll pay an additional 20%.

Our Take

Buffer is probably the best tool for newer brands.

You can customize the pricing based on how many accounts you connect.

And there’s even a free option if you want to save money as you grow your business.

TweetDeck

As the name suggests, TweetDeck is a program just for managing Twitter.

It lets you view all of your tweets, notifications, and messages in one place.

That way, you don’t have to tab back and forth to keep up with everything.

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As the name suggests, TweetDeck is a program just for managing Twitter.

It lets you view all of your tweets, notifications, and messages in one place.

That way, you don’t have to tab back and forth to keep up with everything.

Our Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Best For: Twitter – manage multiple clients easily

Notable Features

• Customize the columns
• Link as many Twitter accounts as you want
• Keyboard shortcuts

With TweetDeck, you can decide which columns you want to view and in which order.

You can set up columns for your feed, notifications, messages, lists, and more.

And if you manage Twitter for multiple clients, you can link all of the accounts in TweetDeck to switch between them easily.

There are also keyboard shortcuts to help you save time with replies, likes, and other actions.

Pros

• Completely free
• Can schedule tweets
• Allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts
• Customizable social media dashboards
• Can set a default account

Cons

• No mobile app available
• No analytics built into the tool
• Can only be integrated with Twitter

Unfortunately, TweetDeck isn’t the best tool to use on the go since it only works in a browser.

You also won’t get analytics to help track well-performing tweets.

And while it works well for Twitter, you can’t use it with any other platform.

That means you may have to juggle more tools to handle all of your social accounts.

Is TweetDeck Hard To Use?

TweetDeck isn’t too hard to use.

There’s a helpful menu on the left side of the screen that lets you customize the columns and add more accounts.

Pricing & Plans

• Free plan

All you need to start using TweetDeck is a Twitter account.

You can connect as many accounts as you want, making it an excellent option for social media agencies.

Our Take

TweetDeck is probably the best social media management tool for Twitter.

But if you want to manage any other platforms, it will not suit all of your needs.

You can use it as a supplement to other tools, though.

Later

Later is a fantastic social media management tool for Instagram and other platforms.

You can collect and upload media to your library.

The tool also comes with a bio link that you can use on Instagram and other platforms.

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Later is a fantastic social media management tool for Instagram and other platforms.

You can collect and upload media to your library.

The tool also comes with a bio link that you can use on Instagram and other platforms.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Best For: Instagram accounts

Notable Features

• Linkinbio
• Media library
• Works with most social platforms

Later offers Linkin.bio to help you link to individual Instagram posts.

That way, you don’t have to constantly switch out your link.

The media library keeps track of images you’ve used to keep things fresh, and it keeps all of your photos together.

Plus, you can use it with Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

Pros

• Free plan
• Compatible with different networks
• Able to save captions
• Automatic posting to Instagram
• Advanced plans for agencies

Of course, it’s great to have a free plan to test out Later for more than the trial period.

It works well with everything from Instagram to Pinterest to TikTok.

For Instagram, you can save captions, which is a great way to organize sets of hashtags.

If you have a business Instagram, Later will post automatically for you.

And if you have a social media agency, you can get a larger plan to meet your needs.

Cons

• Significant limits on the free plan
• Add-ons on only some plans
• Minimal analytics

If you choose the free plan, you can only post up to 10 times per month per platform.

You also won’t get access to hashtag suggestions, post-time recommendations, or other features.

To add on extra social sets, you’ll need one of the more expensive plans.

And without spending a lot, you won’t get a ton of analytics.

Is Later Hard To Use?

No, Later is easy to use, and you can use it on your desktop or through the mobile app.

You can upload media in bulk, and you can schedule posts easily.

If you want to post manually, the Later app can notify you when it’s time to post.

Pricing & Plans

• Free: $0
• Starter: $15 per month
• Growth: $40 per month
• Advanced: $80 per month

The plans quickly get expensive after the free and starter tiers.

However, the more advanced tiers let you add more social sets ($15) and users ($5).

You can save 17% if you pay for any of the plans for an entire year at once.

Our Take

Later is an excellent choice for beginners through full-service agencies.

There’s a plan with features to meet almost any need with Instagram or other platforms.

Agorapulse

Agorapulse is yet another fantastic social media tool that offers publishing, reporting, and monitoring of your social media accounts.

