Every creator or business’s social media strategy looks different. Some lean into video, while others prefer to use words or pictures to tell the story. Some create new or repurposed content for each post, while others have a mix of new posts and those they recycle on a schedule. 

And then there are agencies that have to manage multiple accounts across it all.

Me? I’m a text-based, new content LinkedIn gal who dreams of starting her own YouTube channel (maybe someday).

Whichever kind of creator or business you are or manage, there’s a social media management tool out there for you. In this post, I’m comparing two of them, complete with hands-on testing across publishing, analytics, inbox management, and team workflows.

Buffer is built around getting content published quickly and flexibly for anyone, from a solo creator to a growing team, with no learning curve and a free plan that has no strings attached. RecurPost is built around the idea that a lot of social media content should keep running behind-the-scenes, with libraries that auto-loop and Instagram DM automations. 

Here’s what I found.

Key takeaways

• Buffer has a free-forever plan that includes three channels, 10 social posts per channel (refillable anytime), basic analytics, API access, and 24/7 email support. RecurPost has no free plan, only a 14-day free trial. On RecurPost's entry-level paid plan ($9 per month), support is knowledge base only, and there are no shareable calendars.
• Buffer’s Team plan ($12/channel per month) has unlimited users. RecurPost’s Agency plan includes 3 seats, and each additional seat costs $20.
• RecurPost’s evergreen content libraries are a mature content recycling system with looping and optional end dates. Buffer has a recurring posts feature in beta, but it’s simpler: set a single post to repeat on a schedule rather than a rotating library of multiple posts.
• Buffer's Community inbox covers comments and mentions across a wider set of platforms, but no DMs. RecurPost's inbox covers comments and DMs on fewer channels.
• RecurPost has strong Instagram DM features. It gives you lots of customization options to set which posts to automatically DM people on, and what to say. Buffer doesn’t offer DM support.
• Buffer's API and MCP come with a developer ecosystem. You’ll find beginner-friendly docs, active builder channels in the Discord community, a Developer Advocate on staff, and stories from builders for inspiration. RecurPost also has both an API and an MCP, but neither is mentioned on the marketing website, and there are no real resources to help builders. Most people would never even know they exist.
• RecurPost’s analytics reporting goes deep. Agency plan teams can create detailed, deeply customizable reports and delivery for clients. Buffer analytics include AI-powered takeaways to easily understand the data, plus Markdown export for deeper analysis in Claude or ChatGPT. 
• Buffer's AI Assistant is unlimited on all plans for content creation and idea generation. RecurPost includes 100 AI credits per month, after which you buy more as a paid add-on.

RecurPost vs. Buffer at a glance

Let’s look at these a little closer.

Plans and pricing

RecurPost and Buffer use different pricing models — one scales per channel, the other is flat-rate with add-ons for channels, users, and additional features.

Buffer pricing (billed monthly, annual saves ~20%)

• Free: 3 channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel (refillable at any time), 1 user, AI Assistant, API and MCP access, analytics, community inbox
• Essentials: starts at $6/channel per month for unlimited posts, 1 user, analytics including exports, first comment scheduling
• Team: starts at $12/channel per month for unlimited posts, unlimited users, approval workflows, custom permissions

Buffer has a tiered pricing model within each plan and includes volume discounts for more than 10 channels. The more channels you use Buffer on, the more affordable each one gets. The Team plan includes unlimited users, so you can have two or 22 people, and it won’t impact your monthly budget.

See Buffer’s full pricing guide here →

RecurPost pricing (billed monthly, annual gets you two months free)

• Starter: $9 per month for 1 user, 2 social accounts, 10 posts per account per day, knowledge base support only
• Personal: $25 per month for 1 user, 5 social accounts, 20 posts per account per day, email and chat support
• Agency: $79/month for 3 users, 20 social accounts, 80 posts per account per day, everything in Personal plus client workspaces, password-free account onboarding, custom reports, internal and external approval workflows
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

If you post to X/Twitter, the platform isn't available during the free trial. Once on a paid plan, basic tweets are included, but posting tweets that contain a URL and X analytics require a paid credit top-up. There’s no inbox support for X.

One good thing to know about RecurPost’s pricing is that, if you need more accounts than a plan provides, you can add them à la carte instead of jumping up to the next plan. Extra accounts come at $4 per month each. For extra users on the Agency plan, it’ll cost $20 per month per additional seat.

There are also add-ons available for more daily posting slots, boosting posts with Meta Ads Manager, and additional AI credits.

See RecurPost’s full pricing guide →

What this means in practice

Let’s look at how costs compare across a few scenarios for solo creators and teams.

If budget is the sole criteria, the tools look different depending on your team size and the number of channels you manage.

RecurPost does not have an equivalent to Buffer’s Free plan, so if you’re a solo creator with three channels or fewer, then Buffer comes out on top. Add another channel and it’s almost the same. 

For teams, RecurPost works out more cost-effective for fewer channels and team members. As the number of channels and team members needed goes up, Buffer ends up being the more affordable of the two.

Bear in mind this doesn’t take into account any RecurPost add-ons beyond accounts and user seats that aren’t included in the plans. If you run out of AI credits, want to boost Instagram or Facebook posts, or need more calendars to share with clients, among other things (more on all this later), you’ll need to spend more.

Scheduling and publishing

RecurPost's entire scheduling is built around the assumption that you’ll be posting evergreen content continuously. Buffer assumes you're mostly creating something new.

Buffer's composer gets you from idea to scheduled post quickly. Write your post, customize per platform, and schedule. The queue handles timing: set your posting slots once, and new posts drop in automatically. On the Team plan, anyone who needs a post approved hits “Save and Request Approval”, and a team member with full access either edits, rejects, or approves and sends it to the queue.

Just like the posts themselves, the posting slots are also customizable per channel. You can choose your own or let Buffer suggest the best times to post for each channel based on our data. These are flexible and can be changed at any time.

One of my favorite (and most used) spaces in Buffer’s publishing tools is the Create space. It’s a board for saving your ideas before you’re ready to turn them into a ready-to-publish post. My Create space is full of ideas that include: 

• A transcribed voice note to capture an idea before I lose it, saved here from the Buffer iOS app
• A URL I wanted to write about, saved here using Buffer’s browser extension
• Topics to explore more deeply based on things I’ve already posted about, saved here using a custom app I built with the Buffer API

Each one is an idea for a new post to keep my content fresh and make sure I’m never wondering, “What should I post about next?” From here, I can develop an idea further before it’s ready to become a draft, then move it over to the composer and schedule it without leaving Buffer.

On Team plans, the whole team shares the Create space, so you can collaborate on ideas within Buffer itself. RecurPost has no equivalent — there's nowhere to hold work-in-progress or store ideas before you lose them. 

RecurPost's scheduling system works differently in other ways too. You can schedule a post once and move on to the next, but that’s not what it’s designed around. Instead, you create a library, add recurring time slots by day of week or month, and posts cycle through and loop back automatically. 

Two posts in a library alternate. Six posts rotate in order and then restart at the beginning. If you add an end date to a specific post, it drops out of the rotation from that date, and the rest continue.

It was pretty fiddly to figure out at first, and I’ll admit I spent a few hours trying to wrap my head around setting it up. If your content is unique each time, this system is more complex than you need. But for content that's meant to repeat, RecurPost's library approach is strong.

Buffer also has recurring posts (currently in beta), but it works differently — you can set one post at a time to repeat on a schedule rather than a rotating library of multiple posts cycling through automatically.

Where RecurPost goes the extra mile is in its Instagram-specific features. From within the composer itself, you can schedule a reel as a trial reel if your account supports it, add licensed audio via your Facebook connection, set up an automatic DM for a specific post, and tag people, products, and collaborators. 

An additional $5 per month allows you to boost Instagram (and Facebook) posts from within RecurPost. You’ll need to connect your Meta Ads Manager account for this, and once set up, you can manage ads while scheduling posts. For Instagram-heavy workflows, this is a much richer toolkit than many schedulers offer.

If you share the same content across different platforms, keep in mind that you can customize the post for each platform only on the Personal plan and above. On the Starter plan, you’d have to schedule the post on each platform separately.

Inbox and engagement

Buffer's Community inbox covers a wide platform footprint. You can reply to comments and mentions on Facebook Pages, LinkedIn profiles and pages, Instagram professional accounts, Threads, Bluesky, X/Twitter, Google Business Profiles, TikTok, YouTube, and Mastodon.

If you’re spread out across different channels, you can engage with your audience and build relationships from within Buffer itself instead of hopping back and forth between them. AI reply suggestions are available on all platforms and give you a starting point for each comment if you need a nudge. 

Every channel has its own Comment Score to track how quickly your team responds, and you can save responses to the most frequently asked questions. These are shared with your whole team, so everyone can drop the same answer to these questions so that commenters aren’t left waiting for too long.

RecurPost's inbox covers Instagram business profiles, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn Company Pages, and Google Business Profiles. It’s a narrower set of platforms, but it goes deeper by including Facebook and Instagram DMs.

The Instagram DM automation is one of RecurPost’s strongest features across the entire platform. You can set up lots of configurations: have it run on individual posts or reels (or across all of them), choose a specific keyword trigger or go on every comment, and decide whether to send a DM instantly or only after the person follows you first. 

I tested it, and it worked beautifully. It’s exactly the kind of thing that's useful for those campaigns where you want to automatically send a link or a download to anyone who comments on your posts. 

One thing to watch out for: comments that were auto-replied to by an automation still showed up in the inbox as pending (like the one in the screenshot below). This creates a real risk of a double response if a team member doesn't notice it was already handled.

Another gap is that RecurPost doesn’t have saved replies. On platforms that aren’t Instagram, your team has to manually write responses to repeated questions each time. This makes it slower to go through all the pending comments, and it risks miscommunication if there’s been a change in one of your policies and a teammate didn’t clock it before replying.

If your engagement work is primarily comment management across many platforms, Buffer is the right fit. If managing DMs for a smaller set of platforms matters, or you want to run automated Instagram DM campaigns, RecurPost is the stronger choice.

Analytics and reporting

Analytics on Buffer live in Insights and cover 10 platforms: Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, YouTube, and Mastodon. You get data for each individual channel and your entire social media presence rolled up in one. Use filters or channel groups to create a custom dashboard for two or more channels of your choosing. 

You can even create dashboards for tags assigned to posts. I use tags to categorize posts by topic, so I can see how, for example, all posts on content creation or all posts on data privacy have performed.

At the channel level, AI-powered weekly takeaways share tailored suggestions on what to do next. For creators and teams that want both the numbers and data-backed, built-in recommendations for how to grow their engagement and following, Buffer’s Insights offers it all in one place.

On paid plans, you can export your data in PDF format for reporting to clients or stakeholders, plus CSV or Markdown formats if you want to run a deeper analysis on a tool like ChatGPT or Claude.

You can build custom reports using filters: by client, by channel or channel group, by tags, or a combination of these. Set a date range — the past 7 days, the past 30 days, the past quarter, something else entirely — and compare it against the same period before it or even the same date range in the previous year.

It’s a flexible way to create reports that show exactly what each client or campaign needs. Bookmark the custom view to return to it with one click for next month’s report.

Where Buffer's Insights are designed to help you act on your data quickly, RecurPost's analytics are designed to give you everything you may ever need for a report. The dashboards are incredibly detailed: channel and post performance snapshots; audience demographics by age, gender, country and city; link click performance; and publishing cadence; to name just a few. 

The custom report builder, available on Agency and above, lets you tailor reports down to how the data is presented — line chart, raw numbers, or others — remove metrics you don't need, and add ones the templates don't include by default. White-label PDF reports with agency branding and scheduled delivery to clients are available on Agency and above. For agency billing and client reporting, this is a strong foundation.

RecurPost’s AI feature for analytics has a chat interface where you can ask plain-language questions about your performance data. Where the data exists, it analyzes and responds. Where it doesn't, it generates a response that appears to be based on general best practices, which is worth knowing before you lean on it for client meetings.

X/Twitter analytics are available only as a paid-add on that’s priced per post. It’s an incredibly low amount — $0.006 per post — but worth flagging for agencies that need to report on hundreds of posts across multiple clients.

Team collaboration

Buffer’s Team plan includes unlimited team members at no additional cost. When you invite a new team member, you can give them the exact permissions they need for posting and inbox management for each social channel.

For posting, team members can have full access to publish without approval, require approval before publishing, or no access to the channel’s publishing. For the Community inbox, they can have full access to reply to any comments or mentions, view only so they can read but not reply, or no access to the channel’s inbox.

Permissions don’t have to be the same for one channel. A team member can have full access to post on Instagram and view only access to comments, while having no access to TikTok at all.

Since the plan includes unlimited team members, you can invite clients and give them access to only their channels without compromising on your own or other clients’ privacy. Brainstorming, drafting, and approvals can all happen with your team or clients directly inside Buffer.

In RecurPost, team collaboration takes place in workspaces. Your plan's channel limit is shared across all workspaces — on Agency, you're distributing the 20 included accounts across clients, not multiplying them per workspace. 

Each workspace has its own connected social profiles, media library, team members, and reports. You can invite team members to specific workspaces only, so a contractor or teammate working on one client account can’t see what’s in any of the others. If they’re working on more than one account, invite them to all the relevant workspaces to give them access.

There’s one big limitation with team workflows: there’s no way to require approval from a team member. They can choose to send a post for approval when adding it to the library, but there's no access levels within a workspace like Buffer has. Anyone on the team can schedule a post or reply to messages without any oversight.

RecurPost’s Agency plan comes with three user seats in total, so if you need four or more, that’s a paid add-on at $20 per seat. You don’t need to add clients to your plan. The Agency plan comes with five shareable calendars — a maximum of one allowed per workspace — and you can get more via paid add-ons again. Clients can view a shareable calendar without logging in and comment on individual posts directly to share feedback.

For agencies where clean client separation matters most, RecurPost's workspace model is the right structure. For teams that need enforced approval workflows across all content, Buffer's permissions model is more reliable.

AI features

Buffer's AI Assistant is available on every plan including Free, with no cap on its use for publishing posts. You can use it in the Create space to spin up post ideas, and in the composer to draft the text, repurpose content across platforms, or just refine what you already have. 

You can also generate alt text for any images you post to make them more accessible. If you rely on AI to get the words flowing, you can use it as often as you like without running into limits on any plan.

AI-powered takeaways in Insights work the same way: always on, no credits required. In the Community inbox, AI reply suggestions are unlimited on paid plans, and Free plans get five suggestions per week.

These are just the AI features inside Buffer. You can also connect your Buffer account to AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT and work on your social media content from inside the tools you’re already using (more on this below).

RecurPost also has AI reply suggestions for the inbox and an AI chat feature to analyze reports, but it’s the AI posting features that offer plenty of options. You can use it to generate a single post, plan a full week’s worth of content, create posts based on a template, and draft for holidays and observances like Halloween or Valentine's Day. I tested these out with a mixed bag of results.

Where it fared better was with AI-generated images to accompany the posts, which Buffer doesn’t offer. I generated with both a vague prompt and detailed instructions — including brand colors, angle, and illustration style — and was pleasantly surprised that I got two equally good graphics at first shot.

These AI features come with caps: 100 credits per month across all plans for post generation, and 10 for images, with add-ons available to buy if you need more.

One thing I couldn't find during testing: a visible, persistent credit counter anywhere. The in-session counter resets every time you close the chat, so after using the AI tools across a few different sessions, I had no way of knowing how many credits I had left overall. 

For teams that want image generation, custom AI personas, weekly planning tools, and don't mind managing a monthly allowance, RecurPost's AI has more range. For daily use without credit management, Buffer's unlimited approach is simpler. 

API and MCP

Both Buffer and RecurPost have public APIs and MCPs, but the experience surrounding them is poles apart.

Buffer's API is available on all plans including Free, and the number of calls and API keys depends on your plan. 

It’s incredibly easy to use — I know, because I’ve built a bunch of tools and workflows despite being a non-technical user. Buffer users have spun up everything from a trend-based ideas engine to a workflow that turns questions in Slack into social media posts written in the author’s voice.

What makes all of this easier is the ecosystem around the API. You’ll find stories on the Buffer blog about what people have actually built so you can get inspiration, beginner-friendly guides and best practices in the developer docs, clear support documentation, active builder channels in the Discord community, and a full-time Developer Advocate on the Buffer team. If you're building something with Buffer, there's real support available for builders of all technical levels.

There’s also an MCP so you can use Buffer directly from inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Cursor, Raycast, and others. Ask what's scheduled for the week, brainstorm and save ideas, draft and schedule posts directly from inside the tools you’re already using. Buffer also has an official Claude connector so you can get it up and running quickly.

RecurPost’s API works — I tested it with a lightweight Lovable app just to confirm. But while the technical foundation exists, there’s none of the surrounding support.

There isn’t even a mention of the API on the website or knowledge base, or indication of usage limits. I found the MCP listed, so I put on my finest detective hat and did a little digging to see if there was also a public API (it’s not a given that it would be available). I found it, but I couldn’t find anything close to Buffer's developer documentation depth or builder community. You can build with RecurPost’s API, but you’re on your own.

This may work for technical users, but it’s a real stumbling block for non-technical users. For anyone who doesn’t want to build custom workflows or tools, this distinction probably doesn't matter. For technical users or anyone who wants a custom integration, Buffer's developer ecosystem is a meaningful advantage.

Customer support

Buffer offers email support on all plans including Free, plus active coverage across social channels and a dedicated support channel in our Discord community. Our global team means someone is available 24/7, no matter what timezone you’re in. There's no live chat, but 24/7 email coverage means you're not waiting until Monday if something goes wrong on a Friday evening.

RecurPost's support model varies by plan. On the Starter plan, you get a knowledge base and self-serve guides only. If you have a problem or question, there’s no human on the other side to help you out. Email and live chat become available on Personal and above, 24/5 with no weekend coverage. Agency and Enterprise plans get faster responses and personalized onboarding help.

There’s also no coverage on Indian public holidays, which I learned when I opened the live chat widget on one such day — that also happened to be a Friday. The message confirmed that support is closed on weekends and any messages that came through would be answered on Monday in the order they arrived.

That gap in support coverage can be frustrating for different reasons. It could mean a missed opportunity to run a time-bound promotion for a small business, scrambling to fix problems with influencer marketing campaigns for a creator, and problems with client accounts for agencies. Buffer's 24/7 availability on every plan is a meaningful difference here.

Supported platforms

Both Buffer and RecurPost cover similar channels, with a few differences among them.

There are two gaps that matter most for publishing: Buffer supports Mastodon, and RecurPost doesn't. RecurPost supports full YouTube video upload — title, category, thumbnail, the whole thing — while Buffer covers Shorts only. If either of these channels are part of your social media presence, you need the tool that supports it.

The other is the inbox. Buffer supports comments and mentions on a much wider range of channels, and RecurPost supports DMs for a select few.

Who should pick which tool

Creators and solopreneurs

Pick Buffer. If video is central to what you do, go with RecurPost. For everything else, Buffer is the stronger fit. Our Free plan is a real free plan — three channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel (refillable at any time), an AI Assistant, API access, analytics, and community inbox, with no credit card required. RecurPost has no free plan, and its $9 per month Starter plan limits you to knowledge base support. If you occasionally need content to repeat, Buffer’s recurring posts feature handles the basics. If evergreen libraries are central to your strategy, RecurPost Personal plan at $25 per month is the minimum to get the feature set that makes it worthwhile.

Small businesses and growing teams

It depends. If you publish fresh content consistently and need strict approval workflows that cover everything your team publishes, Buffer is the cleaner setup. Our permissions go to the channel level, with posting and inbox access configured independently for each user. And because Team includes unlimited team members, you're not paying per seat as your team grows. If you publish evergreen content on repeat, have fewer users, and don't need enforced posting approval workflows inside the tool, RecurPost's Agency plan is worth a serious look — just know that the fourth user and above are $20 per month each.

Video creators

Pick RecurPost. If you post primarily video content, RecurPost is hard to beat. Its Instagram toolkit goes further than most schedulers, it supports full YouTube video uploads as well as Shorts, and has TikTok-specific features like setting privacy levels per post, turning off comments, and enabling duets and stitches directly from the composer. 

Agencies

Pick Buffer. Buffer’s Team plan starts at $12/channel per month and includes unlimited users. You can require approval on every post before it goes live, build flexible custom reports per client, support engagement on 10 channels, and get round-the-clock support. RecurPost goes deeper on analytics — but its Agency plan starts at $79/month, the cost grows with every user you add beyond three, there’s no way to enforce approvals, and the inbox supports only four channels.

Technical (and non-technical) users and builders

Pick Buffer. The API is available on every plan including Free, and the MCP connects directly to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Raycast, and others. What makes it practical for non-technical users as much as developers is the ecosystem: builder stories, beginner-friendly guides, active builder channels in the Discord community, and a full-time Developer Advocate on staff. RecurPost has both an API and an MCP, but you'd be building without meaningful documentation, usage guidance, or community support.

To sum it up

RecurPost is the right call in specific situations: video-first creators who need all the bells and whistles for Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, and teams running evergreen content libraries for clients with white-label delivery.

For everyone else — and for most teams that don't map neatly to one of those categories — I think Buffer is the stronger fit. The free plan is real, the data is designed to help you act, the scheduling is fast, and approval workflows cover everything your team publishes.

Buffer has a real free plan, and RecurPost has a 14-day free trial — the best way to know which is right for you is to try both and see which suits how you and your team work.

Sign up here to try Buffer’s Free plan — it’s free forever, no catch.

Frequently asked questions

Does RecurPost have a free plan?

No, RecurPost offers a 14-day free trial, but there's no ongoing free plan after that. The entry-level paid plan is Starter at $9 per month for two social accounts and one user, with support limited to a knowledge base. Buffer has a free-forever plan that includes three social channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel (refillable at any time), an AI Assistant, API access, and basic analytics, with no trial period or expiry date.

