What exactly are social media management tools, you ask?
They are essentials for businesses to scale up and onboard customers without having to spend big bucks on your social marketing venture.
Social media management apps are for businesses of all sizes, helping them centralize their social media activities into one platform and run them effortlessly with the help of automation.
These tools enable you to schedule, publish, monitor, and manage online communication with your audience. Organizing and running campaigns while keeping a close eye on their performance saves a lot of your time and effort.
In this blog, we shall zero down on 25 best paid and free social media management tools to schedule posts, curate content, monitor responses, track buyer journey, analyze performance, and more at real competitive prices.
How we analyze and select Social Media Tools:
Our process of curating a list of relevant tools involves thorough research and evaluation. Factors considered include platform compatibility, automation, content creation, visualization, analytics, collaboration, pricing, scalability, and user experience. Curated by seasoned professionals, these tools empower marketers with valuable insights to make informed decisions and scale their businesses.
Top Social Media Management Tools:
Best for:
Mid-sized businesses, mid-sized agencies, and some enterprise brands.
About Agorapulse
Agorapulse is a robust social media tool that helps small businesses with social media management, community build-up, competitor monitoring and moderation. Agorapulse has a dynamic interface that can be effective for running all your social campaigns from the same dashboard.
Additionally, it can integrate with all the major social media networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
However, it’s important to consider alternative options when assessing pricing plans and offered features, as you may find solutions that deliver slightly better value for your investment.
Pricing:
Agorapulse offers one free plan and four paid plans with a 30-day free trial for each. The four paid plans are called Standard, Professional, Advanced, and Custom, ranging from $49 to $149 for managing 10 social profiles.
Key Features:
- Tailored Content Creation: Provides robust tools for content creators to customize their posts meticulously, optimizing them for peak performance before scheduling.
- Real-Time Social Monitoring: Stay seamlessly connected by monitoring brand mentions and industry conversations in real time.
- Insightful Performance Analysis: You can access comprehensive performance data for all your posts.
- Unified Social Media Inbox: Efficiently manage and organize conversations from various platforms in one consolidated inbox.
- AI Writing: Elevate your efficiency by swiftly generating creative ideas and captions using AI writing assistant.
After thoroughly reviewing a multitude of user testimonials about Agorapulse, gathered from reputable platforms like G2 and Capterra, we meticulously scrutinized each one, taking into account every aspect of the tool. Based on this comprehensive analysis, we’ve aggregated the following insights.
Pros
- The scheduling capabilities have been well-received by most of its users, proving to boost their social media consistency.
- A large majority of Agorapulse users have referred to the content customization features to be a commendable asset to the scheduling aspects of the tool.
- 3 out of every 4 users feel data visualization in the analytics dashboard makes readability and understanding of data through charts and graphs convenient.
- The tool integration with CRM makes supporting marketing, sales, and every facet of customer interaction synchronous and all users found this convincing.
- Agorapulse’s messaging tools are highly effective, with 71.43% of users recognizing the efficiency boost from built-in inbox management features for seamless audience interaction.
Cons
- Around 3 out of every 10 users were affected by the complex scheduling process. Some said the process of queueing, pre-schedule, and timelining was a bit of a hassle.
- Despite having automated reporting abilities, nearly one-third said the tool required more updates and improvements.
- 34% of the users felt the tool needed improvements in responding to messages and comments.
- 1 out of every 5 users said the support team was unable to resolve their issues.
- A majority of users (80%) said the tool was costly and not affordable for them.
Best for:
Professionals, Small teams, Small-medium businesses, and Enterprises.
About Hootsuite
Adopted by thousands of users, Hootsuite comes across as a versatile software. It very effectively centralizes all the activities related to social media management for a business into one single dashboard. Its multiple in-app integrations eliminate the need for separate tools for its users.
Hootsuite has helped a myriad of industries organize their social media efficiently, including education, finance, government agencies, and healthcare organizations worldwide.
Hootsuite helps scale agencies and enterprise-level businesses. The tool works especially well with larger teams due to its collaboration tools. However, the steep price often makes it unaffordable for growing businesses or individual marketers.
Pricing:
Hootsuite offers five pricing tiers after a 30-day trial, ranging from $99/month to $249/month, catering to different social account and user needs.
Key Features:
- Scheduling and Publishing: The tool lets you plan, create, and schedule social media posts to be automatically published at the designated date and time.
- Engage Customers: A unified social inbox that helps monitor, respond, engage with followers, and automate replies with AI chatbots.
- Social Listening: Keep up with online trends and track brand mentions along with keywords and hashtags to keep an eye on what people think of your brand.
- Social Media Ads: Manage social media ads for Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn from Hootsuite’s dashboard.
- Analytics: View the analytics data from connected profiles from multiple platforms in one centralized dashboard.
- Team Collaboration: Work with your team and involve clients with well-defined roles for seamless collaboration.
- Employee Advocacy: Hootsuite helps users get an extended reach by enabling employees to share posts of their company to their own social profiles.
