The 5 Best Social Media Scheduling Tools: First-Hand Recommendations

Our top 5 media scheduling tools include Publer, eClincher, Sendible, SocialPilot, and SocialBee. These tools have excellent features like auto-scheduling, social inboxes, analytics, and approval workflows to help you with content creation, engagement, reporting, and collaboration. 

I tried and tested the above tools, noting their unique features and capabilities. I also reviewed their ease of use, pricing, and customer support. Lastly, I analyzed user reviews and ratings on top-rated websites like G2, Capterra, and GetApp.

Maintaining a consistent content strategy is an uphill task when you have to do everything manually. That’s why you need an efficient tool to automate and simplify social media management.

Fortunately, I’ve tested over 10 social media tools and rounded up the top 5 to help you match your needs with the ideal tool.

The next section covers a detailed description of the best social media scheduling tools.

Read on to learn more about their features, pricing, and what social profiles they support.

#5. Publer: Best for basic image and video editing 

Publer is your go-to tool if looking for a straightforward social media scheduling tool to help with content planning and creation. Its clean, easy-to-use dashboard allows you to create and customize posts for your favorite social profiles. Then, you can schedule the posts for later publishing on the virtual calendar. You can schedule up to 500 posts in a unique CSV file to auto-publish them later.

So why does Publer appear among our top 5 social media scheduling tools? 

Publer offers basic editing capabilities for video and images. You can directly create custom images using Canva on your Publer account. Alternatively, design photos or videos using the VistaCreate integration. Then, edit these visuals using colors, filters, stickers, or texts with Publer’s built-in photo editor.

Publer could be your perfect social media scheduling tool if you’re managing a few accounts or on a tight budget. The platform offers a free plan, allowing 3 social profiles, 1 user, and 10 scheduled posts per account. You also get a link-in-bio to promote your posts on Instagram, but you can’t add more users.

Publer’s supported social media channels

Publer supports the following social media platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• X 
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• Google Business Profile
• Telegram
• WordPress
• Threads
• Mastodon

Publer pricing

Publer offers three pricing plans:

• Free
• Professional: 12USD/month
• Business: 21 USD/month 

Note: Each plan allows a minimum of 3 social accounts. But you can add more accounts at an extra cost.

Best Publer features

• Dedicated workspaces – are digital spaces for different projects, from which you can share tasks and organize workflows with your team members. 
• RSS feeds – lets you share blog posts automatically from your favorite websites to ensure that your social channels always have new content.
• Autodelete – automatically deletes time-sensitive posts from your socials.
• Publer’s browser extension – allows you to share media, quotes, and links wherever you are without logging into your Publer account. 
• Watermarks – Publer allows you to add your logo to your products, including images, to promote your brand image. 
• Signatures – help you prevent other people from using your text posts on their accounts.

Publer pros

• Easy to use
• Has basic image and video capabilities
• Flexible pricing
• Straightforward content scheduling
• Allows bulk scheduling and content recycling
• Excellent customer support

Below are user reviews on Publer pros:

Publer cons

• Limited features
• Pricing can be high for users with multiple social accounts
• Lacks a unified social inbox
• Basic analytics and reports
• Media library unavailable for free users

Here are some reviews on Publer cons:

You might also like: An in-depth comparison of Publer and Later.

#4. eClincher: Best for social listening and analytics

eClincher is a top-rated social media scheduling tool that allows you to schedule and auto-publish content across multiple social profiles. In addition to the basic features, eClincher offers advanced analytics and reporting at a reasonable price. So, it’s the perfect tool for medium-sized businesses looking for better social listening features and detailed analytics.

eClincher appears on our list of the top 5 social media scheduling tools due to its amazing social listening and analytics features. 

The comprehensive social listening feature lets you monitor your brand’s reputation, competitor activities, and industry trends. The detailed analytics give a clear picture of how your business is performing on social media.  