It’s a good option for marketing agencies and businesses who want to manage social media in-house.

There are also resources to help you.

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Agorapulse is yet another fantastic social media tool that offers publishing, reporting, and monitoring of your social media accounts.

It’s a good option for marketing agencies and businesses who want to manage social media in-house.

There are also resources to help you.

Our Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Best For: Large teams who need to scale

Notable Features

• Powerful analytics
• Social media inbox
• Publishing tools

You can use the analytics to track the most successful posts, and you can learn which posts are driving traffic and sales for your business.

The social media inbox lets you check messages for various platforms in one place.

Like any other tool, you have publishing features to help share content.

Pros

• Ability to scale
• Integrates with Canva
• Scheduling tool is included
• User-friendly interface
• Free training course provided

You can add more users and social profiles to existing plans as your business grows

The Canva integration makes it easy for individuals and teams to create content.

And the scheduling tools let you automate your posting.

Thanks to the user-friendly interface, getting started is easy.

But if you want to learn more, you can go through a free course on the platform.

Cons

• Expensive compared to similar tools
• They only offer a 15-day trial
• Doesn’t support all networks

Even the most basic plan is quite expensive, so it’s a bit overkill for some businesses.

Now, you can test out the tool, but you only have 15 days to do that before you have to pay.

And you can’t use the tool with TikTok, Pinterest, and some other networks.

Is Agorapulse Hard To Use?

Agorapulse can be easy to use, and the training course is helpful.

You may need to spend some time learning to navigate your account.

Pricing & Plans

• Pro: $79 per month
• Premium: $199 per month
• Enterprise: Custom price

These prices apply to an annual billing cycle, so paying monthly will cost more.

If you get the Premium plan, you can pay extra to add more users ($50) or social accounts ($20).

The Enterprise plan is best for large agencies.

Our Take

Agorapulse is best for serious marketing agencies or other businesses with big budgets.

The social media marketing tool is more expensive than others with similar features, so it’s a bit much for some.

But you can do a free trial to see if it’s worth the cost for you.

How Social Media Management Tools Help Users

When choosing the right option, consider how social media marketing tools can help you and your team.

What Are the Advantages of Using Social Media Management Tools?

Advantages of using social tools include saving time.

You can often create a posting schedule and upload content in batches.

Some tools will reshare your content for you, and you won’t have to stop what you’re doing to post.

Detailed analytics can also help you improve your marketing strategy in the future.

What Are Some of the Pain Points Social Media Management Tools Can Solve?

The software can help agencies manage client posts.

It can also help businesses with multiple social accounts keep track of everything.

Features To Look For in a Social Management Tool

Here’s what you should consider to choose the right social media managing tool.

Ability to Schedule and Publish to Multiple Social Networks

Some platforms let you connect accounts for various platforms.

That way, you can schedule and manage content in one place and easily cross-post content.

Collaboration and Easy Integration

Being able to collaborate lets you work with clients or your own team members on social media.

And the right integrations can help you import media and other information for social posts.

Analytics

The best tools for managing your social accounts will offer analytics.

That way, you can see which posts are doing well and which are converting to website visits or sales.

Social Listening and Monitoring

Social listening allows you to stay on top of brand mentions.

You can use those to manage your reputation and respond to comments.

Campaign Management

Consider if a tool lets you manage specific social campaigns.

If so, you’ll be able to track different campaigns individually.

Technical Support

You should also look for a tool with a good support team.

Whenever you have questions or problems, you should have someone to contact for help.

Is There a Difference Between Using a Free vs. Paid Social Media Management Tool?

Free tools usually limit you, either in the number of accounts you can connect or the number of posts you can schedule.

Paid tools allow more of that, and they also tend to offer better analytics.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you still have questions about selecting the right social media program, here’s what you should know.

Wrapping Up

Sprout Social is the best social media management tool because of its features and pricing.

MeetEdgar is an excellent runner-up, especially if you don’t want to keep scheduling social posts.

Both tools are easy to use, and you can choose the plan that works for you.

Then, you’ll be able to manage your social media and save time.

Of those platforms, YouTube is one of the best sources for new music available – it’s free for everyone, and you can discover new music or listen to your old favorite songs.

