We get it. Getting yourself (or your brand) out there in the social media realm can be daunting. When we started our online business, choosing from the many social media management tools out there was our first source of real existential terror.
That’s why we’ve put together this list of the best social media management tools for any price, business size, or situation.
Social media management is not a one-size-fits all problem. So we have gathered up the most important information from dozens of sites, reviews, and forums to help you figure out which social media management tool is right for your situation. By the end of this post, you’ll know exactly which social media management tool will best serve you and your business.
But first, a little TLDR…
The Best Social Media Management Tools: Fast Answers
Our top choice (but only for Pinterest and Instagram):
Tailwind (Free or $19 per month)
Our top choice for overall:
If you are a Small Business Owner and can’t spend more than $30 per month:
If you are a Small Business Owner and can’t spend more than $80 per month:
If you can afford $120 per month (and could use SEO and content marketing thrown in):
If you are a blogger looking to dominate Pinterest:
If you are a serious blogger that needs to dominate many different platforms and marketing channels:
If you’re just starting out and need to watch your budget:
AgoraPulse’s Free Plan
What is Social Media Marketing Anyway?
Simply put, social media marketing is how you, as a small business owner, leverage various social media platforms to increase exposure to your product.
Social media marketing is something every business, big or small, has to leverage for better outreach. If you are a small business or startup owner, that is all the more reason for your business to have social media support.
After all, there were 1.3 million new users joining social media every single day in 2020. And 54% of these users on social media use these channels to research products before purchase.
So, you can imagine the power of social media as a marketing channel and the reach that it can give you.
But, when you are managing your own business, the last thing you need is the headache of also managing your social media accounts. You’ve got enough to do already. So…
Social media management software is here to save the day. It’s like having your own advertising assistant (only way cheaper).
What is Social Media Management Software?
Social media management software is designed to help you manage, monitor, and engage your audience through your social media channels. They usually allow you to manage more than one social media channel from a single platform.
You can share content and schedule sharing to all your social media accounts from the tool itself. The same post can also be shared on all your social media accounts at once.
You can even respond to comments on your posts and direct messages as well.
Social media management software is also great for collaboration if you have a social media team, or maybe more than one person managing your social accounts.
There are tons of options out there (enough to make your head spin) so let’s untangle this mess and find the best tool for your business.
What Makes a Great Social Media Management Tool?
Ok, this is a bit subjective. It will depend on you, your management style, and the size of your business.
But some things are common to all of the best social media management tools. First we’ll look at the features you will probably want (no matter your size or style) and then dive into the specifics below.
Publishing and Scheduling
A good social media management tool should have a publishing and a scheduling option. Why?
This helps you manage the act of posting on your social media accounts so you control what and when you post. With automated posting you can set the posting time of each individual social stream.
This not only saves you time but also presents you or your business as consistent and reliable, willing to engage with your audience.
And this allows you to test your timing. You might better interact by posting early or late, often or sporadically. You will never know what works best for your business or your niche until you test it out.
Unified Social Inbox
If you are managing more than one social media account through your social media management tool, it is important to have a unified social inbox.
A unified social inbox is basically all the inboxes of your different social accounts combined into one common dashboard.
That way, you can view all your direct messages in one place and respond to them as well. The inbox should also show any comments on your post or mentions of your page on the social channel.
This is particularly helpful because you don’t have to keep logging in and out of your different accounts. It also reduces your chances of missing a comment or a message and ensures that you can follow all your social conversations and engage with your audience from a single platform.
Integrated RSS Feeds
An integrated RSS feed ability in your social media management tool helps you link content on one social media account to another.
Using an RSS feed, you can link the different social channels. So, if you are posting something on Facebook it automatically updates to all the other linked social media channels.
Or when you publish a new post on your blog, you can share it on your social media accounts as well.
In that case, having an integrated RSS feed automatically shares the post on social media so you don’t have to manually go to every social media channel and update your feed.
This can be great for increasing views on a post and growing your reach, as well as saving time.
Social Monitoring
For businesses to grow or to create better marketing campaigns, they need to keep track of what is going on around them. This can be best done on social media.
But, monitoring each social media channel to see what is trending is not practical. You’d spend all day clicking and get nothing done.
So what’s a budding social media marketer to do?
A good social media management tool should have some sort of social monitoring baked in. The social monitoring tool can keep track of all the conversations, keywords, hashtags, and accounts relevant to the business.
In short, it helps keep track of the key social metrics you need (such as brand awareness or your share of audience on the social media channels) so you can quickly and easily assess your social media positioning.
Social monitoring can give you valuable insights about the position of your business on the social channels as well as that of your competitors.
Speaking of competitors…
Competitor Analysis
There is competition on social media too. Competition for traffic, ad placements, followers, shares, you name it. A competitor analysis tool in your social media management suite shows how your accounts perform in comparison to your competitors.
You won’t need to keep track of what your competitors are doing, since the tool will give you the reports from time to time.
It’s like your own personal spy team.
This serves double duty as well:
Not only do you get to easily keep tabs on the competition, but you also have a fresh and constant supply of new content ideas.
What do I mean?