Is Buffer or RecurPost better for agencies?

Buffer is better for agencies. Buffer’s Team plan starts at $12/channel per month and includes unlimited users, enforced approval workflows, flexible custom reports, inbox features for up to 10 channels, and 24/7 customer support.

RecurPost’s analytics go deeper on the Agency plan and include white-label reports and password-free client approvals. But the plan starts at $79 per month, the cost grows $20 with every user you add beyond three, the inbox only supports four channels, and there’s no way to require approvals before publishing.

Which is cheaper, Buffer or RecurPost?

It depends on two things: how many channels you connect and how many users you have.

Buffer pricing is per channel — Essentials starts at $6 per channel per month, Team at $12 — with volume discounts as you scale. Team includes unlimited team members at no extra cost. There are no surprises: you know exactly what you'll pay each month regardless of how many people are on your team.

RecurPost uses fixed plans with room to grow without upgrading. You can add channels or users without moving up a plan, but each addition is an extra cost ($4 per channel and $20 per user). Layer on top of that the add-ons like Twitter analytics and tweet links, and additional AI credits beyond what's included in your plan. The base price may look lower at a small scale, but the total can climb depending on how you use it.

Does Buffer have content recycling like RecurPost?

Yes, but it's simpler. Buffer's recurring posts feature (in beta) lets you schedule a post and set it to repeat daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. RecurPost's library system is more elaborate: you create a library, set recurring time slots by day, add multiple posts that cycle through and loop back automatically, and can set end dates on individual posts to pull them from rotation. For basic recurring content, Buffer works. For a full evergreen library strategy with multiple rotating posts and seasonal content, RecurPost's system is more capable.

Does RecurPost have an API?

Yes, RecurPost has both an API and an MCP, although neither is mentioned on RecurPost's pricing page, and there's no information about which plans include access or what the usage limits are. Buffer's API is available on all plans including Free, clearly documented with per-plan limits and supported by a developer community, beginner-friendly guides, and a full-time Developer Advocate.

Can I switch from RecurPost to Buffer?

Yes. Setup takes a few minutes: connect your channels, set a posting schedule, and start scheduling content. Buffer will pull in older posts and historical data for each channel based on what the platforms allow. There's no automated way to import scheduled posts from RecurPost, but you can start publishing through Buffer immediately. Buffer's free plan lets you test it with no time limit or credit card required.

I currently author Buffer’s Substack, The Weekly Scroll, which has grown to 92K+ subscribers, and I’ve spent the past month publishing to Notes every day. That hands-on, day-to-day experience is why I revisited and reworked this guide.

Ever since we moved The Weekly Scroll, Buffer’s newsletter, over to Substack a few months ago, I’ve been learning the platform from the inside rather than writing about it as an outsider. A lot of the advice and learnings from my first pass at this guide held up, but some of it didn’t, especially since Substack has changed a fair bit since then.

So this reworked guide walks through everything from setting up your account to growing and monetizing your newsletter, with advice from the creators I interviewed and everything I’ve learned firsthand.

Let’s get into it.

Key takeaways

• Substack is a free newsletter platform with a social layer built in. You publish posts that go out by email, and Notes, Chat, and Live sit around them for discovery and community.
• Subscribers and followers are different groups. Subscribers get your emails; followers only see your Notes in the app. You want both, but subscribers are the ones who'll read your newsletter.
• Setting up properly takes about an hour: fill in your profile, set up the publication and its categories, rewrite the welcome email, connect Stripe, import any list you have, and publish a welcome post and a first Note before you start the regular issues.
• Pick a niche you can describe in a sentence and a schedule you can stick to. Fill in the SEO title and description on every post while you're at it, because Substack articles do rank on Google.
• Most growth happens inside Substack, through Recommendations and Notes, so switch those on before you spend time sharing links elsewhere.
• Substack is free until you turn on paid subscriptions, at which point it takes 10% plus Stripe's processing fees.

What is Substack (and how does it work)?

Substack is a publishing platform where you write posts and send them to subscribers by email, for free, with the option to charge for some or all of your work.

The platform is part social network and part newsletter tool, as every publisher gets a website, an archive, and a profile in the Substack app, where readers can find you through recommendations and the Notes feed.

The simplest way I've found to explain how it all fits together is in three parts: the content you publish, the audience that finds and follows it, and the money you can (but don't have to) make from it.

Content

There are four content surfaces you can use in Substack.

Posts

Posts are the main draw on the platform. They go to your subscribers' inboxes and live on your publication page, and they can be long-form writing, audio, video, or a mix of all three.

Substack’s audio and video capabilities have evolved a lot. You can run a podcast from Substack and it gives you an RSS feed you can submit to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the rest.

You can also publish video posts by uploading a file or recording directly in Substack's Recording Studio (which will look familiar if you’ve ever used Riverside).

Every audio or video post gets a transcript, which you can edit or switch off. And if you connect your YouTube channel under Settings → Connected accounts, Substack will upload your video posts to YouTube when you publish them, along with up to two auto-generated clips as Shorts.

Notes

Notes is Substack's short-form content feed, which works a lot like X or Threads. Anyone on Substack can post Notes, whether or not they have a publication, and they're public, so people who don't follow you can still come across them.

A Note can be plain text, text with up to six images or GIFs, or a video up to five minutes long. There's also a restack button on every post and Note, which reposts it to your own feed with or without your added commentary. Video Notes and clips from your video posts also show up in the app's media tab, which is Substack's vertical, short-form video feed (it launched in early 2025 and works roughly like the TikTok or reels feed, but only for Substack content).

Chat

Chat is a space for conversations with your subscribers, and it only exists inside the app and on your publication page, not by email. Only your subscribers can see it. By default you start the threads, but you can let subscribers start them too, and threads can hold text, photos, image replies, and emoji reactions, so it works a bit like a group chat you host. Substack's direct messages live in the same tab, so this is also where one-to-one conversations with readers and other writers happen.

Live

Live lets you stream video to your audience from the Substack app or your computer. You pick who can watch (everyone on Substack, all your subscribers, or paid subscribers only), you can invite up to two other Substack writers to stream with you, and you can schedule a live in advance. When you go live, Substack notifies your subscribers and adds the stream to their queue.

Once you finish, the recording is saved as a draft post, so you can edit it and send it to the subscribers who didn't catch it live, or cut clips from it to share as Notes. If you already stream with something like OBS or Riverside, Substack supports RTMP, so you can send that feed in rather than using the app's camera.

Audience

On Substack, subscribers and followers are not the same thing (which definitely confused me a bit at first!).

• Subscribing: When someone subscribes to your publication, they get your posts by email as well as all your other content.
• Following: When someone follows you, they only see your Notes and activity in their app feed, but they don't get any emails. Followers exist because Notes exist, so they're more like a social following than a newsletter audience.

This distinction is important because Substack shows you Notes from writers you don't follow and shows your Notes to people who don’t yet follow you. This way, your Notes can reach people who've never heard of you.

And of course, the goal with followers is to eventually turn them into subscribers, since you control and can export your subscriber list anytime and take it to another platform, but you can't export your followers.

Monetization

Substack is free for you and free for your readers unless you turn on paid subscriptions. When you do, you connect Stripe (an external payment platform), set your prices (monthly, annual, and an optional founding tier for readers who want to pay more), and choose what sits behind the paywall. That can be whole posts, part of a post with a free preview, paid-only Chat threads, or paid-only lives.

Substack takes 10% of that revenue, and Stripe takes its processing fees on top. I've broken the actual numbers down in the monetization section, along with when to start charging and what the creators I spoke to and researched put behind their paywalls.

How to use Substack: setting up your publication step by step

While you can technically publish your first Substack post within about five minutes of signing up, I'd hold off. Spending an hour on setup first means that when someone lands on your page from a Note or a recommendation, they see a real publication, not a blank profile with one post. Here's the order I'd do it in.

1. Create your account and fill in your profile

Head to substack.com, sign up, and go straight to Edit profile (click your profile picture, or go to substack.com/profile/edit) before you do anything else. Your profile is what shows up when someone taps your name in Notes, and it's the first thing a potential subscriber checks.

• Add a photo — we went with a face (mine), but a logo works too.
• This is also where you set your handle, which becomes your profile URL and what people use to tag you.
• Create a short bio, and add links to your other socials. The bio should say what you write about and who it's for, in the way you'd say it to someone. So instead of "I'm a marketing expert sharing my thoughts on digital trends," something like "Every week, I break down digital marketing trends into strategies you can actually use."

There's also a Branding section on the same page where you can add a header image and pick an accent color for your profile. It's optional, but it’ll only take a minute and makes the page look polished and personalized.

⚡Under Subscription Privacy, you can choose whether the publications you subscribe to show on your profile. I like to have this visible, along with the specific publications we love here at Buffer, because it helps amplify similar newsletters (recommendations are a big deal on Substack) and what you read says a lot about what you write.

2. Set up your publication

A profile lets you post Notes and follow people, but a publication is the actual newsletter, with its own name, URL, subscribe page, and settings.

Substack creates one for you automatically, and the first time you click the + button on your Home page or Create in your profile page and choose Article, you'll land on it.

To make modifications to the publication, you’ll want to get to your Publisher dashboard, which you can access by selecting the graph icon on the left to take you straight there, or clicking the three dots on your profile, then selecting Publisher dashboard.

At the bottom left, you’ll see Settings, where you can modify all the details about your publication, from your name to payments.

Some immediate things to do in your Settings:

• Pick a name and your URL. You can change both later, but that may confuse subscribers, and you can't set up a redirect (to my knowledge), so choose wisely. If you'd rather use your own domain, that's under Settings → Domain. It's a one-time $50 fee, and Substack needs a subdomain like www. rather than the bare domain (here's how).
• Pick a category or two from the drop-down. Substack uses them to surface your publication in search and discovery and to decide which leaderboard you show up on.
• Upload a logo and a cover image, and pick your homepage layout and colors.
• Write a one-line description. It shows up on your Welcome page (yourname.substack.com/welcome), which is what first-time visitors see before your homepage.

Substack also gives you a setup checklist in your dashboard, which is handy if you're doing this over a few sessions.

3. Write your welcome email

New subscribers get an automatic welcome email, and this is a great opportunity to give them a taste of what to expect from your content.

State who you are, what they'll get, how often, and ask them one question they can reply to. Replies boost deliverability and, more importantly, they're how you learn more about who’s opening and reading your emails.

You'll find them under Settings → Emails, and there are actually four types of you can create: one each for free, paid, imported, and founding subscribers. I recommend starting with the free one, although the imported one matters more if you're bringing a list over (more on that in step 5).

Substack has also been rolling out email automations to more publications since August 2026, so depending on when you read this, you might also be able to set up a short welcome sequence of emails rather than a single email. If you have it, definitely use it.

4. Connect Stripe (even if you're not charging yet)

You don't have to charge anything to sign up for or use Substack, but connecting Stripe is an easy step takes five minutes and means you can turn on paid subscriptions later without a scramble.

It's under Settings → Payments → Connect with Stripe.

Stripe will ask for a business address, your personal details, and a bank account, then send you back to Substack to set up your plans. If you're sure you'll never charge for your publication, feel free to skip this step.

⚡Note: Stripe isn't available everywhere. You can still set up a free publication, but Substack lists a handful of countries (India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Malaysia, and Thailand at the time of writing) where you can't turn on paid subscriptions, and Stripe's own supported countries list is the one to check for everywhere else.

5. Import an existing email list or previous content

If you have email subscribers elsewhere, import them.

Go to the Subscribers tab, choose Upload a CSV (.csv or .txt both work), and confirm those people gave you permission to email them.

This is what we did with the Weekly Scroll, and it's the biggest reason the move didn't feel like starting from scratch.

If you're also moving old posts over from Medium, Ghost, WordPress, Mailchimp, or beehiiv, that's under Settings → Import/Export.

Just know that everything imports as published, so you can't pick and choose beforehand. You delete what you don't want afterward.

If you don't have a list yet, grab your subscribe link from your publication page and add it to your social bios and website. Substack also gives you an embeddable subscribe form that you can add to your website.

6. Publish a welcome post

Before you start the regular newsletter, publish a post that introduces you and what you'll write about.

It might sound similar to a welcome email, but is more a way to keep your archive from looking empty. Keep it short, detailing who you are, why you're publishing, what to expect and how often, and an invitation to reply or share.

7. Post your first Note

Once your publication is live, write one Note. It doesn't need to be the most clever thing; it can literally be a Hello World post.

In other ideas, say what you've just launched and what it's about, and link to your welcome post. Notes is where most of your early discovery will come from, and it's much less intimidating to post there once you've done it once.

That's everything you need for the initial setup. Everything after this is about what you publish and how you get it in front of people.

What to publish on Substack

Once the publication is set up, the next question is the same one everyone has: what is this thing actually about? Along with, of course, a list of smaller questions like when should I share, or how do I promote?

I haven't found a single right answer, but the newsletters that seem to be doing really well by all publicly available metrics have a clear focus, a sustainable publishing rhythm, and a clear voice and point of view.

Here's how the creators I spoke to (and I) approached it.

Start with a niche, even a loose one

You don't need a hyper-specific niche on day one, but you do need a starting point, because a clear focus is what makes it obvious who should subscribe.

A few questions that help: What do you enjoy writing about, week after week? Who do you want reading it? And what do you know or notice that other people writing about the same thing don't?

That said, don't overthink it. Some of the best newsletters started as someone exploring an idea and figuring out the niche as they went. I'm still adjusting what the Weekly Scroll covers based on what people open and what gets responses, and I'd rather do that than wait for the perfect angle.

Pick a format you'll enjoy repeating

Once you have a topic, decide how you'll structure it. Essay-style deep dives, short weekly roundups, curated links with commentary, interviews, and practical how-tos are all common formats on Substack, and none of them is better than the others. The right one is the one you'll still want to be doing in six months.

You also don't have to pick a traditional format. Gabby Whiten, who writes Oh Eight, a lifestyle and fashion newsletter, builds an elaborate collage for every issue, and it's become the signal people know her for. If there's something only you would think to do, that's usually a good sign it’ll work on Substack.

For The Weekly Scroll, we cycle through a few formats, from essay-style newsletters to interviews to keep things fresh.

Set a schedule you can actually keep

Consistency matters on Substack, partly because readers get used to a rhythm and partly because a predictable cadence makes Notes easier (you always have something new to point to). But consistency doesn't mean constant.

Once a week is the most common starting point for posting articles on Substack. Some people publish every two weeks, and a few send several times a week. But the best schedule is the one that doesn't burn you out.

If you're unsure, start slower than you think you can manage. It's much easier to add a second post a week later than to walk back from a daily commitment you can't keep.

Optimize your publication for SEO

Most people don't think about this until later, but it can really help with early growth.

Lade Falobi, who writes Marketing for Geeks about product marketing, told me: "I wish I'd known to optimize for search earlier. It's not just about writing great content. You have to make it easy for people to find you."

MillieAmelia, who writes Life Unscripted about travel and creator income, echoes this, with some advice. Two of the five things she'd tell someone starting with no audience are to set your publication categories (so Substack knows who to recommend you to) and to fill in the SEO title and description on every post, because Substack articles can and do rank on Google. Both take a minute, and almost nobody does them.

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A post shared by Amelia Austin [Millie] | Travel | Creator Biz | Freedom (@millieameliacreates)

Choose quality over quantity, especially early on

Frequency gets people to subscribe. Quality is what keeps them from unsubscribing. If you have to choose between shipping something that’s below your standards but on schedule and skipping a week, I’d recommend skipping the week.

That said, Don’t Overthink It. One of my favorite Substackers, Kel Rakowski, shared a recent video advocating for thinking of it less like you’re a legacy publication and more like you’re a person sharing their thoughts in a longer form.

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A post shared by Kel Rakowski (@h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y)

With the what and the how-often sorted, the next question is how to get it in front of people who haven't heard of you yet.

How to grow on Substack

Growth on Substack is slower than on social media, faster than on a standalone email list, and most of it happens inside Substack itself.

So the advice here is less about driving traffic from elsewhere and more about using the things Substack already gives you.

I've written a much more detailed guide on this (it'll be linked at the end of this section), but these are the basics that make the most difference in my experience.

1. Turn on Recommendations, then give and ask for them. When you recommend another publication, it's offered to your new subscribers when they sign up, and vice versa when other writers recommend you. Several of the creators I interviewed named this as their biggest single source of new subscribers. Set yours up under Settings → Recommendations, add a handful of publications you actually read, and then ask writers in your space if they'd swap. A short, specific message has worked far better for me than a generic one.
2. Post Notes consistently. Notes is where people who've never heard of you find you, because the feed shows people content from writers they don't follow. Short observations, a single useful idea, or a quote from your latest post tend to travel further than a link to it. Restacking other writers' Notes with a comment of your own helps too. Anna Burgess Yang started "restacking quotes from other Substack writers as a way to boost visibility," and found it noticeably increased engagement.
3. Give followers a reason to subscribe. Someone who follows you from a Note sees your Notes but doesn't get your emails. So every so often, write a Note that points at the newsletter itself: a preview of this week's issue with a reminder to subscribe, a question you answered for subscribers, or a simple reintroduction to your newsletter.
4. Cross-promote with other writers. Guest issues, newsletter swaps, and interviews all work, and Substack makes them easy because you can link straight to another publication's subscribe page. Start with writers at a similar size to you as they're more likely to say yes. You can also check Substack’s new Creator Match feature to find writers with audience overlap.
5. Share where you already have an audience, and ask readers to share too. Many creators still grow partly through social media, and it works best when you share a takeaway or a story from the issue rather than just dropping a link. Also, reply to commenters; it's how casual readers turn into super fans.

📚 Related reading: I've gone much deeper on all of this, including what Substack's own founders say the feed rewards and what I learned posting a Note every day for a month, in How to Grow on Substack.

One last thing before you hit publish

If you've made it this far, you have everything you need to set up, publish, and grow a Substack. But if there’s one thing that I’d like to leave you with, it’s the part that's easiest to skip: talking to the people who subscribe.

I’ve always believed that newsletters aren't a one-way channel, and Substack reflects that sentiment.

Subscribers have invited you into their inbox, and every reply, comment, and Chat message is a chance to find out what they need or want from you. That’s why the writers who do best on Substack aren't necessarily the best writers, but make their readers feel like they’re part of something.

If you've been thinking about starting one, consider this your sign. Your first post likely won't be perfect, and your first 10 subscribers might be friends and family. But every newsletter you admire started the same way, with one post and one reader.

Frequently asked questions about using Substack

Is Substack free to use?

Yes. Creating an account, setting up a publication, and sending posts to any number of subscribers is free. Substack only makes money when you do: if you turn on paid subscriptions, it takes 10% of that revenue, and Stripe takes payment processing fees on top.

How much does Substack take from paid subscriptions?

Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue. Stripe, which handles payments, adds 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction and a 0.7% billing fee for subscribers who signed up after July 2024. On an $8/month subscription, that leaves you with roughly $6.62.

What's the difference between subscribers and followers on Substack?

Subscribers get your posts by email (and access to Chat and any paid content). Followers only see your Notes and activity in their Substack app feed, and don't receive emails. Followers exist because Notes exists, so they behave more like a social following. Most growth advice on Substack comes down to turning followers into subscribers.

Do you need an audience to start a Substack?

No. Substack's Recommendations, Notes feed, and app are designed to help new publications get found without an existing following, which is one of the main reasons creators choose it over a standalone email tool. Growth is slow at first either way, and having an audience elsewhere helps, but it isn't a requirement.

Can you schedule posts and Notes on Substack?

You can schedule posts natively: set a date and time in the publish flow and Substack sends the email for you. You can also schedule Notes by clicking the calendar icon in the composer and setting your preferred date and time.

How often should you publish on Substack?

Once a week is the most common cadence for newsletters, and it's a sensible default. Notes is different: because the feed rewards consistency, daily or near-daily Notes tend to do more for discovery than weekly ones. Whatever you pick, choose a schedule you can sustain.

If you want to stay consistent on social, you need a good home base to work from — which is why, in my humble opinion, the social media management tool you choose is a lot more important than you might think.

The right tool for you will be easy and flexible, without stretching your budget. And actually be a place that you want to hang out every day (trust me on that one!).

Buffer and Later are two names you’ll see often, each offering different ways to help you schedule posts, connect with your audience, and analyze performance.

If you’re weighing your options between Buffer and Later, I've got you! The key differences and similarities to look for between them are:

• Pricing structure: Buffer charges per channel, starting at $6/month. Later uses bundled “social sets” with plans starting at $25/month.
• Free plan: Buffer offers a free plan for up to three channels and includes publishing, inbox, and analytics. Later's free plan is limited to 12 posts per channel, a link-in-bio page, access to the media library, and creator marketplace. There's no inbox or analytics on the free plan.
• Platform support: Buffer connects to 11 platforms, including X/Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Google Business. Later supports eight, including Snapchat.
• Visual planning: Later leans into visual-first planning with a drag-and-drop calendar and grid preview. Buffer focuses on simplicity and flexibility across multiple channels.
• AI tools: Buffer includes unlimited AI-assisted content creation on all plans. Later offers AI credits on paid plans, with limits based on your tier.
• Extras: Later offers add-on products for social listening, influencer marketing, and commerce features like a Shopify-integrated link-in-bio with conversion tracking. Buffer keeps its focus on publishing, engagement, and insights.
• Team scaling: Buffer allows unlimited users on its Team plan, making it more cost-effective for growing agencies than Later’s per-seat model.

In this guide, we’ll compare the two platforms so you can decide which is the better fit for your brand.

Buffer vs. Later features overview

Here's a look at the key features and costs for Buffer and Later at a glance. 

Plans and pricing

Cost can be one of the biggest factors when choosing a social media management tool, with good reason. You need a tool that has the features you need at a price that makes sense for your brand or business.

