Social media can help you to build your brand, increase sales and drive website traffic. However, connecting with your audience across multiple social media platforms can be very time-consuming.
We have reached out to 67 social media experts and asked them: which social media management software would you recommend others to use and why?
Last update: 1 March 2022
About this guide
This social media management software guide is written based on the feedback of 67 social media experts.
We interviewed each one of them and ask them about their previous experience with social media software and which one they recommend using.
After that, we dug into the ones that got recommended the most compiled a pros and cons list of each and added some comparison tables. The goal of all of this is to make it easier for you to find the right social media management software.
Top 10 Social Media Management Software 2023
Without further ado, let’s dig into the ones that our expert recommended.
1. Hootsuite (16 votes)
Hootsuite makes finding, scheduling, managing, and reporting on social media content easier. They have an integration with 20+ of the most popular social media platforms, making managing multiple ones a lot easier.
2. Sprout Social (13 votes)
Sprout Social let’s you understand and reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with an all-in-one social media management platform built for connection.
3. Buffer (12 votes)
Buffer let’s you plan, collaborate, and publish content that drives meaningful engagement and growth for your brand. You can also measure your performance, create reports, and get insights.
4. Canva (7 votes)
Canva is a graphic design platform. It allows you to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content by using an easy drag-and-drop feature and professional layouts.
5. CoSchedule (6 votes)
CoSchedule is a work management software for marketers. It offers a range of agile marketing tools that will help you stay focused, deliver projects on time, and make your team happy.
5. Later (6 votes)
Later is a social media planner and scheduling tool, with a strong focus on Instagram. It lets you visually plan, schedule and analyze posts for Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.
7. Planoly (4 votes)
Planoly is a visual planner for Instagram. It helps you manage, plan, and schedule your Instagram posts for multiple accounts.
7. Sendible (4 votes)
Sendible has a strong agency focus and let’s you manage multiple brands on social media. Their tool improves communication with multiple stakeholders when scheduling and approving content.
9. Tailwind (3 votes)
Tailwind is a social media scheduling tool for Instagram and Pinterest. It helps you to post at the best times for engagement and to get more actionable analytics.
10. Grammarly (2 votes)
Grammarly is a free writing app to make their online writing clear and effective. It can help you to improve your content writing for social media.
By streamlining your social media accounts, reporting and analyzing the data, and actively monitor activity and engagement you can manage your social media accounts more effectively. A social media management tool can help you in this process.
A social media tool is software that helps you with the planning, execution and reporting of your social media accounts. Most tools will have an integration with at least one social media channel. Depending on the social media accounts that you manage, you might want to consider using multiple tools.
There’s no doubt that social media has become an essential part of marketing for businesses of all sizes. But with so many different platforms and strategies to consider, it can be tough to know where to start – or how to keep up. That’s where social media management tools come in.
Management tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social offer users a variety of features to help them plan, publish, and measure their social media activity. With these tools, businesses can save time and ensure that their social media presence is consistent and effective.
Additionally, social media management tools offer users insights into their audience’s behavior. This data can help businesses to better understand what content is resonating with their audience and make adjustments accordingly.
Overall, social media management tools are a valuable asset for any business seeking to navigate the ever-changing world of social media marketing. With the right tool, businesses can save time, produce better content, and connect with their audience in a more meaningful way.
Full Software Reviews
Now, let’s dig into the top social media management software tools individually.
First, there are first grade social media tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Buffer. These tools have a direct integration with multiple social media platforms. Their main focus is to manage your social media accounts more easily.
Then, there are tools that are not necessarily focussed on social media management but that can make your life a lot easier. For example, Canva is a graphic design platform and can be used for creating images for social media. Grammarly can help you with the spelling of your social media posts.
Now, let’s dig into a few of these a bit deeper.
Hootsuite makes finding, scheduling, managing, and reporting on social media content easier. They have an integration with 20+ of the most popular social media platforms, making managing multiple ones a lot easier.