Let’s say your main competitor makes a post and sends it out to all of their social media channels (through their social media marketing tool, of course).
Now let’s say you take a peek at that article and few thoughts run through your mind:
- “I disagree!” I have different experience or evidence and I think I could write a more honest/insightful post!
- “I agree, but you did a poor job of explaining yourself” I can write a better post!
- “You left out X, Y, and Z!” I can add and expand to that post to offer my customers a better experience!
Each new post made by your competitors can (and often does, for us) add several new ideas to our content calendar.
Campaign Tracking
I won’t lie. Social media marketing is work.
You will launch ‘campaigns’ on social media for your business to garner some attention. To ensure that you are getting the desired results from a campaign, and to make this process as easy as possible, campaign monitoring is essential.
A good social media management tool should have a built-in campaign tracking feature that gives you insights into your social media marketing campaigns. It can track how your ads are performing, how users are finding your page on social media, and much more.
If you’re serious about growing via social media, you need some way to track your campaigns.
Custom Reporting
Last but not least, a social media management tool should have a customizable reporting feature.
Custom reporting in a social media management tool gives regular updates and insights on various aspects of your social media marketing efforts.
You can choose which areas you want the reports to focus on and what metrics you want to use in order to get a comprehensive report of your performance.
The goal is to have all the info you need in the format that makes the most sense to you.
Best Social Media Management Tools
With that out of the way, let’s look at some of the best social media management tools available and figure out what will work best for you.
Remember, we want you to find the best option for you. That means we will be looking at the specific features of each.
For each option we have listed prices, pros, and cons. We have done our best to give you an unbiased, aggregate view of the many many personal reviews we have read for each of these, plus our personal preferences were applicable.
What does all that mean?
What follows is actual information from actual users, not blurbs from sales teams or ads.
Also, please be sure to click through to any sites that might work for you and double check our work. Pricing and features change constantly so please be careful!
Best Social Media Management Tools for Startups, Home-based Business
Let’s start with our (personally speaking) favorite…
Tailwind
Why do we love Tailwind so much?
It’s cheap. It’s easy. It is extremely good at what it does. This should be the first stop for anyone building a new small or home-based business.
Tailwind is a social media scheduling tool for Pinterest and Instagram. The app recommends the best time to post and the best hashtags to use on Instagram. It also helps create amazing pins for your content.
You can schedule pins for an entire week in less than fifteen minutes. As you know, here at Three Month Millionaire, we love anything that lets us accomplish a lot in very little time.
Tailwind does that in spades.
It also offers analytics and insights such as Top Pins Report, Pin Inspector, and Board Insights to show how your Pinterest and Instagram accounts are performing.
We have heard stories of people who credit all of their profitability to Tailwind. As in, they weren’t making a dime until they invested in Tailwind.
Price:
Free:
Tailwind does offer a Free Forever plan, and it’s great, don’t get me wrong. But if you’re going to use Pinterest and Instagram to extend your reach you are going to need more than 20 posts per month.
FYI: Here’s a quick comparison of the free plans that are out there.
- Tailwind Free: 20 posts per month
- Crowdfire Free: 10 posts per month
- Agorapulse Free: 40 posts per month
- SEMRush Free: 10 posts per month
Pro Plan:
This is better if you are just starting out and getting your feet wet with Pinterest and Instagram. Even so, 100 posts per month (divided between Pinterest and Instagram) isn’t nearly as many as it sounds.
Most of you will probably end up upgrading out of the Pro Plan fairly quickly.
I’d really only recommend it if you don’t have very much content at first and your plan is to slowly expand into this space.
Advanced Plan:
This is probably going to be the sweet spot for most of you. If you are following along with what we’re doing here at Three Month Millionaire (meaning, you are building a million dollar business that you run from your home in less than three months per year) your size and scale will probably fit nicely into this plan.
You get 1,000 posts per month (again divided between Pinterest and Instagram) and while I hesitate to say ‘that’s plenty’ it is a comfortable amount. You would really have to hustle to fit more than that amount of posting into our two-hour-per-day time limit.
BUT the real reason this is the sweet spot isn’t the number of posts you get per month…
It’s the unlimited access to Tailwind Communities. These are basically giant think-tanks made of people just like you, in niches just like yours, facing the same struggles you face. You get to learn from each other, find what works, what doesn’t, and just generally make everyone’ life better.
Seriously, I wish I had a way to quantify the networking power behind those communities. For some of you, these communities might actually be more valuable than the scheduled posting and analytics.
Max Plan:
The Max Plan is $39 per month and is probably overkill for a lot of you, and you could probably save a few dollars by sticking with the Advanced Plan.
The Max Plan would be right for you if you had multiple sites that you are bringing into the visual search space.
Or if you work with a social media team and need multiple accounts.
Tailwind Pros:
- Price! $19 per month is a steal for what you get on the Advanced plan.
- Ease of scheduling I literally don’t know how people would get seen on pinterest without being able to schedule pins to consistently stay in front of people’s eyeballs
- Tutorials and Education – People rave about the tutorials and educational material with Tailwind. I have heard several people say they would have happily paid $19/month for the training alone because they didn’t have to spend hours learning a new product.