Buffer pricing

• Free plan: $0 for up to three social media accounts/channels
• Essentials plan: $6 per channel per month (or $5 per channel paid annually) for one user account
• Team plan: $12 per channel per month (or $10 per channel paid annually) with unlimited team members

See Buffer’s full pricing guide here →

Buffer provides complete flexibility when choosing channels. You can select the exact channels you need and only pay for those channels, so you're only paying for what you actually use.

Later pricing

• Free plan: $0 for up to 8 social media channels, 1 per platform
• Starter plan: $25 per month for one user (or $18.75 per month paid annually) and one social set
• Growth plan: $50 per month for two users (or $37.50 per month paid annually) and two social sets
• Scale plan: $110 per month for four users (or $82.50 per month paid annually) and six social sets

See Later’s full pricing guide here →

Later’s listed prices are the minimum for each plan, and the final cost could go up depending on the number of users on your team and the social channels you connect.

Later requires paid users to purchase “social sets.” Each social set includes one account from each supported platform (Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Snapchat).

This bundled approach means you can't pick and choose individual channels. If you only want to connect a Facebook Page and a LinkedIn profile, you're still paying for a full set. And if you need multiple accounts on the same platform, say, two Instagram profiles, you'd need to buy additional social sets, which adds to the cost.

Number of users or seats included

Buffer and Later structure user accounts in different ways. For social media managers especially, it’s worth knowing what each plan includes so you can choose the setup that fits best.

Buffer user accounts

Buffer’s Free and Essentials plans each include one user account, and the Team plan includes unlimited users. This is one of the biggest reasons creators and small teams choose Buffer. Your costs stay predictable no matter how many people you bring in.

Later user accounts

Later’s Starter plan includes one user account. For teams, the Growth plan includes two user accounts, and the Scale plan includes four user accounts. If you need more user accounts, you can purchase additional seats at $5 per user per month ($3.75 per user billed annually) on the team plans.

What this means for you

Buffer and Later price things differently, and those differences can add up, especially as your team or the number of channels grows.

For creators

Later's free plan includes one social set, and you can publish up to 12 posts per channel. There's no basic analytics or inbox to engage with your audience.

If you need multiple accounts on the same platform (e.g., a LinkedIn profile for your personal brand and a LinkedIn page for your business), you’d need the Growth plan, which is priced at $50 per month.

Buffer has a free plan for up to three social media channels, and paid plans start at $6 per month per channel.

For teams

Later has a fixed number of users on its plans. If you have two social platforms and two users on your marketing team, Later would cost you $50 per month.

If you need a third channel on the same platform, you’d have to purchase additional social sets. If you need more users, you can upgrade to the next tier or purchase more seats.

Buffer’s pricing is based on channels. For two channels and unlimited users, Buffer would cost $24 monthly.

Free trials

If you're curious to see how these features stack up, both Buffer and Later offer free trials of their plans, letting you test everything out for yourself before you pay.

Buffer free trial: 14 days on Essentials and Teams Plans, and you can use up to three social media channels on the free plan.

Later free trial: 14 days on all plans.

Social media scheduling and planning

Both Buffer and Later offer plenty of features to easily schedule posts across multiple platforms from a single dashboard.

Let's look at them in more depth.

Available channels

Here's a breakdown of the various social media platforms Buffer and Later support.

Creating and scheduling posts

Both Buffer and Later make it easy to draft and schedule content to multiple social media accounts at the same time. You can customize captions or images for each network as you go, and both tools let you set up predefined time slots so you don't have to manually pick a posting time for every single post.

It's worth knowing that some platforms (Instagram in particular) have API-level limitations that can affect how posts are published. Depending on the post type and your account type (business, creator, or personal), you may occasionally need to use notification-based publishing instead of full auto-publish. This applies regardless of which scheduling tool you use.

Beyond these basics, there are some differences in how Buffer and Later work at this stage of your workflow.

Number of scheduled posts

Buffer supports scheduling 10 posts at a time per channel on the free plan and unlimited scheduling on all paid plans. You can have as many posts in your drafts as you'd like.

Later has limits on the number of posts you can schedule, even on paid plans. The Starter plan lets you schedule 30 posts per profile per month, and the Growth plan lets you schedule 180. Unlimited scheduling is available on the Scale plan.

Captions and hashtags

Later includes a feature that lets you save captions, which can be handy if you frequently reuse announcements, reminders, or hashtags. You can also get hashtag suggestions, which are generated based on the text of your post. 

Buffer has a dedicated hashtag manager, where you can save and organize groups of hashtags to add to your posts quickly. There's also a free Instagram hashtag generator available to everyone, even if you don't have a Buffer account.

Bulk content posting

If you’re planning content at scale, Buffer supports bulk scheduling of up to 100 posts at a time from a CSV file on paid plans. If you plan content in spreadsheets or manage campaigns at scale, you can upload an entire content calendar in minutes rather than scheduling posts individually.

Later doesn’t support bulk scheduling via a CSV, so there’s more manual work involved to schedule larger campaigns.

Channel groups

Buffer's channel groups let you save frequently used combinations of social accounts and publish to them simultaneously. For example, you could create a "Company Accounts" group containing Facebook, LinkedIn, and Threads, then schedule to all three with one click.

Later offers channel grouping features through its social sets. Social sets group specific social profiles tied to a single brand or client, which allows you to schedule one post across multiple channels at the same time.

First comment scheduling

Buffer supports scheduling a first comment on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn posts for paid plans. Later supports first comment scheduling only on Instagram.

Instagram-specific features

Later offers a visual planner you can use on all platforms, which helps you see your Instagram grid (and Pinterest) before you publish. You can drag images from the media library onto the calendar, then add captions directly from there.

Buffer has an Instagram grid preview feature on all plans as well, but there’s no drag and drop directly onto the calendar.

There are also some differences when it comes to posting on Instagram. Later doesn’t support publishing to personal profiles, and Instagram Stories can only be auto-published for business accounts. 

If you have a creator profile, you’ll need to use notification publishing for stories. Later’s Android app isn’t available in all countries, so that could pose a challenge for some creators.

Buffer provides more options for Instagram publishing. It supports posting to personal profiles through notifications on the mobile app, and you can post automatically to both creator and business profiles.

AI features

Both Buffer and Later offer AI tools to speed up content creation, but the biggest difference is access. Buffer includes unlimited AI usage on every plan (including the free one), while Later ties its AI features to paid plans with a credit-based system.

Buffer

Buffer’s AI Assistant is available without limits on all plans, including the free one. You can generate fresh ideas whenever you need them, draft or refine posts or captions, and even repurpose content across multiple social media platforms without worrying about running out of credits. 

For creators or teams posting regularly, this removes the risk of hitting a ceiling in the middle of a campaign.

Later

Later offers its AI-powered Ideas tool on paid plans, with a credit system that helps manage how many ideas you can create each month. The number of credits you get depends on your plan, and you spend one credit to generate a caption or three content ideas.

Once those credits are used up, you’ll need to wait until the next month or purchase additional credits.

Capturing ideas and planning content

A great idea for a post can strike at any time, and both Buffer and Later give you a dedicated space to save these ideas so they don't get lost.

Buffer

The Create Space is an ideas hub where you can collect and organize anything you might want to turn into a post later. Here's what you can do with it:

• Save and organize ideas: Collect notes, text snippets, links, and media, then tag and sort them on a flexible, Kanban-style board.
• Get started faster: Built-in template library and AI Assistant.
• Clip inspiration from the web: Browser extension for Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, and Edge.
• Curate content with feeds: Automatically pulls content from RSS feeds, blogs, and YouTube channels into your workspace.

Later

Later’s idea space leans heavily on AI to get you going. You start by providing a description of your brand, and the AI will generate content pillars (which you can edit) and a few initial post ideas for you.

From that point, you can continue to use the AI to generate more ideas or add your own thoughts to these pillars.

This gives you a structured starting point, though it’s more narrowly focused on generating prompts than on capturing and organizing the wide variety of ideas and inspiration that might come your way.

Social media engagement

Both Buffer and Later let you manage comments and conversations from a single dashboard, but they differ in who gets access. Buffer's engagement features are available on all plans, including Free. Later's Social Inbox is available on Growth and Scale plans. Starter users can preview the feature but need to upgrade to manage comments and DMs.

Here's how each tool handles engagement.

Buffer

As the name suggests, the Community feature (available on all plans, including Free) helps you build an engaged social media community across multiple accounts. You can reply to comments and mentions quickly from the Community tab right within Buffer, and the AI Assistant even gives you suggestions to kick off the conversation.

You can also save responses to commonly asked questions. This lets you answer these FAQs quickly without rewriting the same message every time. 

To help you see how you're doing, you get a comment score for each channel that tracks how fast and consistently you respond. This visibility helps you see where you’re engaging well and where conversations might be slipping.

The Community inbox is available on Instagram business and creator accounts, Facebook Pages, Threads, Bluesky, LinkedIn profiles and pages, X/Twitter, Google Business Profiles, TikTok, YouTube, and Mastodon.

Later

The social inbox in Later gathers your Instagram and Facebook DMs and comments, along with TikTok comments, in one space. It has a useful feature that lets you hide comments directly from the inbox, which removes them from view on the original platform — handy when you’re dealing with spam or inappropriate replies.

The social inbox is only available on team plans. Solo users on the Free or Starter plans aren't able to use it to engage with their audience.

Later also offers a social listening tool to help you understand the sentiment around your brand. It finds brand mentions, highlights trending topics, and provides competitive benchmarking to see how you stack up against other brands in your industry. 

Social listening is only available as a paid add-on for users on the Scale plan, and it comes at an additional cost that Later says depends on “each brand’s unique needs and goals.”

Social media analytics and insights

Social media analytics tools give you a clearer view of how your content performs, helping you understand what's working and where to adjust.

Buffer and Later both provide analytics, but they differ in two important ways: which plans include them, and which platforms they cover. Buffer offers meaningful insights on all plans (including free) and advanced analytics on paid plans. Later reserves most analytics for paid plans, though link-in-bio analytics are available on all tiers.

Buffer’s Insights features

Buffer's Insights gives you a clear picture of how your content is performing across all your connected social channels. Analytics and insights are available on every plan (including the free version), while paid plans unlock more historical data, custom date ranges, advanced reporting, and deeper analysis.

Buffer's Insights provides a unified view of your social performance with the following capabilities:

• Cross-channel dashboard: Compare performance across 10+ platforms (including Mastodon and Bluesky) in one view.
• Granular metrics: Track impressions, reach, engagement, and follower growth per channel.
• Channel grouping: Organize accounts by brand or client for streamlined reporting.
• AI takeaways: Automatically identify patterns and content opportunities without manual data analysis.

Where Insights really stands out is its AI-powered Takeaways. Rather than leaving you to interpret charts and graphs yourself, Takeaways analyze your content and highlight the patterns that matter, including what's working, what isn't, and what you should try next.

You can also generate polished reports for any channel or date range — whether you're sharing results with a client, a manager, or just keeping your own strategy on track.

Later’s analytics features

Later’s analytics give you a deep dive into your performance on Instagram Business and Creator profiles, Facebook Pages, TikTok, Threads, and Pinterest accounts. 

What you see depends on the platform, but you’ll usually get a channel overview, audience insights, and how your individual posts are doing.

Later gives you some really useful specifics, too. For Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Threads, Later breaks down your audience demographics for you — gender, location, and age. And if you're active on Instagram or TikTok, it will even pinpoint when your followers are online and most likely to engage with your content.

It’s a little trickier if you’d like to see analytics from multiple social media accounts in one view. The feature is available, but only on the highest-tier plan. 

Reporting has some restrictions, too. While there’s no option to create and export PDFs directly, you can easily download the data as a CSV file.

For Instagram users, there’s also a neat option to generate a shareable performance report link for the past 90 days. It’s an in-depth analysis of your Instagram performance with metrics for profile growth and audience demographics, as well as post and story data.

Link-in-bio tools

Buffer and Later both offer link-in-bio tools you can share in your social media profile bios. Both let you add links to your social profiles, buttons with links, and an email signup form to build your email list.

Beyond those shared features, there are a few differences worth noting.

Buffer Start Page

There are plenty of ways you can use Buffer’s link-in-bio tool, known as Start Page:

• Share links to websites or pages you'd like to highlight
• Embed YouTube videos and Spotify tracks, playlists, or podcasts
• Add a custom image grid (with links)
• Schedule unique posts specifically for this page

Each of these content types works as a block, and you can add multiple blocks of the same type.

What does this mean? If you'd like to create two image grids — one to show off your latest products, and another to highlight brand collabs — there's no stopping you.

Later's Link in Bio page

Here's how you can use Later's link in bio tool:

• Embed featured media, such as a YouTube video, your latest TikTok or Instagram post, or a custom image
• Add a featured banner to promote your most important link
• Add an image banner with multiple linked items
• Embed posts from your Instagram or TikTok profile with custom links

The image banner works as a carousel, allowing you to display multiple images.

For every other content type, you can only use one at a time. So if you'd like to highlight a YouTube video, you won't be able to add a custom graphic as well.

Later's link-in-bio tool also leans into commerce. There's an integration with affiliate marketing platform Mavely, which lets you convert links into affiliate links right within the tool for supported brands. And if you sell products, Later's Linkin.bio connects with Shopify, so you can tie posts to products and track conversions — a helpful feature if driving sales from your bio is a priority.

You can also add affiliate links and earn a commission from Buffer's Start Page. You’ll just have to copy the link from your affiliate network and paste it into the block.

Team collaboration features

For social media managers, agencies juggling multiple clients, or creators working alongside a consultant, team collaboration tools can make a big difference in how smoothly things run.

Both Buffer and Later have collaboration features that help teams stay aligned and keep content moving without a lot of back-and-forth.

Managing teams in Buffer

You can add an unlimited number of users to the platform on Buffer's Team plan, and set different access and permissions.

You can give users:

• Full posting access: They can schedule posts to be published without another team member's approval.
• Approval required: All their scheduled social media content will need approval from someone with full posting access before it is published.

You can also restrict which accounts they have access to so they can schedule or post to only specific social media accounts. It’s a straightforward scheduling process with just two user roles.

We also offer a public API on all plans, so you can connect Buffer to your existing tools, automation workflows, and processes — and build exactly the setup that works for you.

Managing teams in Later

Later uses access groups to manage who can see and work with social profiles, media libraries, and calendars. This can be useful for teams and agencies working across multiple brands or clients.

That said, the setup can feel inflexible. Each access group is tied to a full social set, and each social set can only include one profile per platform.

So if you need two profiles on the same platform — like a LinkedIn profile and a LinkedIn Page — they can't live in the same social set. You'd have to assign them to separate sets, then assign both sets to the same Access Group. The catch? That locks other Access Groups out of those accounts.

To work around this, you'd need to purchase an additional social set, which adds to the overall cost.

You can add multiple users to an access group, and you can add users to multiple access groups. Like Buffer, you can set roles and permissions for scheduling:

• Reviewer: They can schedule and publish posts without another user's approval, and they can approve other users' posts.
• Member: They can schedule and publish, but they can't approve posts.
• Member (Restricted): All their scheduled content will need approval from someone with Reviewer permissions.

Since Later offers visual content planning, it has a useful shared media library for each Access Group. Users in the group can upload media to the library, and then set labels, make notes, or create alt text. This media can then be dragged and dropped into the calendar to easily schedule.

There’s no equivalent in Buffer, but you could use images saved in the Create Space as the starting point for a post.

Influencer marketing features

In addition to its social media management tools, Later also has a separate product built for influencer marketing. Brands and agencies can use it to run campaigns, find and manage influencer relationships, and measure results.

There are a few extras too, like a Shopify integration that makes it easy to send products to influencers, or the option to get creative support from Later’s team.

It’s separate from the social media management platform, and pricing isn’t listed upfront.

Creators using Later’s social media scheduling tools get access to a Creator hub. You can put together a media kit, apply to campaigns, and manage collaborations, all included in your existing plan.

At Buffer, we don't offer influencer marketing tools. Our focus is on helping creators, small businesses, and solopreneurs grow their presence in a way that's sustainable. Publishing, engagement, analytics, and insights are all built in, so you can stay focused on what matters: showing up consistently and building a real audience.

Which tool is right for you?

Buffer and Later both have plenty of features to help you manage your social media, so the right choice really comes down to what matters most to you.

They aren’t identical tools, and the main differences show up in pricing, flexibility, and the features included on each plan. Here's a quick guide to help you decide.

Buffer might be the better fit if you:

• Want a simple, flexible tool that's easy to get started with
• Manage multiple platforms and want to pay only for the channels you actually use
• Need support for platforms like X/Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, or Google Business
• Want unlimited AI-assisted content creation on every plan, including free
• Have a growing team and want unlimited users without per-seat pricing

Later might be the better fit if you:

• Focus primarily on visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok
• Want a drag-and-drop visual planner and Instagram grid preview
• Need social listening or influencer marketing tools (available as paid add-ons)
• Post to Snapchat and need scheduling support for it

If you’re on the fence (or you’ve decided to give Buffer a go) and have questions, our team is always happy to help. You can reach out to us at hello@buffer.com, and someone from our global team will be on hand to answer your questions.

Sign up today to use our free plan or to test Buffer’s paid plans for free.

FAQ on Buffer vs. Later

What are Buffer and Later?

Buffer and Later are social media management tools that let you schedule posts, track performance, and manage multiple accounts from one place.

Buffer offers flexible, channel-based scheduling across a wide range of platforms with a free plan that supports up to three social media channels. Later leans into visual content planning, with a drag-and-drop calendar and features built around Instagram and TikTok workflows.

What's the difference between Buffer and Later?

Buffer is built for simple, flexible cross-platform publishing, while Later is built around visual content planning with a focus on Instagram and TikTok.

In practice, that means Buffer offers channel-based pricing, support for more platforms (11 vs. eight), unlimited AI tools on every plan, and features like bulk scheduling and channel groups.

Later leans into visual-first workflows with a drag-and-drop calendar, Instagram grid preview, and optional add-ons for influencer marketing, social listening, and commerce.

What social media platforms do Buffer and Later support?

Buffer connects to 11 platforms: Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, Google Business, Mastodon, YouTube, Threads, and Bluesky.

Later supports eight: Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Snapchat.

The key differences: Buffer includes X/Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Google Business, none of which Later supports. Later includes Snapchat, which Buffer doesn't support.

Do Buffer and Later offer free trials?

Both tools offer a 14-day free trial on their paid plans. Buffer also has a permanent free plan that supports up to three social media channels, with 10 scheduled posts per channel and unlimited access to the AI Assistant.

More social media marketing resources

• The 11 Best Social Media Management Tools, Tried + Tested
• 9 Tools for Social Media Automation (+ Automation Pro Tips)
• The Best Social Media APIs for Developers + Vibe Coders
• 8 Best Free Hashtag Generators
• The Top 10 AI Writing Tools I Recommend as a Professional Writer
• The 21 Best Social Media Marketing Tools to Try
• The 11 Best Social Media Analytics + Reporting Tools

The first time I opened Meta Ads Manager, I closed it again within about 90 seconds. I consider myself a pretty tech-savvy person (love a new tool, I do), but even I found all the buttons and options overwhelming.

Good news, though: I figured it out, and you can too — promise. It isn't actually difficult once you know the correct order for things. Plus: running Facebook ads is seriously worth it, if that's where your audience hangs out. (With more than 3 billion users on the platform, it probably is.)

To run Facebook ads, you create a Meta Ads Manager account (you'll need a Facebook Page and a verified payment method), pick a buying type and a campaign objective, set your budget and schedule, choose who sees the ad and where it appears, build the creative, then publish it for review. Everything hangs off three layers — campaign, then ad set, then the ad itself.

OK, that might sound like a lot, but we got this. I'm going to walk you through it, step-by-step.

Key takeaways

• Massive reach: Facebook gives advertisers access to billions of people worldwide.
• Precision targeting: Advertisers can target users based on specific demographics, behaviors, and life events, or use Meta Advantage+ AI for automated targeting.
• Centralized management: All campaigns are managed through Meta Ads Manager, requiring a verified payment method and a Facebook Page.
• Flexible budgeting: You can set daily or lifetime budgets, with a minimum of $1 per day per ad set.
• Real-time tracking: Use the Meta Pixel and Conversions API to track website conversions and adjust campaigns based on live performance data.

Why advertise on Facebook?

Facebook advertising is worth the setup time for one reason: the targeting. You can reach people by life event, job history, or recent purchase behavior, which almost no other platform offers.

It also solves a problem that organic posting can't. The Facebook algorithm decides who sees your page content, and that decision isn't yours to make. But paid reach is another story entirely.

Target customers accurately

Facebook has tons of user data, and you can tap into it when targeting your audience.

When creating a Facebook ad, you can get specific with demographics about Facebook users, like gender, location, and age. Where Facebook differentiates itself from other platforms with ads, though, is through lifestyle-based targeting options, like:

• Interests
• Behaviors (like recent purchases)
• Education and job history
• Income (depending on location)
• Major life events
• Spoken languages

Don't want to build the audience yourself? Meta's Meta Advantage+ features help to "maximize performance by using AI to optimize campaigns in real time and match ads to the people most likely to take action."

Get powerful results

Meta Ads Manager takes a couple of sessions to get comfortable with, and most campaigns start delivering impressions within a few hours.

Reach billions across Facebook and Instagram

Because Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, their platforms are easily integrated. This means that ads can be run simultaneously on both platforms, giving you access to even more social users, even if you aren't active on Instagram.

That's unusual. On most social media platforms, you're buying reach on one network at a time.

Track ad performance in real time

While Meta got rid of its full Facebook Analytics platform in 2021, it still has excellent resources for understanding ad performance, including reach, engagement, conversions, and more metrics. This data is updated in real time, so you can adjust your campaigns based on performance.

