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Best Social Media Tools: Review of Market’s Most Wanted

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How to Manage Social Media

Social Media Management tools are a necessity right now. It doesn’t matter whether you manage a single brand or company or hundreds of brands. These tools help you in getting your message across on time, without delay, on multiple social media channels, and with minimal effort. Therefore, the efficiency and significance of these social media management tools is undeniable, especially in the marketing department.

But, it is not the case that all tools are equally good. That is however, depending on user’s needs. Every tool is different in terms of its features and its unique offerings. Hence, what is the best social media management tool?

The world wide web is huge, and yet you had stumbled on my site looking for something. I hope you find it as we had taken huge efforts to create them. Best of all, its FREE! Hence, some of our content may include affiliate links (i.e. whenever you click on the links and purchase, I earn a small commission at no extra costs to you!). No worries! Some of these links may look like phishing, but I assure you they are not! Lastly, the affiliation does not affect my reviews towards them. Enjoy!

In this article, we evaluate and compare some of the best social media management tools in the market. We do not intend to write comprehensively on each tool’s features as there are always other sites to cross reference from. That is, we are writing based on what feature we feel makes that tool great. It’s a comparison of usability against pricing to help you quickly think about your ‘ideal’ social media management tool.

  1. Buffer
  2. CoSchedule
  3. Crowdfire
  4. Hootsuite
  5. MeetEdgar
  6. Metigy
  7. POSTOPLAN
  8. Sendible
  9. SocialBee
  10. SocialPilot
  11. Sprout Social
  12. Tailwind

1. Buffer

Best Social Media Tools: Buffer

Year Founded: 2010

Country: USA

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest & Twitter
  • No. of Social Accounts: Up to 3, or Unlimited
  • Social Listening: No
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: Yes
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: 10, or Unlimited
  • Custom URL: Yes
  • Save Templates: Yes
  • User Permission Setting: Yes
  • Paid Ads Reports: Yes
  • 3rd Party Integrations: 30+ (with Zapier and Automate.io +600 more)
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Drag-and-Drop Scheduling – Buffer has an easy drag-and-drop interface which allows extremely easy scheduling of posts. Furthermore, it provides a clear and concise overview of your social media calendar that requires absolutely no prior knowledge for anyone to use it.
  2. Landing Page Builder – Supports your paid and unpaid marketing campaigns regardless of social media or not! With Buffer, users can use the landing page builder to quickly build specific pages for that campaign. Above all, these pages are fully mobile-responsive! Helps with your campaign attrition tracking too when you can trace landing page to campaign.
  3. Fully Cost-Effective – With a pricing plan based only on the social channels you wish to connect to, you only pay for what you use. Moreover, the subscription fee starts from an affordable single digit! We say, the best social media tools got to be affordable for businesses of any size and represents value. Agree?

Pricing

  • Free Plan: Yes
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 5/mo per social channel
  • Free Trial: 14-Days
  • Specials: Nonprofits get 50% discount!

2. CoSchedule

Best Social Media Tools: CoSchedule

Year Founded: 2013

Country: USA

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest & Twitter
  • No. of Social Accounts: 10 (+US$15/mo for 5 more)
  • Social Listening: No
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: No
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: Yes
  • Custom URL: No, Require Integrations
  • Save Templates: Yes
  • User Permission Setting: Yes
  • Paid Ads Reports: No
  • 3rd Party Integrations: 14
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Real-Time Marketing Calendar – CoSchedule visualises the user’s marketing activities using a calendar. That is not to say just for social media marketing, but for marketing as a whole. The calendar is shared across the whole team to enable them to work better with each other. The outcome is a better organised team driven to achieve results for the organisation regardless of working at home or in the office!
  2. Project Tools – Furthermore, CoSchedule comes with a range of project tools. Likewise, for marketing too, to add lots more value to using CoSchedule among other dedicated social media tools. The project tools include tasks management features, task automation, recurring events, project information and responsible persons etc. Hence, all these visualised against a synced calendar greatly support team working.
  3. Post ReQueue – A very useful feature that we can’t stressed enough. CoSchedule allows you to requeue your post quickly so you don’t need to copy-paste them multiple times into your calendar across different dates. Saves the time and hassle!

