13 Best Social Media Scheduling Tools – 2023 Comparison
Are you looking for the best social media scheduling tools for your business?
Staying on top of your social media efforts is no easy feat. Even small businesses need to maintain a presence on major social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, but managing all these accounts and publishing regularly can be a time-consuming task.
However, with the help of social media scheduling tools, you can plan your social media strategy ahead of time and make posting across platforms easier and more efficient.
In this article, we’ll be comparing the best social media schedulers available and sharing recommendations for specific use cases so you can choose the right one for your business.
Ready? Let’s get started:
The best social media scheduling tools – summary
TL;DR:
- SocialBee – Best social media scheduling tool overall. Uses content libraries and post recycling to keep things organized and save time.
- Agorapulse – Best all-in-one social media management tool with publishing & scheduling functionality. Includes a free plan.
- Pallyy – Best social media scheduler UI & workflow. Includes analytics, social inbox and IG bio link tool. Supports other social networks for scheduling. Includes a free plan & affordable.
- Sendible – Excellent social media tool for agencies and teams. Includes social calendar, content queues, inbox and analytics.
- Missinglettr – Best for automating social media scheduling. Generates campaigns based on blog posts pulled from RSS feeds.
- PromoRepublic – Best social media scheduling tool with built-in content library and social calendar. Includes social inbox on higher plans.
- Iconosquare – Powerful social media analytics platform with built-in social media scheduler. Best for visual content (e.g. Instagram).
- NapoleonCat – Social media platform designed for customer service teams. Integrated social media publishing & scheduling tool included.
- Sprout Social – Best social media scheduling tool for large businesses. Includes a full suite of social media tools.
- Crowdfire – Another solid social media scheduling tool. Quite affordable.
- TweetDeck – Free tool for scheduling Twitter posts.
- Buffer Publish – Simple post scheduler with a free plan.
- MeetEdgar – Powerful dedicated social media scheduling software based around the use of content libraries.
#1 – SocialBee
SocialBee is a social media scheduling tool that can help you stay on track with all your social media accounts. With Social Bee, you can schedule posts for just about every social media platform you can think of, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google My Business.
SocialBee works on a category-based scheduling system. You can assign each one of your posts a category and then easily schedule cross-platform campaigns using these categories instead of publishing posts individually. You can also re-queue and edit posts in bulk which is perfect if you’re running large-scale campaigns with a lot of content.
With SocialBee, you can also save all of your old posts into content libraries so you can easily stay on track of what you’ve posted on what platforms. You can also use the post recycling features to republish posts from your library to different platforms or to the same platform at different times.
In addition to its advanced scheduling features, Social Bee also comes equipped with a range of reporting, analytics, and collaboration features that are extremely useful for large marketing teams that are looking to share and collaborate on social media content and analyze the results of their campaigns.
Overall, it’s the best social media scheduling tool on the market and it’s perfect for individuals and businesses.
Key features:
- Easy scheduling
- Content categories
- Pause categories
- Curated content
- Evergreen posting sequences (content recycling)
- Expire posts
- Automatically share articles on social
- Customize posts for each social network
- Hashtag suggestions
- Social streams
- Canva integration
- Image editor
- Team collaboration
- Analytics
Pros:
- One of the best re-queue features of any platform
- Powerful content curation tools and automations
- Sophisticated features like content recycling, RSS feed post generation, etc.
- Affordable plans
Cons:
- No social media inbox. Only social streams.
- No social media listening tool
- Content calendar UX could be better
Pricing:
Plans start from $29/month for up to 5 social accounts. Save 16% with annual billing.
Read our SocialBee review.
#2 – Agorapulse
Agorapulse is an all-in-one social media management tool that can help you schedule and publish posts across various social platforms.
Agorapulse’s publishing tool will help you to optimize your posts for each individual social network, and organize them into an easy-to-understand social calendar. Not only that, but different team members can share notes, track posts, and collaborate on social media content easily using the social media scheduling calendar.
In addition to scheduling and publishing, Agorapulse can help you to manage just about every aspect of your social media campaigns.