Another significant benefit of Facebook's current analytics is the ability to add the Meta Pixel to your website. Most content management platforms allow you to easily add this piece of code to your website and track the effectiveness of your Facebook ads. You can monitor user behavior and create specific target audiences for future Facebook advertising campaigns.

Define your advertising goals before you start

Decide what success looks like before you open Ads Manager, because the objective you pick in step 3 locks in what Facebook optimizes for.

If you want app downloads, pick a number. If it's leads you're after, decide what a useful email list actually looks like. That target is what makes the objective choice obvious when you get to it, and your ad objective should follow your wider social media strategy rather than the other way round.

How to run Facebook ads: step by step

All of Facebook's ad campaigns run through Meta Ads Manager, so learning how to run ads on Facebook means getting to grips with it. The good news is that once you get the hang of it, it's pretty straightforward to use.

Here's the shape of the whole process before we get into the detail:

We'll walk through the desktop version here, but don't worry, we'll cover mobile options later in this guide.

What you need before you start

When you sign up for Facebook, you're given a personal ad account ID by default. You can see this ID by going to Ads Manager and looking in the upper left-hand corner.

To use Meta Ads Manager, you need a verified payment method and:

1. A Facebook Page or
2. To be an admin, editor, or advertiser on someone else's page

If you do not have a page for your business, you can follow Facebook's steps to set one up. Any page you create will be automatically given an ad account.

If there is a page you wish to advertise for created by someone else, you need to ask the page admin to assign you an admin, editor, or advertiser role on the page.

If you already have an existing ad account for your page but want to start a new one, you'll need a Business Manager account. You can create a new ad account once you sign up for Business Manager.

Here's a time-saver: bookmark this direct link to Meta Ads Manager so you can jump right in whenever you need it. You will be brought directly into the Meta Ads Manager for your personal ad account. If you manage multiple ad accounts, use the account drop-down menu to pick the right account.

To navigate to Ads Manager right from your business page, head to the left sidebar and click on the Ad Center drop-down arrow of any Facebook Page, then choose All Ads from the drop-down. At the bottom of that page is an option to click Ads Manager.

Click on Facebook's Ads Manager to get started. You will be brought to your Facebook Ad Accounts page, where there will be a quick overview of your ad account(s). If you have access to more than one ad account, select the account where you wish to run ads.

If you'd rather use a mobile device, a Meta Ads Manager app is available for Apple and Android.

1. Create ad

Click the green Create button to get started with your first ad.

Meta will take you to a page where you will be prompted to choose a buying type and campaign objective.

2. Choose your buying type 

Meta's ads have two different buying types: Auction and Reservation. Here's how they compare:

Not sure which one to pick? Meta's guidance here can help you figure out what works best for your needs.

3. Choose your campaign objective

Meta offers six campaign objectives. Pick the one that matches what you actually want the ad to achieve.

In more detail:

1. Awareness: Your ad will be shown to people most likely to remember it. According to Meta, this goal type is good for reach, brand awareness, video views, and store location awareness. 
2. Traffic: This ad type will send people to a specific destination, like your website, an event, or a download link. It's best for link clicks, landing page views, and calls. 
3. Engagement: This ad type will make you more likely to receive messages, in-app purchases, likes, and comments. It's also great for video views, conversions, and calls. 
4. Leads: Your ad may help you collect info from potential customers. It's good for forms, conversions, and calls. 
5. App promotion: Get more users for your app or encourage current users to keep using it. 
6. Sales: Find people who are likely to buy your product or service. This route is great for conversions and in-app sales. 

4. Pick a name for your ad campaign

Once you've selected your marketing objective, you'll be asked to name your campaign. Be sure to make your campaign name recognizable to everyone working on the ads. 

5. Declare your ad category

Different regions have different advertising rules, particularly when it comes to categories like credit, employment, housing, social issues, elections, or politics. If your ad falls into one of these buckets, it's worthwhile declaring it here to ensure it remains compliant with Facebook's and various countries' advertising standards.

6. Decide whether to turn on A/B testing

At this point in the process, you'll be able to turn on the A/B test feature, where you can try out different images, text, audiences, or placements to maximize your ad performance. The full setup for this will come later in the process — this toggle just turns it on.

7. Decide whether to use Advantage+ campaign budget

This option is available only if you chose Auction as your buying type. It means Facebook will automatically find the best available opportunities for results across your ad sets and distribute your campaign budget in real time to get those results.

Advantage+ campaign budget (formerly called campaign budget optimization) is best suited for campaigns with at least two ad sets.

8. Set your performance goal

Facebook now allows you to get specific about the ultimate goals of your ad. Each campaign goal mentioned in step 3 has a separate set of targets. For example, Awareness has everything from the broader 'Maximize reach' to the hyper-specific 'Maximize two-second continuous video views.' 

If you're new to Facebook ads, it's worth trialing the broader options before zeroing in on targets that lend themselves to your goals and the content you share.

9. Define your ad spend and schedule

When you set an ad budget, it's important to remember that this figure represents the maximum amount of money you want to spend. You can set your budget per day or as a total amount for the campaign.

• Daily: A daily budget sets a limit on what you spend each day on your ads. Facebook will use your set criteria to find the right place and time to show your ad to your target audience. Once your budget is reached, the ads stop running for the day. The cycle starts again on the next day.
• Lifetime: A lifetime budget is the maximum you'll spend over the entire time you run your ad campaign. You give Facebook a number and an end date, and it will spend the money based on ad performance. Once your budget is reached, the campaign ends.

Hit the Next button to go to the next part of the setup.

10. Customize your target audience

Meta recently made some changes to its audience customization settings in Ads Manager, which is why things may look a little different nowadays if you're a regular user.

The main audience panel now shows three controls by default: location, age, and language. Detailed demographic, interest, and behavior targeting sits behind the Advantage+ audience settings rather than on the first screen.

It helps to know which of Meta's three audience types you're building:

• Saved audiences: Built from scratch using location, interests, behaviors, and demographics. Save one and you can reuse it across campaigns.
• Custom audiences: People who already know you: your customer list, people who've visited your website, people who've engaged with previous ads.
• Lookalike audiences: New people who resemble an existing custom audience. You give Facebook a source audience and it finds more like them.

If you want to get more specific than the default three controls, the Meta Advantage+ audience feature does the ad targeting for you.

Here's how it works:

Meta’s AI uses numerous pieces of information to find your audience, evolving constantly as it learns. For example:

• Past conversions
• Meta Pixel data
• Interactions with previous ads

Good news for the Meta Ads Manager veterans who know their target audiences inside out and want to reach them. As you can see, your custom audiences are still available in the ad creation wizard, and you can even switch back to the original audience options.

11. Choose your ad placements

Ad placement defines where your ad appears for your target audience. Meta has made similar changes to its placement tools, with the AI-powered Advantage+ placements to help maximize your ad reach.

However, you can still decide on ad placement yourself by selecting the Manual placements option in the screenshots above. When you do, you'll see the options below become available to you:

There are several options across the Meta suite of social platforms:

• Feeds: Get high visibility for your business with ads in feeds.
• Stories, status, and reels: Tell a rich, visual story with immersive, full-screen vertical ads
• In-stream: Quickly capture people's attention while they're watching videos.
• Search results: Get visibility for your business as people search.
• Messages: Send offers or updates to people already connected to your business.
• Apps and sites: Expand your reach with ads in external apps and websites

For more, check out Facebook's guide to ad placement.

12. Choose your social accounts

In the next window, you can choose which Meta social media profiles you want the ads to run on. 

13. Choose your ad format

Under Ad setup, you'll be able to create a new ad, use an existing post, or use any mock-ups you have in Meta's Creative Hub.

Once you've made that selection, choose whether your ad will feature a single image or video, a carousel (multi-image or video post), or a collection (a group of products that becomes a full-screen experience on mobile). 

14. Add your media and copy

Now you upload the files for the format you picked in step 13 — a single image or video, several images for a carousel, or a product set for a collection.

In this area, you can also switch up the ad copy and ad creative you use in each section of the Meta apps, if you want to tailor the experience for each platform.

Lower down in this section, you can choose music for the formats where this is applicable (check out our article on trending Instagram audio to help guide your choice).

You'll also be able to add your ad copy with the various text options in this section — don't forget to include an applicable call-to-action (CTA).

15. Choose your destination 

There are four places you can send people when they click your ad: your website, an Instant Experience, a phone call, or a message thread.

Instant Experience is a fast-loading, mobile-optimized experience. These offer a way for Facebook to keep your audience in its app. In other words, they're a simple, dynamic landing page, form, or lookbook you can create with Facebook. 

Of course, you can also choose your website link and even add your own UTM tracking parameter.

On top of that, you can send people directly to your inbox in Facebook Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp.

16. Publish your ad

To submit your ad, click the Publish button at the bottom right-hand corner of the page.

Once your ad is submitted, Facebook will hold your post so they can review it to make sure it fits the specs and doesn't violate their community guidelines. Expect it to be reviewed within 24 hours. You'll receive a confirmation email from Facebook once the ad is live.

How much does it cost to create a Facebook ad?

Facebook ads run on a budget you set, with a minimum of $1 per day per ad set. Across all industries, the average cost per click is $1.72, according to data from Wordstream.

What you get for that spend varies by industry, from $0.45 per click in apparel to $2.93 in personal services. Here's the full breakdown:

Get strategic with your Facebook ads

Facebook's A/B split testing tools let you run two versions of an ad side by side and compare the results directly: different images, different copy, different audiences.

For each step above, pausing and thinking back to your goals is helpful. Make sure everything you define and create aligns with your own measure of success. Not sure what your audience wants to see? That's totally normal, and Facebook has tools to help you figure it out.

Two honest caveats before you spend anything. If your product needs a long explanation before anyone would consider buying, Facebook ads are a poor first channel, as the format rewards immediate comprehension. And if you're spending under about $5 a day, expect to gather direction rather than results; the learning phase alone needs more data than a small budget generates in a week.

From there, it's watch and adjust. Give any change three to seven days before you judge it. Looking at results on day one can be tempting, but early performance isn't always enough to tell you whether a campaign will work.

FAQ about advertising on Facebook

How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?

Facebook ads work on a flexible budget. You can set a daily or lifetime budget and only spend what you’re comfortable with. On average, cost per click (CPC) varies by industry, but many traffic campaigns fall under $1 per click. Your total cost depends on your audience, competition, and goals.

Is $5 a day enough for Facebook ads?

A $5 daily budget can be enough to run a small test, but whether it generates useful results depends on your audience size, objective, conversion event, and cost per result. Give a campaign enough time and data to make a meaningful decision rather than judging it after the first day

Are Facebook ads worth it for small businesses?

They can be, especially if you need predictable reach. Organic posts don’t always reach your full audience, but paid ads let you target specific people based on interests, behaviors, and demographics.

What’s the difference between boosting a post and running a Facebook ad?

Boosting a post is a simplified way to promote existing content directly from your Facebook Page. Running a Facebook ad through Meta Ads Manager gives you more advanced targeting, budget control, placements, and performance tracking.

How long does it take for Facebook ads to work?

Most ads start delivering impressions within hours, but meaningful performance data typically takes a few days. Facebook’s system also goes through a learning phase, where it tests your ad with different users. For best results, allow at least 3–7 days before making major changes.

Do I need a business page to run Facebook ads?

Yes. To run ads through Meta Ads Manager, you need a Facebook Page and a verified payment method. If you’re managing ads for someone else, you’ll need admin, editor, or advertiser access to their page.

How do I target the right audience on Facebook?

You can target by location, age, and language, and use tools like custom audiences or Meta Advantage+ audience to refine delivery. The key is to start with a clear idea of who your ideal customer is, then test and refine based on performance data.

What is Meta Advantage+ in Facebook ads?

Meta Advantage+ uses AI to optimize your audience targeting, placements, and budget distribution automatically. Instead of manually narrowing your audience, Advantage+ analyzes performance data in real time to find people most likely to complete your goal.

How do I measure Facebook ad performance?

Use Meta Ads Manager to track metrics like reach, clicks, conversions, and cost per result. You can use the Meta Pixel and Conversions API to help measure actions people take on your website after interacting with your ads. Focus on metrics tied directly to your campaign goal.

How long does Facebook take to approve ads?

Most ads are reviewed within 24 hours. During this time, Facebook checks your ad for compliance with advertising policies and community standards. You’ll receive a notification once your ad is approved and live.

More Facebook resources

• Inside the Facebook Algorithm: All the Updates You Need to
• How to Get More Followers on Facebook for Free: 10 Tried-and-
• What Is a Good Facebook Engagement Rate? Data From 52 Million+ Posts
• 16 Facebook Statistics to Know
• Facebook Ad Specs + Image Sizes — Fully Updated
• How to Schedule Facebook Posts in 3 Easy Ways (+ Save Hours Every Week)

While it's always a good time to watch TikToks, figuring out the best time to post on TikTok is a little more complicated.

And yet, knowing when to post can make a real difference for content creators and small business owners alike. After all, creating TikToks is tough work (trust me, I know), so it makes sense to give your content the best possible shot when you hit publish.

That's why we analyzed Buffer's data of more than 7.1 million videos, carousels, photos, and text posts to pinpoint exactly when posts tend to get the most engagement on the platform. And we found some patterns.

In this guide, I'll unpack them all: the best times to post, the best day of the week, and which hours are best avoided. Plus, I'll help you find the best time to post on TikTok based on your target audience and goals. Hopefully, this takes some of the guesswork out of deciding when to post and gives your content a better shot at landing in front of the right people's For You Pages.

Key takeaways

• Peak posting time: The single best time to post is Sunday at 9 a.m., followed by Monday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.
• Best day: Saturday is the top-performing day for TikTok engagement, with Monday and Sunday following close behind.
• Evening advantage: Engagement generally peaks during evening hours (6 p.m.–11 p.m.), with afternoons (12 p.m.–5 p.m.) showing the lowest engagement across most days.
• Personalize your data: Use TikTok Studio Analytics (Followers tab) to find when your specific audience is most active.

Let's dive into what the data shows about the best times to post on TikTok in 2026.

Is there a best time to post on TikTok?

There isn't one "magic" best time to post on TikTok for every creator, but our study of 7.1 million posts shows clear standout times to try.

To put these numbers together, we looked at the median engagement rate across 7.1 million posts published through Buffer.

These numbers helped us pinpoint some pretty clear patterns in the times of TikTok posts that tend to perform well compared to those that don't.

Why does posting time matter on TikTok?

It comes down to how the TikTok algorithm works. When you publish a TikTok, the platform uses a range of signals to decide who may be interested in it and how widely to recommend it. User interactions (including whether people watch, like, share, comment on, or skip content) can influence those recommendations.

If that initial group engages — especially within the first hour or so — TikTok takes it as a signal that the content is worth pushing to a wider audience on the For You Page. If they don't, the video's reach stays limited.

Posting when your audience is active may give your content a better chance of earning engagement early on, though timing is only one of many factors that can influence performance. If your video lands when people are already scrolling, it's more likely to pick up that early engagement boost, which is what TikTok needs to show it to more people. On the flip side, if you post when your followers are asleep or inactive, your content can get buried before it ever has a chance to gain traction.

But before we get into the numbers, here's an honest note: there's no single best time that'll work for every account on TikTok.

Your ideal posting time depends on your target audience (their location, time zones, and online behaviors), which is why I'll walk you through analyzing your own TikTok data to figure out the best time to post on TikTok for your target audience later in this article.

That said, our data from 7.1 million posts does show clear patterns in when content tends to get more engagement. Our take? Timing isn't a magic bullet, but it can give your content a better starting position, especially when paired with a strong hook and content your audience actually wants to watch.

Experiment with these slots to help you maximize your content potential while growing your following. If you're not sure when to post your content, using our data is a great place to begin.

The best times to post on TikTok

According to our data, the best time to post on TikTok is Sunday at 9 a.m., followed by Monday at 1 p.m., and Sunday at 1 p.m.

Videos, carousels, and text TikTok posts shared during those times tended to get the most engagement of the week, though other slots weren't far behind.

This heatmap shows patterns in the best time to post on TikTok by hour and day. The darkest blocks are the time slots with the most engagement (the best time to post), and the light to white blocks are the time slots with the lowest engagement (times that are probably best avoided).

🌙 Generally speaking, engagement tends to pick up in the evening hours, with peak time slots between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. Afternoons (12 p.m.–5 p.m.) tend to see lower engagement across most days, though there are pockets of activity worth noting, particularly around lunchtime.

This makes sense when you think about how people consume TikTok. Unlike text-based platforms that you can quickly scan during a meeting, short-form video demands active, sound-on attention. That's something people are more likely to give during a lunch break, on their commute home, or while unwinding on the couch in the evening.

The best time to post on TikTok at a glance

In general, evenings and weekends tend to deliver the best results.

Here's a quick look at the best time to post on TikTok every day of the week. The posting times below are listed in order of performance (so the first time mentioned is the best time for that day, and so on).

The best time to post on TikTok on Monday

The best time to post on TikTok on Monday is 1 p.m., closely followed by 11 a.m., then 8 a.m., according to Buffer data. Monday is one of the strongest days of the week for TikTok engagement, making it a great option if Saturday doesn't work for your schedule.

⏰ When to post on TikTok on Monday: 1 p.m.

The best time to post on TikTok on Tuesday

The best time to post on TikTok on Tuesday is 6 a.m. Videos posted at 10 p.m. received the second-highest median engagement, followed by 7 a.m., so add those into your TikTok posting schedule, too.

⏰ When to post on TikTok on Tuesday: 6 a.m.

The best time to post on TikTok on Wednesday

On Wednesdays, the best time to post on TikTok is 10 p.m., closely followed by 6 a.m., then 9 p.m. Wednesday tends to be quieter overall, so if you're being selective about when you post, you're likely to see stronger results if you post on Saturday or Monday instead.

⏰ When to post on TikTok on Wednesday: 10 p.m.

The best time to post on TikTok on Thursday

The best time to post on TikTok on Thursday is 1 p.m. Videos posted at 10 p.m. received the second-highest median engagement, closely followed by 6 a.m. Like Wednesday, Thursday tends to see lower engagement overall.

⏰ When to post on TikTok on Thursday: 1 p.m.

The best time to post on TikTok on Friday

On Friday, the best time to post on TikTok is 6 p.m. There is another solid posting time at 10 p.m., then 8 p.m.

⏰ When to post on TikTok on Friday: 6 p.m.

The best time to post on TikTok on Saturday

Saturday is the strongest day on TikTok overall, with clear optimal times worth noting. The best time to post on TikTok on Saturday is 5 p.m., followed by 4 p.m., then 3 p.m. That afternoon-to-evening window makes Saturday a great day for batch-creating and scheduling content ahead of time.

⏰ When to post on TikTok on Saturday: 5 p.m.

The best time to post on TikTok on Sunday

The best time to post on TikTok on Sunday is 9 a.m., which is the single best time to post throughout the entire week, so it's worth adding this slot to your regular TikTok posting schedule. Other strong times to post on TikTok on Sunday are 1 p.m. and 12 p.m. This is a great time to use scheduling tools if you prefer to keep weekends free.

⏰ When to post on TikTok on Sunday: 9 a.m.

This is where social media scheduling tools like Buffer shine. Experiment by systematically going through the times on the list above, scheduling a TikTok, and tracking its performance to see what works best for your specific audience.

The best day of the week to post on TikTok

The best day of the week to post on TikTok is Saturday. Overall, videos, carousels, and text TikTok posts shared on Saturday tended to perform the best.

Monday comes in second place, followed closely by Sunday.

It's worth noting that not all studies agree on this. Other studies have found stronger engagement on different days, which highlights how much results can vary by audience, dataset, and methodology. Use our findings as a starting point, then compare them with your own analytics.

How to find your best time to post on TikTok

As always, these times are a starting point; your audience might behave a little differently.

1. See when your TikTok followers are most active

1. Open your TikTok profile and tap TikTok Studio (just under your bio).
2. Inside Studio, look for the Analytics card and tap View all.
3. Choose the Followers tab, then scroll to Most active times.

In this TikTok analytics section, you'll find a retrospective overview of when your TikTok account followers were most active on the app over the past week.

2. Look for patterns in your peak posting times

It's worthwhile spending some time noting down your audience's most active times over the past few days. Look for patterns.

⚡ Pro tip: I suggest posting slightly before your followers' most active times, particularly if it lines up with one of our recommended times above.

3. Consider your own posting schedule

A simple posting schedule or even a rough content calendar can take a lot of the mental overhead out of showing up consistently. When you're not scrambling to figure out what to post and when, it's much easier to actually do it.

4. Experiment with different times

Don't be afraid to mix things up. Try different posting times throughout the day and see what lands best for your audience.

Even small shifts, like posting at 6 p.m. instead of 3 p.m., can make a noticeable difference. Try a few different time slots over a couple of weeks and compare the results.

Keep in mind that your niche may influence what works, too. An educational creator might find that morning posts perform well when people are in a learning mindset, while an entertainment-focused account might see more traction in the evening or weekend when people are winding down. Let your content type guide your experiments, not just the clock.

5. Analyze your content performance

Stick to your planned posting schedule when you post on TikTok for a few weeks to give each posting time a fair trial. Use these numbers to help you find the best time to post on TikTok:

1. Views: Total number of times your video was watched
2. Likes: Total likes received
3. Shares: Number of times your video was shared
4. Comments: Total comments on your video
5. Followers: New followers gained from the post

6. Post regularly, rinse, and repeat

Can't find any patterns that point to a best time to post on TikTok? That's OK. You could stick to your current schedule when you post on TikTok a little longer if your posts are generally performing well, to gather more data. If not, I'd suggest adjusting your schedule (and checking out these tips for creating great TikTok content, too.).

Either way, showing up regularly matters. When you post consistently at times your audience comes to expect, you start building trust and loyalty, which can lead to stronger long-term engagement even before you've cracked the perfect time slot.

If you've found some times that seem to be working? Be sure to share or schedule your posts during those times for the next few weeks.