- AI Writer: The tool helps create social media post captions easier and faster using AI assistance.
We went through a hundred user reviews for Hootsuite, gathered from trusted review platforms like G2 and Capterra. After carefully analyzing each of them in respect to all the features of the tool, we have gathered these insights.
Pros
- Many users find Hootsuite’s ability to publish content across multiple platforms highly valuable.
- Advanced scheduling, according to 58.44% of respondents, simplifies content planning and posting, saving a significant amount of time.
- Hootsuite’s overall content management features received a thumbs up from 88.24% due to its ease of use.
- 81.25% of users were highly appreciative of the team collaboration capabilities in Hootsuite, which allows them to work seamlessly with all their team members and clients.
- Users highly appreciate Hootsuite’s capability to schedule a diverse range of content, encompassing images, videos, GIFs, and links.
Cons
- While some people think it is an easy tool to use, 11.76% have a hard time getting a grasp on the tool.
- Around 9.09% of users have had a difficult time while using the mobile application of Hootsuite to schedule posts.
- When a high volume of content is concerned, the bulk scheduling capabilities of Hootsuite have inconsistencies, which have led to a lot of hassle and failed publishings for 14.14% of users.
- Although said to be efficient, 25% of users have raised some concerns about the content performance in the app.
- Content recycling, which is an important feature under scheduling, has some gaps that concern 76.92% of users to some degree.
Best for:
Businesses, Publishers, Non-profits, Mid-stage startup teams, Higher education, Solopreneurs, E-commerce, and Sports teams.
About Buffer
Known for its excellent user experience, Buffer is a tool for all aspects of managing one’s social media presence. Whether it’s an individual marketer, small agencies, growing start-ups, or well-established enterprises, Buffer caters to the whole lot.
The tool enables users to generate shoppable pages linked to their bios, increasing conversions and sales. Additionally, Buffer provides a free plan, albeit with limited features, which is a good way to try out the tool. The higher plans require a per-channel model of pricing.
Even as an altogether proficient tool, Buffer falls somewhat behind as the lack of chat support puts a dent in the users’ experience with the tool.
Pricing:
Buffer provides a range of four pricing options along with a 14-day trial period for each. There is a free plan for beginners. Paid plans range from $6 a month for one account to a monthly $120 for 10 accounts.
Key Features:
- Post Planning and Automation: Create tailored posts and streamline their publication with Buffer’s content scheduling capabilities.
- Analytics: Access comprehensive analytics insights and generate detailed, shareable reports for each linked social profile.
- Seamless Engagement: Manage audience interactions, incluzzding messages and comments, with Buffer’s social inbox.
- Collaboration: Facilitate smooth collaboration with your entire team and involve clients in post approval workflow.
- Landing Page-Maker: Leverage the Start Page feature to craft visually appealing yet straightforward landing pages that drive conversions from social media traffic.
After sifting through numerous user reviews of Buffer sourced from reputable platforms such as G2 and Capterra, we meticulously examined each one, considering all aspects of the tool. From this thorough analysis, we’ve compiled the following insights.
Pros
- The easy-to-use post-publishing dashboard in Buffer was commended by 36.4% of reviewers, requiring little to no training to use efficiently.
- Around 9.10% highlight the convenience of Buffer’s post customization options, making it easy to adapt content for multiple social platforms in a single dashboard.
- Over 20% of Buffer users find maintaining social media consistency easier with its content scheduling features.
- At least 20% of all Buffer users agreed that maintaining consistency on social media became easier with the help of the tool and its content scheduling capabilities.
- The team collaboration capabilities are appreciated by around 30% of the users.
Cons
- Almost 40% of Buffer users have claimed to have faced problems during bulk scheduling their posts.
- Every one out of three Buffer users faced difficulties in content recycling and reporting older posts.
- 33% of users have mentioned the lack of real-time analytics for them creates obstacles in staying updated on their social media performance.
- A quarter of the Buffer audience has said that they have faced difficulties due to delays in message handling by the social inbox of the tool.
- Difficulties in task management have been the cause of concern for some of the Buffer users.
This AI-based social media management software can help you turn your captions into excellent social media posts. Whether you are working with blogs, videos, podcasts, or articles, you can get amazing social media posts without spending a great deal of money.
Lately can help syndicate the content you create across multiple stakeholder accounts making it one of the advanced social media management tools. It is being used extensively by small and medium businesses from different markets and industries to enhance their brand communications and management, promoting thought leadership. Some other notable features of Lately include:
- Calendar management
- Data export
- Keyword tracking
- Marketing automation
- Social media monitoring
- External integrations
- Scheduling
- Interactive dashboard
- Contact management
This tool can help you reduce reliance on social media agencies and cut down social media content creation and posting time by a whopping 90%. It is best known for increasing productivity exponentially and gets hours of work done in a matter of minutes.
Lately offers a subscription at $200/month and includes all the necessary tools for marketers associated with small and medium businesses.
Nicholas N.
I love how quickly you are able to generate posts from your content. I have been able to schedule hundreds of social media posts in a few hours. This would have most likely taken me days to accomplish this same feat!