- SmartLoop – Suggests content and timing for you. When you fall behind in your content (and who doesn’t from time to time?) SmartLoop will keep you from missing a beat
- Chrome and Safari Extensions Make it easy to save and share ideas on the fly, even when your working on something else entirely
Tailwind Cons:
- No Twitter or Facebook – But then, I know of people in certain niches that forsake Twitter and Facebook entirely because Pinterest and Instagram have them covered, so this one might depend on your niche and style. (BTW, if/when Tailwind adds coverage to these two, I predict it will dominate the world of small business social media management.)
- Navigational Complaints – A few feel that the navigation within the Tailwind site is not intuitive. Some say it’s overly complex. Others love it. Food for thought.
- Learning Curve – Some have complained of a steep learning curve. I feel this is a minority complaint, but I’ll add it here for the sake of completeness. I don’t see this complaint crop up often, so it could be a personal preference.
Tailwind is THE way to conquer Pinterest. It is also one of (if not the) fastest way to go from zero to tangible social media results.
However, if Pinterest’s visual search doesn’t work for your niche or product, there is still a solid low-cost easy-to-use option out there…
Sked Social (For When You NEED Twitter and Facebook)
Sked Social picks up where Tailwind leaves off (with some overlap, as you will see).
I will tell you up front that Sked Social is more expensive than Tailwind, and when it comes to Pinterest and Instagram, Tailwind is our choice bar none.
But…
Sked Social also works with Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and Linkedin… AND they bill themselves as THE Instagram scheduler.
If you are a small business, or are just getting started, the $25 per month price tag of Sked Social can seem steep. But if Twitter and Facebook need to be part of your marketing plan right now, then Sked Social is a good fit for you.
Price:
Sked Social Pros:
- Ease of Use – People generally praise Sked Social for its ease of use and intuitive design
- Automatic Posting ‘carousel’ – The ability to set a number of posts and just let them rotate into circulation over time
- Honestly… I’m having trouble coming up with a third ‘Pro’. Sked’s place here is a wider-reaching Tailwind for people who don’t want to spend money on the next tier of social media marketing. It’s fine. My subjective feeling is that about 50% of its users would recommend it to others.
Sked Social Cons:
- Glitchy / Buggy – Many complain that uploading is often glitchy or buggy. This is frustrating enough as it is, but it is compounded by…
- Poor Customer Service – We have encountered many people complaining about the poor customer service of Sked Social.
- Poor Perceived Value – Generally the most common complaint we found in our research was that people just didn’t feel like Sked Social was worth the money. We personally see this in comparison to the $10 or $20 plans offered by Tailwind, but many feel like they should have just paid for one of the more expensive options we’ll get to in a moment.
Final Thoughts Social Media Management for Startups and Home-based Businesses
Tailwind is our go to choice. We think its value is far beyond its cost (it’s one of the highest Value/Cost ratios of anything in this post, up there with big-time players like AgoraPulse and SEMRush).
Sked Social is also fine, but only if Facebook and Twitter need to be managed by a third party tool.
Best Social Media Management Tool for Bootstrappers and The Budget-Constrained
Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a very well connected social media management tool. It works with any and all of the major social media channels out there.
It has all of the features that you would expect from a good social media management tool and it does its job well.
Why is it our top pick for bootstrappers and the budget-constrained?
It’s cheap!
Crowdfire offers a free plan (although it is fairly limited at just 10 scheduled posts per month) and it’s Plus plan can be as low as $7.50 per month if you pay annually.
Crowdfire is generally well received and well reviewed. It doesn’t garner the ecstatic praise that Tailwind does, but it also doesn’t get the complaints that Sked Social does.
All-in-all Crowdfire is good (not great; aggregated user reviews average out around 3.7 out of 5) and cheap. If you need to get into the social media space and want to save as much money as possible, Crowdfire is the right choice for you.
Price:
Crowdfire Pros:
- Know your followers – You can see who is following you and use demographics data to really hone in on your customer base
- Know your unfollowers – You can also see who has unfollowed you and their demographics data. Both of these are great for fine tuning your marketing decisions in the future
- User Interface – Has been described as “Simple” and “Friendly” and generally just easy to use
Crowdfire Cons:
- Customer Support Complaints – Mostly these hover around Crowdfire’s no-refund policy (which we see as a bit of a red-flag).
- Automation concerns – Some users report that some social accounts are less automatic (and require more babysitting) than others.
- Forced Limitations – Even on the highest paid plans there are forced limitations on the number of posts you can schedule and the number of followers you can track.
Final Thoughts on Social Media Management Tools for Bootstrappers and the Budget-Constrained
We really understand what it is to start a business on a shoestring budget.
Crowdfire can definitely help in that regard. Just remember, you are looking at a budget option here. Things won’t be perfect and may not be worth the bargain price (see the above update)
Also remember that there other completely free options out there:
Reminder: Here’s a quick comparison of the free plans that are out there.
- Tailwind Free: 20 posts per month
- Crowdfire Free: 10 posts per month
- Agorapulse Free: 40 posts per month
- SEMRush: 10 posts per month
Best Mid-Range Social Media Marketing Tool ($20-$40 per month)
Ok, so you’ve got your business established. You’re making some money and you’re ready to invest in social media and its management.