One of the standout features is the social inbox, which allows you to manage comments and direct messages from followers all in one unified inbox. This means that you can easily stay on top of your social media interactions and ensure that no message is ever missed.
Another useful feature of Agorapulse is the monitoring tool. This will help you to listen in on what people are saying about your brand across social platforms. You can gauge the general sentiment towards your brand and be the first to know about conversations involving your brand online.
If you’re running a large-scale social media operation, Agorapulse has just about everything you need to schedule, publish and optimize your social media posts, as well as a bunch of extra features that you can use to supercharge your campaigns.
Key features:
- Integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more
- Social media inbox for managing messages from all platforms
- Easy-to-use scheduling and publishing features
- Visual content calendar
- Collaboration features such as commenting, approving, and editing posts
- Social media monitoring tools
- ROI tools
- Advanced Reporting
Pros:
- Integrates with most major social media platforms
- All-in-one tool with scheduling, reporting, monitoring, and more
- Powerful scheduling calendar with collaboration features
- Free plan available suitable for individuals
Cons:
- No Pinterest scheduling
- Expensive for teams
- You pay for additional features. Cheaper dedicated scheduling available
Pricing:
Agorapulse offers a limited free plan suitable for individuals. Paid plans start at €59/month/user. Yearly discounts available.
Read our Agorapulse review.
#3 – Pallyy
Pallyy is a social media scheduler tool with a UI designed to save you time. With Pallyy, you can schedule posts on popular platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google My Business.
Pallyy features an easy-to-use content calendar that makes it extremely easy to visualize your upcoming content plans and publishing schedules.
This makes it the perfect choice for Instagram and TikTok users who post mainly visual content like images and videos.
The scheduling workflow is extremely good. Just upload your media in bulk, then drag onto the calendar to schedule your content.
A grid preview is included for Instagram, and there’s a link in bio tool that supports both grid & button based bio link pages.
There’s also a social inbox so you can reply to messages and comments. What’s particularly great about this is that it supports TikTok comments – most platforms don’t offer this feature.
Pallyy is a great choice for content creators and social media managers that need to balance costs. Overall, it’s a full-featured social media management tool with one of the best scheduling workflows we’ve seen.
Key features:
- Cross-platform scheduling
- Content calendar
- Visual planning grid for Instagram
- Content curation
- Unified social inbox
- Team collaboration tools
- Analytics
- First comment scheduling
- Best time to post
- Native canva integration
- Comment management
- Link in bio tool
Pros:
- Awesome free plan
- Outstanding design and planning tools
- Great visual workflows
- Premium plan is very affordable
- Ideal for Instagram scheduling
Cons:
- Lots of the more advanced features only support Instagram
- Additional social sets are charged separately (very expensive if you’re managing dozens of different brands)
Pricing:
Pallyy offers a free plan which includes 1 social set and up to 15 posts per month. Paid plans start from $18 per social set. Annual discounts available.
Read our Pallyy review.
#4 – Sendible
Sendible is a social media management tool designed with strong publishing capabilities. It’s well suited to small businesses and agencies alike.
When it comes to scheduling, Sendible offers an easy-to-use content calendar that can help you and your clients get a clear idea of what posts are due to be published.
You can publish individual posts, or in bulk, which is perfect for agencies that are scheduling content far in advance for their clients. You can also create post queues that will allow you to schedule and publish posts on your client’s social media accounts with consistency.
In addition to the scheduling features, Sendible also provides a range of social media management tools that would be perfect for agencies. The social inbox allows teams to manage comments and interactions from multiple platforms from one unified inbox.
Sendible also features extensive analytics and reporting features which makes it easy to track and evidence results when managing client campaigns. Not only that, but you can measure brand sentiment using the social listening tool.
All in all, it’s the perfect tool for agencies managing social media campaigns for multiple clients.