What do I dislike about Lately?
I have noticed some features like the queue has tended to be a little buggy for me at times. When I try to reorganize posts, they jump back to the original order.
This social media management platform helps businesses increase their social media ROI. eClincher supports all major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google My Business, and Youtube.
It’s more of an enterprise/agency-focused social media management tool with in-depth features to manage your social media campaigns successfully. Other features eClincher plans include:
- Smart queues for republishing multiple content pieces
- Centralized social inbox
- In-built image library
- Social media calendar
- RSS feeds integration
- Bulk scheduling
- Monitoring and listening
- Social media analytics and reporting
eClincher’s premier plan is priced at $175/month, with which you can connect about 20 social media profiles and add up to 3 of your team members
eClincher User
We loved using Eclincher when we first started. The support was great, and we had an easy switch from our previous social media management platform. It was a great tool, gave us a great insight into analytics, and loved using it.
What do I dislike about eClincher?
We loved using Eclincher until we got to the point where we were managing over 50+ profiles. Once we got to that point, the system was always buggy, and the support started to lack. We’d have problems and issues, and support couldn’t help us out. Most times, it felt like we’d ask them something, and they couldn’t comprehend what the issue was; it was kind of frustrating.
Best for:
Mid-sized businesses, mid-sized agencies, and some enterprise brands.
About Sendible
Sendible has firmly positioned itself as a leading solution for today’s social media management needs, specializing in the requirements of brands and agencies. Connect with your teams and clients easily with this agency-focused social media management tool.
Sendible supports all major social media platforms and blogging platforms like WordPress, Medium, and Tumblr. Sendible has a unified dashboard which enables users to create and publish their unique content in collaboration with their whole team to monitoring the performance of said content.
However, it’s important to note that Sendible has been reported as a less-than-ideal experiences with the quality of its customer support.
Pricing:
Sendible provides four paid plan options, and instead of offering a free plan, it provides a 14-day free trial period. The plans range from Creator, priced at $29, Traction for $89, White Label for $240, to the last plan, White Label+ plan, which is priced at $750.
Key Features:
- Publishing: Sendible streamlines your publishing responsibilities, enabling you to create and schedule posts, thereby simplifying the content creation process through automation.
- Collaboration:Elevate task management by efficiently coordinating with both your team members and clients, ensuring seamless workflows and approval procedures.
- AnalyticsAcquire a thorough comprehension of your content’s effectiveness and uncover valuable insights into audience behavior by utilizing in-depth analytics for all your posted content.
- White Label: Amplify your income with highly customizable social media management solutions designed for your clients, complete with your unique branding.
We have gathered multiple authentic Sendible user reviews from G2 and Capterra and meticulously analyzed them in regard to the major features important in terms of use case. Based on this study, we have gleaned the following insights.
Pros
- Every 3 out of 4 users find the team collaboration capability provided by Sendible to be highly useful to integrate their co-workers into the workflow of the tool itself.
- 20% of the users have mentioned that the intuitive nature of the content calendar makes it easier to plan and track their content strategy.
- 27% of the reviews have mentioned the in-depth insights on trends analysis, which are available in the tool dashboard, to be very useful for tweaking the marketing strategy accordingly.
- Users have praised the overall modern and neat aesthetic design of the user interface which adds to the experience of using the platform.
- Much of the Sendible audience considers the tool to be providing true value for money.
Cons
- Out of all the reviews, 57% have raised the issue of live posting failing in several instances, which in turn disrupted their schedules.
- According to 20% of users, content queue management becomes difficult with a lot of glitches on a regular basis.
- 20% of the reviews said that the KPI monitoring showed inaccurate numbers occasionally and needed some fine-tuning to rectify the gaps.
- While some users have appreciated the reporting abilities of Sendible, a fair number of users have pointed out that they faced problems with the automated generation of reports on a regular basis.
- Some technical glitches in the feedback and collaboration workflow have hindered the coordination of atleast 33% of the users.
This social media management tool gives more importance to content and scheduling, emphasizing its social performance. CoSchedule offers resourceful content management for social media with its calendar feature. It has a ReQueue feature that automatically fills the queue with the best-performing posts.
CoSchedule supports Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr social media platforms. This social media management tool also lets you connect to your WordPress and Hubspot accounts. Other sets of features include:
- Custom social media calendar
- ReQueue to autofill your posting schedule
- Team collaboration
- Bulk scheduling
- Social campaign templates
- Integrates with 9 tools
CoSchedule is a bit expensive when it comes to pricing. You can connect only up to 10 social media profiles with 10 team members at $39/month in their Marketing Calendar plan. If you are an agency with multiple clients, you’d have to opt for their Marketing Suite to manage all in one place.
Jessica H
Its integrated project management and collaboration tools are great for smaller groups. The calendar itself is strong and extremely useful.
What do I dislike about CoSchedule?
The platform seems slow lately, probably as a result of the large amount of data we are entering and the amount of filters we are creating. It is more expensive than the normal content calendar alternatives I have found.