At this price point, you can expect a more well-rounded experience, better customer support, smoother integrations. All-in-all, you are paying for a more solidly built machine.
And you should adjust your expectations accordingly. You should demand more of these services.
Allright, let’s see what we have:
Sked Social
Technically Sked Social falls into this price point, but it doesn’t quite fit. I want to mention it here for the sake of completeness, but see our review above (under best Social Media Management for Startups and Home-Based Businesses) for details.
In short, Sked Social just doesn’t feel like it can run with the rest of these.
SocialPilot (Our top pick for this price point)
Socialpilot offers social media management across several social channels with unlimited scheduling and posting. It also offers powerful analytics and reports to track performance and help with data-driven decisions to improve your audience engagement.
Socialpilot can curate content and RSS feeds to bring you new content ideas as well. The bulk posting feature allows you to upload several posts in advance.
All things considered,
Price:
SocialPilot Pros:
- Social Inbox – This is generally touted as SocialPilot’s greatest asset and what sets it apart from competitors. Some of the features are limited at the lowest price level, so to really get the most out of it you may need the Small Team plan or greater.
- Endless streams of content – SocialPilot makes it easy to find content and add it to your calendar.
- Visualized content calendar – The most intuitive and efficient way to visualize your content time in this price bracket. You can then automate your postings in a way that does not seem automated (meaning, you keep the ‘human touch’).
SocialPilot Cons:
- Occasional Bugginess – Mainly with Instagram, but SocialPilot is constantly updating the software so these problems might be taken care of by the time you try it.
- User interface – Some complain about the interface and the amount of clicking it takes to get to where they want to go. It’s not that the interface is hard, per se, just not as efficient as it could be.
- Honestly – I’m having trouble coming up with other cons. I’ve seen some bad customer service reviews out there, but they have mostly been from overly-emotional customers demanding unrealistic things (A one star review I read demanded a full refund of five years’ service because their sales numbers didn’t increase). Maybe we’ll add Price because it only makes it into this category because of the cheapest option they have.
CoSchedule
CoSchedule is not only a world-class social media management system, it’s a world-class management system. We have seen several reports of people switching to CoSchedule from Asana and Trello.
We like to think of it as buying a social media management system, and getting project and teams management systems for free.
It has a headline analyzer feature that helps choose search-optimized headlines for your posts. It is a great tool for collaboration as well. It offers a calendar organizer, content organizer, work organizer, and asset organizer to streamline your content creation and posting.
People tend to also praise CoSchedule for its ease of use and its customizability options.
Overall, CoSchedule is well reviewed (aggregate reviews tend to hover around 4.5 stars out of five) and well received.
Price:
One of the great things about CoSchedule is the simplicity of its pricing. There is only one plan. Everyone gets everything for the same price.
CoSchedule Pros:
- Fills the Gaps – You rarely (maybe even never) hear anyone complain about social platforms that CoSchedule can’t do.
- Intuitive – People praise how this feels like it is especially built for them and their job.
- Reliable – Many other platforms on this site have reports of bugs or things getting ‘stuck’ but CoSchedule seems to be free of such complaints. It seems solidly built.
CoSchedule Cons:
- Upsells / Price – The $29 per month price tag is absolutely worth it. BUT, there are tons of other tools and features produced by CoSchedule that they will try to upsell you on. Don’t get me wrong, most of those are worth it too. Users just often feel that they end up sending a lot of money to CoSchedule (but they also tend to love the services). I think this is just poor customer experience design on CoSchedule’s behalf.
- Too focused on social media marketing – Coschedule has been a bit confusing in its advertising and many come to the scheduling software expecting it to do other things. They have been misled by CoSchedule’s confusing structure. If you go into the Marketing Calendar expecting social media management, then the other features you do see are a bonus! But many feel like they paid $29 and should have access to everything.
- Lack of video options – Several users have wished for more functionality in the video space, especially Youtube.
FInal Thoughts on Social Media Management Tools ($20-40 per month)
SocialPilot gets our vote here because it just garners a higher order of praise from its users. People are very happy with it and some very large businesses use it and never feel the need to move on to any other option.
CoSchedule is a solid choice as well, but we feel its whole pricing and feature structure is confusing. Also, people just don’t seem to praise it the way SocialPilot users do. In other words, CoSchedule users seem to be a bit more ‘meh’ about the software.
BUT, CoScehdule is also much more than just a social media management tool. They can help you with tons of other stuff. It may be worth it to you to keep all of your tool within one company.
Best Mid-Range Social Media Management Tools ($40-$80 per month)
At this price point, the competition is getting tough. Excellence in social media management is required.
We also expect a higher standard when it comes to analytics.
So, if you are in a niche that requires advanced analysis or you desire lots of experimentation in your social marketing, you might want to focus on this price range and up.
Iconosquare
Iconosquare has built a solid reputation around its practical usefulness (They have a post carousel that people love), its analytics and demographic tools, and its customer service.
However, there is a huge glaring omission:
Pinterest.
Of course, you could sign up for Tailwind to fill in the gap. Or maybe Pinterest just isn’t part of your marketing plan.