Your Go-To Social Media Manager
Our experts voted Hootsuite as the go-to social media manager. It’s among the most popular social media management platforms. The single dashboard shows an overview of the most popular social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter Instagram and Facebook. Within this dashboard, you can manage and schedule posts, receive updates, follow people and much, much more.
It significantly reduces the number of hours needed to manage your social media. To do this, Hootshoot offers automated scheduling to maintain your social media. It schedules posts into a content calendar and sends reminders when to post your content.
Also, there are options to add team members. This makes Hootsuite perfect for small and large organizations where there are multiple stakeholders.
Hootsuite is a great tool to manage multiple social media channels at one central spot, and measure the results to optimize the ROI of your organization. It’s a go-to social media management tool for every social media manager.
Among our experts, there are a few huge fans of Hootsuite who recommend using the tool to others. Its convenience and efficiency are praised, as well as the fact that it helps social media managers to be increasingly time-efficient.
Additionally, Hootsuite has seamless integration with your favorite project management tools, like Canva, Slack and Zendesk.
Being used by companies around the world, Hootsuite
Sprout Social lets you understand and reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with an all-in-one social media management platform built for connection.
All The Bells & Whistles
Similar to Hootsuite, Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool. However, the main thing that sets them apart is the ability to work with your team.
From within the app, you can see who created which post, who left a comment and who is managing a profile. Therefore, Sprout Social is perfect for larger organizations that have multiple people managing their social media.
Sprout Social is made for understanding and reaching your audience, engaging with that audience and measuring the performance of your social media engagements. It has many resources available that can help you when research content. Like Hootsuite, it also offers a calendar tool that will help you to plan your social media strategy in advance. This will save you time and effort.
Buffer lets you plan, collaborate, and publish content that drives meaningful engagement and growth for your brand. You can also measure your performance, create reports, and get insights.
Automated Content Scheduling
Buffer is focused on automated content scheduling across multiple platforms. Its multi-functional analytics dashboard allows tracking the performance of your social content in real-time. It has the ability to schedule posts for peak times of social media, depending on the time zone a user is located.
Buffers can connect directly to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. The platform allows you to schedule posts far into the future, letting you schedule your social media posts in advance and let you sit back.
Planoly is a visual planner for Instagram. It helps you manage, plan, and schedule your Instagram posts for multiple accounts.
Official Instagram Partner
If you are only using Instagram, Planoly is the way to go. They are an official Instagram partner which means that the integration is never in danger to be paused.
It is a great way to visualize your Instagram posts and plan for the future. You can move things around and have a visual representation of how your feed will look like. Their calendar drag-and-drop grid preview is great for this.
Canva is a graphic design platform. It allows you to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content by using an easy drag-and-drop feature and professional layouts.
Graphic Design At Its Best
Canva is a very different tool than the others in this list. It’s an online content creation tool, which allows you to create social media content without much graphic design knowledge and skills.
If you don’t have the skills to use tools like Adobe Photoshop, Canva will help you out. And even if you do have these skills, Canva can most likely still help you out. It has many (hundreds) free templates, which makes it very easy to create images for Instagram, Facebook etc.
Canva is a great tool to help social media managers to get the social media graphic and any others.
Table Comparison
Then, let’s compare these top social media management software.
Now, let’s have a look at how the 3 most popular social media management tools compare against each other.
These three tools have a direct integration with multiple social media platforms. Their main focus is to manage your social media accounts more easily.
Hootsuite vs Sprout Social vs Buffer
Hootsuite
✓ Free trial
✓ Paid plans start from US$49/month
Schedule post across:
✓ Instagram
✓ Facebook
✓ Twitter
✓ LinkedIn
✓ Pinterest
✓ Youtube
✓ Auto-scheduling
✓ Optimal send times
Content calendar
✓ Campaign tagging and reporting
✓ Multiple users*
Sprout Social
✓ Free trial
✓ Paid plans start from US$89/month
Schedule post across:
✓ Instagram
✓ Facebook
✓ Twitter
✓ LinkedIn
✓ Pinterest
✓ Youtube
✓ Auto-scheduling
✓ Optimal send times*
✓ Content calendar
✓ Campaign tagging and reporting*
✓ Multiple users
Buffer
✓ Free trial
✓ From $5 per social channel per month
Schedule post across:
✓ Instagram
✓ Facebook
✓ Twitter
✓ LinkedIn
✓ Pinterest
Youtube
✓ Auto-scheduling
✓ Optimal send times
Content calendar
✓ Campaign tagging and reporting
✓ Multiple users*
* Available in a more expensive price package.