If you want an effective content management for social media, this tool is for you. ContentStudio is a content curation tool that helps discover, plan, publish and analyze your content going out to social media platforms.
This is one of the best social media management tools as it also helps you with hashtag suggestions and comes with an in-built SEO optimization toolbox. ContentStudio has more features like:
- Content and hashtag suggestions
- SEO toolbox
- Unified social inbox
- Team collaboration
- Recycle evergreen content
- Bulk scheduling and RSS feeds
- Customized reporting and omnichannel analytics
ContentStudio lets you connect to all major social media platforms and some blogging sites like WordPress and Medium. ContentStudio is a more content-focused tool that helps publishers and content marketers with easy content promotions. Its small business plan is priced at $99/month, with which you can manage up to 25 social media accounts and 5 team members.
Steven L.
In theory, this should be a good product or a great product. They allow customization per social channel, and my team finds it easy to use. Unfortunately, things simply do not post correctly, or at all, too often. We get false posting confirmation messages all the time.
What do I dislike about ContentStudio?
Their support is now dreadful and has gotten worse over time. It is a damn shame. A week or two can go by with several emails to them, and all we hear are crickets. There is no response sometimes until the third or fourth email.
Best for:
Creators, freelancers, agencies, social media managers and small businesses.
About Later
Later, although started as an Instagram scheduling tool has since evolved into a versatile social media software. It offers users an all-in-one dashboard to plan and create their social media content for six different channels from start to finish.
This is a versatile social media management tool that is designed to simplify all tasks pertaining to social media for creators, agencies, social media managers, and growing businesses. With its user-friendly interface, anyone can master the tool in practically no time at all.
The tool’s focus has always been Instagram marketing, with designated features for the platform, helping users achieve business objectives such as improved visibility and boosted sales.
The Later software is perfect for individual social media managers or creators but lacks structured approval workflows for bigger teams to function smoothly.
Pricing:
Later presents three subscription choices, each accompanied by a 14-day complimentary trial period. The system presents a no-cost option, followed by paid levels starting with Starter, valued at $25, Growth at $45, and the final choice, the Advanced option, priced at $80.
Key Features:
- Content Management Hub:Streamline your social media content planning, creation, and management all in one place. Later also lets you schedule user-generated content (UGC) for your profiles.
- Unified Social Inbox: Aggregate incoming comments, messages, and brand mentions from various channels for efficient engagement and responses.
- Comprehensive Analytics:Dive into detailed data on engagement rates, impressions, follower growth, and click-throughs across your diverse social profiles.
- Linkin.bio Integration:Create a mini-landing page and link it to your TikTok and Instagram bios for enhanced profile visibility and increased conversions.
- AI-Powered Captions:Harness Later’s AI assistance to effortlessly craft compelling social media captions with just a few clicks.
We’ve compiled numerous genuine user opinions of Later from G2 and Capterra, conducting a thorough examination focused on crucial features relevant to practical application. From this examination, we’ve extracted the following observations.
Pros
- Almost 50% of the users agree that multiple-platform integration enables them to centralize their social media management.
- Around half of the users complement the neat and clean design of the Later dashboard.
- A75% of the users spoke highly of the ability to upload media assets like images and videos in masses to be used for later.
- The analytics capabilities have been highly appreciated by about 40% of the total users in Later.
- Bulk scheduling has been lauded as one of the best scheduling features by almost 83.3% of users, quoting the ability to schedule a month or more worth of posts as a reason for it.
Cons
- The intuitiveness of Later interface has been found lacking by more than 50% of the users.
- Many have complained about the sudden and considerable hikes in prices by the platform.
- Six out of every ten users have expressed their frustration on the fact that Later has a big gap as it does not provide adequate analytics for Facebook and LinkedIn.
- More than 60% of the users have found the analytics part of Later quite lacking on many occasions.
- ANearly all of th users have mentioned that
The pricing plans in Later come with a lot of strings attached.
Tailwind is an official Pinterest and Instagram partner making it a visual concentrated social media management tool. You can find the best times to post and use suggested hashtags to drive engagement on your Instagram and Pinterest profiles.
Tailwind has this feature where you set your logo, color palette, and fonts just one time, and it will automatically add your branding to every design you schedule. Other Tailwind features are:
- Analytics and reporting
- Social media monitoring and trends
- Hashtag finder
- Tailwind communities
The advanced Tailwind plan for 5 users is priced at $39.9/month, with which you can connect 3 Pinterest 3 Instagram, and 3 Facebook accounts and schedule to publish about 10000 posts/month.
Stacy F.
It helps me program, pin, improve Pinterest and has helped me grow my brand on Instagram and Pinterest.
What do I dislike about Tailwind?
Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to navigate. Also, the tutorial sometimes starts over when you log in. I would still like to be able to post to Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook with an image and text.
MeetEdgar is a unique social media management tool that does all the scheduling for you. It automatically pulls posts from your content library and sets them on repeat. With MeetEdgar, you never have to worry about filling your queue as it re-shares your evergreen posts.