Key features:
- Content calendar
- Bulk scheduling
- Post queues
- Unified social inbox
- Analytics and reporting
- Social listening tool
Pros:
- Ideal for agencies and teams thanks to its built-in collaboration tools and centralized dashboard
- Advanced publishing capabilities
- Easy-to-use content calendar
- Good value for money
Cons:
- Doesn’t support all platforms (no TikTok, etc.)
Pricing:
Plans start from $25/month (billed annually)
Read our Sendible review.
#5 – Missinglettr
If you prefer taking a back seat when it comes to social media content creation and publishing, then Missinglettr could be the tool for you.
Missinglettr is a social media scheduling and automation tool that aims to make it easier for businesses to create and schedule content without devoting too much time to their social media efforts.
It’s the perfect tool for busy bloggers and business owners as it automatically generates social media content based on blogs pulled from RSS feeds. After Missinglettr automatically generates campaigns, you can customize and edit them easily using the social media calendar.
With Missinglettr you can create social media drip campaigns for offers, curated posts generated from your blog content and other influencers’ content, and one-off posts, and the calendar tool will then help you to create a perfectly balanced schedule for your whole campaign.
This can help you make the most of your posts and avoid repetition of content. On top of all this, Missinglettr comes equipped with a powerful analytics tool that you can use to track key metrics of your social media campaigns and optimize them based on the insights you gain.
Key features:
- Content curation
- Scheduling calendar
- Automations
- Stock image library
- Note taking feature
- Drip campaigns
- Reposting
- URL shortener
- Collaboration features
Pros:
- Very affordable platform
- Includes a fantastic content curation tool
- Automated campaigns are ideal for busy marketers and brands
Cons:
- Quality of generated content is hit and miss (you may have to edit posts before scheduling them)
- Most of the advanced features are only available on the highest-tier plan
Pricing:
Missinglettr has a limited free plan available. Paid plans start from $19/month. Curate add-on is available to help you with content curation and promotion.
Read our Missinglettr review.
#6 – PromoRepublic
PromoRepublic is a social media scheduling tool with extra features that can make creating content and planning your campaigns easier and faster.
Firstly, PromoRepublic features a useful social calendar that can be used to schedule posts ahead of time for various platforms. In addition to this, PromoRepublic offers a library of curated content that you can use to up your social media game.
The curation feature will help you to find articles, images, and more that are industry-relevant that you can use to inspire your social media posts. You can also select from a range of templates to create professional and visually appealing posts.
You can also customize and edit graphics directly within the PromoRepublic dashboard which makes it easier to add those finishing touches to your posts when scheduling. In addition to all this, PromoRepublic comes complete with a reporting feature that will help you to record and analyze engagement metrics for your social media posts.
There is also a social inbox feature available on most plans.
PromoRepublic has a solution for just about every business, from small businesses to marketing agencies and enterprise-level companies, and is the perfect tool to help marketing teams save time when it comes to social media management and scheduling.
Key features:
- Social media calendar
- AI recommendations
- Team approval workflows
- Cross-platform support
- Evergreen content
- Powerful analytics
- Social inbox
- Link shortener
- Review management
- SEO tools
Pros:
- One of the most sophisticated scheduling toolkits anywhere
- Powerful AI-driven automations
- All-in-one marketing platform that can help with all marketing channels, including social
Cons:
- High learning curve
- More expensive than some platforms
Pricing:
Plans start from $9/month
Read our PromoRepublic review.
#7 – Iconosquare
If you’re an analytics buff, Iconosquare is the social media scheduling tool for you. Iconosquare gives users access to a powerful social media publishing tool that will allow you to plan all types of content easily.
The calendar is perfect for planning visual content for platforms like Instagram as you can see a snapshot of the post within the calendar. You can even schedule stories and carousel posts using Iconosquare. You can also upload posts in bulk and preview how your feed will look once your scheduled posts are published, which is particularly useful for Instagram marketers.
However, Iconosquare really shines when it comes to analytics. You can use Iconosquare to measure advanced social media metrics including reach, impressions, and engagement rates. In fact, you can even track metrics for Instagram Stories.