If that’s the case, read on!
Price:
Iconosquare Pros:
- Data Data Data – Most of the value of Iconosquare is found in the data it gives you. People often report that Iconosquare helped them uncover new markets by getting to know their customers better.
- Idea Generation – Closely related to the last point, the analytics Iconosquare offer let you better predict how your customers will react and engage with certain types of content, giving you endless ideas for your content calendar
- Support / User Experience – From the general experience of using Iconosquare to the support staff, reviews for overall experience have been great. Problems are rare, but when they happen, most people are happy with the service they receive.
Iconosquare Cons:
- Price – Far and away the most common complaint.
- No Pinterest – If Pinterest is crucial, go with Tailwind (or another all-in-one)
- Mobile Problems – The mobile app seems to give some users trouble from time to time.
- Cumbersome – Some users report a cumbersome or illogical workflow. Nothing too serious, but enough that you can feel bogged down trying to find things.
AgoraPulse
Agorapulse is a social media management tool that lets you manage your social media messages, get useful analytics and demographic reports and schedule and publish content.
So basically everything we’ve come to expect…
But, AgoraPulse also has tools to let you identify key influencers and manage it all from a single dashboard. Generally people praise AgoraPulse’s user experience. It feels less cumbersome than Iconosquare.
Agorapulse currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
They do have a free trial that lasts 30 days (but lacks their Twitter sync). And they have a few free tools including Easy Advocacy (employee advocacy / sharing) and AdsReport (Facebook Ads reporting).
But there is one giant omission (just like with Iconosquare)…
No Pinterest.
All things considered, this is our favorite social media marketing tool for this price bracket, and reviews around the web back that up.
Price:
AgroaPulse Pros:
- Higher level of customer interaction – AgoraPulse makes it easier for you to comment on, respond to, or otherwise interact with your customer base. Not only does this increase customer engagement, it also helps fight that ‘robot’ feeling that social media auto schedulers can have.
- Tangible proof of success – Of all the social media market tools in this article, we have seen the most objective evidence of increased sales coming from AgoraPulse (meaning people can objectively connect switching to AgoraPulse to an increase in engagement and sales). This is probably due to the ease of interaction you have with your users. It adds a special layer to a tool that otherwise can become robotic.
- “Social Listening” – All of the social media marketing tools from this price point and up have the ability to gather demographic data on your customers (with varying degrees of success) but AgoraPulse’s analytics take this to another level. When people talk about switching to AgoraPulse this is the number one reason they cite.
AgoraPulse Cons:
- Minor and Petty Things – AgoraPulse is generally well liked and well reviewed. (It made digging up negative reviews tricky). Most of the negative reviews around the web are for very small, dare I say ‘nitpicky’ things. Things like ‘when I click X I want Z to happen, not Y’.
- Instagram problems – Some users have reported complaints with Instagram. Mostly trouble with Instagram Direct Messages, but a quick search of AgoraPulses’s support page tells me that you need to have at least 1,000 followers for Direct Messaging to become available.
- Mobile App – The mobile app is not as user friendly as the main site. We haven’t seen any direct complaints (like, “This app is terrible 0 stars”) but people express the wish that it was as smooth as the site.
FInal Thoughts on Social Media Management Tools ($40-$80 per month)
AgoraPulse eeks out our top vote for this price bracket, but only slightly. Either of these are bound to make you happy.
But seriously, what’s with the lack of Pinterest support at this level?
Best High-End Social Media Management Tool ($80-$120)
Ok, these are the big guys. They are expensive, but they are powerful. These set the Industry standard and are used by some seriously successful businesses.
Needless to say, our expectations are high.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social boasts a line of serious users. This is a big league piece of software.
That being said, Sprout Social is also very approachable for small and medium-sized businesses. It has the power and service to keep even universities happy, but is completely within reach of even small businesses.
Even though Sprout Social is well-established and has an impressive lineup, we should point out that the aggregate reviews for Sprout Social are actually less than the slightly cheaper AgoraPulse. It’s not enough that we’re worried about it, though.
Price:
Sprout Social Pros:
- The Usual – Sprout does just about everything that everyone else does. It has been around a long time, it is well established. Social Inbox, Social analytics, everything from our list at the beginning of this article is available with Sprout Social. But then, for this price point, it had better or we wouldn’t suggest it.
- Firmly Established Player – You will get a higher level of experience out of Sprout Social. Full stop. They retain the best talent. They maintain the best customer support team. They have very firmly entrenched themselves in this space. There is no situation you could face that they have not seen before.
- Impressive Pedigree – Sprout Social is used by some very large businesses. Hotel chains, universities, nonprofits and charities, apparel companies, you name it. Sprout is clearly doing something very right. (They keep an updated list on their site).
Sprout Social Cons:
- Only 5 accounts!? – Seriously. Sprout Social costs a full $10 more per month than AgoraPulse, and it’s only going to give you five accounts?! To match the 10 accounts you get from AgoraPulse, you need to pay Sprout Social at least $149 per month. To get more than 10, you need to pay a la cart for them.
