As a Social Media Manager, you may be looking for the best social media management tools available. You want to utilize the right platform to reach the right people and create the best experience possible. With so many social media management tools on the market, choosing one can be difficult.
| Tool | Plan | Pricing (Monthly) | Pricing (Yearly) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Personal | $18 | $180 | Free Trial |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Essential | $240 | $2,400 | Pricing |
 | Premium | $99 | $1,188 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Starter | $39 | $390 | Pricing |
 | Starter | $29 | $300 | Pricing |
 | Professional | $30 | $300 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Solo | Not purchasable | $108 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Pro | $49 | $468 | Pricing |
 | Base | $34 | $300 | Pricing |
 | Small | $15 | $144 | Pricing |
 | Base | $129 | $1,290 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Lite | $19 | $228 | Pricing |
 | Pro | Not public | Not public | Tool |
 | Starter | $59 | $708 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Advanced | $19 | $190 | Pricing |
 | Bootstrap | $19 | $190 | Pricing |
 | Standard | $49 | $588 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Personal | $10 | $96 | Pricing |
 | Standard | $16 | $192 | Pricing |
 | Micro | $9 | $90 | Pricing |
 | Solo | $9 | $108 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Basic | $15 | $180 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Business Lite | $9 | $108 | Pricing |
 | Starter | $9 | $108 | Pricing |
 | Start | $99 | $1,188 | Pricing |
 | Freelancer | $39 | $468 | Pricing |
 | Solo | $29 | $348 | Pricing |
 | Standard | $179 | $1,548 | Pricing |
 | Starter | $12 | $72 | Pricing |
 | Individual | $7 | $84 | Pricing |
 | Starter | $4 | $48 | Pricing |
 | Starter | $15 | $180 | Pricing |
 | Regular | Not public | Not public | Tool |
 | Regular | Not public | Not public | Tool |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Regular | Not public | Not public | Tool |
 | Start | $42 | $459 | Pricing |
 | Basic | $59 | $708 | Pricing |
 | Regular | Not public | Not public | Tool |
 | Regular | Not public | Not public | Tool |
 | Regular | Not public | Not public | Tool |
 | Regular | Not public | Not public | Tool |
 | Professional | $29 | $348 | Pricing |
 | Drive | $199 | $2,028 | Pricing |
 | Solo | $20 | $204 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Starter | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Free | $0 | $0 | Pricing |
 | Social Media Manager | $99 | $996 | Pricing |
 | Regular | Not public | Not public | Tool |
 | Medium | $12 | $119 | Pricing |
The data that we gathered from the social media management tools is open to everybody and free to share.
You can check it out at Googl
The best social media management tools & software – summary
We’ll start off with a quick summary of each tool. Then, I’ll talk you through each one in more detail.
And remember: all of these social media management platforms either offer free trials or limited free plans. Click the links below and sign up for an account if you want to try them for yourself.
- Agorapulse – Best all-in-one social media management tool overall. Ideal for agencies. Includes social inbox, scheduling, reporting, and social listening. Free plan available.
- Sendible – Another great all-in-one social media management platform. Ideal for solopreneurs and freelancers. Strong scheduling functionality and social inbox included.
- NapoleonCat – Best all-in-one social media management tool for customer service teams. Includes scheduling, reporting, and a powerful social inbox with built-in automation rules to save you time.
- SocialBee – Best dedicated social media scheduling tool. Ideal for busy teams.
- Pallyy – Best social media marketing tool for Instagram and incredibly affordable. Includes scheduling, analytics, comment management, and IG bio link tool.
- Iconosquare – Best for social media analytics. Includes publishing/scheduling for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Basic social inbox is available for Instagram only.
- PromoRepublic – Excellent social media calendar & scheduling tool with integrated template library. Enterprise accounts include a social inbox.
- Crowdfire – Best all-in-one social media management app for affordability.
- ContentCal – Social media scheduling & planning platform designed for content marketers. Analytics and social inbox available as optional add-ons.
- Sprout Social – Powerful all-in-one social media management tool that is priced for larger businesses.
- TweetDeck – Best free social media management tool. Only supports Twitter.
- Hootsuite – Another solid social media management tool. A lot more expensive than it used to be though.
1. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is one of the best social media management tools overall. It provides all the key functionality you need in one user-friendly interface. It works great for individuals and teams alike. And if you’re not ready to invest straight away, it even offers a limited free plan.
If you’re looking for a full-featured social media management tool to replace your entire stack, there’s no better choice.