However, it takes up much more bandwidth to watch a video than to listen to a song.

Fortunately, there are ways to download the songs from your favorite artists directly onto your devices.

Today we’ll discuss the best YouTube to MP3 converters, breaking down the features, prices, who they’re best for, and more.

Our Top Picks

An overview of favorite YouTube to MP3 converters from our comprehensive list below.

Best for iOS

Video Downloader Pro

• Easily download videos from sites like Dailymotion, Break, Howcast, and more
• Functionality for a variety of audio files

Visit Video Downloader Pro

Best for Android

YTMP3

• Robust feature set that has proven to be reliable time and time again
• Has a dedicated Android app, but also a great web interface and Chrome extension

View YTMP3

Best for macOS

Pulltube

• This software can download to many different file types and audio files
• One of the most professional and advanced video downloaders on the market 

Visit Pulltube

Why You Should Convert Videos From YouTube to MP3

There are several reasons to convert YouTube videos to a downloadable MP3.

First of all, by downloading them from YouTube, you won’t have to listen to the ads that generally start (and sometimes intersect) YouTube videos.

If the online video is downloaded onto your device, you won’t need to use internet services or cellular data to stream it.

Although many people have unlimited data, it can be difficult to access the internet if you’re in a rural area or need to switch your phone to airplane mode.

What Is MP3, and How Does It Work?

An MP3 file is the most common file format for audio and songs.

It compresses the complex audio sounds into one track for easier burning and duplicating.

MP3 compresses the sound into a single file, reducing the overall size of the file without taking away the complexity of the sound.

Benefits of Converting Videos to MP3

Here are the advantages of converting files from online videos to downloadable MP3s:

• Audio clearer
• Files are smaller and easier to save
• Audio no longer requires the internet to play
• You can keep all of your files together in one place
• No ads or lag due to a specific website
• Unlimited, free listening

What Are the Best YouTube to MP3 Converters?

If you are ready to begin downloading YouTube videos and converting them into MP3 music, we’ve compiled a list of the best converters.

These best free YouTube converters are safe and legal.

Best Youtube to MP3 Converters for Smartphones

Most people listen to music on their smartphones.

However, if you are driving or in a spot with a bad data connection, you might experience issues with your music streaming.

YouTube to MP3 Converters for iOS

Here are some of the best YouTube to MP3 downloading apps for iOs.

1. Video Downloader Pro

Our Pick

Video Downloader Pro works well if you don’t mind watching the video but can’t use data too much.

It downloads videos off the internet from any source. However, Video Downloader Pro doesn’t download to MP3.

Visit Video Downloader ProRead Video Downloader Pro Reviews

Video Downloader Pro works well if you don’t mind watching the video but can’t use data too much.

It downloads videos off the internet from any source. However, Video Downloader Pro doesn’t download to MP3.

Best For: Video watchers who don’t want to use too much data.

Notable Features: Video Downloader Pro downloads any YouTube video onto your phone in minutes.

It works with multiple video formats and can download in the background.

Pros:

• Can download multiple videos at once
• Storage and sorting for videos
• Password protection can be enabled
• Very fast download speeds

Cons:

• Doesn’t download to MP3
• Takes up space
• Videos pause background downloading after ten minutes

Is Video Downloader Pro Hard to Use?

Video Downloader Pro is pretty intuitive-all you have to do is download the app, find the video you want to download, and choose the new file type you need.

Pricing and Plans: $39.99.

2. YouTube++

YouTube++ is one of the original YouTube workaround apps.

Instead of focusing on downloading YouTube songs into MP3s, YouTube++ tweaks the original app so you can listen to music without ads when the app is closed.

However, it does allow downloads as a secondary feature.

Best For: Those who don’t mind using the data and just want to let videos play in the background.

Notable Features: YouTube++ is one of the most popular “tweaking” apps available for YouTube.

Instead of focusing on downloading MP3s off the site, it allows you to listen to videos while using other apps. You can also download the videos.

Pros:

• Blocks YouTube ads
• Allows you to listen to YouTube while using another app
• Available as a chrome extension
• Completely free
• no ads if you have YouTube premium

Cons:

• Tough to download MP3s
• Banner ads across the bottom
• Only downloadable on third-party stores

Is Youtube++ Hard to Use?: Youtube++ is not difficult unless you want to download the songs and play them offline.