But don't forget to add some new times to the mix. TikTok trends (and TikTok's algorithm) shift constantly, so testing new posting times every few weeks can help you stay ahead.

Get the best times to post on TikTok right in Buffer

Did you know you can access these recommended times right in Buffer? It's super handy, and really easy to set up, too.

You can automatically set these recommended times for TikTok and your other social media platforms. They'll appear as posting slots in your queue and calendar.

It'll take you less than a minute to set up:

1. Select TikTok on your channels list on the left.
2. Click on the settings (gear) icon above the calendar.
3. Scroll to Posting Schedule and under Posting Slots, click the Generate New Posting Slots button
4. Then Use Recommended Posting Times.

The schedule will automatically update to include the best posting times for the week, based on our latest analysis of millions of TikTok posts.

The next time you schedule a post, you can easily choose one of these high-engagement slots. No more guessing.

Finding your optimal times to post on TikTok

Hopefully, this guide gives you a solid starting point for finding your best time to post on TikTok and takes some of the guesswork out of the equation.

Here's a quick recap of what to do next:

• Start with the data-backed times above as your jumping-off point.
• Check your own TikTok Analytics (Followers tab → Most active times) to see when your specific audience is online.
• Experiment over a few weeks and track what sticks using views, watch time, and engagement metrics.
• Adjust and repeat — your best time may shift as your audience grows.

And if you'd rather not be glued to your phone at 9 a.m. on a Sunday, a scheduling tool like Buffer can help you show up at the right time without the hassle.

Here's to getting your content in front of more people and building a stronger online community while you're at it.

FAQ about the best time to post on TikTok

Is there really a "best" time to post on TikTok?

Technically, yes. Some posting times tend to perform better than others on TikTok. But there are two important caveats here. First, your ideal time depends on your audience. Second, even the best timing in the world can’t 'save' a weak post. The quality of your content will always be the most important factor.

That said, our analysis of 7.1 million posts shows clear engagement patterns, so while timing isn't everything, it can still give your content a helpful head start.

Do I need to adjust the posting times for my timezone?

You can use the times in this guide as a starting point regardless of where you live, as the data reflects patterns across a wide range of Buffer users around the world. If you're not sure where your followers are, check TikTok Studio Analytics to see when they're most active and which regions they're in, then plan your posting schedule around that.

Do I need to post every day at the best time?

Posting consistently matters more than posting every single day. Choose times that work for your audience and feel sustainable for you.

How do I know when my audience is most active?

Check TikTok Analytics → Followers tab → Most active times. This shows when your followers were online in the past week, which is a great clue for when to post next.

What is the peak hour for TikTok?

Based on our analysis of 7.1 million posts, TikTok engagement generally peaks between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. on most days. The single best-performing time slot across the entire week is Sunday at 9 a.m., a notable exception to the evening trend.

Afternoons (roughly 12 p.m.–5 p.m.) tend to see the lowest engagement across most days, though lunchtime can still be worth testing depending on your audience. Evening hours consistently outperform the rest of the day, which makes sense: TikTok is active, sound-on viewing, and people are more likely to give it their full attention when they're winding down.

Does posting time matter if my content isn't getting views?

Timing can help, but it's rarely the main reason a video underperforms. If your content isn't getting views, look at watch time first. TikTok's algorithm uses it as a key signal to decide whether to push a video further.

Once your content is connecting with viewers, posting at a time when your audience is active gives it a better chance of gaining early momentum. Think of timing as a boost, not a fix.

If watch time is low, take a closer look at your hook, pacing, and whether the video delivers on what viewers expect.

What is the three-second rule on TikTok?

The “three-second rule” is a common creator rule of thumb: Hook viewers quickly before they scroll away. TikTok considers viewing behavior when recommending content, so giving people a reason to keep watching from the opening seconds can help.

How long should I test a posting time before deciding if it works?

TikTok performance can be unpredictable day-to-day. Give each time slot at least a few weeks so you can spot patterns instead of one-off spikes.

What if my followers live in different timezones?

Start by checking your TikTok Analytics → Followers tab → Most active times. This shows when your followers are actually online, regardless of where they live.

If your audience is spread across multiple regions, look for windows where activity peaks across groups. Early mornings and evenings (in the major timezone your audience sits in) tend to be the most reliable overlap points.

If your audience is fairly evenly split (say, between the US East Coast and the UK), try posting in the early afternoon EST, which lands in the early evening for UK viewers. It won't be perfect for everyone, but it covers a lot of ground.

⚡ Pro tip: If you post consistently, you’ll also gather more data about what resonates with your audience. So don’t overthink it: Post, track, and adjust.

Can I schedule TikTok posts?

Yes, Buffer lets you schedule or set up notification-based posting. It's a great way to show up at the right time without having to be glued to your phone.

What time are you most likely to go viral on TikTok?

No specific time guarantees a video will go viral, but timing can give your content a running start. When you post while your audience is active, your video picks up early engagement (views, watch time, shares). That early momentum is what tells TikTok the content is worth pushing to a wider audience on the For You Page.

The highest-performing times in our analysis are Sunday at 9 a.m., Monday at 1 p.m., and Saturday between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. That said, timing is just one piece of the puzzle. A strong hook and high watch time will do more for your reach than any posting window.

More TikTok resources

• How to Schedule TikTok Posts (For Free): A Step-By-Step Guide
• 14 Ways to Get More Followers on TikTok — Tried and Tested
• How Often Should You Post on TikTok? Data From 11 Million+ Posts
• TikTok Algorithm Guide: Everything We Know About How Videos Are
• Top 250 TikTok Hashtags + How to Use Them for Growth
• How to Make Money on TikTok: 10 Ways to Earn (With or Without a Huge Following)

Updated September 2026

Big marketing dreams, but working with a tight budget? After more than a decade of marketing for bootstrapped brands, I've learned that you don't need to spend a fortune on fancy digital marketing tools to see results.

It's all about building a smart toolkit that punches above its weight. One that helps you work efficiently and get results without breaking the bank.

That's where this comprehensive list comes in: 28 digital marketing tools that help growing brands succeed. Many of these tools offer free or low-cost versions, so you can start small and scale up as you're ready for more features.

Consider this your guide to building a powerful marketing tech stack that works within your budget.

Key takeaways

• Cheapest complete starting stack: $0. Buffer's free plan, Canva's free plan, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console cover publishing, design, and measurement without a card.
• Best for social media on a small budget: Buffer's free plan, then $6/month per channel, so cost scales with channels rather than seats.
• Best email tool under $15/month: Mailchimp is free to 250 contacts, paid from $13/month.
• Best for ecommerce email and SMS: Klaviyo is free to 250 contacts and 500 sends, then $20/month for email or $35/month for email and SMS.
• Best free SEO tool: Google Search Console is the most direct way to understand how your site performs in Google Search.
• Best paid SEO tool under $50/month: Moz has paid plans from $49/month.
• Best AI images you can use commercially: Adobe Firefly is trained on licensed content, free with a watermark, $9.99/month without.

Here's every tool in this guide, what it's best at, and what it costs

Social media marketing tools

For most small businesses, Buffer (free plan; paid plans from $6/month per channel) is the best place to start, while Mentionlytics ($69/month) and Predis.ai (free plan) can add social listening and competitor insights.

These social media tools help you maintain a consistent social media presence and evaluate your content performance.

Buffer: Social media management for creators and small businesses

A social media management tool is central to any social strategy. It helps you manage your online presence so you can post consistently and on a schedule you choose, which can help improve engagement.

I've been a Buffer customer and fan for nine years, long before I started contributing to the blog. And, when I became more active in building my personal brand a year ago, Buffer was the natural choice.

Since this is the Buffer blog, we're naturally excited to share how Buffer can help with your social media management.

Key features:

• Capture and organize all your social media ideas in the Create space
• Track and respond to comments on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, X/Twitter, and Bluesky in a streamlined dashboard.
• Schedule finished posts in your social queue.
• The AI assistant helps you generate ideas, repurpose content, and edit posts to perfection.
• Buffer's Insights shows you your cross-channel performance in easy-to-understand graphs
• Buffer's API, MCP, and connectors allow you to plug it into ChatGPT, Claude, or your AI tool of choice.

The Create space is one of my favorite features. I love how I can tag and organize everything by color, in Kanban columns.

I log all my half-baked ideas here and move them along in my custom Kanban board as they progress. I even have a prompts category for ideas in case I get stuck (many of which came from Buffer's Creator Camp) — but there's a nifty "generate ideas" button that can jumpstart your content creation.

From here, adding a finished post to my queue for publishing is super easy.

And with Buffer's pay-by-channel pricing model, I've been able to scale the services I pay for up and down based on what I need. For example, I used to be active on both LinkedIn and X, but now I'm only on LinkedIn. That flexibility is helpful since every dollar counts as I grow my freelance business.

Plus, if you're experimenting with newer platform options, Buffer quickly adds support for new social platforms (hello, Mastodon and Bluesky).

Buffer shines brightest for small businesses, solopreneurs, and creators looking to streamline their social media game without getting lost in complex features. It's the perfect balance of powerful and user-friendly — just what you need to make your social media presence pop without the headache.

Pricing: Free plan; paid plans start at $6/month/channel.

Mentionlytics: Social listening on a budget

Have you ever wondered what people say about your brand when you're not looking? That's where social listening comes in. Mentionlytics makes it accessible even if you're working with a tight budget.

Many social listening tools cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, putting them out of reach for small businesses. But Mentionlytics brings these powerful capabilities to small businesses at a fraction of the cost.

Key features:

• Monitor mentions of your brand, competitors, or relevant keywords across social media, review sites, and the entire web.
• Gauge audience sentiment with AI-powered analysis.
• Stay on top of trends and conversations relevant to your industry.

The drag-and-drop report builder also lets you create custom reports to share insights with your team.

Whether you're looking to improve your customer service, gather product feedback, or keep tabs on your online reputation, Mentionlytics could be a valuable addition to your digital marketing toolkit.

Pricing: Starts at $69/month.

Predis.ai: Competitor analysis for social media

Ultimately, you'll want to differentiate your social media marketing strategy from your competitors', so you don't want to copy them. But checking out what they're doing with a competitive analysis tool can help you understand their strategy and inform your own.

Predis.ai surfaces these insights and can even help you generate content based on what's working in your industry.

Key features:

• Decode your competitors' social media strategies on select social platforms (they're building out support for more networks as we speak).
• Get the scoop on which posts are hitting home runs and which are striking out for your competition.
• Understand content distribution patterns to time your posts for maximum impact.
• Uncover the hashtag strategies your competitors are using to boost their reach.
• Generate AI-powered posts based on what's working in your niche.

All in all, Predis.ai is worth considering to learn from the wins and mistakes of your competitors so you don't have to learn them yourself the hard way.

Pricing: Free plan; paid plans start at $32/month.

Quuu: AI content curation for LinkedIn, X, and Facebook

This next great digital marketing tool has been mentioned by several folks I respect who are growing their personal brands on social media.

If you ever find it hard to keep your social media queue full, Quuu can help curate content from around the web that interests your audience. Then, you can blend original posts with curated content that gets conversations going without manually searching for share-worthy content. 

Quuu uses AI to curate content and draft posts suitable for your audience.

Key features:

• Discover and share high-quality, relevant content tailored to your niche and audience.
• Use AI to generate custom posts for LinkedIn, X, and Facebook that you can edit and personalize so they feel like you.
• Chat with Quuu's AI bot to brainstorm content ideas or get help crafting your post.
• Seamlessly integrate with popular scheduling tools (including Buffer) to maintain a consistent posting schedule.
• Optimize your posting times for maximum engagement.

Whether you're looking to establish thought leadership, keep your audience informed, or maintain a consistent posting schedule, Quuu can save time while keeping you up-to-date and relevant.

Pricing:  7-day free trial; paid plans start at $19.79/month per social media profile.

Partnership marketing tools

For affordable partnership management, Buzzstream ($49/month) is the better starting point for most small teams, while Influencity ($398/month) is built for brands managing more involved influencer campaigns.

Partnership marketing is great for businesses of all sizes. It enables you to expand your brand's reach through exposure to the audiences others have already built. These digital marketing tools can help you track relationships, streamline outreach, manage campaigns, and measure the impact of your collaborations.

Influencity: Influencer marketing management on a budget

Many influencer marketing tools are in the thousands per month. But Influencity makes influencer marketing management a lot more achievable for those with a modest budget.

Key features:

• Discover the perfect influencers for your brand without tedious manual searching.
• Manage your campaigns from start to finish, keeping all your influencer relationships organized in one place.
• Track your campaign performance easily by combining your brand's data with influencers' engagement stats for a clear picture of your ROI.

Influencity is perfect for brands looking to dip their toes into influencer marketing for the first time or those who don't have a large budget but want to level up from managing with spreadsheets.

Pricing: 7-day free trial; paid plans from $398 per month

Buzzstream: PR relationship management

In the five years I spent managing partnerships at Tortuga, I can't recommend using a CRM for partnerships enough. I used Buzzstream to track brand features and outreach of all kinds, including those with media, bloggers, product review sites, influencers, and affiliates.

Key features:

• Manage relationships with a wide range of partners all in one place.
• Track and automate your outreach campaigns so no important follow-up falls through the cracks.
• Monitor brand mentions across the web to stay on top of your brand awareness game and link-building efforts.

If you manage many partnerships for your brand, Buzzstream can help you keep all those plates spinning without dropping any.

Pricing: 14-day free trial; paid plans start at $49/month.

Email and SMS marketing tools

For most small businesses, Mailchimp (free plan; paid plans from $13/month) is a flexible starting point, while Klaviyo ($20/month) is better suited to e-commerce and HubSpot is a stronger fit for B2B SaaS.

After discovering new potential customers through other marketing channels, you'll want a way to stay in direct contact with your audience so you can build deeper relationships and gather first-party data for personalization. Email and SMS marketing can help you nurture leads, maintain existing customer relationships, and drive conversions through personalized, direct communication.

Mailchimp: Email and SMS for small businesses

When it comes to email marketing tools, Mailchimp is often the first to come to mind because it's versatile and approachable for new businesses.

Key features:

• It has a user-friendly email campaign builder.
• Customizable signup forms and landing pages help you grow your list.
• Automate emails and segment your list to personalize messages.
• Paid users have the option of adding SMS to their plans.

Content creator and relationship coach Mike Mantell has used Mailchimp for years to manage their email newsletter. "I find it pretty easy to make lists to distinguish where signups from different lead magnets came from," they share. "It has the basic functionality I need for email marketing."

They can even create multiple email sequences on the free plan, which sets Mailchimp apart from other options.

However, Mike notes that as your needs grow more complex, you might feel some growing pains: "If I have to edit any of my automations, it takes a long time for me to figure out how. It's a bit unintuitive in that way."

If that's the case for you, you may consider upgrading to a specialized tool focused on your niche.

Pricing: Free email-only plan for up to 250 contacts; paid plans start at $13/month.

Klaviyo: Email and SMS for e-commerce brands

If you're running an e-commerce business, you know Klaviyo. It's been a go-to email marketing tool for online retail stores for years.

Key features:

• It's built for online shops and integrates with major e-commerce platforms.
• Advanced segmentation and automation features let you send emails, SMS messages, and push notifications based on shopper behavior.
• Robust analytics tie directly to revenue so you can see the impact of your program.

I've had hands-on experience with Klaviyo at multiple e-commerce brands, and having a provider focused on online retail makes a difference. Klaviyo makes it intuitive to create segments based on your history with a customer, set up automated flows, and track revenue impact.

While Klaviyo has been a frontrunner for over a decade, it's worth mentioning that alternatives like Privy and Omnisend offer similar features at comparable price points and are establishing a name for themselves as well.

For those with bigger budgets and more complex needs, solutions like Sendlane and Attentive are pushing the envelope with advanced features and top-tier service.

On the flip side, if you're a Shopify brand just starting out, Shopify Messaging has a generous free tier for up to 10k emails per month. While it offers fewer features than Klaviyo, it can be a good stepping stone for budding brands.

Pricing: Free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 monthly email sends; paid plans start at $20/month for email alone.

HubSpot: Email marketing and lead management for B2B SaaS

HubSpot is a powerhouse for B2B SaaS companies looking to manage their relationships with leads and customers alongside email marketing.

I've used it to manage email marketing for a small tech company, and it was so helpful to be able to peek at a customer's entire journey and history with our brand.

Key features:

• Combines customer relationship management (CRM) and email marketing capabilities for comprehensive lead management.
• Create and send email marketing campaigns for a seamless workflow.
• Track interactions, from website visits to email engagement, for a full picture of lead behavior.
• Automate email sequences based on lead actions and characteristics.
• Robust reporting features tie marketing efforts to sales outcomes.

The email builder is intuitive. It's also powerful to be able to segment your list based on any data point in your CRM. However, the learning curve can be steep if you're new to marketing automation platforms because HubSpot is packed to the brim with capabilities.

It's worth noting that while HubSpot is excellent for B2B, it'll be overkill for simpler email marketing needs. If you're not leveraging its full suite of tools, you might find better value elsewhere.

Pricing: Free plan available; paid Marketing Hub plans start at $10/user/month but can get pricey as you add more contacts and features.

Kit: Email marketing for solopreneurs selling digital courses and products

Kit is an email marketing platform designed for creators and solopreneurs who sell digital products like courses, ebooks, or coaching services. Kit sets itself apart through its monetization features.

Key features:

• Easy email sequence builder helps you nurture leads and sell products.
• Landing page builder lets you create lead magnets and pages to sell digital products directly.
• Tag-based segmentation allows for precise audience targeting.

Anna Burgess Yang, a freelance writer who helps fellow solopreneurs improve their workflows, swears by Kit's capabilities:

"I host a lot of webinars and create free downloads for my audience. Kit makes it easy for me to create landing pages and email sequences. I now have a well-oiled process for launching something new in Kit and segmenting the subscribers into different groups with tags based on what they signed up to receive."

Pricing: Free plan for up to 10K subscribers; paid plans start at $39/month.

beehiiv: Email newsletters for content creators

Several creators I follow have switched to beehiiv recently due to its specialized features. It's a platform designed for creators who see their newsletter as the main event, not just a marketing tool.

While platforms like Kit excel at selling digital products, beehiiv shines when the newsletter itself is the value you're offering. It's for those who want to turn their email list into a thriving community and potentially a revenue stream.

Key features:

• beehiiv has a sleek, modern email editor for crafting engaging newsletters.
• It has built-in monetization options, including paid subscriptions and an ad network.
• Custom websites host your content, creating a hub for your newsletter.
• Audience segmentation and automated workflows nurture your community.
• Send unlimited emails on all plans, perfect for prolific writers.

Buffer's own Senior Content Creator, Tamilore Oladipo, hosts her newsletter, Content-as-a-Career, on beehiiv. "I've tried many newsletter platforms and have found beehiiv to offer the most value for my usual needs," she says. It's also made it easy for Tami to monetize early on: "My favorite thing about the platform is the ability to connect to sponsors easily. I'm already monetizing with just over 1,000 subscribers."

As far as more advanced features, Tami shares, "I haven't had to implement anything too complex yet, so I can't say too much about its automation capabilities. But if you're looking to get an MVP (minimum viable product) of your newsletter off the ground, it's a great tool."

The platform also offers robust analytics, helping you understand what content resonates with your audience. This data-driven approach can be invaluable for creators looking to grow their readership and influence.

Pricing: Free plan for up to 2,500 subscribers; paid plans start at $49/month.

SEO (search engine optimization) tools

Google Search Console is free and should be your starting point for understanding your Google search performance; Moz ($49/month) adds keyword research, rank tracking, and technical SEO tools, while Frase ($49/month) is useful for optimizing long-form content.

SEO isn't just about pleasing search engines. It's about improving your visibility so you can connect with people searching for what you offer. The right SEO tools can help you decode the mystery of search engine rankings and determine where to focus your efforts.

Moz: Search performance optimization and monitoring

I've been using Moz on and off for nearly a decade. I keep coming back to it for its simple user interface and powerful features, some of which they even grant access to (at a small monthly volume) on the free plan.

Key features:

• Research keywords to find high-impact search terms to target.
• Track your site's keyword rankings.
• Audit your site to identify and fix technical SEO issues.
• Analyze backlinks to understand who's linking to you.
• Get on-page optimization suggestions for your content.

While Moz offers similar functionality to competitor Ahrefs, I find Ahrefs more robust and intuitive. However, Ahrefs' paid plans start at a higher price point, making Moz a more accessible option for many small businesses.

Moz also rocks in the educational content department. Their webinars and SEO guides are excellent resources if you're looking to expand your SEO knowledge. Clearscope co-founder Bernard Huang's episode on ranch-style content marketing is a personal favorite.

Pricing: Free trial available; paid plans start at $49/month.

Frase: Content optimization for long-form content

Frase is a content optimization tool that helps you create SEO-friendly long-form content that ranks well in search results.

As a freelance writer, I've used several content optimization tools, including SurferSEO and Clearscope. While they all offer similar core functionality for optimizing blog posts, Frase stands out for its affordability and flexibility.

Key features:

• Analyze the SERP to understand the features of articles currently ranking for your target keywords.
• Generate content briefs to outline your articles.
• Optimize content with relevant keywords.

What I appreciate most about Frase is its pricing model. As a freelancer, not all of my clients need search optimization, and some provide access to their own software. Frase's monthly subscription option allows me to pay only when I need it, which helps cut down costs compared to annual subscriptions for similar tools.

The intuitive interface makes it easy to analyze top-ranking content and ensure my article covers all the necessary topics.

Pricing: Free trial available, starts at $49/month.

Google Search Console: Monitor and improve Google search performance

Google Search Console is a free tool for understanding and improving your site's performance in Google search results.

Mike Mantell, the relationship coach and content creator we mentioned earlier, relies on Google Search Console to understand how well their blog posts rank and what search terms bring people to their site.