- Price – I know Sprout Social has been around a while, and I’m aware that it probably has the best customer service, but it just seems too expensive. It’s prohibitive to small businesses and you can just get more stuff elsewhere (see above comment on the number of accounts you get).
- No Drag and Drop – Software this large and prominent really should have function drag and drop. Users of Sprout Social are going to need to post in volume and drag and drop would really make things easier.
SEMRush
First let’s clear something up:
SEMRush probably doesn’t like me calling it a “Social Media Management Tool”.
Instead, they bill themselves as an “Online Visibility Management Tool”.
And, honestly, that title is well-deserved.
Here’s what sets SEMRush apart from everyone else on this list:
It does do social media management. But it also does search engine optimization as well. So SEMRush is a bit of a different animal than the others on this list.
It also boasts some seriously big clientele (Tesla, Forbes, Walmart). Honestly, if this sort of clout matters to you, SEMRush has Sprout Social beat.
Price:
SEMRush does offer a free plan. It is limited in its features and SEMRush does not do a very good job of making clear what those limitations are. At the time of this writing, you could not find any information about it on their website.
But according other sources, the main things we care about for this post is:
- You can track 5 social profile for free
- You can post to 2 profiles for free
- You can schedule up to 10 posts per month for free
SEMRush Pros:
First and foremost, we need to talk about value:
SEMRush is our pick for Best Value on this list. As a social media management tool, SEMRush has everything you need, but it is also…
- A world-class SEO research tool
- A content marketing tool
- A market research tool
- Paid Per Click advertising tool
- Website monetization tool
And seeing as the cost for SEMRush’s main competitor in the SEO research (ahrefs.com) alone is $99 per month, you can see why we feel SEMRush represents the best value on this page.
Other SEMRush Pros:
- The usual – SEMRush does all the social media management tricks you would expect (post scheduling, tracking, analytics) and it has the sort of customer support you would expect from a company that cites Tesla and Walmart as clients.
- Everything under one roof – The biggest selling point of them all. This is one tool that does the job of many. Having everything under one account simplifies processes, makes getting support easier, and just all-around makes life easier.
- Forward-thinking developers – SEMRush has been adding new features at regular clip for years and it shows no sign of stopping. That means that the SEMRush you sign up for today will only get better and more feature-rich over time.
SEMRush Cons:
- Jack of all trades – Master of none. Having so many features in one place almost necessarily means that SEMRush can never be the absolute best of any one of them. As far as social media management goes, the shortcomings are mostly in the demographics section. Scheduling and general analysis are just fine, but you can’t get the granularity you see in the specialized social media management tools on this page
- Expensive – While we believe that this is the best bang for your buck of anything on this page, you still have to put up a considerable amount of those bucks to start with. For you bootstrappers and startups, this can really hurt and we get that. If you don’t also need an SEO tool, you’d be better served by AgoraPulse. If you do need an SEO tool as well SEMRush is almost certainly better than getting a social media management tool AND Ahrefs or Moz
- Upsells – The Business Plan costs $450 per month AND they’ll charge you $100 per for additional users AND $200 more for their Trends feature AND another $100 for Their Agency Growth kit. Now, you probably don’t need any of these right now, but sheesh. That sort of pricing sends a message and it’s not flattering.
Other Social Media Management Tools Worth Mentioning
What follows is a list of other prominent social media management tools that are out there.
Some of these you’ve heard of. Some you haven’t.
Why don’t we give these the full treatment we gave the other tools?
Either we don’t feel they deserve their hype or we just don’t have the experience with them we need to make a full recommendation. You should still know about them to get a sense of the landscape. We have provided links to help you do any research you might want to do.
But ultimately, the tools listed above are the ones we feel most confident about.
Check back as we update and expand our reviews!
Buffer Publish
Buffer is one of the most popular social media management platforms preferred by large and small businesses alike.
Buffer Publish helps you plan your content for different social media channels and publish them on time. It supports all the major social networking channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Buffer helps manage your Stories on Instagram as well. Buffer Publish also adds a first comment to your Instagram posts. If you want to keep the hashtags out of your caption, you can include them in a comment when you schedule the post. Buffer will publish the comment along with the post.
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Great for handling multiple social media accounts
- Drag and drop publishing
- Analytics (although a bit on the basic side).
Cons:
- You need to re-authorize your social accounts from time to time
- Analytics feel to some users a bit on the shallow side. (They upsell you for better analytics)
- You have to manually switch to a free plan after the trial ends. This feels like a bait and switch to us and we don’t like it. You have enough to worry about and getting cheap-shotted into paying $15 a month feels sleezy.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite can automate publishing, content management, customer targeting, contact management, keyword filtering, and conversion tracking.
The Hootsuite platform also provides analytics on your social media performance and offers solutions in social media monitoring as well. It also supports and manages multiple accounts.
Pros:
Hootsuite is one of the most comprehensive social media management platforms out there. It’s got elaborate analytics and reporting features. It is perfect for small and medium businesses.
Cons:
If you want add-ons, it may get a little expensive. And some of the best features of the tool are, in fact, exclusive to the enterprise plan. Check what they offer. Check what you need. If you can get by without the enterprise exclusive features, you might be looking at a winner.