It’s straightforward if you are just looking for a way to use the YouTube app while other apps are open.

Pricing and Plans: Free download.

3. Shortcuts App

Also Great

The Shortcuts App on the iPhone is one of the most underrated apps available.

It can convert video files into audio files.

It works if you’ve taken a video or downloaded a video.

After a one-time setup, you can convert videos.

Visit Shortcuts AppRead Shortcuts App Reviews

The Shortcuts App on the iPhone is one of the most underrated apps available.

It can convert video files into audio files.

It works if you’ve taken a video or downloaded a video.

After a one-time setup, you can convert videos.

Best For: Users who have already downloaded YouTube videos.

Notable Features: Your iOS shortcut app can do much more than you imagine.

One of these things is converting videos to audio format.

Once you’ve downloaded them, you’ll be able to convert them using your phone’s existing app.

Pros:

• Already installed in iOS
• Quick conversion
• Easy to use after the setup
• Convert batches of videos at once

Cons:

• Doesn’t support all audio formats
• Can’t download videos
• Difficult to set up

Is the Shortcut App Hard to Use?

Like many Apple apps, it’s quite easy to figure out the shortcut app.

However, the setup for audio transition can be difficult.

Pricing and Plans: Free with iPhone.

YouTube to MP3 Converters for Android

While Apple phones have plenty of options, there are also good choices for those with another smartphone.

You can download these apps straight to your phone!

1. YTMP3

Our Pick

YTMP3 is an online source that has released an Android app.

By inserting a YouTube link into the website or app, you can transfer the audio to an MP3 file and download it straight to your device.

Visit YTMP3Read YTMP3 Reviews

YTMP3 is an online source that has released an Android app.

By inserting a YouTube link into the website or app, you can transfer the audio to an MP3 file and download it straight to your device.

Best For: Those who want a single service for conversion.

Notable Features: YTMP3 does the entire job, converting a YouTube video into an MP3 file.

It has been around for years under different names.

There is also an iOS app, but it doesn’t work as well as the Android app.

Pros:

• Completely converts a video to an MP3
• No registration required
• Also a chrome extension
• Free

Cons: 

• Takes a long time
• Popup ads can be malicious

Is YTMP3 Hard to Use? YTMP3 is one of the original conversion sites and is extremely easy to use.

All you need to do is enter the YouTube link and wait.

Pricing and Plans: Free.

2. YT1s

Runner Up

YT1s works on any platform and finds videos, converts them to different formats, and offers a new downloadable file for you.

Whether you need an MP3 version or a different video file, you’ll be able to find it with YT1s.

Visit YT1s

YT1s works on any platform and finds videos, converts them to different formats, and offers a new downloadable file for you.

Whether you need an MP3 version or a different video file, you’ll be able to find it with YT1s.

Best For: Anyone with multiple platforms.

Notable Features: YT1s is one of the most popular video converters.

You can simply download the video or convert it to another video or audio format before downloading it.

Pros:

• Fast
• Safe
• Free
• No registration required

Cons:

• No app, just online
• Takes you to a third party page to download
• One song at a time

Is YT1s Hard to Use?

YT1s is easy to use—all you need to do is copy and paste the YouTube video URL into the website’s converter, choose “MP3,” and click “convert.”

The downloadable file will be ready in minutes.

Pricing and Plans: Free.

3. VidMate

Also Great

VidMate is popular in countries like India, where YouTube videos take up more bandwidth than they’re worth.

Vidmate uses some bandwidth to stream videos, download them, and convert them to audio format for a data-free streaming experience.

Visit VidMateRead VidMate Reviews

VidMate is popular in countries like India, where YouTube videos take up more bandwidth than they’re worth.

Vidmate uses some bandwidth to stream videos, download them, and convert them to audio format for a data-free streaming experience.

Best For: Android users.

Notable Features: Vidmate is an Android-only app that allows users to stream videos, download, and convert to audio format.

Pros:

• Can convert to multiple formats
• Downloads any YouTube song
• Convenient

Cons:

• Uses a lot of data
• Multiple pop-up ads
• Takes a while

Is Vidmate Hard to Use? Vidmate is pretty easy to use.

Pricing and Plans: Free with ads.

