Suppose you’ve started your business and you have more than a few social media platforms to manage so you can establish your online presence. This task may be very time-consuming and sometimes even exhausting. Luckily, social media scheduling tools come to your rescue.
In this article, we’ll guide you through everything you need to know about social media scheduling tools—what to look for in them, how they work, and what their benefits are. Moreover, we’ll provide a list of top-ranking apps and let you choose the one that meets your needs.
Let’s jump in!
Key Takeaways
- The benefits of social media scheduling tools are time efficiency, a strategic approach, the ability to post at the ideal time, and better editing.
- When looking for an ideal tool, you should pay attention to its features, usability, and pricing.
- Publer is the best social media scheduling tool on this list because it boasts the most impressive feature set that comes at a low price.
- The most expensive app on this list is Sprout Social.
- The main characteristic of social media scheduling tools is that you can typically schedule posts from a single dashboard.
What Are Social Media Scheduling Tools?
Software solutions that primarily aim to allow businesspeople and individuals to schedule their social media posts for a later time are called social media scheduling tools. With these tools, users can publish content at a specific time they previously set.
While some social media platforms have built-in features for scheduling and publishing posts in advance, they’re not flexible enough. Third-party scheduling tools are designed to make scheduling more effortless, accessible, and easier to use. Those who are not tech-savvy can particularly benefit from such commodities.
Additionally, most social media scheduling apps offer scheduling content for multiple social media accounts and channels from a single dashboard.
Besides, organizations that aim to curate their content in advance may significantly reduce time spent scheduling posts.
9 Social Media Scheduling Tools You Should Use in 2024
Below, we’ll provide an in-depth comparison of nine social media scheduling tools and tell you more about each app, its key features, pros, and cons. You’ll also have a glimpse into who could benefit most from each and how much the tools cost.
#1. Publer
Publer is a social media scheduling tool you can use to analyze, post, and schedule your content on all major platforms. Although you have the option to post instantly, if you want to plan a post, you can use any of the following features: Manual, Recycle, Auto-Schedule, or Recurring.
This tool takes first place on our list for a good reason—it’s the easiest to navigate, has the best feature set, and is the best option for marketers of both small and large businesses. Overall, it’s the best value for money.
You can schedule posts on TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, WordPress, Telegram, Instagram, Twitter/X, and Google My Business. One of the newest features allows you to schedule Instagram stories, too!
Still, if you want to invest in paid plans, Publer Professional starts at a discounted price of $9.60 (instead of $12) a month. Choosing this plan will grant you access to the following features:
- Multiple Twitter/X accounts
- Eternal post history
- Unlimited workspaces
- Unlimited RSS Feed Automation and others
However, if you choose the Business plan, you’ll be paying $16.80 a month and get full access to all advanced features, including:
- Unlimited AI prompts
- Automatic recycling posts
- Analytics reports
- Hashtag and content suggestions
- Professional design feature
#2. Later
Later is another scheduling tool that helps you schedule posts across multiple platforms, and it showed its best potential for Instagram scheduling due to its easy-to-use visual calendar. It’s excellent for image-first campaigns. With it, you can even schedule Instagram reels.
This tool allows you to quickly identify brand-specific posts available online and modify user-generated ones as your own.
Some of Later’s key features include:
- Tools for curating content
- Auto publishing for multiple accounts
- Media storage for your photos and videos
- Saved captions and hashtag suggestions
Still, there’s room for improvement since this tool doesn’t provide some advanced features offered by competitors. Namely, you can’t post videos on Pinterest via a mobile app, and there’s no option to schedule videos on YouTube. Another stumbling block for users is the lack of live chat without the Advanced plan.
As for the pricing, you won’t have a Free plan with this one. Instead, if you decide on a Starter plan, you’ll pay $16.67 a month. Small teams should go for Growth, which costs $30 a month. Ultimately, growing teams can purchase the Advanced plan and get all the app’s features for $53.33 a month.
The Starter plan allows one user, the Growth plan can be used by three, and the Advanced plan lets six people use the app simultaneously. There’s a 14-day free trial for all plans.
#3. CoSchedule
If you’re looking to organize your marketing strategy across social media platforms, including your WordPress blog, CoSchedule has you covered. It’s perfect for small business owners who want to manage their editorial calendars and content marketing.
The solution offers a built-in headline studio that aids in the impact of your headlines and boosts useful analytics on campaigns. Moreover, you’ll benefit from guidance and support within the content marketing calendar.
