
Tools for Social Media Scheduling, Analytics, Automation
Popular social media management platforms combine scheduling, analytics, and automation to streamline content workflows for brands, agencies, and individuals. The best choice depends on factors like your budget, team size, and specific feature needs.
Comprehensive all-in-one tools
These tools are ideal for agencies and larger businesses that need a full suite of features for complex social media strategies.
- Sprout Social: A premium, all-in-one platform known for advanced analytics, comprehensive social listening, and a unified Smart Inbox that collects all your messages and comments. It is an ideal fit for managing customer care, tracking brand sentiment, and generating automated, in-depth reports.
- Hootsuite: A long-standing industry leader that supports a wide range of social networks and is excellent for large-scale scheduling. Hootsuite offers powerful analytics, team collaboration features, and social listening to track brand mentions and trends.
- Agorapulse: Offers a comprehensive platform with a unified social inbox for managing interactions and robust analytics to track ROI. Its features include competitor analysis and reporting for agencies managing multiple clients.
- Sendible: Tailored for agencies and businesses that manage multiple client accounts, with strong features for white-label reporting, team collaboration, and client approval workflows. It also includes tools for content curation and automation.
Streamlined and beginner-friendly tools
These platforms prioritize ease of use and are well-suited for creators, small businesses, and solopreneurs.
- Buffer: A simple and intuitive tool known for its easy-to-use scheduling and clean interface. It offers solid, built-in analytics, a content calendar, and a free plan that supports up to 3 accounts.
- SocialPilot: An affordable all-in-one tool for small teams and agencies that need to manage a moderate number of accounts. Its features include bulk scheduling, client management tools, and white-label reporting.
- Loomly: Provides content ideas, post previews, and a simple interface that is great for team collaboration. A standout feature is the ability to create a custom channel for publishing to almost any service using Zapier.
- SocialBee: Ideal for content recycling and automation, allowing you to categorize evergreen content and automatically reshuffle it into your posting queue. It also offers AI-assisted content creation and post customization.
Tools with a specialized focus
These tools cater to specific needs, such as visual content or integrating social media with broader marketing efforts.
- Later: A visual-first platform that is especially popular for Instagram and TikTok users. It features a drag-and-drop visual calendar and tools for curating user-generated content (UGC).
- CoSchedule: A powerful marketing calendar that integrates social media scheduling with content marketing and project management. It's excellent for bloggers and content writers who want to align their social and content calendars.
- MeetEdgar (now Edgar): Focuses primarily on content recycling, allowing you to build a library of evergreen content that it automatically posts on a continuous loop.
- Iconosquare: An analytics-first platform with a strong focus on visual content and competitor benchmarking. It provides detailed metrics for Instagram and other visual platforms.