Pricing

  • Free Plan: No
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 29/mo per user
  • Free Trial: 14 Days
  • Specials: Nonprofits get 30% discount on all plans

Start your free trial of CoSchedule's Marketing Calendar software today.

3. Crowdfire

Best Social Media Tools: Crowdfire

Year Founded: 2010

Country: India

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest & Twitter
  • No. of Social Accounts: 3, 5, 10, or 25
  • Social Listening: Yes
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: Yes
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: No
  • Custom URL: No
  • Save Templates: No
  • User Permission Setting: Yes
  • Paid Ads Reports: No
  • 3rd Party Integrations: via Zapier only
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Content Curation – With Crowdfire, users can easily scour the web for the content they want including articles and images to quickly post in their social channels. This can form part of your content strategy while making known your brand’s awareness to the status quo. All users need is connect to a RSS feed or key in keywords for Crowdfire to automatically bring them to you!
  2. Competitor Analytics – Truly worthy as one of the best social media tools around! Users can use Crowdfire to obtain analysis of their competitors to find their top performing posts, what’s not working for them, an idea of what they do, and an overall of their marketing performances. Well, technically you need an SEO tool for this but Crowdfire readily provides it. Pretty complement social media marketing, and so very useful!
  3. Best Time to Post & Queue Meter – Sometimes you know, but sometimes you are just unaware. Whichever, Crowdfire suggests the best time to post for each of your account to drive greater effectiveness of your posts, and ensure your efforts are not wasted! Besides, you can use the queue meter to inform how much posts you need to schedule in the next 7 days to ensure your accounts all stay content-filled for your followers!

Pricing

  • Free Plan: Yes
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 7.48/mo
  • Free Trial: No

4. Hootsuite

Best Social Media Tools: Hootsuite

Year Founded: 2008

Country: Canada

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter & YouTube
  • No. of Social Accounts: Up to 2, 10, 20 or 35+
  • Social Listening: Yes
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: Yes
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: Yes, for All Paid Plans
  • Custom URL: Yes
  • Save Templates: Yes
  • User Permission Setting: Yes
  • Paid Ads Reports: Yes
  • 3rd Party Integrations: 190+
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Market-Leader – Hootsuite’s biggest accomplishment as a social media management tool is its full-suite features which makes them the market leader. It has all the essentials for the effective management of social media that drives marketing success for individuals, small and large enterprises.
  2. Team Reports – See, social media management isn’t a one-man job. To achieve real success, the whole team needs to work as one. So, here is Hootsuite reinforcing its position in our best social media tools list with their team reports. The report tracks essential team metrics to ensure prompt customer responses and resolutions to support overall social media management efforts. Yet, don’t get the wrong idea for this is good for employee learning too!
  3. Powered Social Listening & Analytics – Hootsuite provides real-time reports on the performance of your social media posts and profiles for as much as 6 channels! It gives you comprehensive and up-to-date information about traffic, likes, comments, shares and other forms of engagement. Coupled with its powerful social listening tool, Hootsuite Insights, users are in a best possible position for any social media and paid campaign decisions.

Pricing

  • Free Plan: Yes, for 2 social accounts & 5 scheduled messages per month
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 49/mo
  • Free Trial: 30 Days
  • Specials: Nonprofits get up to 50% off Professional and Team Plans