Here are other social listening features on eClincher:

• Sentiment analysis – lets you measure and understand customers’ perceptions of your brand.
• Competitor analysis – lets you know how your competitors are doing on social media. So you can identify gaps or opportunities by monitoring their interactions with followers, the number of followers, and what people say about them. 
• Real-time alerts – are instant notifications of trending topics and brand mentions to help you respond promptly to customer concerns or market changes.
• Customizable dashboards – are personalized dashboards where you monitor relevant social media activities and zoom in on what matters the most to your brand.
• Targeted keyword monitoring – lets you track relevant keywords, brand mentions, hashtags, and company names from other social streams. You can also customize the search feeds from which you’ll monitor key phrases by entering your preferred social profile, keyword, or hashtags.

When it comes to analytics, eClinchers’s detailed reports will let you know how your social media strategy is doing. eClincher offers different types of reports for every social profile. 

For instance, the in-built reports (available on all pricing plans), provide insights into the performance of your pages and posts. So you’ll get useful metrics like the number of page likes, followers, post impressions, and engagement.

Others including custom analytics, competitors analytics, team productivity, and business template reports are available at top-tier plans 

eClincher’s supported social media channels

eClincher supports the following social media channels:

• Facebook
• X (formerly Twitter)
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• TikTok
• YouTube
• Pinterest
• WordPress
• Google Business Profile
• Blogger

eClincher pricing

eClincher’s pricing model has four plans:

• Basic – 65 USD/month for 1 user and 10 social profiles
• Premier – 175 USD/month for 3 users and 20 social profiles
• Agency – 425 USD/month for 6 users and 40 profiles
• Enterprise – customized price depending on your business needs

Note: The basic plan is perfect for freelancers and solopreneurs who’ll benefit from essential features like unlimited scheduling and publishing, social inbox, social listening, and built-in analytics. But the top three plans are best for medium and large-sized businesses looking for advanced listening and analytics, collaboration tools, auto-posting, and competitive intelligence reporting.

The next section will cover eClincher’s standout features, pros, and cons.

Best eClincher features

• Advanced analytics – are detailed insights into how your business is doing online. Features like competitor analytics help you know how you’re competing with industry rivals.
• Comprehensive social listening – helps you monitor your brand’s reputation and industry trends from social engagements like comments, mentions, and reviews.
• Writing assistant – is an AI-powered tool that helps you create and customize social media posts.
• Instagram feed scheduler – allows you to auto-publish photos and carousels on Instagram.
• Auto Post with Queues and RSS – are automatic scheduling features that allow you to recycle evergreen content.
• Local SEO ranking – allows you to know and improve your business’s performance in your local area. 

eClincher pros

• Comprehensive features at a reasonable price, offering value for money
• Excellent customer service
• Unified social inbox
• Straightforward scheduling and publishing across multiple platforms
• Allows post customization for different platforms
• Allows recycling of evergreen content
• Integrations with third-party platforms like Canva, Zapier, Bitly, Google Analytics, and more
• Advanced social listening and analytics

Here are some user reviews on eClincher pros:

eClincher cons

• Steep learning curve
• Non-attractive and less intuitive interface
• No reports for individual posts
• Most advanced features are only available at top-tier plans.
• You have to renew your accounts every month.
• Minor technical glitches

Below are user reviews on eClincher cons:

Interesting read: Why is eClincher better than AgoraPulse?

#3. Sendible: Best for limited budgets

Sendible is an affordable social media management tool that helps you manage your socials from one dashboard. Its robust scheduling features let you plan and auto-publish your content at specific times. Sendible is integrated with several platforms like Canva, Pexels, GIPHY, and RSS feeds importer to help you customize posts per social profile.

Sendible is on our list of the best social media scheduling tools because it is cost-effective. It offers excellent functionality and direct integrations at no extra cost. For instance, users on all pricing plans enjoy direct scheduling to all their social profiles, access to the priority inbox for quick responses to interactions, and built-in reports to measure social performance.

Medium-sized businesses and agencies with multiple social media accounts will benefit from advanced features like client dashboards and approval workflows. Client dashboards allow your clients to preview and approve drafted posts without sharing passwords. On the other hand, approval workflows allow you to share scheduled posts with other users for a go-ahead before publishing.

However, top-tier users enjoy custom approval workflows that automate approval on scheduled posts without the user seeking approval from clients or team leaders. 