You can also use Iconosquare to keep a close eye on social media tags and mentions. In addition to all this, you can set up automations to create social media analytics reports in just 3 minutes. Overall, it’s the perfect tool for businesses that want a scheduler with additional analytics features.
Key features:
- Content calendar
- Post scheduling
- Identify the best time to post
- Media library
- image cropping
- Add captions, tags, mentions, and geolocations
- Auto-posting
- Crossposting
- First comment scheduling
- Approval workflows
- Analytics & reporting
- Collaboration
- Conversations
Pros:
- Great value for money
- Beginner-friendly UI
- Lots of advanced features
Cons:
- Focused heavily on Instagram
- No TikTok scheduling
Pricing:
Plans start from $45/month (billed annually)
Read our Iconosquare review.
#8 – NapoleonCat
NapoleonCat is a social media scheduling tool designed to help customer service teams make the most of their social media efforts.
The scheduling features include an easy-to-use content calendar that allows you to publish posts to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google My Business from one unified dashboard.
NapoleonCat also offers tools that can help you add automated comments on your posts and CTA buttons, discount codes, and more to your Google My Business offers.
However, the standout feature of NapoleonCat that makes it perfect for customer service teams is the social inbox. Using the social inbox you can manage all your social media interactions, from responding to comments to offering customer support via direct and personal messages.
NapoleonCat can help teams stay engaged with their followers whilst cutting down the time they spend responding to repetitive messages with the help of automated responses. Overall, it’s a great tool for customer service teams that are looking to run a highly organized social media operation.
Key features:
- Content calendar
- Social inbox
- Automated responses & workflows
- Automated comment moderation
- Analytics
- Reporting
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Best-in-class social inbox and comment management
- Perfect for customer service teams
- Flexible pricing model makes it a scalable solution
Cons:
- More focused on the social inbox than the publishing tool.
- Lacks some key features like best time to post recommendations and native image editing.
Pricing:
Plans start from $21/month (billed annually)
#9 – Sprout Social
Sprout Social offers feature-rich social media management software that is well suited to large businesses and enterprise companies. It’s so much more than just a scheduler and is perfect for teams that need a full stack of social media tools to manage their social media campaigns.
Sprout Social offers a visual content calendar that makes it easy to manage posts for all platforms. The visual elements make it easy to schedule posts for image-focused platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. If you’re short on content, you can also use the multimedia library to find inspiration and images for posts.
On top of the useful scheduling features, Sprout Social also comes complete with a powerful engagement tool. You can create a unified inbox that brings together messages from all your social channels.
If you have a large team managing your social media campaigns, the unified inbox makes it easy to respond to followers and ensures that no messages are lost in translation.
When it comes to analytics, Sprout Social is second-to-none. You can use the analytics tool to easily visualize important metrics like engagement and reach, and create reports for your colleagues and clients.
You can also use the social media listening tool to keep your finger on the pulse when it comes to brand mentions online. Overall, it has everything a large business needs to manage its social campaigns efficiently and effectively.
Key features:
- Shared content calendar
- Asset library
- Content suggestions
- Best time to post recommendations
- Analytics
- Collaboration tools
- Social commerce
- URL tracking
- Bio link tool
- Social media listening
- Mobile app
Pros:
- Very advanced feature set
- Great set of collaboration features makes it a good choice for agencies
- Suggestions & recommendations help you to maximize engagement
Cons:
- Much more expensive than most other platforms
- Lacks a re-queue feature and post variants
Pricing:
Plans start from $249/user/month (billed annually)
Read our Sprout Social review.
#10 – Crowdfire
Crowdfire is one of the more affordable social media management tools on that market. It includes a feature-rich social media scheduler & content calendar allowing you to publish to major social platforms like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Not only that but it also comes complete with a tailoring feature that will help you optimize your posts for the platform you’re publishing them to. You can also use the automatic best time to post feature to ensure that your content is shared at optimal times, or you can customize it based on your own analytics.
In addition to scheduling, Crowdfire can also help you to create content, analyze your post performance and monitor brand mentions across social platforms. For smaller businesses, all of the tools that Crowdfire offers can be accessed for free.