5. MeetEdgar

Best Social Media Tools: MeetEdgar

Year Founded: 2014

Country: USA

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest & Twitter
  • No. of Social Accounts: 3 or 25
  • Social Listening: No
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: No
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: Yes
  • Custom URL: No
  • Save Templates: No
  • User Permission Setting: No
  • Paid Ads Reports: No
  • 3rd Party Integrations: Yes, but via Zapier only
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Post Automation & Generation – MeetEdgar differs from other best social media tools in our list for its post automation and generation capabilities. With a few clicks, users can generate different variations from one post and then schedules them for posting on certain dates. Thereafter, all users need is watch their strategies take effect and monitor the outcome for further tweaks and optimisations. Fully time-saving and productive!
  2. Content Library (Unlimited!) – Well, how can MeetEdgar achieve auto-post generation and scheduling without knowing the content of the posts? So, here is MeetEdgar’s powerful content library. The feature automatically categorises and saves every social media post in its content library. Then, it retrieves posts from these libraries and post them smartly, if you want it to, in different dates such that it avoids content repetition.
  3. A/B Testing – You can post two variants of a similar kind of post and monitor the kind of response they generate. Doing so, you can optimize your social media marketing performance in the longer run. A simple feature, but not all social media tools have it. Loved by all marketers though.

Pricing

  • Free Plan: No
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 19/mo
  • Free Trial: 30 Days

6. Metigy

Best Social Media Tools: Metigy

Year Founded: 2015

Country: Australia

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest & Twitter
  • No. of Social Accounts: 3, 5, 10 or 20
  • Social Listening: Limited (Selected Competitors Only)
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: No
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: No
  • Custom URL: No
  • Save Templates: No
  • User Permission Setting: No
  • Paid Ads Reports: Yes
  • 3rd Party Integrations: Limited (Google Ads, Giphy, &Unsplash etc)
  • Mobile App Version: Yes, for Android Only

Buy Factor

  1. AI-Powered Real-Time Insights – One feature that makes Metigy stand out from the other social media tools in our list. The platform is AI-powered from head to toe. Whether you want recommendations of media to post, when to post, tracking the performance of your competitors’ ads etc., Metigy’s AI supports you readily. It’s like having a second expert mind only that you will be the one executing. Honestly, we always like having second opinion. So, this is a plus, plus for us.
  2. Asset Library – Metigy syncs with top stock libraries in Giphy and unsplash. A pretty neat feature since Social Media Managers always need to create content from time to time. So, with a built-in library, users get access to royalty-free stock images, audios, and videos for them to quickly create memes, and even ads too!
  3. Metigy Ads – Again, Metigy makes their platform super easy to use. This time, for the advertising users with Metigy Ads. The platform syncs with Google Ads to guide users to advertise on Google search engine within minutes! Besides, being able to perform your search engine marketing within the platform makes marketing work one-less hassle, and a whole lot of time saved!

Pricing

  • Free Plan: Yes
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 25/mo
  • Free Trial: 14 Days

7. POSTOPLAN

Best Social Media Tools: POSTOPLAN

Year Founded: 2019

Country: Estonia

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Google My Business, Instagram, LinkedIn, Telegram, Twitter & WhatsApp
  • No. of Social Accounts: Unlimited
  • Social Listening: No
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: Yes
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: Unlimited
  • Custom URL: No
  • Save Templates: No
  • User Permission Setting: Yes
  • Paid Ads Reports: No
  • 3rd Party Integrations: Limited
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Share to WhatsApp & Telegram – Not many social media tools provide text marketing capabilities, and so, we are glad to feature POSTOPLAN! With POSTOPLAN, users can schedule and automate posting to WhatsApp and Telegram much similar to how they do it with other social channels. Above all, text marketing easily triumphs over email marketing with its 98% open rates vs 20%. Yet again, regulations are stricter, so ensure you got the user permissions before sending via texts.
  2. Built-In Graphic Editors with Library– POSTOPLAN is slightly more advanced in the design department with their built-in graphic editors that also comes with a 5,000+ images library. Users can in quick-time design their posts with simple edit tools by selecting stock images, or just use the Picture Generator.
  3. 700 Ready-to-Use News Hooks – Running out of ideas is common, but fret not! POSTOPLAN has over 700 post ideas and suggestions in their calendar that users can explore and then fill up with non-repetitive fresh content that their followers will appreciate! 