Another unique feature that medium-sized businesses will love is the content library where you can store your favorite content, including hashtags and media. You can then use these assets when creating new social media posts at a later date.

Sendible’s supported social media channels

Sendible supports the following social platforms:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Instagram
• X
• YouTube
• TikTok
• WordPress
• Google My Business 

Sendible pricing

Sendible plans include:

• Creator – 29 USD/month
• Traction – 89 USD/month
• White label – 180 USD/month (on discount; regular price is 240USD/month)
• White label plus – 750 USD/month

Sendible’s lowest plan offers the basic features, making it perfect for freelancers. The second is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses as allows teams to collaborate in task assignments and approvals. The top two tiers are the best for large enterprises since they offer more advanced features like white labeling and live links to custom reports.

Best Sendible features

• Priority inbox – is a centralized social inbox where you monitor and respond to interactions from all your social accounts.
• Automated reports – are custom reports sent to your team and/or clients via email. These reports show the performance of your social media strategy.
• Optimal posting times – are suggestions on the perfect time to have your posts go live. The best time to post is usually when your target audience is mostly engaged on a particular social media platform.
• Built-in image editor – lets you customize images with filters, stickers, text, and colors.
• Multi-lingual dashboard – allows you to switch to your preferred language. Sendible offers several language options, including English, French, Spanish, and German, among others.
• White labeling dashboard – helps agencies customize Sendible to match their brand colors, personalized email notifications, and support pages. White labeling makes it easy for loyal customers to recognize and trust your brand.
• Cloud integrations – like Dropbox and Google Drive allow you to attach and upload images stored in these accounts to your posts.

Sendible pros

• Allows multi-platform scheduling
• User-friendly with intuitive interface
• Allows recycling of evergreen content
• Direct integration with multiple third-party platforms like Canva, DropBox, and Bitly
• Flexible pricing model
• Reliable customer support
• Offers customized analytics for each social profile
• Provides content ideas from RSS feeds

Below are some user reviews on Sendible pros:

Sendible cons

• Glitchy mobile app
• Delayed email notification for failed posts
• Random account disconnection
• Limited Instagram analytics

Here are some user reviews on Sendible cons:

Dig deeper: Why we chose Sendible over Hootsuite

#2. SocialPilot: Best for social media automation

SocialPilot is an all-in-one social media scheduling tool that automates content planning, creation, and publishing across multiple social profiles. It simplifies social media management by letting you manage all your social accounts from a centralized dashboard. In addition, it offers awesome analytics to track and measure your social media strategies.

SocialPilot makes it to our top 5 social media scheduling tools because it is the best for social media automation. 

The content calendar allows you to schedule posts on all your social accounts and auto-publish them on your preferred date and time. You can also use the smart queues feature to auto-schedule your content. Or save more time by scheduling up to 500 posts in advance using the bulk scheduler.

Apart from excellent scheduling and publishing features, SocialPilot offers amazing engagement capabilities to ease interactions with your customers and followers. The social inbox lets you track conversations on all your social profiles, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google Business Profile. You can manage all these interactions by replying to comments, reviews, or mentions.

I also like that I can add eye-catching visuals like GIFS, images, and emojis to make my replies more relatable to customers or followers. Plus, I don’t have to heap up the social inbox with conversations. I can mark completed tasks as done to clear my inbox. I can also allow team members to respond to comments or queries to quicken responses and deal with customer issues promptly.

SocialPilot’s supported social media channels

SocialPilot supports these social media platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• TikTok
• Google Business Profile

SocialPilot pricing

SocialPilot’s pricing model has four plans:

• Professional – 25 USD/month for 1 user and 10 social media accounts 
• Small team – 42 USD/month for 3 users and 20 social media accounts 
• Agency – 85 USD/month for 6 users and 30 social media accounts
• Agency plus – 170 USD/month for unlimited users and 50 social media accounts

SocialPilot’s standout features

• Slack integration – allows you to receive SocialPilot’s workflows on your Slack account.
• Automated RSS feeds – provide a consistent flow of content suggestions at specific times from relevant sources.
• UTM parameters help you track and analyze your social media efforts using Google Analytics.
• Custom field – includes personalized hashtags, and signatures on every post you create depending on the social account to maintain consistency and relevance.
• Collaboration features – such as approvals-on-the-go, draft collaboration, comments, and client invite links help boost teamwork among members.
• Image editing and watermarks – allow you to create custom images with every post you create.
• Hashtag generator – helps you come up with unique hashtags to customize and promote your posts.