Key features:

• See which queries people use to find you.
• Identify which pages are performing well (and which aren't) in search results.
• Discover and fix technical issues that might be hurting your site's performance.
• Submit new content for indexing to get it in search results faster.

What does Mike love about Google Search Console? "It sends me a regular email to help me gauge my progress. It's cool to see my monthly clicks go up. And I find it helpful to see which pages are growing the fastest. It's gratifying to see my progress and to home in on what's working."

Pricing: Completely free.

Content and design tools for marketers

For most marketers, Canva (free plan; paid plans from $18/month) is the easiest place to start, while Adobe Firefly (free version) adds AI image generation, VEED (free version) handles quick video edits, and Claude (free version) can help with writing.

Creating professional, engaging content helps you capture your audience's attention and convey your message effectively. These tools can bridge the gap, turning your ideas into polished visual content and crafty copy, even without specialized skills.

Canva: User-friendly graphic design

Canva makes graphic design accessible to anyone. I've been using it for years, personally and professionally. It's my go-to tool for creating quick, polished visuals for social media posts, profile banners, and LinkedIn carousels.

Key features:

• The drag-and-drop interface makes creating designs intuitive and fast.
• An extensive template library of various formats (social posts, presentations, flyers, etc.) makes starting a new project a breeze.
• There's a huge selection of stock photos, illustrations, and fonts.
• The Brand Kit feature helps maintain consistent branding across designs.

What I love most about Canva is that you don't need to be an Adobe pro to create professional-looking graphics. The templates are a great starting point, and it's easy to customize them to fit your brand.

One standout feature is the ability to resize designs for different social media platforms in one click. This is a huge time-saver when you're creating content for multiple platforms or social media channels with their own size requirements.

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $18/month for one person.

Adobe Firefly: Commercial-friendly AI images

Adobe Firefly is Adobe's foray into the world of AI-generated images, and it's making waves for good reason.

It can help you produce high-quality visuals quickly, especially if you need images for commercial use.

Key features:

• Adobe says Firefly outputs can be used commercially, subject to its terms.
• The intuitive interface gives you granular control over image style and composition.
• Firefly integrates seamlessly with other Adobe products like Photoshop.
• Generate variations or edit images in Adobe Express to get the results you want.

Kirsti Lang, a senior content writer at Buffer, took it for a spin. Her opinion was that the free web version is surprisingly powerful. You can specify everything from aspect ratio and art style to depth of field and color tone.

One standout feature is the quality of human faces in AI-generated photos. Unlike some other tools, Firefly produces realistic faces without the unsettling "uncanny valley" effect. "My results with Firefly were consistently excellent," Kirsti says, "I found that playing around with the various art styles and effects pre-generated really helped me fine-tune my ask."

While the free version is great for experimenting, the watermark-free images in paid plans are worth considering for professional use.

Pricing: Free version available (with watermark); paid plans start at $9.99/month.

VEED: Simple video editing

VEED is a simple browser-based video editing tool designed to make video creation accessible to those without extensive editing experience.

As someone who's dabbled in more advanced tools like Final Cut Pro, I initially found VEED limiting. However, I appreciate its simplicity for quick edits.

Key features:

• It has a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface.
• The auto-subtitling feature saves time when creating captions.
• Basic effects like green screen and filters let you customize your video.
• Stock footage library lets you add additional content to break up long stretches of video.

What stands out about VEED is its ease of use. While I sometimes wish for more control, that's exactly why it's great for small business owners or marketers who aren't video editing pros. It's hard to make big mistakes with VEED.

Pricing: Free version available (with watermark); paid plans start at $20/user/month.

Butter: Dynamic video creation for e-commerce

Butter is a specialized video creation tool designed with e-commerce brands in mind, offering a Canva-like experience for short-form product videos.

As someone who's worked with e-commerce brands, I appreciate tools that streamline the process of creating engaging product content. Butter does just that for video.

Key features:

• It lets you turn still product shots into dynamic videos.
• The intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes video creation easy.
• An extensive library of templates is tailored for e-commerce.
• Brand kit functionality helps you maintain a consistent visual identity.

Butter really sets itself apart in its focus on creating dynamic product videos from a combination of still shots and video footage. It lets your marketing team create eye-catching assets on the fly for your website, email, SMS, and social media campaigns. 

It's a tool I wish I had when I was doing marketing for e-commerce brands. It lets you step up your video content without a huge learning curve or budget.

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $25/month.

Claude: AI writing chatbot that sounds more human

Everyone has their go-to AI writing assistant at this point. Claude is mine. It's a large language model, much like ChatGPT, that you can use to brainstorm ideas, generate and edit writing, and repurpose content, among other things.

I've experimented with numerous AI writing tools, including ChatGPT, Writer, Jasper, Lex, Copy.ai, and Reword. I've found Claude to be a standout option.

Key features:

• It has a chat-based interface for natural, conversational content creation.
• You can get assistance with writing, editing, brainstorming, and problem-solving.
• It generates human-like text for both creative and analytical tasks.
• I've found its outputs more natural and easier to edit than those from some other AI writing tools I've tried.

What I appreciate most about Claude is how human it sounds. The outputs feel more natural and require less editing than many other AI writing tools I've tried.

I've also been finding Claude's Projects feature useful lately. You can add resources and custom instructions to use across multiple chats. So you don't need to add the same files and instructions over and over again.

For example, I used Claude for an upcoming Buffer article to brainstorm a new outline that will be more skimmable, noting the resources I'd attached to the project:

Claude also offers limited use on its free plan. So when my workload is lighter, the free plan suffices, which has led to me only paying for Claude for four out of ten months so far this year.

While Claude is great for individual writing tasks, software like Narrato or Blaze might be worth exploring for teams managing large amounts of content. They offer additional features for collaboration, content repurposing, and publishing that I've found intriguing.

Pricing: Free version available; paid plans start at $20/month.

Conversion optimization tools

For affordable conversion optimization, ConvertFlow (free plan; paid plans from $29/month) is a strong choice for website personalization, while VWO is better if you specifically need A/B testing, and Aftersell ($29.99/month) is designed for e-commerce upsells.

Is your website getting traffic, but not enough visitors are taking action? That's where conversion optimization software comes in handy.

VWO: A/B testing to improve conversion rate

Let's talk about A/B testing (or split-testing) with our first conversion optimization software: VWO.

A/B testing is used to determine the best way to display different elements on your website that will lead to the most conversions. For example, you might test different colors or copy for your CTAs (calls-to-action) or timing on a popup.

Key features:

• VWO lets you split-test just about anything you can think of on your website or mobile app.
• Its user-friendly visual editor lets you create test variations without code.
• Use heatmaps and session recordings to understand visitor behavior.
• Identify drop-off points in your journey with funnel analysis
• Collect qualitative feedback from visitors with surveys.

VWO is a great option for small businesses due to its approachable pricing that scales with you as you grow.

Pricing: Schedule a demo for pricing.

ConvertFlow: Funnel builder to guide site visitors

Another important aspect of conversion optimization is personalizing your website — tailoring your visitors' experience depending on their actions.

For example, you might show an exit-intent popup if they're about to leave, or recommend products based on their purchase history and other first-party data you've collected.

This is where ConvertFlow comes in. Now, full disclosure: I used to work at ConvertFlow, so I'm a little biased. But I think it's a powerful tool for any business looking to personalize their website and guide their site visitors' experience.

Key features:

• Create engaging popups, forms, quizzes, and surveys to capture leads and gain essential customer data to personalize their experience.
• Design landing pages to continue the story from your marketing campaigns (ad, email, etc.) and guide shoppers toward a conversion.
• Personalize website content for different audience segments.
• Integrate with a wide range of other digital marketing tools to share and activate the customer data you gather.
• A/B test your campaigns to improve performance continually.

What sets ConvertFlow apart is the ability it gives you to create complex, multi-step campaigns without any coding. Its drag-and-drop builder lets anyone on your team create campaigns — something I wish I had at other brands when I had to rely on a designer for any requests.

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $29/month.

Aftersell: Revenue optimization for e-commerce

If you're running an online store, getting conversions is one piece of the revenue puzzle. But increasing cart values lets you boost your bottom line without acquiring new customers.

Key features:

• Create upsell and cross-sell offers for high-intent shoppers in the cart, at checkout, and post-purchase.
• Customize offers based on cart contents, customer history, and other factors.
• A/B test different offers to find what performs best.

Cody shared in a recent newsletter that he appreciates Aftersell because it has a great team and it's cheaper than similar options. "You can get post-purchase upsells, in-checkout blocks, and network offers in one tool with a capped pricing model," he says.

What's particularly clever about Aftersell is its focus on high-intent shoppers. People who already have items in their cart or have just purchased are already in a buying mood, so it's a great time to upsell or cross-sell items they might be interested in.

Pricing: Aftersell offers modular pricing, depending on which features you want, starting at $29.99/month.

Paid advertising tools

Start with WordStream's free Google Ads Performance Grader to find opportunities in your campaigns; if you need ongoing optimization for Meta and TikTok, Atria starts at $159/month.

It can be easy to burn through your paid ads budget without seeing results. That's where paid advertising tools come in handy. They help ensure you're maximizing your ROAS (return on ad spend) and targeting the right audiences.

WordStream: Google Ads Performance Grader

Wondering how your Google Ads campaigns are stacking up? WordStream's Google Ads Performance Grader lets you gain quick, actionable insights — and it's completely free.

Key features:

• Analyze your Google Ads account performance.
• Compare your metrics against industry benchmarks.
• Identify wasted ad spend and opportunities for savings.
• Get actionable recommendations for improvement.

It takes the complex data from your account and translates it into clear, actionable advice.

Pricing: Free.

Atria: Ad optimization for Meta and TikTok ads

If you've ever felt like you're walking in a dark room when it comes to your Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok ads, Atria is like flipping on the lights.

Key features:

• Manage Meta and TikTok ad campaigns in a unified dashboard.
• Generate engaging ad content with AI-powered assistance.
• Create high-converting ads from 500+ Canva templates.
• Automate budget allocation across best-performing ad sets.
• Analyze competitors to learn from their success.
• Refine your target audience with advanced optimization tools.

Atria is really leaning into its AI features to stand out from other options in this space. Its AI can analyze your best performers and use that data to generate new ad ideas, even providing a conversion score to help you pick the most effective copy.

Plus, curated "top picks" showcase winning ads from various industries, giving you a shortcut to what's working right now in paid advertising.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $159/month.

Marketing analytics tools

Google Analytics is free and enough for most small businesses; Contentsquare starts at $49/month for deeper website experience insights, while Amplitude and Lifetimely are better suited to digital product and Shopify teams.

Marketing analytics tools give you X-ray vision into your marketing efforts. They help you see what's working so you can amplify successful efforts and adjust anything that's falling flat.

Google Analytics: Free website analytics

As far as free tools go, Google Analytics is a powerhouse. I've used it at every company I've worked with for over a decade. It's got a surprising amount of depth and flexibility for a free analytics tool.

Key features:

• Track your website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates.
• Set up custom conversion events to measure specific user actions relevant to your business.
• Monitor the revenue impact of your marketing efforts.
• Analyze traffic sources to understand where your visitors come from.
• Create custom reports to focus on the metrics that matter most to you.
• Integrate with other Google tools like Google Ads and Search Console.

What I appreciate most about Google Analytics is its ability to adapt to your specific business needs. The custom conversion events let you track anything from newsletter signups to product purchases, giving you a clear picture of how users interact with your site.

If you don't have the budget to invest in a more comprehensive or automated tool, Google Analytics will give you most of what you need. If you're not already using it, I recommend implementing it ASAP to build up your historical data.

There is a paid version (Google Analytics 360), but I've never used it, likely because its hefty starting price of $50k/year is out of reach for most small businesses.

Pricing: Free.

Contentsquare: Website engagement analytics

Contentsquare helps you understand how users experience your website and digital products.

Key features:

• Analyze user behavior with metrics such as clicks, scrolls, engagement, and conversion across your digital experiences.
• Visualize customer journeys to understand how users navigate your site and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Build funnels and journey analyses to identify where users drop off and understand what may be preventing conversion.
• Collect and analyze user feedback to add qualitative context to behavioral data and better understand customer needs.

What I love most about Contentsquare is that it brings different types of experience data together. You can see what users are doing, where they're struggling, and how those behaviors affect their journey, giving you a much clearer picture of where to focus your optimization efforts.

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $49/month.

Amplitude: App and digital product analytics

If you have a mobile app or web-based digital product, Amplitude's robust analytics platform provides valuable insights into user behavior, ultimately allowing you to improve retention.

Key features:

• Track user actions and create custom events to measure what matters most to your business.
• Build cohorts based on user behavior to understand different segments of your audience.
• Identify friction points in the customer journey.
• Create custom dashboards to keep your team aligned on key metrics.
• Leverage predictive analytics to forecast user behavior and prevent churn.

What sets Amplitude apart is its focus on behavioral cohorts. Instead of just looking at demographics, you can group users based on their actions. This can help you identify your power users and understand what features keep them coming back.

Pricing: Free plan for up to 2 million events/month; paid plans start at $94/month.

Lifetimely: E-commerce analytics for Shopify brands

This is another tool I wish I had when I was working at e-commerce brands. For Shopify store owners, Lifetimely offers a crystal-clear view of customer behavior and lifetime value, helping you make data-driven decisions to boost profitability and grow your store strategically.

Key features:

• Track key metrics like customer lifetime value, retention rates, and repurchase probability.
• Forecast future revenue based on historical data and current trends.
• Segment customers based on their value and behavior to tailor your marketing.
• Compare your performance against industry benchmarks.

Plus, the ability to predict customer lifetime value. This insight lets you focus your marketing efforts on your most valuable customers and improve profitability.

Max Bidna, who goes by Marketing Max, reports on X that Lifetimely's Shopify charts "are second to none in terms of helping you understand the LTV from different customer segments and from different acquisition channels."

Plus, the ability to compare your store's performance against others in your industry gives you a clear picture of where you stand and where you can improve.

Bonus: All features are available on all plans, making it easy to grow your Shopify store.

Pricing: Free plan up to 50 orders per month; paid plans start at $49/month.

Build your digital marketing stack one tool at a time

Start with two tools, not twenty. Start by identifying your most pressing marketing challenges. Is it maintaining a consistent social media presence? Understanding your website visitors' behavior? Or maybe you're looking to get into influencer marketing for the first time?

Choose one or two areas to focus on initially and adopt the tools that address those needs. When you're ready to try a new channel or optimize an existing one, you can come back to explore your options and gradually expand your digital marketing toolkit.

FAQ about digital marketing tools

What are the main types of digital marketing?

SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, email and SMS marketing, paid search and social advertising, partnership marketing (affiliate and influencer), and analytics and conversion optimisation are some of the main types of digital marketing. This guide covers tools for all seven.

Which digital marketing tools are best for a small business?

For a small business, the five tools that cover a lot of ground are Buffer for social publishing, Mailchimp or Klaviyo for email, Canva for design, Google Analytics for measurement, and Google Search Console for search.

What marketing tools does a small business need?

A publishing tool, an email tool, a design tool, a web analytics tool, and a search monitoring tool are some of the most helpful digital marketing tools for small businesses. You can assemble all five for free: Buffer, Mailchimp, Canva, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console.

What are the most popular digital marketing tools?

The most widely used are Google Analytics and Google Search Console, Canva for design, Mailchimp and Klaviyo for email, HubSpot for B2B lead management, and Buffer for social media. Amplitude and Lifetimely can be excellent choices for businesses with more specialized product or e-commerce analytics needs.

How much should a small business spend on marketing tools?

You can run a complete stack for $0 using free tiers, and a solid paid stack for under $100 a month: roughly $6 per channel for Buffer, $13 for Mailchimp, $18 for Canva, and $49 for Moz. Tools priced above $150 a month, like Atria, Lifetimely, and VWO, generally need existing traffic or revenue to justify themselves.

How do I teach myself digital marketing?

Start with the free material published by the tools themselves. Moz's SEO guides and webinars are the strongest free SEO education available, Google offers free Analytics and Ads certifications through Skillshop, and HubSpot Academy covers email and inbound marketing at no cost.

More digital marketing tools and resources

• 17 Must-Try AI Social Media Content Creation Tools
• The Top 10 AI Writing Tools I Recommend as a Professional Writer
• 6 Instagram Analytics Tools That Will Help You Grow Your Audience in 2025
• 9 Time-Saving Tools to Support Creators
• 28 AI Marketing Tools to Save Time and Boost Performance

After digging into millions of posts sent through Buffer, we've pinpointed the best time to post on all major social platforms, LinkedIn included.

By "we," I mean Julian Winternheimer, our resident data scientist.

We've (OK, Julian has) been running these numbers for around two years now, and the 2026 LinkedIn findings surprised me a little: The best time to post on LinkedIn in 2026 is generally between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. on weekdays, with Wednesday at 4 p.m. emerging as the strongest overall slot in our analysis of 4.8 million posts.

In 2025, peak engagement was almost entirely confined to working hours — things fell off pretty sharply once 5 p.m. hit. This year, we're seeing those peak windows shift later into the day, which mirrors what's been happening on Instagram and TikTok for a while now.

Late afternoon and evening hours are now pulling some of the strongest LinkedIn engagement numbers we've seen. People are still showing up for professional content; they're just doing it after they've closed their laptops for the day.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's get into the data.

Key takeaways

• Peak hours: Late afternoon and evening hours (3 p.m.–8 p.m.) now drive the highest engagement on LinkedIn, although some days have high-performing slots later in the evening.
• Top slots: Wednesday at 4 p.m., Friday at 3 p.m., and Friday at 4 p.m. are the highest-performing times.
• Best day: Wednesday is the best day to post, closely followed by Thursday and Friday.
• Early-week dip: Monday and Tuesday see the lowest engagement; save your best content for mid-to-late week.

Is there a best time to post on LinkedIn?

Yes, our data shows that when you post on LinkedIn can meaningfully impact how much engagement your content gets.

The best time to post on LinkedIn is generally 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays. Wednesday at 4 p.m. is the strongest overall time in our analysis, followed by Friday at 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.

That said, as even LinkedIn's own marketing blog points out, timing research isn't a black-and-white science, and every audience is a little different.

After analyzing more than 4.8 million LinkedIn posts sent through Buffer, we were able to pinpoint some clear posting windows when content tended to get higher engagement than others.

Your LinkedIn content is more likely to get engagement in these windows, whether you're looking to grow a LinkedIn Page for a brand or your own personal brand with a LinkedIn profile.

Engagement is a particularly useful benchmark when it comes to identifying the best time to post on LinkedIn. The platform’s algorithm uses interactions (reactions, comments, and reposts) as signals to help it decide which posts are valuable and should be shown to more people.

In other words, the more engagement your post receives, the more people will see your post. That's a simplification, as loads of factors go into how posts are ranked, but it's a solid rule of thumb. Strong engagement doesn't automatically guarantee more reach, but the two definitely influence each other.

This is why we consider time slots in which posts got the highest engagement to be the best time to post on LinkedIn.

But here's the thing — every audience is a little different.

My recommendation? Treat these times as a starting point, experiment with your own posting schedule as part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy, and dig into your social media analytics to find what works best for your specific audience and make the most of the LinkedIn algorithm.

The best time to post on LinkedIn for engagement

The best time to post on LinkedIn for high engagement is generally during late afternoon and evening hours on weekdays. The top-performing slots include:

• Peak window: 3 p.m. – 8 p.m.
• Top slot 1: Wednesday at 4 p.m.
• Top slot 2: Friday at 3 p.m.
• Top slot 3: Friday at 4 p.m.

You can see it all pretty clearly in the graph above. It breaks down the week into hourly chunks, where the darkest blocks are the time slots with the highest engagement (and the best time to post on LinkedIn), and the light to white blocks are the time slots with the lowest engagement.

The shift toward evening engagement on LinkedIn looks a little different from what we saw in 2025, when the best posting times were exclusively within working hours. What's interesting is that this late-day activity doesn't seem to be passive scrolling. Professionals winding down their workday are often reading thought leadership, exploring solutions, and engaging with peers more intentionally — which could mean higher-quality interactions for your content, too.

That doesn't mean midday is a dead zone, though. LinkedIn's own marketing blog notes that pockets of the workday (like the lunch break or mid-afternoon) are still moments when professionals pause to scroll. In our data, those midday hours perform decently; they're just no longer the clear peak the way they were in 2025.

As you'll see from the graph above, engagement picks up in the afternoon and remains strong through the evening hours. Unlike other social platforms where evening slots have always performed well, this represents a notable shift in LinkedIn behavior.

Posts shared in the morning hours (6 a.m.–11 a.m.) now tend to see lower engagement than afternoon and evening slots. If your current posting schedule is built entirely around morning windows, it might be worth testing some later time slots to see if your audience has shifted, too.

The best times to post on LinkedIn by day

🌍 Wait, what time zone? To make this data easier to understand, our data scientist has normalized posting times by local time zone. So if the recommended time is 4 p.m., you can treat that as 4 p.m. in the time zone you’re targeting. There’s no need to convert from a single reference time zone.

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Monday

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Monday is 10 p.m., as professionals catch up on content after their workday. If you're looking for more Monday slots to add to your posting schedule, LinkedIn posts shared at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. also saw higher engagement than the rest of the day.

Monday overall tends to see lower engagement compared to midweek, so consider saving your highest-priority content for Wednesday through Friday.

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Tuesday

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Tuesday is 4 p.m., as users begin wrapping up their workday and checking their feeds. If you need more posting times to choose from, 5 p.m. is not far off in terms of engagement, as is 10 p.m.

Like Monday, Tuesday sees slightly lower overall engagement, so test these times with your audience before locking in a regular Tuesday schedule.

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Wednesday

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Wednesday is 4 p.m. This is actually one of the highest-engagement time slots of the entire week. Other top posting times for Wednesday are 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., giving you a solid afternoon-to-early-evening window.