Zoho (If you have a whole social media team)
Zoho has a wide range of solutions in different areas of business, but may not be the best idea for small businesses who don’t need an entire social media team.
Zoho Social is their social media management tool. It offers all the social media management features that you would expect from a good social media management tool. These include automated publishing, customer engagement, post scheduling, content management, and brand tracking, among other things. It also provides some solid analytics and social media monitoring features.
More importantly, Zoho Social offers some great collaboration features, allowing teams to work together on the platform. It allows you to discuss popular posts with your team, share reports and work on campaigns together.
You can invite team members onboard and assign roles to each member on the platform, making it easier to track the work. You can even add clients as members separately on the platform with the Client Members option.
Since Zoho has so many other (non social media related) solutions covering various areas of business, integration becomes seamless. So Zoho needs to be considered as a holistic choice. There may be more value to you in combining its social media with its other offerings.
It’s a 2+2=5 situation.
One drawback, however, is that Zoho Social is not as easy to use as its popular counterparts and customization of features is difficult.
MeetEdgar
The problem with automated posting is that it might often look impersonal and detached. Your audience might realize that it is a robot posting on behalf of you. MeetEdgar aims to fix this.
MeetEdgar, also called Edgar, is a social media management tool that offers unlimited scheduling of posts and some very flexible automation options. The founders of Edgar claim to understand what small businesses need most and have designed the platform to specifically serve small businesses.
Pros:
All your social media posts are saved to a library of evergreen content that you can repurpose. In fact, Edgar automatically repurposes and republishes your posts if you add a recurring time slot. It allows you to auto-generate variations of the same post for different platforms. You can add your content to the evergreen library on the platform. So, even if you don’t have the time to schedule a post someday, Edgar can choose and post from the archive.
Con:
I don’t know that I would call MeetEdgar a ‘social media management’ tool.
It’s more of a ‘social media scheduler’. It just doesn’t have the tools that I would expect to see from a full-on social media management tool.
If I was going to pay MeetEdgar ($19/month for basic, $49/month for pro), I’d rather just use Tailwind.
Loomly
Loomly is really a Brand Success Platform. It integrates not just with the popular social networking channels but also with other channels like YouTube, Slack, Snapchat, Microsoft Teams, and more. Loomly allows you to manage all your social media content with its calendar and post overviews. All your assets for content creation, including photos, videos, notes and more can be stored in the Loomly library.
The best thing about Loomly is that it offers you post ideas. Loomly can track RSS feeds, trending topics on social media such as Twitter trends and keeps track of events and holidays so you can create posts around these topics.
If you need to churn out a lot of content and often run out of ideas, Loomly is the tool for you.
Loomly has almost all the social media management features you could need.
However, one issue that many users complain about is that it does not let you post directly to Instagram. So, if Instagram is your primary social channel, this may not be a very handy tool. Overall, Loomly gives a great user experience.
Sendible
Sendible offers the highest number of supported integrations than any other social media tool in this roundup.
The list of integrations includes blogging platforms like WordPress and Tumblr, marketing platforms, analytics tools, and more.
Sendible allows you to create tailored content that is customized to your preferences. You can set posts for approval from your team members before publishing and get them approved on the platform itself, making collaboration extremely easy.
Users do face some issues with posting or editing published posts now and then, but there are no common, persisting issues seen with Sendible.
Sendible suffers the same problem as a few other ‘big name’ tools. They have carved out their market share and they aren’t really doing anything new except raising prices.
All-in-all there are better value options above.
Later
I feel like Later could really be something. Someday. Like, I can see it seriously competing with Tailwind.
But for now, it still feels green, unfinished. I hear reviews about functionality and it just isn’t breaking out. But we have our eye on it. Maybe in a year or so we’ll see something worth writing home about!
The biggest plus right now is the pricing, though. There is a free plan that includes a few basic features and no add-ons. But even if you need a more detailed plan, the Starter package begins at just $12.50 per month. (It’s now $15 per month).
Hubspot
Hubspot is… tricky.
Hubspot is trying to be all things to all people. And that means that it has gotten extremely confusing.
There are like a thousand smaller subHubspots within Hubspot that each do a different thing and cost a different amount.
A new business owner could easily walk into Hubspot thinking they are buying a social media management service, but end up buying this and that and pretty soon they are paying a whole lot of money for things they don’t need.
Just be careful. Complexity rarely benefits the end user. That being said…
Hubspot is a popular marketing software that offers solutions in email marketing, blogging, lead generation, and much more. It also has a social media marketing tool that is widely popular. Hubspot allows you to publish content directly to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You can also schedule posts, monitor social mentions, and get reporting on your social strategy. Hubspot makes it very easy to report your social media ROI.
The best thing about this platform is that you get a host of other marketing tools along with social media marketing.
But that also makes it a very expensive solution.
How expensive?
I don’t even know because I can’t even tell all the things you’d need to buy. If you’re a big business, go for it. For us little guys, well, I’m sticking with simple, thanks.
Traject Fanbooster
Fanbooster by Traject is yet another comprehensive social media management tool that offers social media scheduling and analytics. It tracks your social posts and provides high-quality reports to help in monitoring engagement, performance, and audience growth. Fanbooster integrates with all the popular social networking channels.