This is the best tool for social media managers that supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. MeetEdgar runs mainly on one feature, which is great if you want to autopilot your social media posting. It builds a library of evergreen posts, and if it runs out of new content, Edgar will refill your queue with older ones. Other features this social media management tool offers are:
- Category based scheduling
- Suggested social posts
- Social media analytics and reporting
MeetEdgar is priced at a flat $49.99/month, with which you can do social media account management of 25 accounts and 1000 weekly automation.
Dana G.
What I like most about the Edgar Social Media Management software is that it automates our social media to stay relevant and top of mind.
What do I dislike about MeetEdgar?
There are not enough options for posting schedules. It works really well for a daily posting but does not allow for weekly or bi-weekly posting to be scheduled.
Post Planner is a social media management tool built for reach and engagement. Post Planner is a social engagement solution for small and mid-sized businesses. This social media management tool lets you manage your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest profiles.
Post Planner has features that are well-equipped for a small business to increase its brand awareness on social media. They are:
- Posting calendar
- Discover top-performing posts
- Recycle evergreen content
- RSS feeds
- Social media streams
- Library of quotes
- Real-time brand mentions
Post Planner is priced at $34/month, with which you can manage up to 25 social media profiles with 5 team members.
Post Planner User
I have nothing good to say about this company.
What do I dislike about Post Planner?
PostPlanner is an extremely non-intuitive, difficult, inflexible, stubborn, and impermeable program that has never left me satisfied after use. Moreover, their customer service and use of “fine print” are more than unethical.
Loomly is a social media management tool that helps you build a successful brand with your team. It’s a brand success platform that empowers marketing teams to grow brands online through collaboration, publishing, and analytics features. With Loomly, you can manage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, Google My Business, TikTok, Snapchat, and more.
Loomly is one of the best social media management tools for small businesses fit for agencies and businesses. Loomly lets you manage all digital assets in one place. You can store images, videos, posts, notes all in one library. Other features include:
- Post suggestions
- Central library
- Ad preview and tips
- Team collaboration
- Respond to comments and reactions
- Social media analytics
Loomly’s standard plan is priced at $79/month, with which you can manage 20 social media accounts and 6 team members, whereas if you want to add more profiles, the price goes up to $179/month for social media account management of up to 35 accounts.
Loomly User
I really like how Loomly allows me to map out my marketing content for the month in a very easy and digestible way.
What do I dislike about Loomly?
It is more of a posting platform and less of an engagement management platform. In my view – it is not as easy as other media to reply to comments or like comments or reactions, and I miss having the inbox that alerts you to posts that need replies.
SocialHub is an advanced social media management tool that automates your posting on social media. Keep your engagement metrics in check with an analytics dashboard. Assess your reach and growth with real-time data and insights.
With SocialHub, you just don’t stop at evaluating your online presence, you can also monitor your team’s performance. Know their response time and rates in the business hour. You can optimize your services at the peak hours of engagement to not miss out on any important conversation.
Explore how your content is impacting your audience. Find out the top-performing ones with a detailed comparison of paid and organic reach to get an idea about the overall effectiveness of your content strategy. This makes SocialHub one of the best tools for social media managers.
Features of SocialHub are as follows:
- Smart Inbox
- Monitoring and Publishing
- Analytics
- Team Collaboration
SocialHub pricing starts from $99 per month for a single user. You can request for a demo before making the final call.
Samantha S
I liked how easy it was to plan and schedule Facebook posts for weeks in advance. In the monthly calendar, it’s easy to see where you have gaps and where more content could go, etc. they also made it super easy to collaborate with other people on your team, which was nice so that everyone could access that content.
What do I dislike about SocialHub?
The analytics could be a little better; even though it was nice to see the conversions, I’ve seen better, so that’s something I would improve.
SocialFlow by Piano is an amazing optimization platform that gives you a comprehensive insight of all your social media accounts. A striking feature of SocialFlow is that its advanced algorithm puts out the content that’s best for consumer attention. You get the flexibility to work with your entire team and regulate their workflow.
This social media management tool also lets you have a watch on consolidated metrics from platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can even track engagement of varied content types and growth in your following across multiple social media profiles over time.
Furthermore, you can use RSS feeds for more content outsourcing and sequence them effortlessly. You can even recycle your old posts and garner engagement round the clock.
Features of SocialFlow are as follows:
- Content Optimization
- Predictive Analysis
- Data Monitoring
- Customized Reporting
SocialFlow doesn’t provide any free trial. If interested, you can directly get in touch with the team for a quick product tour and customized setup.
Verified User
Automation of posts from RSS feed. Seeing options for posts with a predictive scoring of how posts will perform. Boosting from the tool is also a solid feature. Setting a budget is fairly easy as well.
What do I dislike about SocialFlow?
It still involves human time, and could be better at automation and scheduling. The time involved is the biggest drawback. To really use the tool properly, an employee will need to be in the tool for multiple hours each day. Ok if you have a dedicated resource, but tough if one person is in charge of all social activity.