Wednesday is your best day overall for LinkedIn engagement, so this is a great day to share your most important content.

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Thursday

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Thursday is 5 p.m. Posts shared during the late afternoon and evening hours tend to perform well, so this time is definitely worth adding to your content calendar. If you need more times on Thursday, 7 p.m. is also strong, and 9 p.m. is worth considering for reaching users who engage later in the evening.

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Friday

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Friday is 3 p.m., right as professionals are starting to wind down their week. Other strong contenders for your posting schedule are 4 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Friday is one of your strongest days for engagement, and definitely worth keeping in your rotation.

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Saturday

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Saturday is 9 a.m. Posts shared on Saturday tend to see less engagement on the platform than most weekdays, so consider scheduling your content for a weekday instead. If you must post on Saturday, our data showed that 9 a.m. tends to get the highest engagement, followed by 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Sunday

The best time to post on LinkedIn on Sunday is 10 p.m. Still, content shared on Sundays sees lower engagement compared to weekdays, and this slot is definitely not your best option if you're hoping to boost post interactions. If Sunday works better for your schedule, late evening is your best bet. Other times to consider are 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The best day to post on LinkedIn

The best day of the week to post on LinkedIn is Wednesday. We found that posts shared on Wednesday tended to get the most engagement, closely followed by Thursday, then Friday.

Anecdotally, this mid-to-late-week pattern makes sense. By Wednesday, most people are fully in the swing of the week — focused, open to learning, but not yet counting down to Friday.

Monday and Tuesday, on the other hand, showed the lowest engagement in our data. Monday sees the weakest numbers of the week, with Tuesday not far behind.

It's worth noting that not all research agrees here. LinkedIn's marketing blog highlights studies where Tuesday is actually one of the most active days on the platform. This is a good reminder that results can vary depending on the dataset, audience, and industry, so it's worth testing early-week posts with your own followers before writing those days off entirely.

The heads-down work theory still holds, though: if your audience tends to be deep in tasks on Monday and Tuesday, mid-to-late week is likely your better bet.

Get the best times to post on LinkedIn right in Buffer

With Buffer, you can have your posting schedule automatically set to the best times. That goes for all the other channels that Buffer supports, too. They'll appear as posting slots in your queue and calendar, making it super easy for you to schedule posts at the best times.

It'll take you less than a minute to set up:

1. Select LinkedIn on your channels list on the left.
2. Click on the settings (gear) icon above the calendar.
3. Scroll to Posting Schedule and under Posting Slots, click the Generate New Posting Slots button.
4. Then Use Recommended Posting Slots.

The schedule will automatically update to include the best posting times for the week, based on our latest analysis of millions of LinkedIn posts.

The next time you schedule a post, you can click one of these high-engagement slots in your calendar or list view, or just hit Next available to add it to the next available slot.

How to find the best time to post on LinkedIn for your audience

The best times above are a great starting point if you're still figuring out your LinkedIn strategy. Still, they're no substitute for figuring out your own best time to post.

LinkedIn's native analytics show your top-performing posts over a set period (for both pages and profiles) so you can start spotting patterns and figure out your personal best time to post on LinkedIn.

However, you'll need a record of exactly when you posted a specific piece of content (like a social media management tool or social media content calendar) to refer back to.

LinkedIn Analytics won't show you detailed timings on published content after the fact. The best the LinkedIn timestamp will tell you is "3h" or "2d" (to indicate you posted the content three hours or two days ago, etc.)

This is where a tool like Buffer can help. When you schedule and publish your LinkedIn posts through Buffer, you get a clear record of exactly when each post went live, plus analytics that show you how each one performed. Over time, you'll start to spot patterns that reveal your unique best posting windows.

It's also worth noting that timing isn't the only variable to experiment with. The type of content you post can also affect how your audience responds at different times of day. So as you test different time slots, try mixing up your content formats, too.

Best time to post on LinkedIn FAQs

Here are some of the most commonly asked questions about when to post on LinkedIn.

Does the time you post on LinkedIn actually matter?

Our data, based on over 4.8 million LinkedIn posts, shows that yes, timing does make a difference. Posts shared during high-engagement windows (particularly late afternoon and evening hours on weekdays) consistently outperformed those posted at off-peak times.

Remember, timing isn't a magic fix. Posting at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday won't rescue a post that isn't relevant or valuable to your audience. Think of the top posting times as a helpful boost on top of a solid content strategy, not a substitute for one.

The good news? Acting on timing data is easier than ever. LinkedIn now lets you schedule posts directly within the platform, and tools like Buffer can automate your posting schedule based on high-engagement time slots so you don't have to remember to hit publish at exactly 4 p.m.

When is the worst time to post on LinkedIn?

Based on our data, the lowest-engagement windows are early in the week. Monday and Tuesday tend to underperform compared to mid-to-late week. Morning hours (before noon) also see weaker engagement now that late afternoon and evening have shifted to the top of the heatmap.

Weekends are generally quiet too, though Saturday at 9 a.m. and late Sunday evening can still see some activity. If you have a post you really want to perform, don't bury it on a Monday morning; save it for Wednesday through Friday instead.

What is the "golden hour" for LinkedIn posts?

The "golden hour" refers to the period right after a LinkedIn post goes live, when early engagement may help signal value to the algorithm and push the post to more people. LinkedIn hasn't confirmed an official 60- or 90-minute window, so treat it as a general concept rather than a hard rule.

That said, many creators try to be available to respond to comments shortly after posting. Engaging with early replies can keep the conversation going and may help maintain momentum during that initial window.

Is LinkedIn engagement higher in the morning or evening?

Our latest data shows that evening hours now outperform mornings on LinkedIn. Posts shared between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. on weekdays consistently see higher engagement than those shared in the morning — a notable shift from what we saw in previous years, when traditional work hours dominated.

The theory? Professionals are increasingly catching up on LinkedIn content after work, during their commute home, or while unwinding in the evening. Our data can’t tell us why the change is happening, though, only that later posting times performed particularly well in this analysis.

What's the best time to post on LinkedIn on weekends?

Weekend engagement on LinkedIn drops off significantly compared to weekdays, so if you have the flexibility to schedule your posts for a weekday instead, that's likely the better move. If you do need to post on a weekend, Saturday at 9 a.m. is your best bet. Sunday late evening (around 10 p.m.) also shows some activity.

Do these posting times apply to my time zone?

Yes, our data scientist has crunched the numbers so that the recommended times are universally applicable. You don't need to convert anything. Whether you're posting from New York, London, or Mumbai, 4 p.m. means 4 p.m. in your local time zone.

How often should I post on LinkedIn?

Posting two to five times per week is where most creators and brands start to see results. Based on our data, accounts that post more consistently tend to see stronger impressions per post over time, and posting six to 10 times per week can push those numbers further still.

That said, consistency matters more than volume. It's better to post three times a week every week than to post daily for two weeks and then go quiet. Start with a schedule you can actually sustain, then build from there.

What type of content performs best on LinkedIn?

According to our data, carousel (document) posts generate up to 596% more engagement than text-only posts, making them the standout format on the platform right now. Beyond format, content that offers genuine insight, professional value, or a unique perspective tends to do well on LinkedIn. For a deeper look at what's working, check out our guide to the LinkedIn algorithm.

More LinkedIn resources

• How to Schedule LinkedIn Posts in 2026 (2 Easy Methods + Tips)
• Connected Apps on LinkedIn: What They Are + How to Get Buffer Capabilities
• Replying to Your Comments on LinkedIn Boosts Engagement by 30%
• LinkedIn Marketing in 2026: The Complete Guide for Businesses and Creators
• Types of Social Media Content: 30+ Ideas for Your Next Post (With Examples)
• I Reached 20,000 Followers on LinkedIn and I Feel Weird About It

I won’t bore you with a lecture about why you need a social media content calendar.

You likely landed here because you’re looking for a content calendar template, a quick starting point for mapping out your content plan for the coming weeks or months.

I’ve worked as both a social media manager and content creator, and live by my social media content calendar.

My current favorite tool is (of course) Buffer, but there are loads of other options out there. If you’re looking for something lo-fi to get started, I've got you.

Here's a list of 11 calendar templates to help you be more efficient, plus how to build your own if none of them fit.

Key takeaways

• Choose the right tool: Select a format that fits your workflow, whether it's a spreadsheet (Google Sheets), a visual tool (Canva), or an automated scheduler (Buffer).
• Prioritize consistency: A sustainable posting cadence (e.g., three times per week) is more effective than random bouts of activity.
• Include essential data: Every calendar entry should track the posting date, platform, caption, media assets, and current status.
• Optimize timing: Use data-backed "best times to post" to get more eyes on your content.
• Centralize brainstorming: Use a dedicated space to separate your ideas from scheduled posts.

The quick version

A social media calendar template is a ready-made structure for planning what you'll post, where, and when, so you're not staring at a blank screen every week.

The fastest way to start: Pick a format that matches how you like to work (a spreadsheet like Google Sheets, a visual tool like Canva, a flexible workspace like Notion, or a scheduler like Buffer that also publishes for you), grab one of the 11 free templates below, and block 30 minutes to map out your next two weeks.

If you want to build one from scratch instead, skip to how to create a social media calendar.

11 free social media calendar templates

1. Buffer social media calendar

This is not a downloadable template, per se, but Buffer is so easy to plug and play, it might as well be.

I'm definitely biased, but after trying just about every tool and template out there, Buffer's calendar is the one I keep coming back to — and honestly, I think you'll see why.

Let's start with the basics: Buffer’s content calendar features a weekly and monthly calendar view. You can drag and drop posts to easily change publish dates and times in real time.

These views can be filtered by platform, so you can see all your posts in a list if you prefer. You can even optimize your posting schedule according to the best time to post on each platform (more on this below).

The Tags feature allows for custom social content categories and color coding (my personal favorite feature). You can organize your posts by status, content strategy pillars, target audience, marketing goals, or type of content, whatever works best for your content strategy.

The benefits of mapping out your content in Buffer go way beyond just planning. Buffer is a social media scheduling tool, not just a social media planning tool.

This calendar is the only one on this list that will publish the posts for you.

Buffer can automatically schedule your social media posts (whether they're text, photos, or videos) on all major platforms to go live at precisely the time you want them to. If you're juggling several accounts, it also makes it far easier to manage multiple social media accounts from one calendar.

It's an excellent option for both solo creators and social media teams, too, with handy collaboration features like approval workflows and smart permissions.

And here's the part that saves the most time: once your posts are in the calendar, Buffer takes care of the publishing for you. No jumping between platforms, no manual posting.

Buffer connects with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Google Business, and more.

Outside the calendar, there’s the Create Space to help you brainstorm and organize your ideas, engagement tools to help you manage replies to comments, and Insights to check in on metrics at a glance.

2. Social media calendar template with the best times to post

Posting at the right time can make a real difference for your reach and engagement, which is why we dug into data from millions of posts in Buffer to find those sweet spots for you.

Thanks to this analysis, we’ve pinpointed several posting times for each social media platform during which posts get more engagement or views. I’ve highlighted these times for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter/X in this downloadable PDF calendar.

How to use this calendar

1. Download the ‘Best Time to Post’ calendar template.
2. Once downloaded, right-click on the file and open it with Adobe Reader or another PDF reader.
3. Click Fill & Sign.
4. Click within the time slot you want to use to start typing.
5. Alternatively, you can always print these pages and fill them out with a good old-fashioned pen and paper.
6. The social media content calendar template is yours to edit as you see fit.

⏰ Get ‘Best Time to Post’ calendar template

There’s a whole lot more nuance in figuring out the best time to post for your audience. I’d recommend checking out these resources:

• The Best Time to Post on Facebook
• The Best Time to Post on Instagram
• The Best Time to Post on TikTok
• The Best Time to Post on LinkedIn
• The Best Time to Post on YouTube
• The Best Time to Post on Twitter/X

3. Simple weekly social media calendar template

This free content calendar template features the same layout as the one above, with publishing schedule time slots from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., just without highlights for the best times to post on each platform.

How to use this calendar

1. Get the simple weekly calendar.
2. Open with Adobe Reader.
3. Click Fill & Sign.
4. Click within the time slot you want to use to start typing.
5. Alternatively, you can always print these pages and use pen and paper to fill yours out.
6. The social media content calendar template is yours to edit as you see fit.

🗓️ Get the simple weekly calendar

4. Simple monthly social media calendar template

If you want to map out an entire month at a glance, this content calendar template is for you. Think of this calendar as your big-picture view. It can be helpful to map out the month in broad strokes by publish date using a layout like this one to help you prioritize tasks.

How to use this calendar

1. Get the simple monthly social media calendar.
2. Open with Adobe Reader.
3. Click Fill & Sign.
4. Click within the time slot you want to use to start typing.
5. Alternatively, you can always print these pages and use a good ol' pen and paper to fill yours out.
6. The social media content calendar template is yours to edit as you see fit.

📅 Get the simple monthly social media calendar

5. Canva social media calendar templates

If you’d like to customize the simple calendars above to better suit you, here are the editable versions in Canva (links below). You’ll need a free Canva account to tweak them.

⏰ Get the best times to post calendar

🗓️ Get the simple weekly calendar

📅 Get the simple monthly calendar

6. Notion social media calendar template

Notion is a flexible project management tool. Unlike some of the simple content calendar templates above, you can easily store the text, captions, and media you plan to use for each post in the calendar itself.

You can also view all your posts in different views, like a list, table, Kanban board, or Gantt chart, which can be useful in planning. It’s a great choice for a content marketing or editorial calendar template too, as you can map out newsletters, blog posts, and other digital marketing campaigns.

How to use this calendar

1. Get the Notion template.
2. Click on the Duplicate button (the juxtaposed squares icon) in the top right corner.
3. Create a free Notion account if you don’t have one already.
4. The social media content calendar template is yours to edit as you see fit.

🤖 Get Notion template

7. Google Sheets social media calendar template

If a spreadsheet is your happy place, a Google Sheets social media calendar template is hard to beat — it's free, it lives in the cloud, and you can customize it endlessly without learning a new tool.

I particularly like how you’re able to use specific custom colors for the list options, too. I like my content calendars to be pretty.

This free content calendar template is, along with Buffer and Notion, one of the most customizable on this list. It's also suitable for storing entire posts and captions, rather than just making notes, as you would have done in the simple calendar templates above. If Microsoft Excel is more your speed, you can convert it in a couple of clicks (I've covered that in the steps below).

How to use this calendar

1. Make a copy of the Google Sheets template.
2. Read the instructions on the Start here sheet.
3. The social media content calendar template is yours to edit as you see fit.

📊 Get the Google Sheets template

✨ Calendar templates from our community

Social media calendars are pretty personal, and what works for one marketer, creator, or entrepreneur might not work for another.

With that in mind, I turned to our community, which graciously shared their real-life calendars, or even turned them into templates that you can use and download.

8. Simon Heaton’s kanban calendar

Buffer’s Director of Growth Marketing, Simon Heaton, leans on Buffer’s Create Space to plan his content and the calendar to schedule it. He’s organized the Create Space kanban columns by content status — things like To Do, In Progress, and Ready to Schedule.

Simon used Tags as another layer of organization in his Buffer social media planning calendar, with each color-coded tag corresponding to one of his content pillars (note the colored bars on his publish calendar above).

How to set up your Buffer like Simon

1. Click on the Get started with Buffer link.
2. Create your Buffer account if you don’t already have one, and click Connect Channels (you can connect up to three for free). Choose the platform you want to start with and follow the steps.
3. Click on Create on the menu at the top left to navigate to the Create Space.
4. Toggle on ‘board view’ on the top right. Choose + New Group on the right to start a new column, and choose your desired column names.
5. Click on Tags (also top right) and the settings cog symbol to create your tags.

🌱 Get started with Buffer

9. Aiza Coronado’s email x ChatGPT calendar

Aiza Coronado, marketer and founder of The Glimmer Code, has a very unique approach to her social media content planner. She has it sent straight to her email. She prompted her AI tool of choice, ChatGPT, to generate ideas for her, then set up a ChatGPT task to have them sent straight to her email inbox.

Bonus: It doesn’t just help her plan when to share the content; it also helps her plan what the content will be.

“The prompt is super simple,” she says. “I used something like, 'From our past conversations, find and list email marketing insights, possible content ideas, and Substack topics I wanted to write about'.”

“The titles are cheesy, but it works as idea sparks,” she says. “I just need to remember what I did. And ask AI to uncover hidden insights I might have missed.”

How to create this system

1. Once you’ve landed on an output you’re happy with, you can create a task in ChatGPT at a cadence that suits you. Prompt in the same chat: “Send me one of these content ideas every morning,” or similar. Here’s more info on how to create a task in ChatGPT.
2. You’ll receive the tasks in your email inbox. Click on them to go back to ChatGPT and make changes before posting via the platform or social media scheduling tool.

I’ve created a more generic prompt you could use for the same purpose.

In ChatGPT, use a prompt like this one to start the conversation: “I’m a [job title/creator] who creates content about [X, Y, Z]. My target audience is [demographic]. I create [X] posts a week on [platform/s]. Find possible content ideas for me.”

10. My simple calendar for TikTok consistency

Using the info from our best time to post on TikTok study and analyzing my own video performance, I've pinpointed the best times for me to share a video on TikTok every day. I've set up my Buffer content calendar to reflect those high-performing timeslots.

Bonus: This works for any social channels, not just TikTok.

How to set up your Buffer like me

1. Get started with Buffer
2. Create your Buffer account if you don’t already have one, and click Connect Channels (you can connect up to three for free).
3. Choose the platform you want to start with and follow the steps. When you connect a new channel, you’ll be prompted to create a posting goal.
4. If you want to create a posting goal for a channel you have already connected, choose your channel from the channels list on the left-hand side, then click on + Set a posting goal right below the channel title.
5. To set posting times to appear in your calendar, click on the cog icon next to the channel name (also visible in the image above). Scroll down to Posting slots to add or remove slots to your calendar.

✨ Get started with Buffer

11. Kiran Shahid’s calendar for personal brand-building

Kiran Shahid has built an impressive personal brand on LinkedIn. Thanks to the robust system she created on Notion while growing on LinkedIn, she’s finding her new Instagram project a whole lot smoother.

“I have these systems in place; I’m finding it so easy to start and have a content bank ready before I launch,” she explains. “If an idea pops into my head, I can note it down on Notion and develop it later when I sit down to plan my weekly content.”

The system is great for anyone who wants to be intentional about building a personal brand, she adds.

“Apart from making sure I never run out of ideas, having them all in one place makes repurposing a breeze, too. On days I’m feeling a bit lazy, I can simply copy-paste an old idea to make sure there isn’t a big gap in my scheduling.”

How to use this calendar

1. Get the Notion template.
2. Click on the Duplicate button (the juxtaposed squares icon) in the top right corner.
3. Create a free Notion account if you don’t have one already.
4. Kiran’s social media content calendar template is yours to edit as you see fit (use the tabs to see different sections and views).

🚀 Get the Notion template

How to create a social media calendar

Templates are the fast lane, but if none of them quite fit, building your own calendar from scratch isn't hard. At its core, a social media calendar maps out what you'll post, when you'll post it, and on which platforms so you can plan ahead instead of figuring it out on the fly. Here's the eight-step process I've used as both a social media manager and a creator.

1. Start with your strategy

Before you open any calendar tool, get clear on the basics: why you're posting, who you're trying to reach, and what you'll actually post about. Having clear goals, understanding your target audience, and defining your content pillars will make your marketing efforts much easier. It also helps to note any key dates, events, or campaigns on the horizon. Your calendar should support your overall goals, not just fill time slots.

2. Pick your tool and format

Choose the home for your calendar based on how you actually like to work. A spreadsheet like Google Sheets, a flexible workspace like Notion, or a publishing scheduler like Buffer are all solid starting points. The best system is the one you'll actually keep using, so try not to overthink it. You can always migrate later.

It would be remiss of me not to point out that there are a host of perks to housing your social media calendar in Buffer beyond the ability to plan and schedule in a single tool:

• A high-level monthly view for big-picture planning
• A more in-depth weekly view to see all the key details at a glance
• The ability to exclude certain channels from view for extra clarity and focus
• Thanks to Buffer’s mobile app, you can check or amend your calendar on the go

📲 Download the Buffer app for iOS here

📲 Download the Buffer app for Android here

3. Set your cadence

Decide how often you'll post on each platform, and be realistic. Three posts a week you can sustain beats seven you'll abandon by Thursday. Consistency is the one piece of advice that survives every algorithm update. As a general rule, try to plan at least two to four weeks ahead — far enough to stay organized, but with enough flexibility to swap things around when something timely comes up.

4. Build the skeleton

Map out your posting slots (the days and times you'll publish). At Buffer, we think of the posting schedule for every social media platform as a Queue — basically, set time slots every week for posting.

You don’t have to stick to this, of course, but it’s a really handy way to commit to the cadence you laid out in your social media strategy. As time goes on and you experiment with different timings and frequencies on all the platforms you’re using, you’ll be able to pinpoint the slots that work well for your target audience. 

To set up your Queue, click on your chosen channel, then click on the cog icon next to your name and profile picture. Here you'll find the options for your posting slots, which you can edit according to your strategy.

5. Get your content ideas down

Now, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work on the actual content creation. This is where Buffer’s Create Space comes in. It’s a versatile system that you can use as a hub for all your ideas.

6. Organize in a way that makes sense to you

Color coding is my organizational love language (you should see my bookshelf). Color-coding or tagging by content pillar, status, or format makes a busy calendar legible at a glance. It also makes it far easier to spot gaps like three promo posts in a row, or a week with no video.

You could use Buffer's Tags to tag posts by content pillar, post status, format, and platform.

What’s really neat about Tags is that they translate over to the Insights section. You can filter your analytics by tag and measure the performance of one content pillar against another. This has been incredibly useful for me as I experiment with my content pillars to see which resonate the most with my audience.