SocialPilot pros

• Allows auto-scheduling and publishing
• Allows bulk scheduling (up to 500 posts)
• Easy to use
• Reasonable pricing
• Advanced features like automated reports, white label, and analytics sharing
• Straightforward approval process
• Advanced customization with White Label for top-tier users

Below are some user reviews on SocialPilot pros:

 SocialPilot cons

• Less intuitive interface
• Limited Instagram functionality
• Glitchy mobile app
• No free plan

Here are some user reviews on SocialPilot cons:

Learn more: Compare SocialPilot vs Buffer.

#1. SocialBee: Best for Facebook Scheduling

SocialBee is a simplistic social media scheduling tool with handy features to streamline your social media campaigns, from content creation to automatic scheduling and publishing. The tool also has excellent engagement, analytics, and collaboration capabilities. Its flexible pricing model makes SocialBee ideal for all business types, from small to medium and large enterprises.

SocialBee is among our top 5 social media scheduling tools as it excels in Facebook scheduling. As a Facebook scheduler, SocialBee allows you to plan and create content for all your Facebook pages, profiles, or pages. It supports different post types like images, text, videos, stories, and reels.

You also don’t have to worry about the perfect time to publish your posts. SocialBee suggests optimal posting times to ensure that posts go live when your target audience is most active on Facebook. You can also recycle your evergreen content by choosing multiple reposting dates and times.

SocialBee’s AI assistant suggests unique captions and images to ease content creation. 

You can also customize the posts by adding tags to fit Facebook’s specifications. The RSS feeds also provide fresh ideas on what you can include in your Facebook posts.

SocialBee’s Canva integration allows you to directly add custom images from Canva without switching tabs. Alternatively, add free stock photos and GIFs from Unsplash and GIPHY. Then, edit and perfect your images using SocialBee’s integrated media to  Facebook posts. 

The customized video covers let you add personalized video frames to your video content on Facebook, from reels to stories. You can also add your favorite emojis to make your content more appealing.

SocialBee’s supported social media channels

SocialBee supports the following social media channels:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• X
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• Google Business Profile
• YouTube

SocialBee pricing

SocialBee offers three pricing plans:

• Bootstrap – 29 USD/month for 1 user, 1 workspace, and 5 social profiles
• Accelerate – 49 USD/month for 1 user, 1 workspace, and 10 social profiles
• Pro – 99 USD/month for 3 users, 5 workspaces, and 25 social profiles 

SocialBee is affordable and offers a flexible pricing model. So it’s perfect for solopreneurs, small, medium-sized, and large businesses.

Best SocialBee features

• AI Co-pilot – suggests content strategies and optimal posting times based on the platform. It also helps you with content creation by modifying the tone and suggesting unique captions for your posts.
• Content categories – allow you to organize or group your content based on specific topics.
• Post customization
• Smart workflows – help teams work together during content creation. If you’re a team leader, you can assign tasks to team members and track their progress. You can also tag them in the comments so that they don’t miss them.

SocialBee pros

• Automatic content scheduling and posting
• Integrations with platforms like Canva, Unsplash, GIPHY, and others 
• Recycling of evergreen content
• Allows content diversification through content categories
• Multiple learning resources
• Great customer service
• Flexible pricing

Below are user reviews on SocialBee pros:

SocialBee cons

• Less intuitive user interface
• Steep learning curve for new users
• Glitchy mobile app
• No in-built Pinterest integration

Below are some user reviews on SocialBee cons:

Interesting read: Why SocialBee is better than SproutSocial.

That’s it for our tool recommendations!

Want to learn more about social media schedulers and how they work? 