CoSchedule’s main features are:
- Project and campaign template for beginners
- Unlimited scheduling across most platforms and marketing projects
- Sub-calendars and approval workflows
However, there are downsides to this tool. The software solution doesn’t offer scheduling for YouTube, TikTok, or Twitter/X, and users may face setbacks trying to find previously published posts.
If you’re looking to purchase CoSchedule, there are four plans. The free plan, Free Calendar, is aimed at individuals who want to work on basic social publishing. Next, we have a Social Calendar that comes at $19 per user/month and includes unlimited social publishing.
The other two are Content Calendar and Marketing Suite, but if you want to know the price, you’ll have to contact their sales team. This, in itself, is one of the flaws.
#4. Planable
Planable can help you schedule your posts across most platforms, and a great addition is that you can also use it to schedule Facebook reels.
This social media scheduling tool is also ideal for content management. Freelancers and startups are its primary target group, and they can use it to maximize team collaboration.
The tool boasts many useful features, and some of them are:
- Visual calendar planning
- Automate workflow approval
- Integrated content creation tools
With this in mind, remember that no matter how good a tool is, it has certain weak points. For Planable, the stumbling stone is the underdeveloped toolkit for marketing campaign assessment. Moreover, the analysis and reporting features are far inferior to those such as Publer’s.
If you’re looking to start using Planable and are on a budget, you can choose the free plan that allows you 50 posts, but you won’t be able to publish for Twitter/X. The Basic plan starts at $11 per user, a Pro plan costs $22 per user, and for an Enterprise, the price is custom, meaning you’ll have to contact Planable to get the price.
#5. Sprout Social
Other than just being a tool for scheduling posts, this software complements its core features by offering insights into your target audience. Although everyone can use it, Sprout Social is primarily designed as a social media scheduling tool for agencies.
Using Sprout Social helps you monitor what your target audience is saying about your brand, and design reports, as well as draw accurate analytics about everything you publish. All of this is made possible with its powerful listening tools.
With everything listed so far, critical features of this social media scheduling tool include:
- Social CRM tools and tasks.
- Reviewing, drafting, queuing, and publishing posts across various channels
- ROI enhancement by paid promotion tools
As no software is perfect, Sprout Social also comes with some drawbacks. Firstly, the tool has no free plan other than the 30-day free trial. Moreover, its customer support is often lagging, and the company has difficulties providing consistent, high-quality care for the users in terms of regular assistance and troubleshooting.
This brings us to pricing, which is their biggest drawback. The standard plan starts at $240 per month, the Professional one is $399 per month, and the Advanced suite goes to a staggering $499. These prices are costly for small teams, startups, or freelancers.
#6. Buffer
Buffer is a social media post scheduler that is widely known and trusted by the users of this type of software. So far, it’s shown itself to be most valuable to small teams as it boasts a wide range of features. It’s one of the best tools for those on a budget.
With it, you can schedule posts on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Mastodon, Shopify, TikTok, and Twitter/X, and you can even schedule Pinterest pins. Moreover, you can have a complete look into numbers about your target audience and their behavior. Additionally, it’s an excellent means for collaborating among teams.
The core features of Buffer are:
- Customized titles and video thumbnails
- Machine learning analysis for intelligent post suggestions
- Built-in link shortener for easier sharing
On the flip side, this tool doesn’t include Instagram integration, and there are no tools for monitoring searches, mentions, and hashtags, so you’ll have to use a separate tool.
The pricing part, however, makes up for it. There is a free plan, a paid plan called Essentials ($6 a month for a channel), a Team plan (starting at $12 a month for one channel), and the Agency plan (beginning at $120 per month for ten channels). The free trial lasts 14 days.
#7. MeetEdgar
This app is one of the most commonly used social media schedulers. It’s an excellent pick to fill your library with top-notch, branded content. If you go with it, you can upload extensive data with a few clicks and spread it around your socials.
Those who like sorting everything by specific categories will love it—you can place all content according to purpose or theme.
Entrepreneurs or small business marketing managers can make the most of this tool and use it for inbound marketing strategy.
Its main features are:
- Repurposing and refreshing content immediately
- Categorizing data in comprehensive libraries
- Content syndication from external sources
But nothing is ever perfect, and MeetEdgar is no exception. The limited reporting and a lack of YouTube, Pinterest, and Google My Business integration leave a solid task for creators to improve the software and make it rank higher among the competitors.
If you go for the paid version, you’ll be able to choose the Eddie Monthly Plan and pay $29.99, and the Edgar Monthly Plan is $49.99.
#8. Hootsuite
Hootsuite offers a collection of additional tools that go beyond post-scheduling. It’s an excellent social media customer management tool that lets you manage all your profiles into columns, laying out all your content exactly the way you want. Still, you can schedule posts on LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.
