Buffer is one of the most popular social media management tools—and for a good reason. It has some cutting edge publishing features, a clean interface, and direct Instagram scheduling.
But it has some major downsides too.
Buffer is split into three apps: Buffer Publish, Reply, and Analyze. These three apps cover cover social media publishing, monitoring, and reporting respectively, and each have their own monthly fee.
On top of this the app’s reporting features are lacking, and Publish lacks support for important social networks like Google My Business.
So before you sign up for a Buffer subscription, check out these 12 best Buffer alternatives for 2020.
Each of these social media management apps have their own pros, cons, and special features, and we’ve highlighted each in this piece.
Let’s dive in!
Table of Contents
1. Fanbooster
Fanbooster is the most full-featured social media management tool on the market. And yeah, we made it, but we’re sure you’ll love it too 😉
The tool has excellent smart scheduling tools, in-depth analytics and reporting, and a social inbox that shows all your brand’s mentions, reviews, and private messages in one easy-to-manage place.
For content creation, we have a brand new Canva integration that’s unique from every other social media management tool.
Think it couldn’t get any better? Well, it does…
Fanbooster has an excellent set of reporting features that let you take an in-depth look at how your social media content is performing. You can even pull reports from your favorite email marketing apps, Google Analytics, and review sites like Yelp!
Some of the in-depth reports we offer include:
- Cross and single channel engagement optimization
- Facebook and LinkedIn ads
- Engagement distribution over time
Ready to give Fanbooster a shot? You can try each of our three plans free for 14 days.
Pricing: $49/mo, $99/mo, $200/mo (all plans include a 14-day free trial)
Best For: Agencies, businesses, and marketing teams of all sizes
2. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is a barebones social media scheduling tool with some tricks up its sleeve.
One of our favorite MeetEdgar features is its self-scheduling content calendar. Just assign a category to each of your posts, and MeetEdgar will schedule them automatically. This keeps things interesting and mixes up your content.
But unfortunately, MeetEdgar has limited agency-focused features.
It doesn’t offer analytics tools, direct Instagram scheduling, or other features that are essential for agencies.
Further, it doesn’t support multiple employee accounts and you can’t link more than 25 social media profiles to one MeetEdgar account.
With that in mind, it’s tough to recommend MeetEdgar for agency use. However, it may still be a viable option for freelancers or small in-house teams that don’t mind sharing a single username and password.
Pricing: $49/mo
Best For: Freelance social media managers
3. HootSuite
HootSuite is one of the most well known Buffer alternatives, and it packs a ton of interesting features.
For example, the tool has a full suite of scheduling and analytics tools that businesses can use for all of their clients. It supports 35 different social networks too, so you’re covered no matter what network your client is active on.
But HootSuite still isn’t perfect for all agencies.
HootSuite doesn’t offer white-labeling and has very limited reporting features. So with this in mind, we recommend taking advantage of HootSuite’s free trial period to see if it pairs well with your workflow.
Pricing: $29/mo, $129/mo, $599/mo
Best For: Enterprises and mid-sized agencies
4. CoSchedule
CoSchedule brands is a full-fledged marketing suite.
Not only does it integrate with many of the popular social networks, but it integrates with email marketing platforms, blogs, and other marketing essentials. This puts everything you need in one place—but it comes at a price.
CoSchedule plans range from $80 to $1,400 a month. The top-tier plan includes just 10 users and 25 connected social accounts—so you’ll need to pay to add more accounts relatively quickly.
But even more disappointingly? You have to pay extra for CoSchedule Academy, the company’s training platform. Make sure to calculate these hidden costs when assessing your company’s social media needs.
Pricing: $80/mo, $400/mo, $1,400/mo
Best For: Small marketing teams and enterprises
5. Sprinklr
Like CoSchedule, Sprinklr’s social media and marketing suite. Its standard account has social scheduling and reporting tools, but you can subscribe to other packages for insights on social advertising, customer support, and content marketing.
Sprinklr doesn’t publish its supported networks online, so be sure to reach out to the Sprinklr to see if it supports the networks that your company relies on. If you don’t, this could be detrimental for client projects.
Anyone that wants to subscribe to Spinklr must get in touch with Sprinklr for a quote. More often than not, this means that the platform can be pricey—and likely out of reach—for smaller businesses and startup agencies.