There are some glitches that users have faced occasionally, but the company keeps updating and making improvements.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck is a social media management application from Twitter itself, which started as an independent app. TweetDeck helps with everything on Twitter, from posting to searching for trends to managing your direct messages. It can push content through different accounts at a time. You can view multiple timelines and mentions in a single view, schedule posts for multiple accounts, and customize the information you want to see for each account.
Some users do prefer more customization options on the user interface. There isn’t anything wrong with TweetDeck, but there isn’t anything great about it either. I’ve heard anyone claim that TweetDeck changed their life (but I have heard that about most of our other recommendations).
Revive Old Post
Revive Old Post is a plugin for WordPress that makes it easy to share your content on social media. It allows sharing to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and Tumblr. You can also bring in your social media links from Buffer. You can choose to share just the titles of the posts, add custom text, include hashtags, and shorten your links through this tool itself.
It also allows you to track and monitor the traffic coming into your site from social media.
eClincher
eClincher is a social media management platform that integrates with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google My Business, YouTube, TikTok, and a host of other channels.
It offers all the tools you need in a social media management suite, including Publishing & Scheduling, Interactions or Engagement, Content Creation & Media Library, Social Monitoring, Analytics & Reporting, and Collaboration. It also has a unified social inbox for all your social conversations.
We’ll have more to say once we’ve delved deeper into this one.
MavSocial
MavSocial is a social media management tool supporting several popular social media channels. It allows you to automate and schedule your social posts easily and the social inbox lets you view and manage all your messages and comments on one platform. You also get social listening, analytics, and reporting features. Content curation and collaboration with teams are also among its notable features.
Again, we’ll have more after we research this one deeper.
Friends+Me
Friends+Me is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to schedule your posts and publish them at the right time to drive maximum engagement. It also helps you with content curation and gives you previews to show you exactly how your post would look when published. It has a number of other useful features too, such as bulk scheduling, link shortening, collaboration, content cross-promotion, and more.
More research is needed.
Post Planner
Post Planner helps you discover engaging niche content for sharing to drive engagement on your social accounts. It also allows you to share and promote your own content. You can connect your blogs to your social accounts for easy sharing. It allows automating and queuing of posts and customizes content for each social channel. Analytics and reporting features help monitor your engagement and performance.
More research is needed.
Why use social media management tools?
For a growing business, social media can be a treasure trove of opportunities. There is immense scope of finding prospective leads and customers on social media channels and your social media marketing has to be on point for that. Managing your enterprise and finding enough time to manage all your social accounts is near impossible.
A social media management tool makes things much easier for you. Not only will it save you time but it will also help you increase engagement on your posts. You will be able to plan ahead and schedule your posts so that you can stick to your content calendar.
What is the best social media management tool for new startups?
Hands down, our favorite is Tailwind for Pinterest and instagram.
Sked Social can pick up where Tailwind left off, but overall we like Tailwind the best.
What is the best social media management tool for small businesses?
Tailwind is our favorite <$20 per month option.
SocialPilot is our favorite for the $20-40 per month option.
But our overall favorite is AgoraPulse (paid plans start at $79 per month but they do have a free plan)
If you need social media management and search engine marketing, then you may want to consider SEMRush.
What are the best free social media management tools?
AgoraPulse is our top pick here as well but as a reminder, here is a rundown of the social media management tools that offer free plans.
Free Plan (NOT free trial) comparison:
- Tailwind Free: 20 posts per month
- Crowdfire Free: 10 posts per month
- Agorapulse Free: 40 posts per month
- SEMRush Free: 10 posts per month
What is the best way to manage all social media in one place?
SEMRush is our top pick if you want to keep everything in one place. We tend to think of SEMRush as a $100 per month search engine optimization tool that comes with free social media management. (Remember SEMRush’s main competitor cost $99 per month).
Hubspot would also fall under this category but its over complex pricing structure makes it difficult to asses. Lack of pricing transparency from them means lack of trust from us so….
Besides, SEMRush just gives you more for your money than Hubspot.
What is the best value among social media management tools?
For low price points:
For medium price points:
For high price points:
Final thoughts on Social Media Management Tools
We hope we have given you enough fair, unbiased information to make the best decision for your situation. Finding the right social media management tools for the job can make a world of difference, whether you are a total newbie starting your first home-based business, or if you have an established business and just need a way to handle the ever-evolving world of social media.
We hope this post has been helpful!
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If you are new to our site here, you might want to check out a few of these related posts. We created Three Month Millionaire to help people do exactly what we did:
Build a home-based business that can be run in less than three months per year (or two hours per day).
If that sounds like something you’d like to learn, check out:
- Our Ultimate Guide to Building a Home Business
- Our Ultimate Productivity Guide
- Our Ultimate Guide to Investing
- Our Income Reports
Or if you want to check out some of our other review pages, Check out:
- Our reviews of the Best Online Course Creation Software
- Our reviews of the Best Books For Following the Three Month Millionaire Journey
- Our reviews of the Best Business Tools No One Ever Told Us About
