Businesses of all sizes need a power-packed social media presence on multiple platforms. But often, small biz owners hesitate to invest in social media management tools and rely on manual posting.
Result? They end up wasting lots of effort sharing erroneous posts with no analytics to quantify ROI. Sounds like an absolute nightmare!
But there are tools that are pretty affordable without any dip in performance. Scaling up and getting more customers on board is no longer a pricey affair.
Now the question of the hour is how do you decide which tool will suit your needs and fit into your budget to manage social media accounts?
In this blog, we shall zero down 24 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.
Ready? Let’s begin!
Agorapulse is a robust and powerful tool that helps small businesses with social media profile management, community build-up, and moderation. Agorapulse has a user-friendly interface that can be easily implemented right from the start. It offers flexibility, less learning time, and reputed customer support.
Additionally, it can integrate with all the major social media networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. The tool can generate complete reports, schedule posts, conduct competitor analysis, and automate user engagement. Its notable features include:
Agorapulse offers plans for small businesses starting at $99/month when billed monthly and $79 when billed annually. This plan provides ten social profiles, two team members, up to 300 active ads monitoring, and email support.
Alex F.
Being built like an inbox system, being able to “review” or check off my mentions, posts, etc., to reach Inbox Zero feels rewarding, and I’m confident I didn’t miss anything. It’s another great feature I enjoy.
What do I dislike about Agorapulse?
Unfortunately, the reporting is pretty weak. We actually use another third-party app to pull .csv files for loading into Google Sheets and Google Data Studio. Agorapulse will allow you to export mostly PowerPoints (which aren’t that pretty) and some .csv files for very basic social metrics. I’m also not sure there are any real metrics for paid advertising as well.
Known for boosting efficiency on social media, Hootsuite alternatives.
Still, Hootsuite offers a wide range of tools for social media management which include:
You can schedule posts ahead of time and get all content ready for a specific time frame in just a single session. Hootsuite also offers advanced reporting that can help you identify which campaigns perform nicely and give you accurate data to calculate ROI.
Hootsuite subscription starts at $49/month and offers 10 social media profiles for one user with unlimited scheduling, bulk scheduling, analytics, and a 30-day trial.
Verified Hootsuite User
I think the most helpful thing is that you can see all of the channels you want to in your streams. Also, the scheduling is super helpful when it comes to planning things out.
What do I dislike about Hootsuite?
I don’t like how difficult it is to post sometimes. Also, I have had multiple struggles getting reports over the last couple of months. There is a deep learning curve when using this tool. You must be constant when you want to learn how to use it. I feel it is a bit expensive for the amount of service it provides.
Buffer is a tool to share and manage social media accounts across popular platforms easily. Though it works prominently as a scheduling tool, Buffer allows you to leverage the social platform by posting content at a time when the members of your target audience are likely to be online. Buffer allows you to log into different social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google My Business, and more all at once.
The Buffer button on your browser helps you in sharing content instantly. You can share the link across different social networks or schedule it down the queue with a single click. It also offers seamless integration with Chrome, WordPress, and other essential tools. Some other exciting features of Buffer include:
It gives you the features mentioned above in a well-organized layout that is suitable for small businesses and new entrants in the field.
Buffer offers a free trial and a free version for individuals. Small businesses can get started with Buffer at $99/month and get 25 social accounts, all the features of the individual plan, RSS feeds, link shortening, tracking, calendar, and 2000 scheduled posts for each account.
Verified Buffer User
The design is clean and simple, allowing me to focus on the content I’m curating rather than on the platform I’m using to manage it.
What do I dislike about Buffer?
Team collaboration features are lacking some functionality that would help the team be more productive in suggesting, curating, editing, and approving content for distribution. Costs prohibit us from increasing to larger team packages (5 team members is a little too small for our situation).
This AI-based social media management software can help you turn your content 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:
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:
eClincher’s premier plan is priced at $119/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.