Pricing: Contact for pricing (pricing looks customized)
Best For: Enterprises
6. Oktopost
Oktopost is another newer player in the social media marketing tools space.
The app has a full suite of scheduling, monitoring and reporting tools for a wide variety of social networks. It even has a built-in sweepstakes tool that lets you run giveaways easily and fairly.
But there is one major downside: like Sprinklr, you’ll need to reach out to Oktopost for pricing; there are absolutely no details available on the company’s site.
Pricing: Contact Oktopost for pricing
Best For: Small agencies
7. EveryPost
EveryPost is strictly a social media scheduling tool with support for Twitter and Facebook.
You can schedule in-house content from the dashboard, or schedule content on-the-go from its mobile app or browser extension.
But agencies beware: EveryPost doesn’t have analytics or reporting features.
This means it’s not possible to track how well your content’s performing or other key metrics. So you need this data, you should look for a more robust management tool with a more full-fledged suite of tools.
Pricing: Free, $9.99/mo, $29.99/mo, $49.99/mo, $99.99/mo
Best For: Freelancers and small businesses
8. Loomly
Loomly is a new addition to the social media management game.
It has everything you’d expect from a social media scheduling tool (like scheduling, posting, analytics) and some unique features like a content calendar creator, a cool post idea generator, and fully customizable post previews.
But note that—like other tools on this list—Loomly lacks support for Google My Business and doesn’t have a social search tool.
This makes brand monitoring and competitor analysis nearly impossible with without using another social media tool—just something to keep in mind as you plan client offerings.
Pricing: $10/mo, $25/mo, $200/mo, $300/mo
Best For: Freelancers and small businesses
9. Zoho Social
Zoho Social is a collaboration-centric social media management tool.
You and your team members can discuss post drafts directly on the app using built-in discussion boards. Each team member is assigned his or her own profile where you can view their past posts and contributions to the project.
The app does have some pretty strict limitations, though.
The app only supports Twitter, Facebook (but not groups), Instagram, and LinkedIn, so you’re left in the dark if you want to post to Google My Business or moderate a Facebook group.
While Zoho Social does have direct Instagram scheduling, it doesn’t support video. This means you’re stuck posting videos through your smartphone—ouch.
Pricing: $10/mo, $25/mo, $200/mo, $300/mo
Best For: Small businesses
10. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media management tool for enterprises.
The app has top-notch collaboration features that makes it super easy for large teams to collaborate on social media publishing, monitoring, and reporting.
However, it isn’t practical for most social media agencies or small businesses.
The app costs—at minimum—$99 per month per user. This means that whenever you expand your team, you’re also expanding your social media management bill by a considerable amount. So tread lightly and see if you can get similar features for a lower price (think Fanbooster).
Pricing: $99/mo, $149/mo, $249/mo per user
Best For: Large enterprises
11. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is a straight-forward social media management suite.
You can schedule posts to major social networks (Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube) and invite your team members to collaborate on posts and respond to customer inquiries.
But—like Sprout Social—Agorapulse is expensive.
Its base plan is only $49 per month, but includes just 3 user profiles and one user account. Pricing goes up exponentially from there, putting this social media scheduling tool out of reach for small teams and freelancers.
Pricing: $49/mo, $99/mo, $199/mo, $299/mo (all plans include 14-day free trials)
Best For: Agencies
12. SocialOomph
SocialOomph is one of the only options on this list with a free tier—but it’s not an all-in-one solution.
The app is mostly geared towards Twitter, and it has some really interesting features not found anywhere else. For example, bulk tweet deleting, DM purging, and email-to-tweet.
And while the social media management tool does support other networks like Pinterest, Facebook, and LinkedIn, support is super limited. For example, it supports posting, but there are no specialized features like with Twitter.
So in the end, we recommend SocialOomph for those that want access to Twitter growth hacks and don’t mind using other networks to manage other important social networks like Facebook and Instagram.
Pricing: Free, $6.97/mo, $17.97/mo
Best For: Social media growth hackers specializing in Twitter
Bottom line on choosing Buffer alternatives
And there you have it: the 12 best Buffer alternatives for 2020. When shopping for a social media tool, make sure to keep your long-term needs in mind in terms of price, features, and number of supported accounts. Otherwise, you might find yourself scrambling for an alternative.