Aside from giving you access to powerful publishing tools (including bulk scheduling, post categories, labeled content, automated rescheduling, and more), Agorapulse also offers:
- Powerful unified social inbox. Track all your communications with social media users across platforms in one unified inbox. Automatically apply labels and assign conversations to specific team member roles and make use of saved replies to save time.
- Social listening. Unlimited social listening searches enable social media managers to monitor key conversations and uncover insights about their brand.
- Collaboration tools. Agorapulse is one of the best tools for agencies and teams as it’s jam-packed with useful collaboration tools. You can assign team member roles, delegate tasks, share internal notes, and more.
Plus full analytics and reporting capabilities, fast support, and much more!
Supported social media networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google My Business (on Pro plans and above), LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Key features:
- Social inbox with automation rules
- Scheduling + publishing
- Analytics + reporting
- Social listening
- Team management + workflows
- Mobile app
Pricing: Agorapulse offers a Free plan that includes basic features, up to 3 social profiles, and 1 user. If you want to unlock premium features and additional profiles or users, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan, which starts from $79/month.
You can also try out everything included in the paid plans for free with a 30-day free trial.Try Agorapulse Free
2. Sendible
Sendible is a great all-around social media management platform that includes strong scheduling functionality, a social inbox, and more.
If you want the same features as Agorapulse, but at a more attractive price point, Sendible is one of the best social media management tools available.
Unlike Agorapulse, Sendible offers a Creator plan specifically built for creators and solopreneurs. It’s more affordable than Agorapulse’s entry-level paid plan, which is built for small businesses.
As such, Sendible is one of our top recommendations for freelancers, bloggers, coaches, influencers, and other independent creators. In particular, we really like Sendible’s built-in social media scheduler, one-click reports, and Content Suggestions feature.
Because the various all-in-one social media management platforms on the market tend to be very similar, we also used Sendible’s live chat support feature to ask their sales reps if there was anything in particular that made Sendible stand out from the competition.
Here’s what they said made Sendible different:
“Our reporting suite is the major selling point with it being so comprehensive!
Also, the ability to customize posts depending on which social network you are posting them to [is something other platforms don’t offer]”
They also get bonus points for rapid support – they responded to our query within 10 minutes!
Supported social media networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google My Business.
Key features:
- Social inbox with automation rules
- Scheduling + publishing
- Analytics + reporting
- Social listening
- Content curation
- Team management + workflows.
- Mobile app
Pricing: Unfortunately, Sendible doesn’t offer a free plan. However, you try Sendible for free for 14 days.
The Creator plan starts from $29/month (limited to 1 user and 6 social profiles). If you want to add more users and social profiles, higher-priced plans suitable for larger teams and agencies are available from $89/month.Try Sendible Free
3. NapoleonCat
NapoleonCat is a complete set of social media management tools for independent, agency-based, and in-house social media professionals. Thanks to its built-in automation rules, it is especially useful for customer service teams.
NapoleonCat’s social inbox makes it easy to manage interactions across all of your social media accounts. That includes comments, messages, reviews, etc.
The auto-moderation feature will help you save time managing repetitive questions, spam, or inappropriate content. And it will help you drive engagement when you’re not working on your profiles.
You also get access to a robust scheduler that supports most popular social media platforms. And your posts can be tailored to each social network allowing you to tag a location on Instagram, for example. Then, all of these posts are displayed on a cross-platform calendar.
NapoleonCat also includes social media analytics and reporting. This allows you to create custom reports that highlight key metrics. Report scheduling is also available.
Supported social media networks: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and GoogleMyBusiness.
Key features:
- Social inbox with automation rules
- Scheduling + publishing
- Analytics
- Team management + workflows
Pricing:
Plans start at $27 per user/month or $21 per user/month when paid annually. Plans can be tailored to the number of social profiles and team members you need. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial.Try NapoleonCat Free
4. SocialBee
SocialBee is the best dedicated social media scheduling platform that we have tested so far.
It isn’t a true all-in-one platform like Agorapulse or Sendible as it doesn’t have quite as broad a feature set and is missing some key features like social listening, but its scheduling tools are as good as it gets. It works like this:
First, you create your content in SocialBee’s advanced post editor. Here, you can select all the social profiles you want to post your content to. You can also customize the content for each profile using post variations. For example, you might want to change the hashtags in your caption for different platforms.
You can also set your posts to expire at a certain date (useful for time-sensitive content) or after a certain number of shares (for giveaways and contests). If you want to recycle your content, you can set it to re-queue after posting.