Best YouTube to MP3 Converter for macOS

Of course, you might be looking to build your backup music library and download these songs to your MacBook or laptop.

You must check your space before downloading music, as macs aren’t known for a lot of space.

1. Pulltube

Our Pick

Pulltube is one of the most professional video downloaders on the market.

Although it’s a paid service, it can download multiple videos at once in a safe and completely legal manner.

Visit PulltubeRead Pulltube Reviews

Pulltube is one of the most professional video downloaders on the market.

Although it’s a paid service, it can download multiple videos at once in a safe and completely legal manner.

Best For: Mac users who don’t mind a one-time payment.

Notable Features: Pulltube is a Mac app that downloads YouTube videos and converts them into audio files.

It can save them anywhere on the computer and screens every video for safety and malware.

Pros:

• Great design
• Easy to use
• Multiple videos at once
• download video trimming available
• Chrome extension available

Cons:

• It will take up space on your computer
• Not very many formats
• More expensive than most

Is PullTube Hard to Use?

No!

Pulltube is easy to use and configure.

It sets up automatically on your Mac, and you change the settings whenever you need to.

Pricing and Plans: $14.99 for a lifetime membership.

2. Folx

Runner Up

Folx is less of a video downloader or converter and more of a file organization app.

No matter what files and downloads you keep from the web, Folx can help you organize them and save space on your Mac.

Visit FolxRead Folx Reviews

Folx is less of a video downloader or converter and more of a file organization app.

No matter what files and downloads you keep from the web, Folx can help you organize them and save space on your Mac.

Best For: Expert users with multiple types of downloads.

Notable Features: Folx is more than just a downloader-it organizes and categorizes your downloads so that you can download more things more quickly.

Pros:

• The best download organizer available
• Can schedule and organize downloads
• Compatible with most browsers

Cons:

• Most of the best features are in the pro version
• Difficult to use for beginners

Is Folx Hard to Use?

Folx is a little difficult for beginners or those not familiar with torrents or some of the other features.

However, it becomes easier once you get the hang of it.

Pricing and Plans: Free or $20 for the Pro upgrade.

3. AnyTrans

Also Great

AnyTrans downloads and converts files and transfers them between devices.

It essentially works as a rival to iTunes, the largest mp3 transfer system available.

There are many extra features, including editing, conversion, and sharing.

Visit AnyTransRead AnyTrans Reviews

AnyTrans downloads and converts files and transfers them between devices.

It essentially works as a rival to iTunes, the largest mp3 transfer system available.

There are many extra features, including editing, conversion, and sharing.

Best For: Those who want to transfer files between Apple devices.

Notable Features: AnyTrans is a file manager and storage system that can download videos, convert formats, and transfer between devices.

Pros:

• Rivals iTunes in capabilities
• Stores and organizes all downloads and files
• Has lots of extra features
• Officially approved

Cons:

• Expensive
• Mostly for file transfers instead of downloading

Is AnyTrans Hard to Use? AnyTrans is easy to use and was made with transferring beginners in mind.

Pricing and Plans: Free trial for three days then $30 for the full service.

Best YouTube to MP3 Converter for PC

Here are the best converters for PC users so that you can connect an iPhone or android and add your favorite songs to your phone without using all the storage.

1. ClipGrab

Our Pick

ClipGrab is a popular YouTube to MP3 converter with a search function so that you don’t have to copy and paste the link into the converter.

It’s a web app that is easy to use and doesn’t require registration or a username.

Visit ClipGrabRead ClipGrab Reviews

ClipGrab is a popular YouTube to MP3 converter with a search function so that you don’t have to copy and paste the link into the converter.

It’s a web app that is easy to use and doesn’t require registration or a username.

Best For: Beginners or those who don’t want to learn a new system.

Notable Features: Clipgrab is unique in its search function, clipboard monitoring, and great ease of use.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Free
• Uses clipboard monitoring

Cons:

• The low-quality search function
• Crashes sometimes

Is Clipgrab Hard to Use? Clipgrab is extremely easy to use.

Pricing and Plans: Free.

2. Wondershare UniConverter

Runner Up

WonderShare UniConverter does more than just convert–you can edit software, trim videos, and preserve the original quality of the audio when transferring to MP3 format.

This software was made for users who want more than a simple conversion process.