SocialBee is a well-rounded social media management tool which centralizes all your social marketing efforts by addressing all your requirements into one space. It supports all the major social channels including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and Google Business Profile.
SocialBee streamlines your post creation efforts with the help of its AI integration. This helps users to create fresh content, customize them for different platforms and repurpose their older well-performing content to leverage their benefits again.
The content curation feature lets you share content on trending topics of your choice by coming up with the latest blog from innumerable online resources. You will never run out of posts to share with access to all the latest which SocialBee makes accessible to you.
Features of SocialBee are as follows:
- Content categorization for easy posting
- Content strategy visualization with intuitive content calendar
- Generate easy social media posts with AI integration
Socialbee has segregated its pricing plans into two segments, catering to solo entrepreneurs and smaller businesses along with larger ones and enterprise-level organizations. The best plan for smaller agencies is the Pro plan at $99 per month which allows three users to manage 25 social profiles. You can go up to 150 social profiles with SocialBee’s Pro150 plan which costs $449 per month.
Verified SocialBee User
I like best that SocialBee allows you to create content buckets. I can schedule content to multiple social media accounts. I can customize the content for each platform. It connects to Canva. I can make content evergreen or use it only once. They keep updating what can be done for sharing videos and using AI to help with posts.
What do you dislike about SocialBee?
It took me a while to get the hang of switching how content is shared to Instagram as a post, or a story or as a reel. It’s not the same as creating and sharing content on the Instagram app.
5 Best Social Media Management Tools for Enterprises
Now here are some social media management tools which are designed to cater to all the needs of larger businesses with a diverse teams.
Sprinklr is an excellent social media management tool that lets you access all key marketing platforms in one place for easy tailoring of the campaigns. You can even monitor influencers, track hashtags, go for competitive analysis, look for industry-wide trend predictions to take better actions.
This AI-powered platform gets you a snapshot of your online presence by integrating 30+ digital channels. Research, market, advertise, along with increasing your sales with top-notch engagement within the platform itself.
Features of Sprinklr can be summarized as follows:
- Social Inbox
- Analytics and Reporting
- Team Collaboration
- Approval Workflows
- Campaign Optimization
- Content Calendar
Pricing of Sprinklr is not yet open as they offer customized plans as per the team size and needs. Sprinklr also has no free trial subscription as of now.
Luis Gustavo
Lots of filters to zoom in and out of your search and analysis. Customizable dashboards are a great way to keep up with lots of searches at once and in different parts of the web or your own pages. Alerts are a great way to be ahead of the game when something is going on, either bad or good.
What do I dislike about Sprinklr?
The UX is really complicated, unnecessarily confusing. 3 places to create a dashboard with different filters, but in the end, you can have the same data displayed on all of them. Really hard to complete simple tasks, like tagging multiple posts, creating rules for adjusting polarity, and tagging comments from your own posts.
Brandwatch is one of the most proficient cloud-based social media management tools for business that helps to push your brand towards success. After its merger with Falcon.io, it is more of a marketing suite than one tool, providing audience intelligence, social media management, and influencer marketing. It leverages features like social media listening to make you a proactive brand, so you never miss out on any engagement. Brandwatch lets you manage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and many more.
You can personalize your offerings to clients with its wide spectrum of features. You can also create a social media calendar, design campaigns with in-built templates, schedule posts, and sum the performance with detailed metrics. The customer support is prompt. Other features that Brandwatch gives its users are:
- Scheduling paid and organic posts
- Collaborative calendar and workflow
- Social media analytics
- CRM integration
- Real-time chat and tutorials
Brandwatch’s Social Media Management suite has customizable prizing. You can schedule an appointment with their team to see which of their offerings suite your needs the best.
Brandwatch User
I like that the tools are very simple to operate, and all the integration with the social media profiles is flawless and can integrate quickly. We need to join the social media venture so our brand can survive in this digital marketplace.
What do I dislike about Brandwatch?
There are some issues that come up regarding access to channels or some of our colleagues are not able to do scheduled posts sometimes. I think most of these issues are caused by the API or the actual social media platforms and not by Falcon (now Brandwatch Social Media Management) itself.
Apart from its exemplary CRM tool, HubSpot also offers social media management software that lets you connect with your followers on different social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Boost your social media ROI with meaningful conversations and reply to every mention. Set up keywords for effective tracking across diversified mediums. Schedule at best times and post content directly from CRM to your social media profiles.
With HubSpot, you can even compare your social media marketing performance with in-depth reporting. You get a full-fledged summary of clicks, visits, leads, etc., to gauge your overall performance.
Features of HubSpot are as follows:
- CRM Integration
- Analytics and Reporting
- Campaign Management
- Keyword Tracking
- Ads Optimization
- Marketing Automation
Social media management software is a part of Marketing Hub and Enterprise plans that cost $800 and $3200 per month respectively.
Rachel K
I love the scheduling of all social posts the best, and the layout is very similar to how we use Facebook and LinkedIn.