Social content can be organized into different categories, which can help you to make sure you’re posting a good mix of different types of content. You can also import content through the bulk import feature, Zapier, or RSS feeds.
Once you’ve set up your content, you can schedule it. You can use a pre-set schedule setup based on best practices or alternatively, set your own posting times from scratch. The calendar view gives you a clear picture of what you’ll be posting and when.
On the Analytics page, you can measure your SMM campaign performance and keep track of important metrics like profile growth, top-performing posts, engagement figures (likes, comments, shares, etc.), and more.
You can also use SocialBee to create custom short URLs and track link performance through customizable UTM settings.
Supported social media networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google My Business, and TikTok.
Key features:
- Social scheduling based on content libraries
- Social media analytics
- Integrations with external content curation platforms (Quuu, Pocket, etc.)
- Dedicated workspaces for each brand
- Users, roles, and content approval workflows
- Done-for-you social media management
Pricing: SocialBee offers various paid plans for agencies, businesses, and individual creators. Their most affordable plan starts from $13.30/month. Agency plans start from $79/month.
You can try SocialBee out with a 14-day free trial.Try SocialBee Free
5. Pallyy
Pallyy is one of the most affordable social media management tools you’ll find. And it’s particularly well suited to those focused on Instagram marketing.
There’s a generous free plan and a reasonably-priced premium plan. But despite the low price point, it comes with plenty of powerful features.
You can use it to schedule posts to popular social networks from your desktop, mobile, or iPad, curate or create stunning content in the integrated Canva editor, reply directly to Instagram comments inside the app, create a custom landing page, generate bio links to add to your Insta profile, keep track of analytics, and more.
It also has one of the best user interfaces we’ve seen. It’s super user-friendly and intuitive and the scheduling calendar looks great. It lays out all your content for the next month (or week, depending on your settings) for you, with thumbnail previews.
The drag and drop editor is set up so that you can visually plan your whole Instagram feed at once, then bulk sync it to your calendar ready for publishing.
This is really useful for Instagram, as brands and creators often aim to make sure their Insta-feed works together holistically, with the same themes and color palette used throughout.
When scheduling your posts, you can also schedule the first comment in order to keep hashtags separate from your caption.
Supported social media networks: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and Pinterest.
Key features:
- Social scheduling that is optimized for sharing visual content
- Link in bio tool (grid + links/buttons)
- Comment management (IG only)
- Analytics and reporting (IG only)
- Content curation (IG only)
Pricing: There’s a free plan that offers limited access to scheduling and analytics functionality.
The premium plan starts from $15/month and includes access to all features. Price increases based on the number of social profiles you need. A discount is applied beyond 5 social groups and that discount scales.
The premium plan includes unlimited team member accounts, which makes the platform very affordable for freelancers and agencies.Try Pallyy Free
6. Iconosquare
Iconosquare is an all-in-one social media platform best known for its leading analytics and reporting capabilities.
It includes common social media management software features including publishing/scheduling tools for all the major platforms, a social listening tool, and a social inbox (for Instagram only).
However, where it really stands out is in its analytics and reporting features. It gives you access to a ton of data about your campaigns and visualizes the metrics that are most important to you in graphs on your customized dashboard.
It also provides you with industry benchmarks for over 100 industries so you can see whether you’re performing under, at, or above the expected standard in your niche.
And the automatic reporting feature means all of these insights can be delivered straight to your inbox or your clients at regular intervals.
Whenever a user on Instagram mentions your brand (or your competitors), you can find out about it using the Conversations feature. Conversations give you an idea of brand sentiment and enables you to better manage your brand reputation by quickly responding to important comments.
The Iconosquare scheduling tool also includes some powerful features like geolocations, best time to post recommendations, a first comment scheduler, user tagging, an Instagram feed preview, and more.
If you’re working as part of a team, you can also now submit posts created on Iconosquare for approvals to other team members or to your clients for easy collaboration.
Supported social media networks: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Not all features are available for all networks. For example, only analytics is supported for TikTok and LinkedIn.
Key features:
- Conversations feature for social listening
- In-depth analytics
- Automated reporting
- Custom dashboards
- Industry benchmarks
- Post approval and collaborations
- Powerful scheduler
Pricing: Iconosquare plans start at $49 per month. A free 14-day trial (no credit card required) is also available.Try Iconosquare Free
Read our Iconosquare review.
7. PromoRepublic
PromoRepublic is a social media calendar and scheduling tool that comes with an integrated template library, plus a social inbox for enterprise customers.