Sendible is a social media management tool that elevates your brand story on social media. 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 that includes the following set of features:
Sendible’s most popular plan is priced at $199/month, with which you can connect up to 49 social media profiles and add up to 7 of your team members with access to building 35 custom reports.
Sendible User
Scheduling content in this social media management platform is easy; however, if you own multiple business accounts for different clients, managing all the streams is complicated compared to other tools in the market.
What do I dislike about Sendible?
I don’t like the monitor and measure features; I consider them limited. The features are there, but the layout and configuration of the platform are not that user-friendly, especially if you run content for different clients. You can not see the posts that you have already posted and see the engagement live. You have an inbox, though, where you see the comments, but it is not as visual as it could be.
This social media management tool gives more importance to content and scheduling, emphasizing its social performance.CoSchedule is known for how well one can organize their content with the calendar feature. It has a ReQueue feature that automatically fills the queue with the best-performing posts.
CoSchedule supports Facebook, Twitter, 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:
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 marketing aid, this social media management 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:
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.
An Instagram engrossed social media management tool – Later helps you visually plan your social media postings. It’s a visual-first social media management platform built for sharing photos, videos, and stories. You can search for content and hashtags if you are out of ideas. Later only lets you manage 6 social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Twitter.
This social media management tool has a feature where it can help turn your Instagram profile into a mini-website with Linkin.bio. It exactly looks like your Instagram profile but where you can track clicks and engagement effectively. Other Later features include:
Later offers an entirely free plan making it the best free social media management tool. Besides this, their advanced plan is priced at $40/month, where one can manage up to 6 social media profiles with 6 team members.
Joe K.
I like Later and everything it brings to improve the management of our digital marketing. Scheduling the publication of visual content couldn’t be easier and faster.
What do I dislike about Later?
It’s a powerful tool for posting content to the more visual and illustrative social networks like Instagram, Tiktok, etc. But a little less practical when it comes to other social networks that involve more textual content like Twitter, Facebook, etc.
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:
The advanced Tailwind plan for 2 users is priced at $39.9/month, with which you can connect 2 Pinterest and 2 Instagram 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:
MeetEdgar is priced at a flat $49/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:
Post Planner is priced at $34/month, with which you can manage up to 25 social media profiles with 4 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:
Loomly’s standard plan is priced at $76/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 $159/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.
Falcon.io is a cloud-based social media tool for managers that can push your brand’s success. It leverages features like social media listening to make you a proactive brand, so you never miss out on any engagement. Falcon.io lets you manage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
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 Falcon gives its users are:
Falcon’s pricing starts at $129/month per seat, which includes 5 social media channels. The monthly price drops to $108 when billed annually for the same plan.
Falcon User
I like that the calendar is clearly visible and fairly easy to manage. I also like that you have access to all/any accounts you manage without having to log in several times. They also have pretty great customer service reps who have helped a ton.
What do I dislike about Falcon.io?
I don’t like that you can’t post the same thing to multiple channels in one easy sweep. I don’t like that there are many missing metrics or they’re not just summed up for you. Our channels are constantly disconnecting, which doesn’t post scheduled content and doesn’t track data for that time until you re-connect.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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 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:
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.
Nuvi is a customer experience management tool 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 Nuvi’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 Nuvi are as follows:
Nuvi 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 Nuvi?
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.
Still fussing over if social media management tools are worth the spend? The concern is obvious!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Social media management tools for small businesses are:
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:
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.
The best alternatives to the Lately social media management tool are SocialPilot, Buffer, and Hootsuite.
Social media management tools have multiple benefits like:
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SocialPilot
SocialPilot is one of the simple and cost-effective social media management tools for small businesses and agencies that helps them to 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 My Business, Vk, and Tumblr. It is popular among small businesses because of its cost-effectiveness, intuitive UI, and exceptional customer support (24×5).
SocialPilot is the best social media management tool 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 and discover curated content.
What People Say About Us
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.