Best Social Management Software: Which One To Choose?
A conclusion of what we have learned from the experts that we interviewed.
Now, with all the different platforms that are available. The critical question is: which social media management tool is best for you?
With the vast array of social media management tools available on the market, it can be difficult to know which one is right for your business. Here are a few factors to consider when making your decision:
First, identify which platforms you need to be active on. Not all tools support all platforms, so it’s important to narrow down your options based on which ones will work for you.
Next, consider your budget. Some tools are free, while others can be quite expensive. Determine how much you’re willing to spend before starting your search.
Finally, think about what features are most important to you. Do you need help with scheduling posts? Analytics? Customer service? Make a list of must-haves before beginning your research.
By taking the time to figure out which factors are most important to you, you’ll be able to narrow down your choices and find the social media management tool that’s right for your business.
There are a number of social media management tools available that can help businesses effectively manage their social media accounts. Some of the most popular tools include Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social. Each of these tools provides users with a range of features that can help simplify managing social media accounts.
For example, many of these tools offer users the ability to schedule posts in advance, track social media analytics, and engage with followers. Additionally, some of these tools also offer features specifically designed for businesses, such as team collaboration and customer support. By taking advantage of the features offered by these tools, businesses can save time and effort while still ensuring that their social media accounts are effectively managed.
If you’re after an all-in-one social media management tool you should pick between Hootsuite and Sprout Social. Both are very similar. Buffer would fit into this area as well, although they started off as a tool to just schedule your posts.
Planoly is best if you are only using Instagram and don’t care about anything else.
You can use Canva alongside each of these tools, as it will help you to create visual content a lot easier.
Read What The Expert Said About The Best Social Management Software
Find out what each expert had to say about their favorite software. Select the software from the list below.
Malte Scholz
Margaret H. Geiger
✓ HootSuite
In order to manage multiple clients, it’s important to stay organized. I love using Hootsuite. The platform is free up to three channels and after that, they have very reasonable annual fees based on how many accounts you have. You can publish directly to Instagram, which many platforms CANNOT do. This was a big win for us.
With Hootsuite, you can schedule content, create analytics reports to track your account’s progress (engagement, likes, followers, etc.) and create streams that are basically a homepage for all published posts, scheduled posts, and any posts that contain hashtags that are relevant to your brand or business. Super helpful!
Andrew Maff
✓ Sprout Social
Our team uses Sprout Social. It’s not the least expensive option, but after years of research and trying several other platforms, we’re very happy with where we landed. A majority of social media growth comes from outreach, not so much just posting, Sprout makes this very simple with some great social listening tools.
John Stevenson
As an entrepreneur whose business revolves on maintaining a large presence online – social media included. To make this possible, I find it important to keep the right tools in hand. Here is a couple of them.
✓ Hootsuite
As far as social media management goes, Hootsuite happens to be on top of my list. They have both an affordable price and it covers a wide range of social media platforms. What I like about it the most would be its analytics feature: Hootsuite gives you a clear view of the optimal times you can schedule your posts, which makes it extremely useful for those who have unpredictable schedules and need to be away from the computer from time to time.
✓ Zoho
Another tool I find handy is Zoho. Its interface is easy to use, making it friendly for new users. The biggest appeal is the engagement reports – Zoho makes it possible to see which of your posts get the most response from your audience. With this in mind, you’ll get an easier idea about what kind of content catches more attention.