Visit Wondershare UniConverterRead Wondershare UniConverter Reviews

WonderShare UniConverter does more than just convert–you can edit software, trim videos, and preserve the original quality of the audio when transferring to MP3 format.

This software was made for users who want more than a simple conversion process.

Best For: Video downloaders and editors who will consistently use more features.

Notable Features: Editing software, video quality preservation, and quick transformation are all hallmarks of Wondershare.

Pros:

• Extremely fast
• Editing features
• Good quality videos

Cons:

• Expensive
• Difficult to fine-tune edits

Is Wondershare UniConverter Hard to Use?

For the most part, Wondershare is very easy to use.

Some customers have complained about the difficulty of trimming videos to the right length, but if you are planning on downloading more than editing, it’s easy.

Pricing and Plans: Free trial, then $10 for a partial license or $50 for a full license.

3. 4K Video Downloader

Also Great

4K Video downloader has a three-download license.

Once you purchase it, you can use it on three separate computers.

It can download the highest quality videos and convert them into any kind of format.

Visit 4K Video DownloaderRead 4K Video Downloader Reviews

4K Video downloader has a three-download license.

Once you purchase it, you can use it on three separate computers.

It can download the highest quality videos and convert them into any kind of format.

Best For: Families or those with multiple computers.

Notable Features: This is a good option for anyone planning on using multiple computers or who might need a new computer after a while.

The license is a lifetime guarantee.

It works well and can convert to multiple forms.

Pros:

• Can download from multiple sites (TikTok, YouTube, etc.)
• Can be used on three computers with one license
• Supports several audio formats
• High-quality 4k YouTube video and audio

Cons:

• Limited downloads unless you pay
• Could use an update

Is 4K Video Downloader Hard to Use?

It’s easy to use, with a user-friendly interface and step-by-step instructions.

Pricing and Plans: Free or $15 for upgraded service.

How Do YouTube to MP3 Converter Tools Work?

YouTube to MP3 converters are complicated pieces of software that work to take a video from a website and convert it into a downloadable audio file.

The video converter tool usually scrapes the site for the YouTube URL and locates the file that way.

Then, it converts that file to an audio-only file using a pre-existing code or system.

Once the site serves the audio file, making it available to you, the job is done.

You have a downloadable audio file with sound from the original video.

Are YouTube to MP3 Converters Legal?

The only legal issue you might run into while downloading music is copyright law.

However, as long as you’re downloading music for your personal use, you’re not breaking any law.

Distributing music that you’ve downloaded is illegal and punishable by law.

Although YouTube to MP3 converters are technically legal, converting a YouTube video to an MP3 file goes against YouTube’s community policies.

It’s usually the site or app doing this, and it’s still not illegal.

Are YouTube to MP3 Converters Safe?

Some sites are scams.

If you trust the site and don’t have to put in personal information, many conversion sites are safe.

Always be careful online and check for signs of foul play.

However, if you believe you can trust a site, you can move forward with the conversion.

Can You Convert YouTube to MP3 for Free?

Youtube to MP3 files can sometimes be converted for free and are sometimes a paid service.

If it is free, it makes its money through advertisements.

To remain completely secure, you can install virus protection software to ensure that your hardware isn’t infected.

Where Is the YouTube MP3 File Saved After Downloading?

Usually, the Youtube downloader will allow you to choose where to save the file when downloading the file.

If you’re operating on a smartphone, it will either put the MP3 directly into your iTunes app or a voice memories app for storage.

With a computer, the site will give you options of where to keep the file.

What Other Conversion Formats for YouTube Videos Are Available?

Youtube videos are generally uploaded in .mp4 or .mov files, depending on what software created them.

However, they can be downloaded as a simple file and converted to MP3 or another type of file.

Here are some of the conversion formats available for YouTube videos:

• Mpeg 4 (video format)
• AVI (video format)
• WAV (audio format)
• FLAC (audio format)
• Vorbis (audio format)

Final Thoughts

Whether downloading music to listen to on the plane or to save data, you can use one of these converters to safely and efficiently download your favorite YouTube videos into audio format.

Check out our guide to downloading YouTube videos to unlock even more helpfulness of this powerful video platform.

Alternatively, if that doesn’t work, you can also unblock YouTube and download the content using another method.