What do I dislike about HubSpot?
Time zones can be confusing, and you can’t tag anyone in the posts, which is a HUGE bummer. Social posts need to have people and other things tagged. It isn’t a full solution.
Reputation is an all-rounder online presence management suite to help you elevate your branding online. Tap into its social listening capabilities to gather real-time details that are crucial for apt audience targeting.
Trace out trends, monitor influencers, and track customers to unleash better promotion and marketing opportunities. Create strategy from scratch and regulate its performance with Reputation’s enhanced market research and competitor analysis features.
Create workflows to onboard your teams and simplify creating, collaborating, managing, and publishing content on social media. Strengthen your relationships with customers with its stellar engagement options.
Features of Reputation are as follows:
- Audience Targeting
- Sentiment Analysis
- Reputation Management
- Competitive Analysis
Reputation has no free trial plan. Its pricing is currently unavailable as they offer customizable plans based on the size and demands of the team.
Verified User
The reports were beautiful. I loved how easy it was to create pretty reports for clients, and it was extremely easy to do so.
What do I dislike about Reputation?
I didn’t think it was that accurate. I didn’t love their projects, and the cost to have a certain amount was kind of high for what the tool really was. I worked at an agency with several clients for whom I ran several campaigns each, and it was tough to track all of it there.
Salesforce Social Studio is your stop to engage with your followers and fans alike on social media. This phenomenal tool helps you listen and manage posts on social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Instagram, and Twitter.
The best part is you can group your posts as per region, products, teams, or brands and schedule them accordingly. Analyze trends, keywords, and competitors, so you stay ahead of others with exceptional branding.
Don’t know what to post? Generate ideas and create content that matters to your audience to get them reacting to your posts. Advance a step further and run campaigns to capture potential customers with this social media management tool.
Features of Salesforce Social Studio are as follows:
- Social Reporting
- Competitor Analytics
- Sentiment Analysis
- Campaign Optimization
Salesforce Social Studio offers personalized plans, so there is no standard pricing as of now. You can contact their sales team for a quick estimation.
Francisco C
Mainly use it for social listening; it gives you great statistics and feedback live. It is very easy to use and interact with other team members.
What do I dislike about Salesforce Social Studio?
Unfortunately, there are things that need polishing, such as reporting, and some information does not show up when monitoring. The main problem is SPAM (or irrelevant) information that gets generated.
What to Look For When Choosing Social Media Management Tools?
That was the best app roundup among social media management tools for you to choose from. However, the requirements of every business are different. Hence, you have to be very particular about selecting any management tool.
Here are some of the essentials for you to keep in mind while picking the right social media management app for your business.
Should Match Your Business Needs
The features offered by social media tools are often focused on specific functions. If your brand is looking to monitor the audience opinion of themfor the betterment of their PR then you will have to select a social media tool with ample listening capability, which facilitates communication management as well.
Offering a Free Trial
A no-strings-attached free trial offers you the scope to of a test run for a product. Using the tool will give you actual insights no demo or tutorial would. This will make grasping whether it is a good fit for you or not much easier.
Support Major Social Channels
This is a very important factor in judging a social media management tool. Content automation is one of the major requirements of users when they intend to go with any social media software. So make sure it supports all the major social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and then some.
Must-Have Essential Features
Keeping in line with your business requirements, make sure to peruse the features and functionalities offered by the tool. Some of the essentials in a social media management tool include content scheduling and publishing, performance analytics, social inboxing, etc.
Along with the basics, a tool having some special features also helps further your social media agenda. Here are some of the advanced features to look for:
- AI-assisted content creation
- Image editing functions
- Hashtag suggestions
- Best time to post insights
- Social media ads management
- Social media listening
- Team and client collaborative workflow
- Bulk content scheduling
- First-comment scheduling
- Branded dashboards and custom reports
- Multiple file-type support
Pricing Plans
This element is one of the biggest concerns for small and medium-sized businesses as they are working on a tight budget. Look at the pricing plans and access to all the functionalities under each of them.
Many a time, the segregation of pricing options of a social media management tool is based on the number of accounts you can connect to it at once and the number of users accessing it.
So be sure to give forethought to how many social channels you need to manage at once and select the subscription accordingly.
Scalability
This factor is in tandem with the previous point. If you are a growing business with an expanding team or an agency with a perpetual influx of clients, the software you select to manage all this needs to be scalable.
Get your facts straight about how accommodating the social media software is when it comes to adding more users to your team or increasing the number of accounts you manage. Usually, all of these alterations come with many added costs.
Customer Support
Last but not least, customer support is a vital part of any software. From guidance during the onboarding period to resolution of queries as soon as possible, efficiency of the customer support shapes the user experience in a major way.
You can gauge this if you take a test run of the tool and reach out to the support team or by accessing past users’ experiences on review platforms.
Now that was all about how to select a social media management platform. However, there might still be questions regarding the actual benefits of using such a tool for your business.
If so, we have answers.