Shira Pik-Nathan
✓ Later
At Tourist Israel we LOVE using Later to schedule our Instagram posts. It has everything you need to keep up a well-curated Instagram page. The first feature I love is the scheduling tool. You have 2 options for viewing your scheduled posts.
The first is a calendar, which you can view by week or by month, and you can drag and drop photos into the time and day on the calendar that you want to schedule. Plus, you can keep that schedule week to week. It makes it super easy to move around the photos’ scheduled posting times. This feature works hand-in-hand with the feed-viewing tool.
Once you’ve scheduled your posts, you can switch to the feed view and see how your Instagram feed will look to your audience. You’re able to see both photos that are already posted and photos scheduled for the future, so if you’re going for a certain look or color-scheme, you can make sure it will look great when users scroll through your feed.
You can then change the order of photos by either dragging and dropping in the feed view or the calendar view if you don’t like how something looks. This feature is especially useful if you’re using the Later app on your phone to schedule your posts, as you can really feel like you’re scrolling through your feed on Instagram. The last great feature is that you can save templates for captions.
So, if you like to use certain hashtags, emojis, or a line like “link in bio” consistently, you can save it. Then, when scheduling your posts, all you have to do is insert your desired template (and you can save as many as you want) and edit the text from there to fit the specific photo. This website and its app make Instagram scheduling and curating so easy and visual, so it’s definitely a great tool for businesses that have a large Instagram presence. For us, as a tour operator, showing great visuals is key to getting customers to book our tours and Later helps us do that.
Adeel Shabir
Social media is the main source of generating traffic nowadays because of its ability to connect with the audience and customers. This also requires to manage social media in a more creative way.
Following are the best tools to be used by social media managers:
✓ Buffer
Personally my favorite tool for managing all my social media posts. Buffer has the ability to schedule a certain onto the peak times of social media usage. We target different audiences in different regions. Currently, we are working in Canada and the United States. So, there are different time zones. Buffer allows us to schedule our posts, and provide the detailed analytics of the engagements on the post.
Pricing: It has two different pricing plans, it all depends upon the usage of the application. Starter plan and business plan. If you a bigger company, than I suggest you go with the business plan. For a small company, they offer a free version also, with limitations.
✓ Trello
Its task-oriented application on which we gather all the necessary tasks for the day and disperse it towards our employees. It’s a great platform for productivity and being efficient at work.
Pricing: Its a free application for the task manager.
✓ Canva
An online content creation tool, it helps a lot in making those post for social media. If you don’t have any knowledge of hardcore designing skills such as Photoshop or Illustrator. You can create the post on Canva and download it in any quality that pleases you. It allows to integrate with any social media platform, popular ones are Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. It has many free templates and also they provide the paid version for the templates.
Pricing: It’s free to use and comes with a paid version of templates.
Kelly Bertog
✓ Hootsuite
As the sole member of the Marketing Team at our small organization, time management is absolutely crucial. That is why I am so reliant on Hootsuite to manage our social media presence across our four core accounts. The tool allows me to monitor key feeds and engagements across our platforms, as well as schedule out similar content across multiple channels all in one go. This means I can batch our social media content creation, and significantly reduce the number of hours I spend in the networks each week, ultimately optimizing the ROI on my time across social. Highly recommend Hootsuite to anyone out there looking to streamline their social operations!
Mimi Banks
✓ Planoly
Use this tool exclusively to plan the look and feel of our feed. It’s a great way to visualize content and plan for the future. Each piece of content is like a puzzle piece, so you can move things around and have a visual of what your feed will look like.
✓ Sprout Social
Main tool to schedule, track and engage on social media. It’s user friendly, enables multiple logins and pretty good reporting. It allows you to schedule multiple channels at once and schedule based on optimal times
✓ Iconosquare
It has one of the best Instagram analytics I have seen. It’s user friendly, allows you to track competitors, hashtags and even schedule posts. We can benchmark posts, easily see top performing content and stories. You can also download data to dive into the quantitative results.