You can analyze customer preferences and trends in real time. Plus, there’s an impressive array of compliance and security tools. The software allows you to designate tasks and integrate the tool with other applications.
Its primary features are:
- High-performing funnel and social sales strategies
- Managing conversations using a single inbox
- A library of branded content that can be shared with the team
As for the less impressive bits, Hootsuite doesn’t offer a free plan. If you want to sign up for a free trial, you will need to use a credit card. Besides, there’s no integration for Google Business Profile.
If you want a Professional plan, the price starts at $99 a month, and for the Team plan, you’ll pay $249 a month. Should you decide on an Enterprise custom plan, you’ll have to request a demo.
#9. Airtable
Although this software is not a fully dedicated social media scheduling tool, it does offer a broad set of calendar templates. Its main value lies in automation templates that can be used for everyday business tasks.
Still, Airtable does a great job at helping team leaders decide which content to publish and when to do it.
The features Airtable boasts are:
- Wide range of templates for managing content
- Task deadline assistance and task assignment
- Excellent collaboration features
The parts that are not that great involve limitations for importing projects, and the configuration process is not intuitive enough. Additionally, the mobile version of the app should be far more user-friendly.
However, the pricing is pretty decent. There is a free plan and two paid ones—The Team plan starts at $20, and the Business plan is $45.
How Do Social Media Scheduling Tools Work?
The technical bit of scheduling revolves around connecting the tool to the social network through the API of the specific network or by the application programming interface. Simply put, this process enables communication between the tool and the social network where you want to schedule posts.
This process connects all accounts to a central dashboard, through which you can schedule content whenever you like. Some scheduling tools let you schedule your posts months ahead of time. Equally important, you can change the post’s publishing date whenever you want.
How to Pick the Best Social Media Scheduling Tool
Now that you know what value you’re getting from these tools, let’s see how to choose the ideal one. We’ll cover the main criteria relevant to selecting the right fit.
- Features. The most important thing should come first, and that is the feature set. A tool may have a rich feature offer, but it may lack one or two that are the only ones you actually require. Generally, look for tools that enable you to schedule posts at the exact hour and minute and see if the tool can handle exchanges such as comments, tweets, and similar.
- Ease of use. If you need a lot of time to understand how the software works or the interface isn’t user-friendly, you may lose plenty of your precious time. Additionally, you could miss some of the great features the tool offers.
For this reason, the interface needs to be simple, and the layout needs to be easy to navigate so you can find what you require within a few clicks.
- Pricing. We can’t pretend that money is no object. A helpful hand you may come across is the free trials you can sign up for and see if you like the tool. This way, by assessing the feature set, you can decide if the software is good value for money.
It’s paramount to consider the fine print. Find out if there are billing restrictions or alternatives, and get acquainted with the cancellation policies of each tool.
Benefits of Using Social Media Scheduling Tools
There are numerous benefits to using scheduling tools for social media posts. While some are apparent, others may give you extra perks you didn’t know of.
- Time efficiency. Instead of having to stand by all the time and post from your phone or computer, you can do it all at once and save plenty of time. You can take an hour and plan posts for an extended period. Once you’re done with it, you can plan your day however you wish.
This approach is particularly attractive for all those who want to improve their online presence, whether they’re business owners or have just started a brand that they would like to kick start and make visible to a broader audience.
- Strategic approach. Once you’ve planned what your audience wants to see, you can spread those points across your social media platform in the exact way you desire. If you dedicate a week covering a central theme to your followers, you can sit down and carry out the entire, thoroughly planned strategy.
This is way more effective than just posting when you have an idea because you often won’t have the bigger picture in mind.
- Post at the perfect time. Many social networks have the best post time. For Instagram, that’s around 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. in your time zone. So, instead of waking up at the break of dawn, you can simply schedule it the night before.
- Better editing and reduced mistakes. If you scheduled your post for tomorrow afternoon and only later realized you had a few typos, you can change it before the due time. Besides, editing is a lot easier. There’s no point in editing your post hours after everyone’s seen it.
Final Thoughts
Business owners, freelancers, and other individuals often seek assistance from social media scheduling tools, as they help them save plenty of time and make the best of their social media presence.
After reading this article, you’ll have a better understanding of how to use these tools and what to look for while browsing for one, and you’ll have an ultimate list of software solutions to help you make an informed decision on which one to purchase.
Now, there’s nothing stopping you from making the most of all your social media accounts with a single, simple platform.
Good luck!