As per the latest social media statistics, Instagram registers more than 2 billion users. And that’s what is making every marketer itch for a better presence on Instagram.
This also means you need to produce more content to stay on top of the feeds to etch your branding name. Add to the list, like and comment on endless posts, design compelling stories, brainstorm for Reels, and follow people, and you almost feel like dropping the ball.
You can lead this race with Instagram automation tools.
Be it automating content creation, scheduling, and publishing on Instagram to grow your account or getting hidden audience insights, Instagram automation tools are marvel heroes.
Maintaining a steady branding on this platform at a break-neck pace is achievable if you invest in the right social media tools. Here’s the compilation of the best Instagram automation tools for a detailed reference.
How we analyze and select Instagram Automation Tools:
This list of exceptional Instagram automation tools has been formulated through in-depth research and experiential analysis. We have considered various aspects of the tool, such as user engagement, G2 ratings and reviews, price points, and scalability. The list ranking also reflects the evaluation of these tools’ competencies in automation, content production, visualization, analytics, and collaborative features. Our goal in curating this list is to enable marketers to choose tools that will help scale their business.
Later is a popular Instagram automation tool with a lot of functionality. For content research, it includes elements such as hashtags and keywords. You can organize your content calendar visually and save each media piece in the asset library. You can add notes, labels, and stars to any material for rapid filtering.
You can also use this library to store evergreen content and schedule it to appear on a regular basis at a specific time. Though its main focus is on Instagram and Pinterest, you can also use Later for scheduling posts on other major platforms.
Pros
- It can conduct an analysis of your account for better promotion on Instagram.
- It provides Linkinbio feature that redirects the Instagram audience to your website directly.
- You can directly generate relevant hashtags when scheduling posts.
Leah I
What I like best about Later is the ease of scheduling posts, rearranging, and timing items for the feed and stories. I especially appreciate the Preview feature, which allows you to view what your Instagram profile grid will look like with your scheduled posts.
Cons
- Bulk scheduling isn’t possible on Later unlike SocialPilot which allows bulk scheduling of up to 500 posts at once.
- It is difficult to schedule text posts as the scheduling process starts with uploading an image.
Joy S
It is not so intuitive, although, with practice, better handling of the platform is achieved. It does not allow you to save some publications as drafts, which can be frustrating to lose published information due to system errors or web problems.
Best for:
Organizations and brands of all sizes.
About Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media automation tool that provides Instagram automation features like scheduling and publishing. Features like auto-responder and suggested replies in DMs help businesses and agencies automate their Instagram marketing.
Analytics and social listening also make Instagram management easier for small businesses. Considering the ease of work, this tool works well on desktops, but the mobile application lacks features like analytics and data insights, a feature for which it’s known.
Pricing:
With a starting price of $249/month, SproutSocial is a very expensive tool for Instagram automation. Even though its advanced plan is $499/month, it only accommodates a single user.
Key Features:
- Scheduling: Plan and schedule your content in advance for better social media growth.
- Hashtag Performance: SproutSocial has the ability to help you track down your best-performing hashtag for recent posts.
- Social Media Analytics: Smart analytics and report generation will help you better understand audience growth and other metrics.
- Inbox and Listening: The advanced social inbox and listening features automate your engagement.
We have gathered multiple ratings and reviews from G2 and Cepterra about SproutSocial and segregated the user experience below to help you understand their opinions about the features.
Pros
- It has a Smart Inbox feature that helps you reply to all your Instagram DMs and comments from one place.
- Sprout Social helps you keep track of your social media campaign with in-depth analytics and insights.
Justis M.
The social listening and engagement pieces are easy to use and have a short learning curve. It was also great to have an onboarding specialist prior to receiving a success coach. The ongoing onboarding live webinars are also extremely helpful.
Cons
- When it comes to scheduling posts on Instagram through Sprout Social, its not efficient and accurate.
- Sprout Social has good automation features. However, it is not as on-point as other Instagram scheduling apps.
Kin J.
One drawback of Sprout is that it can be a bit pricey, especially for small businesses or individuals with limited budgets. This makes it less accessible for those who are just starting out in social media management.
Kicksta offers an Instagram growth tool powered by cutting-edge artificial technology that creates meaningful engagement and authentic connections. When you work with this Instagram automation tool, you select either the standard or premium plan and then customize your dashboard to fulfill your account’s specific needs.
Within the dashboard, you create account lists of competitors, brands, and influencers whose audiences you would like to target. They encourage clients to continue posting high-quality content for more followers.
Looking for a ways to grow more followers? Check out 25+ tried and tested tips that will help increase your Instagram followers.
Pros
- Unlike other companies, Kicksta doesn’t guarantee a number of followers because the followers you will gain are from real, authentic accounts and not bots. Their targeting options on the dashboard ensure the accounts being engaged with are genuine.