✓ ContentCal
A client introduced this to us. We can plan/schedule our Facebook and Twitter content. The client approves and then it automatically schedules. Since there is not a direct API for Instagram yet, we still use Sprout for Instagram. The caveat here is that it’s mostly for scheduling and approving. It’s not a good tool for someone who has more complex planning and needs to input other events, notes, promotions, etc.
Jennifer Johnson
✓ Buffer
Buffer allows me to connect directly to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn accounts and then schedule posts as far into the future as I need to. I can post to multiple platforms at once, cutting my work time in half. Social media isn’t just the wave of the future–it’s now necessary for all reputable businesses and professionals to have an active social media presence. But small business owners and entrepreneurs simply don’t have time for it.
Buffer allows me to provide this valuable service to my clients, and I use it for my own social media, as well. Plus, it’s affordable for professionals like me.
Krystal Kelly
✓ Hootsuite
This is a very helpful tool I use to preschedule my posts all on one platform. Scheduling posts 30 days in advanced can be a huge time saver for posting my content so that I can focus more on creating content.
✓ Upwork.com
I use this to help outsource certain tasks that I don’t have time to do myself. I can hire freelancers here to manage my social media accounts for me or schedule posts or do research on hashtags / similar accounts in my niche etc.
✓ Trello
This is how I schedule and plan all of my social media managing whether its content, managing staff involved with the social media management tasks for the day or more. I like to create all of my checklists and systems via trello (it’s free). Everything is available online so I can share with others team members the tasks for the day/week and I have a common place where I can plan and create all of my content or hashtags or ads.
Skylar Whitney
✓ Sprout Social
We wholeheartedly recommend using Sprout Social for the day-to-day social media management tasks, including social listening, scheduling and reporting.
For the past 3 years, our firm has leveraged this platform in ways that continue to impress both our social media client roster and our more traditional PR clients by offering insights in real time on various campaigns and sharing optimal posting times across all social platforms.
Sprout Social also offers a variety of solutions based on business type, need or network and even provides a vast library of resources for its subscribers, including blog content aimed at improving the skills of social media managers. They’ve integrated with companies like Bambu, Simply Measured and Viral Post to deliver top tier service to their users. Additionally, their support team is knowledgeable and quick, jumping to action in support of your team whenever there is an issue.
Their engineering team constantly discovers new ways to improve the platform and workflow. The reports provided on this platform can be customized with your company or client logos and offer an in-depth analysis of each channel, along with competitor reports, trends reports, Google Analytics reports, internal team performance reports, post-performance reports and more.
Aliza Sherman
✓ Buffer
I can manage messaging going out to multiple accounts including more than one Twitter account, LinkedIn profiles, LinkedIn pages and also easily add posts and articles to a queue to publish over time. NOTE: I don’t use Buffer for Facebook or Instagram.
✓ Planoly
I’m able to not only prepare and schedule posts with graphics and text for Instagram using this tool, but I can drag and drop posts around to find the right placement to create a better aesthetic for each Instagram account I manage.
✓ Hootsuite
I tend to use Hootsuite more as a listening post although it also has post creation and scheduling features and the ability to manage multiple accounts with your team.
✓ Sprout Social
For more robust client social media management needs, I manage post creation, scheduling, monitoring and social conversations using this tool. It’s more of a Swiss Army Knife for social media management.
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Social Media Management Software FAQ
It depends on your business and target audience to decide which social media platform is the best for you. There are many social media platforms out there, most of them have different users and engagement levels.
Our experts voted for Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Buffer. See our article for the full list.
A social media management tool can help you find, schedule, manage and report on social media content.
By streamlining your social media accounts, reporting and analyzing the data, and actively monitor activity and engagement you can manage your social media accounts more effectively. A social media management tool can help you in this process.
One reply on “Best Social Media Management Software 2023”
Nice article! Out of all the Instagram tools that I’ve used, I love using Planoly for auto-posting. I talk about this in my Planoly Review, but it offers a lot of functionality beyond just auto posting content, ranging from its hashtag discovery tool, built-in analytics dashboard, and even auto-posting videos and Instagram stories.