Pricing

  • Free Plan: No
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 1.9/mo for 1 user
  • Free Trial: 7 Days

8. Sendible

Best Social Media Tools: Sendible

Year Founded: 2009

Country: UK

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Google My Business, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, & YouTube
  • No. of Social Accounts: 6, 24, 49, or 105
  • Social Listening: Yes
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: No, Only Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: No
  • Custom URL: No, Requires Bit.ly Integration
  • Save Templates: Yes
  • User Permission Setting: Yes
  • Paid Ads Reports: Yes
  • 3rd Party Integrations: 10
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Easy & Effective Publishing – Which top social media tools doesn’t feature well in publishing? Not quite! With Sendible, users get their post scheduling and publishing done behind a friendly dashboard, that allows bulk scheduling, post preview, drag-and-drop scheduling, and even import with csv! The dashboard is so visualisable, that even 12-year-olds can understand! Just saying!
  2. Content Suggestions – Yeah, ideas may not flow at times, but fret not! With Sendible, you can use its content suggestion tool to get a fresh look into the current happenings related to the business, so that you could share and comment on these contents directly.
  3. Pre-Built Reports – Includes 8 pre-built report templates to help you skip through the hassle and right to your metrics. Then, customise from there and add in your brand logo too before exporting to PDF!

Pricing

  • Free Plan: No
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 25/mo
  • Free Trial: 14 Days

9. SocialBee

Best Social Media Tools: SocialBee

Year Founded: 2016

Country: Romania

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Google My Business, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, & Twitter
  • No. of Social Accounts: 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, or 150
  • Social Listening: No
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: No
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: No
  • Custom URL: No, Requires Integrations
  • Save Templates: Yes
  • User Permission Setting: Yes
  • Paid Ads Reports: Yes
  • 3rd Party Integrations: 13
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Category-Based Scheduling – SocialBee offers some excellent content scheduling features. You can save time by creating categories and managing their schedules instead of doing it individually for each post. You can view previews and set email notifications for them as well.
  2. Post Variations & Re-Queue – Well, like some other best social media tools in our list, SocialBee can automatically create variations of posts and queue them such that there will always be content, and ‘fresh’ ones too! Got to be loved by Social Media Managers! Still, don’t abuse it for content needs to be updated and new ones created to keep to-date!
  3. URL Shortening Choices – Another interesting feature is SocialBee’s seamless integration with URL Shortening tools like Rebrandly, PixelMe and Bitly. This saves precious time during post scheduling yet with the impact of quality branding and tracking. Exceptionally useful, although often could be overlooked!

Pricing

  • Free Plan: No
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 19/mo
  • Free Trial: 14 Days

10. SocialPilot

Best Social Media Tools: SocialPilot

Year Founded: 2014

Country: USA

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Google My Business, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter & VK
  • No. of Social Accounts: 10, 25, 50, or 75
  • Social Listening: No
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: Yes
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: No
  • Custom URL: No, Via Integrations Only
  • Save Templates: No
  • User Permission Setting: Yes
  • Paid Ads Reports: Yes
  • 3rd Party Integrations: Limited (Zapier possible)
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Bulk Scheduling & CSV Uploads – You may need to work offline, or prefer to sometimes. However, your social media management work doesn’t stop! Take the chance to craft your posts for the week, or a certain timeframe, and save them to your CSV. Then, import them into SocialPilot for bulk scheduling at once! Its easy, so don’t worry about how to go around this.
  2. Collaboration & Workflow Tool – Does your work have multiple contributors? Or does a superior need to approve before going live? With SocialPilot, you can easily set team member access and approval flows for efficient and effective team working that your clients would appreciate! Definitely helps your ‘posting’ pipelines in other words.
  3. Content Curation & Discovery – Like other social media tools in our list, SocialPilot has its own content curation and discovery tool to quickly find relevant content to share and comment for their followers.