- Another pro that separates Kicksta from the rest is 24/7 customer service. Instagram is an integral part of your marketing strategy, so knowing you have live chat and email support to reach out to and video courses and FAQ answers to reference is imperative.
Megan McQuade Wadsworth
I have been using Kicksta for about two months. Customer service has been easy to work with, and I am seeing positive momentum on my account!
Cons
- The results are very slow to come, and sometimes there’s no real growth for many users, making the tool a little less trustworthy.
- This Instagram marketing tool is very expensive for the meager results it provides.
NS
It’s a bit early to write a full review, but it’s been a slow start (very slow at the beginning) however I can see daily additions in the 5’s to 10’s each day. It’s not going to deliver hundreds of new followers, so don’t expect that.
Upleap, helps you grow your account organically. For this very reason, they have real people who help in growing your client accounts manually over the phone. They also have several algorithms that require users to narrow their target audience with the help of filters such as location, hashtag, and theme.
Pros
- You can try their service for free with a trial period of three days. The best part is that you don’t need to share your card details with them during this time.
- After you sign up, you are assigned a personalized account manager. This person then oversees your account, assists you with customizing it to your specifications, and helps resolve any issues you face.
Pauline Machnik
The program is amazing! And it really helps to get real nice followers. Moreover the managers are really friendly and answer all your questions.
Cons
- Some people have claimed that while Upleap has helped them grow their account in the initial few days, that has stopped just after a month or so.
- Many users have cited that while they did gain followers, most of those followers were fake and did little to help their engagement.
Nicole
I’ve been using Upleap for a few months now. I signed up for a year of premium service after a great run with their trial period. About a month into the service I began losing followers and had noted that their service is targeting bot and trashy accounts using mine.
Best for:
Small Teams, Agencies, and Big Enterprises.
About Iconosquare
Iconosquare is an Instagram automation tool with advanced content management and Instagram analytics features. These features allow you to schedule, manage, and monitor your Instagram campaign.
With Iconosquare, sorting your best-performing posts based on likes, comments, views, reach, and more becomes easy on Instagram. It also allows you to track your audience as per location, language, impressions, etc.
It is popularly known for its community-building features to help brands understand their audience better. The analytical insights help understand the campaign performance on different social media platforms.
Pricing:
Iconosquare provides a 14-day free trial, after which it charges a minimum of $59 per month for a single user. If you want to use it for a team or more, the price ranges from $99/month or more.
Key Features:
- Content Management and Scheduling: Iconosquare helps you plan and schedule your content ahead of time on Instagram for any time in the future.
- Exportable Instagram Reports: You can download and share your analytics and reports based on 100+ metrics and KPIs.
- Competitor Monitoring: It not only helps you monitor your own campaign performance but your competitors too.
- Community Building: Building a community and growing is easy on Instagram with Iconosquare, which offers analytics on language, age, and gender.
- Team Collaboration: Collaborate with teammates for better workflow and fast process and take easy Instagram post approval from clients.
Although Iconosquare claims to be an AI-powered tool, it has not shown much advancement except for its listening feature. If you wish actually to automate your Instagram, AI can be a major helping hand.
Pros
- The user experience is positive with its easy-to-use interface from beginners to pro.
- Sprout Social helps you keep track of your social media campaign with in-depth analytics and insights.
Verified User
Iconosquare makes it easy for my team to schedule content across multiple social channels, tag content, and analyze metrics.
Cons
- Being an analytics tool, Iconosquare does not have sufficient metrics and KIPs to track.
- Marketers need to resize images every time they schedule it through Iconosquare.
Verified User
Have a limitation on auto-publishing, ex, the size of the image or video should be less than 8MB, and there is no filtration of the received if it is positive or negative
Tailwind is a popular Instagram automation tool. It also supports Pinterest and Facebook. There are in-built design capabilities for you to create high-quality posts. These designs are optimized as per platform too.
There is a personalized drag and drop grid for easy manual scheduling. Tailwind’s SmartSchedule shares your post when your target audience is most active on Instagram, hence boosting your reach and engagement.
Pros
- The hashtag monitoring feature is impressive.
- Unsplash integration is quite handy for posting stock images. These can be further edited within the tool itself.
- You can also find ready-to-use posts that are ideal for your business.
- Smart bio is a promising feature of Tailwind.
Marion Nixon
I love Tailwind. It’s one of the few subscriptions I pay for! It’s 100% worth it – it saves me so much time and makes time-consuming work an efficient process. So useful for my online business.
Cons
- It is a time-consuming tool as loading is quite slow.
- UI can be improvised into something intuitive.