Keep reading.

What is a social media scheduler?

A social media scheduler is a tool or software that allows you to create and plan social media content to publish later.

Social media schedulers save time and simplify content creation since you can create content in bulk and schedule it for posting on your preferred date and time. These tools also publish the content automatically across multiple social media platforms.

How do social media scheduling tools work?

Social media schedulers have content calendars to help you schedule posts for multiple social profiles. Some, like eClincher, allow you to schedule content for posting at different times of the day, week, or month.

Social media scheduling tools have several publishing and scheduling features to help you plan and execute your posts. The most common ones are direct posting on social profiles, bulk schedulers, content libraries, and post customization.

What should you look for in a social media scheduling tool?

Here’s what to look for in a social media scheduling tool:

1. A content calendar, bulk scheduler, content customization, and analytics. 
2. Integration with multiple social profiles, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, and TikTok.
3. A clean and easy-to-use dashboard.
4.  Excellent customer support.

Note: Your ideal social media scheduler will also depend on your needs, budget, and the size of your business.

What are the benefits of using social media scheduling tools

There are several benefits of using social media scheduling tools like saving time, simplifying content creation, and more. 

Let me break them down further.

Social media scheduling tools:

• Save time by allowing you to manage all your social profiles from a single dashboard. You’ll also free up time through auto-scheduling and auto-publishing. Scheduling also helps with brand consistency since you’ll have your posts appearing at specific times.
• Improve engagement by letting you manage interactions from all your social accounts. Most social media scheduling tools have a unified social inbox where you reply to all messages, comments, mentions, and reviews from customers and followers. 
• Boost teamwork and collaboration. Team leaders can assign tasks to their members, share media and content calendars, and approve tasks before publishing.
• Monitor the market via social listening. A good social media scheduling allows you to ‘listen’ to what’s happening around you. You monitor what people are saying about your brand, competitors, and the industry.
• Get analytics showing the performance of your social media posts. Detailed reports will let you know what posts had the highest engagement (and vice-versa). They also show what posts led to conversions or sales, helping you measure the ROI (return on investment) of your social media efforts.

Psst… Compare Metricool vs Loomly for social media scheduling.

Schedule all your multiple social media posts in one dashboard

Content planning and publishing can be daunting when you have to switch between tabs for different social profiles. 

But you can let a social media scheduling tool like SocialBee ease this burden and save time through scheduling and auto-publishing across multiple platforms. 

Sign up for SocialBee for indispensable features like engagement management, analytics, and collaboration to elevate your social media strategy.

FAQs 

Is there a free way to schedule social media posts?

Besides Meta Business Suite, you can use a free plan or a free trial period to schedule social media posts with a tool like SocialBee.

Most social media scheduling tools have free trials for their paid plans. But some offer exclusively free plans. 

Examples of social media scheduling tools with free plans include:

• Publer
• Later
• Buffer
• SocialOomph
• Crowdfire
• Zoho

What is the best scheduling platform for social media?

The best social media scheduling platform depends on factors like your needs, the number of social profiles you manage, your budget, and the size of your business. I recommend eClincher for robust analytics, Publer for image or video posts and Sendible for a limited budget 

What is the best social media scheduling app for small businesses?

SocialPilot is the best social media scheduling app for small businesses. This tool has an attractive offer for small teams at 42 USD/month. The plan allows three users and up to 20 social profiles.

SocialPilot’s small team plan comes with an array of features, including:

• Social media calendar
• Content library
• Social inbox
• Bulk scheduler
• RSS feed integration

SocialPilot alternatives include Sendible, SocialBee, and Buffer.

What are the best social media scheduling tools for limited budgets?

The best social media scheduling tools for limited budgets are

• Sendible
• SocialBee
• SmartQueue
• Later
• Zoho
• Crowdfire
• SocialOomph

Later, Zoho, Crowdfire, and SocialOomph are perfect for freelancers and solopreneurs on limited budgets since they have free versions. 

On the other hand, Sendible, SocialBee, and SmartQueue have no free plans. But their lowest tiers are pretty affordable, and they also offer a 14-day trial period.