Pricing

  • Free Plan: No
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 25/50.mo
  • Free Trial: 14 Days

socialpilot

11. Sprout Social

Best Social Media Tools: Sprout Social

Year Founded: 2010

Country: USA

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Facebook, Google My Business, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter & YouTube
  • No. of Social Accounts: 5 or 10
  • Social Listening: Yes
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: Yes
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: No
  • Custom URL: No, Require Integrations
  • Save Templates: No
  • User Permission Setting: Yes
  • Paid Ads Reports: Yes
  • 3rd Party Integrations: 13
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Task Management & CRM Tools – With these features, Sprout Social definitely comes out as one of the top social media tools in our list. It has built-in task management and CRM tools, that just complements the work for social media management. Besides, this also enhances the performances of their users too! Use the task management tools to easily assign tasks and see them to completion effectively. While you are on it, Sprout Social automatically records data of customer conversations, and other contact points to their CRM to help you personalise your replies to them. Also, don’t forget to analyse your CRM data on hand for better social media campaigns!
  2. Competitor & Team Reports – We mentioned before, that managing your team and social channels go hand-in-hand. So, with Sprout Social, you are totally enabled to with its competitor and team reports. Frankly, our team have team reports to thank for, for constantly shedding light into how we work!
  3. Bot Builder – Do you know you can build chatbots with Sprout Social? Above all, you can embed these chatbots into your social media channels to provide the automation to complement your customer support. Its certainly nice, but don’t take chatbots for human replacements though! Additionally, you will always need to monitor and tweak it further to truly maximise and optimise your bots. In short, its long-term commitment.

Pricing

  • Free Plan: No
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 89/mo per user
  • Free Trial: 30 Days

12. Tailwind

Best Social Media Tools: Tailwind

Year Founded: 2012

Country: USA

Essentials

  • Sync-able Channels: Instagram & Pinterest
  • No. of Social Accounts: 1 ea, 2 ea, or 3 ea
  • Social Listening: Yes, for Pinterest
  • Inbox for All Social Accounts: Yes, for Pinterest
  • Unlimited Scheduled Messages: No
  • Custom URL: Yes
  • Save Templates: Yes
  • User Permission Setting: No
  • Paid Ads Reports: No
  • 3rd Party Integrations: No
  • Mobile App Version: Yes

Buy Factor

  1. Hashtag Helpers – Helps you know how well a particular hashtag is followed before you select it for your posts. Moreover, it also suggests several top and relevant hashtags that you can use. Hence, helping your posts get better reach and engagement worthy of your efforts!
  2. Built-In Graphic Designer & Library – Like other social media tools in our list, Tailwind reaffirms their standing with an equally powerful and easy-to-use graphic editor. Not only, Tailwind has a smart visual designer too, that transforms photos into different designs in one click! Try it, and you will realise creating images are not an issue. Only selecting one that is. Nonetheless, better to have more to choose!
  3. Content Inspiration Tools – Break free from writer’s block with Tailwind! It has tools to perk your design senses by asking you questions. Then based on your answers, it provides sample images for your selection. Amazing? Simple, yet very useful once you start.

Pricing

  • Free Plan: Yes
  • Paid Plan: fr US$ 9.99/mo
  • Free Trial: No
  • Specials: Nonprofits get 50% off!

Our Advice

All these tools are really useful for any social media marketer. It helps in scheduling posts, so that your outreach is constantly updated with new content with the most minimal effort possible. However, not all tools are the same. Some may have advanced analytics, or are focused on competitor analysis. Others have real potential to be the leader as a social media management tool with its comprehensive list of possible integrations that extends its features.

We say, look back to what you need and weigh them against your budget. Consider which tool is the best that you could use for the long term without switching. After all, switching means re-learning and adapting to using again and really not the best for productivity. Also, review the ‘self-help’ resources available. We are always more comfortable when the tool has its own online courses, documentations and community forum for their users, which makes it easy to use and learn at the same time. Go try!

Wishpond

Activities

Are you a Social Media Manager? Then Read about Marketing tips with Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok.

Keen to read more about Content Marketing or SEO? Then Read our Review of SEMrush, SpyFu and Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin.

How is your experience in social media management? Have you tried out any SMM tool? COMMENT below.

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