Verified reviewer
All I wanted was an app that would post social media posts I scheduled in advance: simple. But Tailwind still makes one leave the app, go to Instagram, find the photo on your phone, copy in the caption, add tags and location, and all the work of posting without the app, no value added. I realized it was only a waste of time!
Conclusion
Managing social media marketing on Instagram can be quite cumbersome. From strategizing, and providing customer service, to being consistent, there are loads of things to do.
That’s why businesses rely on Instagram automation tools to cater to an audience ranging in billions. There’s no surprise why Instagram marketing has picked up its pace now, with so many people using it daily.
It becomes more imperative than ever to maintain your presence on this platform. While there are a lot many Instagram tools you could use, a wise decision would be to pick one that helps you tackle all your social media marketing needs.
That’s where SocialPilot lends you a hand. SocialPilot is a cost-effective social media marketing solution that helps you save time by automating most of your tasks so that you’re free to work on crucial things.
Take up the SocialPilot 14-day trial period without wasting any time and see the benefits yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best tools for Instagram automation?
The best Instagram automation tools are:
- SocialPilot: All-in-one social media marketing automation tool
- Later: Instagram automation tool for post scheduling
- Sprout Social: Tool to automate scheduling and social listening.
- Kicksta: Help you gain real authentic followers with an online presence
- Upleap: Tool to help you grow your account automatically
- Iconosquare: Automate community building and analytics.
- Tailwind: Scheduling tool with optimized design capabilities
Does SocialPilot offer direct Instagram automation?
Yes, it does! With SocialPilot, you can directly post to your Instagram business accounts. Schedule images, reels, stories, and video posts hassle-free without any external tools or reminders.
Should I buy followers on Instagram?
Though it might seem like an alluring option, buying followers doesn’t promise engagement. Instead you can invest in Instagram automation tools like SocialPilot that will help you to remain consistent on the platform.
What can you automate on Instagram?
You can automate messaging, posting, scheduling, liking, commenting, and following using Instagram automation tools.
What are the best tools for Instagram?
There are quite a few tools available for Instagram like:
- Canva for design and editing purposes
- SocialPilot for scheduling posts, analytics, and management
- EmbedSocial for integrating Instagram feed to websites
- Promo for video editing
What is the best Instagram planner?
SocialPilot is one of the best Instagram planners that can facilitate posting schedules at the best time and garnering more reach and engagement.
About the Author
SocialPilot
$30
Per month
SocialPilot is your best bet as an Instagram automation and analytics tool if you are on a spree to make it big on the platform. You need not fret and risk your aesthetic feed, as the tool has loads of features that ensure your post is optimized for the platform.
With SocialPilot, you can directly plan and schedule Instagram posts, Stories, and Reels to your Instagram account for a desired time and date.
All you need is to connect your Instagram account, design your posts, and queue them for publishing.
SocialPilot offers several Instagram-specific features that help you to streamline your Instagram content creation. However, it also allows you to monitor your page’s performance, and manage all conversations collaboratively with your team.
You can centralize the management of all your Instagram marketing activities for multiple accounts from the same space with SocialPilot.
Best for:
Marketing Agencies, SMBs, Multi-Location Brands & Professionals
SocialPilot Instagram Automation Features
There are many capabilities that make SocialPilot one of the best Instagram automation tools.
Instagram Scheduling
Publish Reels, Stories, & Carousels from one space
Analytics
Drive your decisions with detailed Instagram analytics
Engagement
Use Social Inbox to keep track of open conversations
AI Assistant
Craft compelling Instagram captions for engagement with AI
Collaboration
Work seamlessly with team and clients for stellar results
Auto-Scheduled Reports
Automate delivering reports on profile performance to clients
These core functions are milestones for making SocialPilot an ideal social Instagram automation tool for businesses.
However, you need to take a closer look into all the features to understand why SocialPilot is considered a complete Instagram tool.
Other Key Features:
SocialPilot Pricing
SocialPilot offers a 14-day free trial and access to all premium features (no credit card required & cancel any time). Choose a plan that fits your needs.
$170.00/mo
$85.00/mo
$42.50/mo
$25.50/mo
What People Say About Us
Ken K
I have used SocialPilot for the last 3 years and this platform has everything I need. I appreciate how well they communicate and how well the software has grown. The analytics are straightforward and easy. The inclusion of Instagram has been an added welcome that we enjoy and I would stay with them. The team is very on top of things and makes sure all issues are sorted asap. I like how fast they deal with any issues.
Diana H
LOVE being able to design and post on multiple social platforms. SocialPilot is easy to use and I’m able to see how each post performs on each platform. Their newly designed dashboard lets me preview the post before scheduling it, which was a feature I had requested when they asked for ideas from their customers. Looking forward to continuing using SocialPilot and how they will continually upgrade their software!