You can link up to 3 social accounts and post 10 times a month without paying a single penny. If you’re in need of more posts or accounts, you can sign up for a paid plan for less than $10. Crowdfire is a great overall tool for social media management, and offers the perfect balance of features and affordability.
Key features:
- Publishing tool
- Content calendar
- Bulk scheduling
- Content curation & discovery
- Customizable RSS feeds
- Integrations
- Tailored posts
- Automatic post time optimization
- Queue meter
- Analytics
- Social listening
Pros:
- Publishing UI is simple and clean
- Includes some unique features like image curation
- Great set of discovery tools
- Affordable entry-level plan and good free plan
Cons:
- Not all social networks supported
- Key features like content calendar are only included in higher-tier plans
Pricing:
Crowdfire offers a limited free plan. Paid plans start from $7.48/month (billed annually)
#11 – Buffer Publish
Buffer Publish is a simple but effective social media scheduling solution that’s perfect for businesses looking to keep their social media costs to a minimum.
With Buffer, you can manage your accounts for all the major social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. For Instagram, you can schedule content using the content calendar, and even schedule your first comments on each post. You can also use it to plan Stories content ahead of time.
In addition to this, Buffer Publish has some useful collaboration features such as draft posts and approvals that can help you to work seamlessly with your clients and team when it comes to social content.
In a nutshell, Buffer Publish provides just about everything you need to effectively plan and schedule your social media posts, and all of the publishing tools are included in the free plan.
If you also want access to analytics and engagement metrics, then you should consider choosing one of Buffer’s paid plans.
Key features:
- Content calendar
- Posts tailoring
- First comment scheduling
- Link in bio
- Reminders & notifications
- Collaboration tools
- Reply & engagement management
- Analytics
- Reporting
Pros:
- Excellent value for money
- Advanced and flexible bio link tool lets you create a whole microsite
- Great for both individuals and teams
Cons:
- UI could be better
- Analytics are fairly basic
Pricing:
Buffer offers basic publishing tools for free. Plans for the full toolkit start from $5/social channel (billed annually)
#12 – TweetDeck
If Twitter is your go-to when it comes to social media, then TweetDeck may just be the social media scheduling tool for you.
This free tool is offered to all Twitter users and can be used to schedule your tweets ahead of time, and manage your Twitter interactions. If you do a lot of tweeting, you may find it difficult to stay on track when it comes to managing your feed and responding to comments and messages.
With TweetDeck, you can organize your feed into different timelines and manage your messages and trending hashtags to make it easier to navigate the platform.
Overall, it’s the perfect free tool for scheduling Twitter posts, but the only drawback is that you can’t use it to schedule posts for other platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
Key features:
- Customizable dashboard
- Schedule Tweets
- Publish Tweets
- Monitor trending hashtags and stories
- Multi-account management
- Monitor likes and mentions
- Manage messages
- Collections
- View activity
- Discovery
Pros:
- The unique column-based dashboard is really cool
- You can link multiple accounts to manage them all from one place
- It’s completely free to use
Cons:
- Twitter-only scheduling tool
Pricing:
TweetDeck is free for all Twitter account holders
#13 – MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is an innovative social media scheduling tool that really takes the hard work out of the scheduling process.
By creating a library full of content that is organized into categories, the tool will then automate your campaigns to ensure that you are consistently posting evergreen content on all of your social channels.
MeetEdgar can also help you out when it comes to creating new content too. If you don’t have time to craft a post, simply input a link to a blog you think your readers will find interesting and the tool will automatically select a ‘post-worthy quote that can form the basis of your post.
The tool will also autogenerate 5 variations of every post you create so that you can repurpose it for different social channels.
If you want to keep your social channels looking fresh with daily updates, but you simply don’t have the time, MeetEdgar is the tool you need.