The integrated template library is a fantastic time-saving feature. It includes over 50,000 social media post templates, all of which look great and are easily customizable.
Another time-saving feature we liked is the content suggestion library, which acts as a repository of media files like images and gifs suited to your industry. You can also customize the graphics you plan on using in your posts within the PromoRepublic dashboard. No need to use external graphic design tools.
The social calendar tool is similar to most other platforms on this list. It features an intuitive interface that you can use to schedule posts ahead of time across platforms.
PromoRepublic also includes analytics and reporting to help you analyze your campaign performance and visualize important metrics.
Supported social media networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Pinterest and Google My Business only on Pro plans and above.
Key features:
- Powerful publishing and scheduling tools
- Post recycling
- Mobile app
- Customizable post templates
- Content curation
- Visual editor
- Analytics and reporting
- Social inbox (Pro plans and above only)
- Team and client collaboration tools
Pricing: The Solo plan is available for $9/month, but it’s very limited. For most users, we’d recommend the Pro plan, which starts from $39/month. Plans suitable for agencies start from $75/month. A free 14-day trial is available.Try PromoRepublic Free
8. Crowdfire
Crowdfire is one of the most popular and affordable social media management tools around. It’s used by over 19 million creators and businesses and has one of the most generous free plans on the market.
It comes with all the usual features you’d expect from an SMM solution, including scheduling/publishing tools, analytics, and brand mention monitoring.
Probably the coolest thing about Crowdfire, though, is its content curation features. For example, the innovative Article Recommendation tool will automatically curate the best content on the internet based on the topics you’re interested in.
Then, it’ll give you a pool of relevant articles that you can share on your social accounts in a few clicks. This helps make it easier to create fresh content every day. The content you share is even automatically tailored for each social platform.
You can also curate images for Instagram and Pinterest, content from your own blog or website, and even get hashtag recommendations.
You can pre-schedule all your posts in advance and publish them at recommended times, or at any other time you choose. Plus, you can customize your posts for all your social profiles easily without having to craft separate posts for each network from scratch.
Supported social media networks: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Pinterest is supported on all plans except the Free plan.
Key features:
- Scheduling and publishing
- Content curation
- Autotailored posts
- Track brand mentions
- Social analytics
Pricing: Crowdfire offers a Free plan for up to 3 accounts. You can schedule 10 posts per account and only get access to basic features.
To unlock more features or schedule more posts, you’ll need to upgrade. Paid plans start from $7.48 per month.Try Crowdfire Free
9. ContentCal
ContentCal, is one of the best social media management tools, that at its core is a purpose-built tool for content marketing teams.
You can use the calendar tool to schedule social media posts across all the platforms you’re active on, plus blog content, press releases, and more.
It has a suite of cutting-edge features designed to help you to build better campaigns in less time. For example, they’ve implemented an artificial intelligence-powered content generator that can automatically create content for you based on keywords and personas, thus saving you a ton of time.
The Engage feature enables you to build better customer relationships, manage conversations, and collaborate with your team, while the optional analytics add-on allows you to dive into the data behind your content and use it to inform your strategy.
Supported social media networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google My Business.
Key features:
- Publishing tools
- Cross-platform content management
- AI-powered content generator
- Direct scheduling
- Category tags
- User permissions
- Analytics and Social Inbox (option addons)
Pricing: The Essentials plan is suitable for individuals and costs $30/month. Teams and agencies that need more advanced features and extra users/profiles can contact ContentCal for a quote.Try ContentCal Free
10. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a powerful all-in-one social media management platform that is best suited to large businesses and enterprise customers.
As an enterprise-level tool, it doesn’t come cheap, but it includes some of the most advanced social media features on the market.
The visual content calendar is great, especially for image-based platforms like Pinterest and Instagram. The built-in multimedia library helps you to find inspiration and images to use in your posts from within the app to save time.
Powerful engagement tools bring together messages you’ve received across all your social accounts in one place. The unified inbox is great for larger teams and makes it easy to assign conversations and respond to your followers at scale.
You can also visualize key metrics through the analytics feature and create reports for your clients with ease, listen in on brand mentions, and do everything else you need to do to manage your social campaigns.
Supported social media networks: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Key features:
- Unified social inbox
- Publishing and scheduling tools
- Content calendar
- Review management
- Keyword monitoring
- CRM tools
- Advanced reporting
- Paid promotion tools for Facebook posts
Pricing: Plans start from $89/month per user. You can start by trying out their free trial for 30 days.Try Sprout Social Free
11. TweetDeck
TweetDeck is a free social media management tool for Twitter only. It won’t help with any other platforms, but if you’re mainly focusing on Twitter marketing and you’re on a tight budget, it’s a great tool to add to your marketing stack.
