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.
Hannah Spencer
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.
Kelly Sturtevant
✓ Later
While this tool can schedule for multiple platforms, it’s really designed for Instagram. With the free account, businesses can schedule up to 30 posts a month and upload unlimited images (size is a restriction). It allows you to create hashtag groupings to make it easy for posting and has a built in emoji keyboard making it simper simple to create engaging posts.
Under a paid account, users get the ability to schedule Instagram Stories and can get access to hashtag suggestions.
✓ Creator Studio for Facebook
Creator Studio is Facebook’s own built in Scheduler, making is super easy on users to schedule directly to their Facebook pages and not having to worry about the program being a trusted partner. For me, it allows me to schedule to all of my client’s pages within one platform with easy to use search functions. Upload any sort of creatives into the scheduler and you’re ready to go! Because it’s by Facebook, you don’t have to worry about any component being missed or not having access to, as it is mirrored exactly as a native Facebook post would look like. Plus, its 100% Free to everyone.
John Rampton
✓ Buffer
Buffer has so many benefits. It has so many benefits, such as the content inbox tool that pulls content directly from the site you want to share to. Buffer also allows you to schedule things out to multiple social media outlets for weeks and even months into the future.
My next favorite benefit is the analytics tool, which shows the past content that has been shared via Buffer and shows statistics on how well or not so well it performed. Another really helpful tool in Buffer is the Re-Buffer tool. This allows for you to re-share something you’ve posted in the past.
Aside from all of these helpful tools, I think my absolute favorite would be the Buffer Extension. You can add an extension to your internet browser and share content from any site straight to Buffer. Altogether, I would highly recommend Buffer to anyone who would like to automate social media sharing.
Sarah Donawerth
✓ Later
This scheduler is made for the visual-first marketer. It provides previews and editors that can help you create an aesthetically pleasing feed. It works with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, so there’s plenty of platforms to start growing.
✓ Carro
Social media managers and digital marketers can find all the influencers who love their brand with this tool. In addition to discovery, Carro also helps streamline the entire influencer collaboration process, from product gifting to tracking mentions. It’s an all-in-one influencer marketing platform that can save hours from a marketer’s schedule.
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.
William Taylor
✓ Tailwind
Our social media team uses Tailwind. It’s the best social media management tool for managing Pinterest accounts. You can even use it to schedule your Instagram posts.
The reason I like Tailwind is that it provides really detailed insights into your Pinterest account. Obviously Pinterest analytics are available for free, but Tailwind allows you to see your daily follower growth, how many repins you have altogether, and the engagement rate of your pins (so the percentage of pins you have shared that have also been repinned). It also offers a great feature: Tailwind Tribes. These tribes are similar to group boards, as you can share pins for other pinners to possibly schedule.
Meg Marrs
✓ Tailwind
One of my favorite social media tools is Tailwind – it can be used to schedule and post Pinterest pins as well as Instagram posts.
Tailwind makes it really easy to add tags, post to specific boards, and re-publish certain seasonal or timely posts during specific times of the year! Their “Tribes” section also encourages other Tailwind members to share other people’s posts, spreading the reach of your pins and driving traffic.
Pinterest is a social media network that’s often underutilized, and Tailwind makes it really easy to crush it at the Pinterest game!
Alex Williams
Whether you’re creating and publishing content, engaging with potential and existing customers or analysing insights, the big wide world of social media can seem overwhelming. Luckily for us, there are a load of super intelligent boffins out there designing social media management tools to support our everyday social media needs.
Many of these tools can help save time, streamline your day to day workflows and help you target the right audience.
✓ Canva
Canva is a great tool to help even the most amateur of graphic designers to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content. Available on both web and mobile, Canva offers a library of free and paid for images, templates and illustrations to help you create engaging and inspiring social media posts.
We use Canva on a daily basis and love the consistency it provides across our content creation.
✓ CoSchedule
When it comes to publishing content, CoSchedule is a powerful tool to help you manage and collaborate with your team to create your social media posts, content, events, and tasks in a calendar style format. It’s perfect for marketers who want to organize all their projects in one place in a collaborative way.
CoSchedule is a great tool for a business of our size. It offers a one stop shop for all our social media scheduling needs and is extremely user friendly.
Paul Strobel
✓ IFTTT
I highly recommend using IFTTT.com with your website. IFTTT helps you automate the tiresome social media sharing process by automatically syndicating your content to all your social media profiles. Even better – it’s free! A whole lot of different integrations are available and their database of integrations is constantly evolving, making life all the more simple for you.
With IFTTT you won’t have to jump around between Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and what not just to share every new blog post you publish. Simply hook up your WordPress installation or website RSS feed to IFTTT and configure your settings and it’s all smooth sailing from there.
Catherine Campbell
✓ CoSchedule
Because we’re an agency that provides social media management to multiple clients, we need a tool that allows us to quickly toggle back and forth between client accounts and marketing calendars. Fortunately, CoSchedule does just that.
They have plans that allow us to scale up or down with project growth at a moment’s notice, and they include integrations such as WordPress, Mailchimp and more, making it easy for us to visually plan, move, and track social media posts associated with any campaign. They also provide automated and manually generated social media reports that you can break down by platform and send to your clients.
✓ Agency Analytics
Agency Analytics is an all-in-one analytics tool so you can pull all of your analytics into one place, including local sources, reputation platforms, call trackers, search consoles, SEO tools, and social media platforms.
They just added Instagram reporting, which makes it easy now for us to provide a monthly comprehensive performance report to our clients rather than having to send them 10 reports from 10 difference sources.
Beth Adan
✓ Hootsuite
Rather than juggling multiple social platforms and posting content at all hours of the day, brands should schedule updates in advance using a service like Hootsuite or Sprout Social. This allows them to publish content on the same time of day and days of the week, which boosts SEO and appears more professional and consistent.
✓ Canva
A super user-friendly tool that lets you design anything from a Facebook cover image to a restaurant menu, Canva is something I use nearly every day for both personal and professional projects. It’s free to sign up and provides a simple way to add text or graphics to an image without having to use a bulky program like PhotoShop. Although most elements are free, if you want to purchase a paid graphic or image, it’s just $1.
✓ Unsplash
The perfect stock photo site for finding Creative Commons licensed, high-quality imagery, this is my go-to resource for finding backgrounds, images for blog posts and more. It’s also a great place to seek design inspiration – Canva includes a section called Made with Unsplash to show you how others are using their images to create vibrant marketing collateral.
End of content
No more testimonials to load
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.