Key features:
- Automatic scheduling
- Post generator
- Automatic post variants
- Content repurposing
- TA/B testing
- Limitless content library
- Real-time insights
- Categories
Pros:
- Unique time-saving workflow
- Powerful automations mean there’s no need to manually schedule each post
- Good value for money
- Lots of innovative features you won’t find elsewhere
Cons:
- Not a traditional scheduling tool
- Limited/basic reporting
Pricing:
Plans start from $19/month
The best social media schedulers – FAQs
Want to know more about social media scheduling tools and how they work? Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions on the topic.
What is a social media scheduler?
These tools allow you to plan and schedule your social media content ahead of time. You can upload your content and set a date and time for it to be published on your social media platform.
If you post a lot of content on different platforms, social media schedulers can help you save a lot of time when publishing content, and they can also help you to stay organized.
What is the easiest social media scheduler to use?
Most social media scheduling tools are extremely easy to use and work just like a calendar app such as Google Calendar. However, Pallyy is particularly easy to use thanks to its visual calendar and it has a free option available. Alternatively, you could opt for a tool like SocialBee that uses content libraries and allows for easy post recycling.
Why do you need a social media scheduler?
Posting content to various social platforms using apps or websites can be time-consuming as you can only post one post at a time, and you’ll need to spend time logging in and out of accounts on different platforms.
With most post schedulers, you can manage content and publishing for all your accounts from one dashboard, so you can save time and stay on track with your publishing schedule easily.
Do scheduled posts get less views?
The short answer is no. According to CinchShare, whether you post directly from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. or you use a scheduler, it won’t affect the number of views or how much engagement a post receives.
Does Instagram penalize scheduled posts?
No. Although there are some myths circulating about this, Agorapulse ran tests and found that the engagement rates and number or likes were comparable whether they used a scheduler or posted directly through the Instagram app.
Features to look for in a social media scheduling tool
There are a lot of options when it comes to social media posting tools, so it’s important for you to choose one that has the features that your business needs the most.
Here are some common features you should look for in a social media scheduling tool:
Multi-platform compatibility
When it comes to social media, most businesses like to maintain a presence on at least 2 or 3 major social platforms. If this is the case for you, ensure that you choose a scheduling solution that will allow you to many all of your social media publishing from one centralized content calendar.
The majority of the tools on this list make it easy for you to schedule social media posts to multiple platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business.
An easy to use content calendar
When scheduling your social media posts in advance, you want to be able to easily view what is due to be published and when. Tools like Agorapulse, SocialBee, and Pallyy all come equipped with an easy-to-use content calendar that help you to easily visualize your upcoming social campaigns so you can stay on track and make changes where necessary.
Curation and collaboration features
Creating content is just as time-consuming as publishing it if you don’t have efficient workflows in place. When choosing a social media scheduling tool, consider choosing a tool like Pallyy or Missinglettr that can help you both to curate new and interesting content and collaborate with your coworkers and clients easily via one centralized content calendar
Additional social media management features
If you don’t already have a social media management tool then it’s a good idea to choose an all-in-one solution that includes publishing and scheduling features. For example, tools like Agorapulse include a content calendar and publishing features as well as a social media inbox, listening and analytics tools, and more.
Choosing the best social media scheduler for your business
Scheduling posts on popular social networks doesn’t have to be time consuming. And you don’t have to be chained to your profiles every second of the day.
With the right social media scheduling tool, you can free up more time to spend on growing your audience.
But which scheduler should you choose?
That will depend on what your business needs and which social platforms you use most often.
However, if you’re looking for a versatile solution that can help you not only schedule content but manage campaigns, you can’t go wrong with any of our top 3 picks:
- SocialBee – The best social media scheduling tool overall with tons of useful features to help you save time and stay organized. Best suited to evergreen content.
- Agorapulse – All-in-one social media management software that includes post scheduling, analytics, reporting, unified inbox, and more.
- Pallyy – Offers the best social scheduling workflow and UI thanks to it’s drag & drop social calendar. Includes social inbox, TikTok scheduling, bio link tool, and a free plan.
If you want to learn more about managing social media campaigns, check out some of our other blogs like 13 Best Social Media Automation Tools and The Best Times To Post On Social Media.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. This means we may make a small commission if you make a purchase.