Anyone with a Twitter account will get access for free without the need to sign up for an account since it is incorporated into the platform itself. You can use it to manage multiple Twitter accounts at once, schedule Tweets, and keep track of the latest trending content and hashtags.
The interface is split into three customizable columns (or ‘decks’). You can change these columns to show the content that’s most important to you. For example, you might choose to have a column to show your latest notifications, mentions, or messages.
There are a ton of column types to choose from, including a Trending column (which shows popular hashtags and trending news stories across the world that day), Collection column (which shows a timeline of Tweets that you’ve curated), Activity column, Scheduled column, and more.
You can add multiple accounts to TweetDeck so you don’t have to constantly switch between them. Once you’ve linked them, you can manage them all in one place and view multiple timelines side-by-side.
You can Tweet directly from TweetDeck or use its powerful suite of tools to schedule Tweets for future posting, build Tweet collections, and more.
You can even gain insight into brand sentiment using its search feature. Just search for your brand name or any keyword alongside a happy or sad emoji, and it’ll bring up negative or positive comments about that keyword.
Supported social media networks: Twitter.
Key features:
- Connect and manage multiple accounts
- Powerful search feature to uncover insights
- Trends deck
- View and manage messages, mentions, and notification
- Publish and schedule Tweets
- Curate Tweet collections
Pricing: TweetDeck is completely free forever so it’s a great alternative if you aren’t ready to invest in a paid tool just yet.Try TweetDeck Free
12. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most long standing social media management tools around – and one of the most expensive. It’s used by some of the biggest brands including 800 Fortune 1000 companies.
As an all-in-one solution, it includes most features you need to manage your social campaigns, including publishing, insights, scheduling, and team collaboration tools.
The content calendar is really easy to use. Aside from scheduling and publishing content, you can also manage all your customer communications in the platform, including all major social platforms plus SMS, WhatsApp, LiveChat, and apps.
Robust insights make it easy to spot and analyze trends in real-time and monitor engagement across your posts and social channels, while brand protection features help to ensure you’re fully compliant with relevant regulations and mitigate security risks.
Hootsuite can also help you to manage, optimize, and track the performance of your social ad campaigns.
You can also reply to messages and mentions via social streams. They’re very customizable and more akin to what you would experience with Facebook’s Newsfeed.
However, social streams aren’t efficient and we found that we missed a lot of messages from followers when we used them. This is why we opted for a tool that includes a social media inbox.
Supported social media networks: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Key features:
- Powerful scheduler
- Social streams
- Extensive integrations
- Robust analytics
- Ad management
- Team management and collaboration (on Team plan and above)
Pricing: Plans start from $49/month and a free 30-day trial is available.Try Hootsuite Free
Which social media management tool is for you?
As you can see, there are lots of social media management tools out there that can help you to better manage your social media accounts. The best social media management software for you will depend on your needs and goals.
To help narrow down your options, the first questions you should ask yourself are:
- What is it that you’re hoping the tool will help you to achieve?
- What social media platforms will you be working with?
- Do you need an all-in-one platform or would you prefer to integrate it with the rest of your existing stack?
Once you know all that, you can choose something that fits the bill.
For example, if you just want a way to schedule social posts in advance and don’t need any other bells and whistles, you should go for a dedicated social media scheduling tool like SocialBee.
If you want to save money and avoid using loads of different tools, you’ll probably need an all-in-one social media management tool. In that case, Sendible and Agorapulse are your best options.
Of the two, Sendible has slightly stronger scheduling functionality but a more convoluted user interface. Agorapulse has the better social inbox and team collaboration tools but its entry-level plan is more expensive.
If you’re mainly focusing on Instagram, we’d recommend Pallyy (you can also find more Instagram marketing tools here).
Likewise, if Twitter is your main priority and you don’t have the budget for a paid tool, TweetDeck is a great free option.
Hopefully, that should help point you in the right direction when choosing the best social media management tools for your needs. Good luck!
P.S. If none of the above have what you’re looking for, check out our roundup of the best social media automation tools for even more ideas!
Conclusion
If you’re running a business, content is an essential part of your marketing strategy. Content helps you rank higher in the results on Google, which leads to more traffic and potential sales. One of the best ways to generate more content is through social media. It gives you an opportunity to interact with your audience, and provide them with valuable information. These interactions can lead to shares, retweets, and tons of traffic back to your blog or website.