Why Do Businesses Need to Invest in Social Media Management Software?
You can definitely put a reminder and manually post on each social media profile of yours and maintain messy spreadsheets to capture the data to keep your progress in check.
But what if one fine day you have other priorities or have to take leave? None of us is available round the clock, with a surveillance lens on to capture the tiniest of trend shifts on social media.
Here’s why investing in social media management tools is a step in the right direction.
Time Savior
An increasing number of businesses are turning to social media management tools to automate their everyday tasks and focus on what matters most. You can plan your editorial calendar months in advance and be equipped with all your assets like videos, images, GIFs, etc.
Maximize ROI
They come in handy when you’re running multiple campaigns at the same time. You can also track whether your marketing campaigns are successful or not. So they help you massively maximize your ROI by revealing the real picture of your social media campaigns.
Branding & Awareness
A good social media presence can be a total game-changer when it comes to online reputation. Your customers will check them before considering you. With social media management tools, you can create impressive profiles that can win you more customers for sure.
Engagement & Meaningful Interactions
Social media connects you with your followers and fans alike. You get to interact with them directly. But this can be a downside too. If you get too many messages and you fail to reply, then it creates a bad impression. And who wants that? Social media management tools can save you here. They will gather all mentions and interactions that need your attention in one place so you can give prompt replies.
Wrapping Up
This list of free and paid social media management tools will let you choose the one to manage your social media presence effortlessly. However, our advice is to go for a tool that grows with your growing needs. One that does more in less time without leaving a burning hole in your pocket!
Another point to consider is that the tool of your choice shouldn’t come with a steep learning curve. You surely don’t want your teammates to spend months learning how to perform even the simplest of actions and get little or nothing done.
That’s why we recommend you SocialPilot. It is user-friendly, intuitive, easy on the pocket, and lets you manage mostly everything under one roof with support available at all times. Take its free trial today and elevate your branding on social media.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are social media management tools?
Social media management tools manage your social media interactions by automating communication and scheduling posts from one dashboard. They also gather metrics and are used for competitive analysis.
What is the best social media management app among SocialPilot, Hootsuite, and Buffer?
SocialPilot proves to be the best social media management app to manage multiple social media accounts. It offers features like advanced post scheduling, content curation, social media analytics and reporting, Facebook ad management, bulk scheduling, and much more.
What are the best paid and free social media management tools for small businesses?
Social media management tools for small businesses are:
- SocialPilot
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
- Lately
- Agorapulse
- Sprout Social
How can I manage social media accounts for free?
With the help of the best social media management tools, you can post and manage multiple social media accounts for free. These free social media management tools are:
- Zoho Social
- Later
- Buffer
Besides free social media management tools, if you want to opt for a low-cost social media management tool that does more – SocialPilot is your go-to tool.
What is the best Lately alternative?
The best alternatives to the Lately social media management tool are SocialPilot, Buffer, and Hootsuite.
What are the benefits of social media management tools?
Social media management tools have multiple benefits like:
- Monitoring social media engagement on various platforms
- Scheduling posts well in advance
- Managing multiple client accounts
- Establishing collaboration and workflow
- Connecting with leads faster
- Relevant posting to target audience
What are examples of social media tools?
Social media tools help to improve your social media presence through content posting, monitoring, and analyzing capabilities. Some examples of social media tools include:
- SocialPilot
- Hootsuite
- Sprout Social
- Zoho Social
- Agorapulse
- Buffer
Which tools should you use as a social media manager?
As a social media manager, there are many tools that you can use to manage and optimize your social media presence. Some of these popular tools that help you with content scheduling, analytics, and listening are SocialPilot, Hootsuite, Agorapulse, and SproutSocial.
About the Author
1. SocialPilot
SocialPilot stands out in this app roundup as the best social media management tools. It’s most sought-after by small businesses and agencies for its simple yet efficient design and cost-effective pricing plans.
A tool like this one helps them strengthen their brand presence across all major social media platforms. It assists in executing a well-planned social media posting schedule with advanced features.
With SocialPilot, you can publish content on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram (Direct Publishing), TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, Tumblr and YouTube. It is popular among small businesses because of its intuitive and user friendly UI, along with an exceptional customer support (24×5).
SocialPilot is one of the top social media management tools that can help you get started with social media management in a jiffy and give you access to the following:
SocialPilot subscription costs $25.50/month (billed annually) and allows you to connect 10 social media accounts.
What People Say About SocialPilot
Hannia F.
What I like about SocialPilot is that it facilitates the scheduling of posts in bulk, and it does not seem automated at all. Its customization and UI are what I love the most about SocialPilot. It’s also worth saying that it, of course, saves a lot of time for my digital marketing team and me.
Adam C
My agency has used SocialPilot for over a year now, and we’re very happy with the decision. In a sea of many tools, SocialPilot stood out as the best social media management software to me with its mix of affordability and the number of accounts they schedule. I’ve mostly been impressed with their customer service. In the times I’ve needed help, I think the team has gone above and beyond. I also love how easy it is to request a new feature.