Here's how to create and manage Tags on Buffer:

7. Start planning

Now comes the fun part: slot your ideas into the calendar. Select an idea that’s ready to go in Create, then click on the Create Post button. Tailor your post to each platform, then choose if you want to schedule, queue, or post immediately.

8. Review and adjust

A calendar isn't set in stone. Check in at the start of each week, move things around, and leave room for reactive posts. Over time, your own analytics will tell you what's working. Keep an eye on metrics like impressions, clicks, likes, and comments to spot patterns.

Buffer's Insights make this easy to do at a glance. As you learn what resonates, you'll start repurposing your best-performing posts and doubling down on what your audience loves.

Social media success starts with a calendar

While a lot of the guidance for social media success changes often, there’s one tip that always remains: be consistent. Whether you're a content creator, social media manager, or small business owner, showing up consistently matters more than posting constantly. Even two or three well-planned posts a week can build real momentum. And the best way to stay consistent? A social media content calendar.

Pick a template from the list above, or build your own — and if you want a calendar that also publishes for you, give Buffer's free plan a try.

Social media content calendar FAQs

If you're new to using social media calendar templates (or just creating a social media content planner in general), here's some handy guidance from someone who lives by them.

Why do I need to use a social media content calendar?

A social media calendar keeps your content organized and your posting consistent — two things that matter more than almost anything else on social media.

Here's what it actually helps with:

• Consistency. Regular posting keeps your audience engaged. A calendar means you're never scrambling for something to post at the last minute.
• Time savings. Batch your content creation in one focused session instead of switching context every day.
• Strategic planning. Map your posts around key dates, campaigns, and goals so your content works toward something, not just fills a slot.
• Content variety. See your mix at a glance and make sure you're not posting the same type of content on repeat.
• Team collaboration. If you work with others, a shared calendar keeps everyone aligned on what's going live and when.

What should I include in my social media calendar?

Your calendar doesn’t need to be fancy; it just needs to work for you. Here are a few things most calendars include:

• Posting dates and times
• Platform and post format (reel, story, text post, etc.)
• Captions and visuals (or at least notes)
• Content pillar or category
• Status (drafted, scheduled, published)

Some people go all in with hashtags, CTAs, social media campaign labels, audience segments, and all the necessary details on their marketing calendar, but if that feels overwhelming, start with a simple social media planner and build from there.

Is there a free template for a social media calendar?

Yes, this article includes 11 free templates in a range of formats:

• Buffer's calendar: plan and auto-publish posts in one place, no download needed
• PDF calendars: a simple weekly view, a monthly overview, and one pre-filled with the best times to post on each platform
• Google Sheets: a customizable spreadsheet you can share with a team
• Notion: flexible enough to store captions, links, and media alongside each post
• Canva: editable versions of the PDF calendars if you want to add your own colors and branding

Every template above is free. Scroll up to the full list to find the format that suits how you like to work.

How do I create a social media calendar?

Here's the short version: Start with your goals and content pillars, choose a tool, set a realistic posting cadence, collect your ideas, and schedule your posts. Then review your analytics regularly and adjust your calendar as you learn what works.

More social media marketing resources

• How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy — 7-Step Guide
• Buffer vs. Hootsuite: Which Social Media Management Tool Is Right For
• The Best Social Media Scheduling Tools (+ How to Find the Perfect Fit)
• The 11 Best Social Media Management Tools — Tried + Tested
• 9 Tools for Social Media Automation (+ Automation Pro Tips)
• The Best Social Media APIs for Developers + Vibe Coders

Choosing the right trending audio to accompany your latest Instagram post is an art, not a science. Still, opting for a trending sound or music clip could provide the boost you need to get your video on the Instagram Explore page or Instagram Reels feed.

While it used to be just for Instagram Reels, you can now also add trending audio to your carousels and single photo posts. This gives your posts a better chance of landing on the Explore page, and it makes carousels and photos eligible to appear on the reels feed, too. That opens up a new way to expand your reach.

But where can you find trending audio on Instagram? If you feel like you’re always chasing the tail-end of trending songs on the app, you’ve come to the right place.

Here are some of the most viral, versatile, trending songs and sounds on Instagram right now.

13 trending songs and audio on Instagram

Here's a quick summary of what is trending in September 2026.

1. original audio by caitbcontent

This original audio from caitbcontent is the soundtrack to the "whimsymaxxing" trend, where creators embrace Y2K-inspired maximalism. It's a great one for brands with a little sparkle. The trend also extends to everyday rituals, turning little touches like heart-shaped ice cubes or sprinkles in your coffee into opportunities to make life a little more fun. Rhinestones compulsory.

🎧 Get the audio

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A post shared by Crispý Cones (@crispycones)

2. Ring My Bell

I nearly forgot about this song, but I'm glad it's back! Ring My Bell by Anita Ward may have been released back in 1979, but its disco energy is having another moment on Instagram. Creators are using it for outfit videos and other playful, feminine lifestyle content.

🎧 Get the audio

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Andrea Piecuch Druckenmiller (@andreapiecuch)

3. Less than a lover

Less Than a Lover by JENNIE was released in July 2026, but it's already been used in over 221K reels on Instagram. Creators are using the dreamy track as a backdrop for inspirational, aesthetic, and romantic content.

🎧 Get the audio

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by ayyn (@itsayyn)

4. Mix by lisahoogendoorn

Using audio from @lisahoogendoorn, the "Two Best Friends" trend is the perfect excuse to show off what makes you and your bestie different. Replace your face with your contrasting preferences, and you have a sweet little montage of your contrasting vibes.

🎧 Get the audio

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lisa Hoogendoorn (@lisahoogendoorn)

5. Mix by alchemysticwellness

This original audio from alchemysticwellness uses the can-can to put a playful spin on the "When you're a professional but you're also..." trend. It's a fun way for business owners and professionals to show the personality (and often a little chaos) behind the polished headshot.

🎧 Get the audio

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A post shared by Blue Bow Boutique (@bluebowboutiquetn)

6. Original audio by bananalace

This original audio from bananalace is behind the "Balance your expenses" trend, where creators take the concept of budgeting very literally, balancing everything from products to pets.

🎧 Get the audio

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jordan & Olia | UGC for Dog Brands (@jordan_cocker)

7. Original audio by thefoundryavondale

This trend is all about the moment someone finally gives you the little push you needed. Creators are taking it literally, showing themselves getting an actual shove into buying something, starting a new hobby, or trying something they've been putting off. It's a great fit for brands to convince people to take the first step.

🎧 Get the audio

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A post shared by Burn Boot Camp Cartersville (@burnbootcampcartersvillega)

8. Yummy Little Day

Yummy Little Day by emilogue is the soundtrack to wholesome “a yummy little day” content on Instagram. Creators are using the gentle audio for cutesy day-in-the-life clips, curated moments of cozy, and definitely plenty of crafting.

🎧 Get the audio

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A post shared by Meghan Hitchman Bustard (@megsbustard)

9. Original audio by olyabelakoneva

This original audio from olyabelakoneva is behind the “POV: your phone is ringing” trend, where creators unpack their very full bags to explain why they can't find their phone. Makeup, sunglasses, fragrances, and everything else they somehow carry around come tumbling out in the process.

🎧 Get the audio

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A post shared by krystall (@houseofkrystall)

10. Original audio by cosrx

This original audio from cosrx is behind the “Bad Dream” trend, where creators give products a hilariously dramatic nightmare sequence. The video starts with the product facing some kind of disaster before cutting to it tucked safely into bed and waking up from a bad dream. It's an easy format for brands to recreate with their own products.

🎧 Get the audio

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A post shared by Kateryna •Content creator • UGC • USA (@kateryna_kozhanova_ugc)

11. petal

petal by Ariana Grande continues to bloom on Instagram (and everywhere, really). The song is dreamy and synth-heavy, lending itself to fashion, beauty, and even dance.

⚠️ Contains an expletive.

🎧 Get the audio

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A post shared by ZARA (@zarasilver)

12. Timber

Timber by Pitbull feat. Kesha is having a throwback moment on Instagram, bringing plenty of good times energy back to reels. The big drop works particularly well for fast-cut edits, such as showing off a workout, a night out, or an adventure.

🎧 Get the audio

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A post shared by @simrann.poudel

13. Cherry on the Edge

Cherry on the Edge by miss rany is giving girl power on Instagram. Creators are using it for everything from beauty and fashion to gym updates, outfit reveals, and travel vlogs. When you hear the vocals and vibe, you'll see why. *adds to Spotify playlist.

🎧 Get the audio

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A post shared by Aria Vale (@aria_vale09)

How to find trending audio on Instagram

Not loving any of the above options? No sweat: here’s a crash course on how to find trending sounds on Instagram Reels.

1. Use Instagram’s trending audio list: Check Instagram’s built-in leaderboard for the top 50 trending songs updated every few days. Find it when creating a post, story, or reel on the Instagram mobile app by tapping the music icon, then selecting ‘Trending.’ Save tracks for later with the bookmark icon.
2. Check the professional dashboard: If you have a professional account in the US, visit the Professional Dashboard on your profile, scroll to Tips and resources, and tap Trending audio for curated suggestions on Instagram Reels.
3. Look for the arrow icon: As you scroll reels, watch for an upward arrow next to audio tracks—that’s Instagram’s indicator that a sound is trending.
4. Follow Instagram’s Creators account: The @creators account shares regular updates on trending songs, editing tips for Instagram Reels, and feature announcements. Check out their IG Anthems highlight for more trending songs and trending sounds.
5. Check TikTok or YouTube Shorts for early trends: Many trending Instagram Reels sounds originate on TikTok or YouTube Shorts. Browse trending sounds there, then search for those tracks on Instagram to get ahead of the curve.

Don't forget about original audio

As you can see from some of the audio we've mentioned on the list, many creators are making waves with their own clips, and jumping on a trending original track can give your content an extra boost and help it stand out in feeds.

💡Pro tip: You can find trending original audio on your professional dashboard under the Original audio tab.

Happy posting with these trending Instagram songs!

You're well-equipped to find the next great trending audio on Instagram for your reels, carousels, or single-photo posts — and you've got several great tracks to put in your back pocket if you get stuck!

If you’ve created an Instagram Reel with one of these trending songs, we’d love to see it. Tag @buffer on Instagram so we can find you!

The first time I saw my client's brand in an AI answer, nobody had done anything to put it there.

I was working through one of the first exercises in an AirOps automation course, running a few prompts through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews to see what came back.

When I did, Perplexity mentioned CAT Electric Vision, a small firm that sells earthing and lightning surge protection equipment on the Romanian market, right in its answer. In ChatGPT, the same brand only showed up as a buried link in the sources panel.

The firm has been selling for three years, had a team with over a decade of experience, and I know it well because the client is a close relative. Like a lot of small, local businesses, they'd been doing fine on referrals, returning enterprise clients, and being found online. Content marketing came in bursts: an initial push to set up brand assets and a content strategy, then business would pick up, the online presence would slow down, and getting back to it meant a reconnecting phase each time.

Even so, the brand was already appearing in AI search without anyone working on it. It got me thinking: if it showed up organically, then with more effort behind it, maybe it could show up more often and across more engines?

That's what AEO (answer engine optimization) comes down to: working on how often AI engines mention you when someone asks a question you could answer. It's something most marketers don't have a system for yet, and neither did I.

I'm a generalist content marketer, and this pipeline was my first automation build. But I'm curious; I look for chances to upskill, and thanks to my course, I knew how to use AirOps, a content optimization tool. So I followed the thread: if people are asking AI engines questions the brand could answer, how do I find those questions?

What I ended up with is a content loop that runs about once a week. It checks what the brand has already published and how it performed, finds the questions where the brand is invisible in AI answers, checks whether the company has enough material to credibly answer them, and turns the best ones into writer-ready LinkedIn briefs that land in Buffer.

Here's how I built it (and what I'd keep in mind if you want to try something similar).

Why LinkedIn was the obvious place to start

Around the time I was running those prompt exercises, I kept coming across research on where AI engines pull their answers from, and LinkedIn came up again and again.

Semrush found that LinkedIn is the second-most-cited source across ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity, appearing in 11% of AI responses on average. For professional queries specifically, Profound found LinkedIn is the most cited domain across all six major AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

That second stat mattered most for this client. The people asking about surge protection are engineers, installers, and building owners — professional queries by definition. There's even data on what gets a LinkedIn post cited: Scrunch found that technical details raise the odds by 77% and named entities by 33%, while Unicode bold formatting lowers them by 58% on ChatGPT specifically. A small firm with deep technical expertise is well positioned for exactly that kind of post.

The firm also had a head start. They were already using LinkedIn to reach clients and had older material to build on. And LinkedIn posts take less effort to write than blog articles, which is ideal for a small team whose content marketing happens in bursts.

One decision I made early was to track brand mentions rather than citations. A citation is when an AI engine links to your post as a source; a mention is when it names your brand in the answer itself. Peec AI, the visibility tool I'll get to shortly, tracks the two separately. For a firm whose clients ask questions like "recommend a lightning protection system supplier in Romania," being named in the answer is a huge win.

📚 Why LinkedIn Is the Most-Cited Source in AI Search (and What Your Business Should Do Next)

The stack I landed on

The finished loop runs on four tools, each with one job:

• AirOps orchestrates the whole workflow and holds the company's Brand Kit and Knowledge Bases
• Peec AI tracks which AI prompts mention the brand, and which don't
• Buffer supplies the LinkedIn engagement data and is the editorial home where finished briefs are sent for the writer to review

Here’s why I chose each tool.

AirOps, the orchestration layer

AirOps was my introduction to automation, through the same education cohort where I ran those first prompt exercises. It can be an expensive tool, but the trial period covers an experimentation phase like this one, and it comes with an AI agent called Quill. I created the workflow by conversationally sharing my ideas with Quill and having it sort out the technical parts, which made the whole thing much less intimidating for a first build.

AirOps also helps you create a Brand Kit and Knowledge Bases inside the platform. Once the company's product pages, social posts, and YouTube transcripts were in one place, I became more aware of how much unused information the firm had, and I started exploring ways to turn it into content ideas.

Peec AI, for visibility data that covers the Romanian market

The deciding factor here was language. AirOps has its own Prompts feature, but it didn't support Romanian yet when I built the workflow. Scrunch focuses on English prompts too, and Profound and AthenaHQ, at first glance, are built for enterprise teams rather than a small firm experimenting.

Peec AI showed up in my LinkedIn feed one day, and it turned out to work well for the Romanian language and market I had in mind. They're headquartered in Germany, which might explain the local-market coverage, and there's a trial period as well.

Buffer, for engagement data and as the editorial home

The workflow only works as a loop if it can see how the last round performed. Buffer is a LinkedIn marketing partner, so engagement data for posts published through it comes back through Buffer's own API, the same one the workflow was already talking to.

Buffer picked up the second job once I saw that post ideas can land in the Create board through the API. I didn't want the writer tied to the workflow or needing AirOps access, and Buffer solved that without adding another layer like a Google Doc or a Notion board.

The Create board is structured like a kanban (a board of columns where work moves through stages), which matches how I'm used to seeing editorial work organized. Multiple writers can have access, an editor or the owner can approve posts before scheduling, and all of it stays separate from the automation itself.

How the workflow runs, end to end

The workflow runs once a week. Each run opens by checking what already happened — what got scheduled, what got posted, and how it performed — before deciding what to make next. From there, it works through four steps.

Step 1: Check what's already in motion

The AirOps Playbook agent connects to Buffer through the API to see what's already drafted or queued, so it doesn't create duplicate ideas. It also checks its own internal Grid, the workflow's memory of previous runs. Then it pulls engagement data for published LinkedIn posts through the same Buffer API, reads the dataset that comes back, and extracts reactions, comments, impressions, and reach for each post. Posts that performed well become signals for follow-up content.

This step replaces a person having to open the apps themselves or message team members to get up to date.

Step 2: Ask where the brand is invisible

Next, the agent connects to Peec AI through a token and pulls data in two passes. The first brings back the prompts themselves: text, topic, volume, and tags. The second brings the measurements: visibility, share of voice, sentiment, position, and how competitors show up for the same prompts.

Peec runs the tracked prompts daily across three AI engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews) and records whether the brand is mentioned in each answer, so a prompt's visibility score is the percentage of answers that mention it. The workflow flags a prompt as low visibility when it sits at 0% after at least seven days of tracking, drops under 20%, or falls 15 points or more in a month.

🖊️ In practice, the thresholds don't filter much yet, since the brand's overall visibility is 7% and nearly every prompt qualified at 0%. But this step will matter more as visibility grows.

In a nutshell, this step answers the question "Where are we invisible?" It replaces a marketer manually going through the prompts, doing data entry, and exporting CSVs.

Step 3: Map the gaps against what the company can credibly say

For each prompt, the agent searches the three Knowledge Bases: 390 older product pages, the company's social media posts, and YouTube transcripts. It checks whether the company has enough material to credibly answer each question; prompts with no supporting evidence get dropped, since without material to draw on, the idea would be hollow.

Surviving ideas get ranked on four factors: the size of the visibility gap, how often people ask the question, the strength of the Knowledge Base evidence, and whether competitors already own the answer space. Only the top five move forward, a limit I set on how much we can work on at once.

Then the agent pulls the Brand Kit rules (the LinkedIn post format, persona, audience profiles, and writing rules) and combines them into a single self-contained brief per prompt: topic, angle, audience, key points, brand positioning, verbatim source material, and format guidance.

Step 4: Land in Buffer as writer-ready briefs

The agent sends each brief to Buffer with a single API call, and it shows up in Ideas, inside the Create space. When the writer opens Buffer, an idea looks like this:

• Post idea: the topic, angle, which audience to write for, and a proposed day to schedule. For the idea in the screenshot, the agent targeted investors and building beneficiaries, flagged it as high priority, and proposed a Wednesday slot.
• AEO prompts targeted: the two Peec prompts the post is meant to answer, both at 0% visibility with medium volume.
• Key points: the substance of the post. This one suggests explaining that "installation included" is a marketing phrase, not a certification, and that a client should ask who designed the system and whether the project complies with the technical standard.
• Brand positioning: how to position the company as the answer: the certification stack, 2,500+ completed projects, and a manufacturer whose products are independently lab-tested.
• Products to name: two specific lightning rods.
• Source material: excerpts from older LinkedIn posts pulled from the knowledge base, so the writer draws on real product language.
• Post format: the Brand Kit rules are 50 to 299 words, no Unicode bold, link in the body, direct address, open with a direct statement. The no-Unicode rule comes straight from the earlier citation data.

On the next run, the agent checks whether the post went live, pulls its metrics from Buffer, and checks Peec again to see whether the brand is now mentioned for that prompt. That check is what closes the loop.

What's changed so far

It's too early for impressive numbers. The posts created from the pipeline's briefs are just going live, so there's no change in cadence or publish rate to report yet.

What has changed is that where my ideas used to stall in a brainstorming phase, they now arrive in Buffer as structured briefs, and the writer spends less time reviewing. We're not posting four times a week yet, but we have the capacity to.

On visibility, four of the five prompts the pipeline selected are no longer at 0% in Peec, and the posts weren't live yet, so I can't attribute the change to the pipeline. Not every visibility shift can be traced to new content, and it's useful to know that before you promise a client otherwise.

The clearest result so far is buy-in. Before this, AI search wasn't on the owner's radar; their focus was compliance, EU rules, and email campaigns. The experiment put AI search on the list, and that's a result in itself.

What I'm watching for next is whether the published posts move their prompts off 0%, and whether ideas from the pipeline make it to publish at a higher rate than ideas did before.

If you want to try something similar

You don't need this exact stack. The lighter-weight version looks like this:

1. Run the discovery exercise yourself. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews the questions your clients ask you, and note where the brand shows up and where it doesn't. The two questions to focus on: how is the brand mentioned in AI searches, and where are the engines failing to mention it when someone asks something relevant?
2. Centralize what the company can credibly say. I used AirOps' Brand Kit and Knowledge Bases, but a set of Notion pages or Google Drive docs works too: a company description, a product and service list, expertise areas, and your LinkedIn post format rules. With a Notion or Drive MCP connector, an LLM like Claude can pull from those docs and handle the orchestration.
3. Get prompt data, however it fits your budget. An AI visibility tool saves the manual work if it covers your language and market. If it doesn't, you can gather prompts yourself, for example with a Chrome add-on like ChatGPT Search.
4. Score the gaps with four questions. Are we invisible for this prompt, do people ask this type of question, can we back up an answer with real material, and are competitors already there? Drop anything you can't support with evidence.
5. Put the output where your writer already works. For me, that's Buffer's Create space through the API, so the review and publishing step needs no access to the automation at all.

Ready to build?

If you're taking Buffer's API for a spin, we've got resources to get you moving. Our developer docs cover the GraphQL schema, auth flow, and quick-start examples. The Buffer MCP server docs walk through plugging it into Claude or any MCP-compatible AI agent.

If you need hands-on help, our support team is around, or you can join our Discord server and chat to other people building with the API.

We'd love to hear about what you make. Find us in Discord, or @buffer on all major social channels.

I’m becoming a pretty prolific tool tester (seriously), and I’ve developed what I think is a fairly scientific approach when exploring a new one. I scour the website, dive headfirst into actually using it, and read the docs to get the details that may not be immediately obvious as I explore.

I did all these things when testing Loomly — so buckle up for a very thorough comparison!

If you’ve landed on this page, you’re either looking for Loomly alternatives or simply comparing social media management tools. Both Buffer and Loomly are great options. So which one should you choose?

There’s no “right” answer to this one; it depends on your team size, how many channels you manage, and which features you need.

Buffer is designed to be a flexible, affordable way for creators, small- to mid-sized businesses, and agencies to maintain their social media presence and build relationships with their networks.

Loomly is designed for teams — its pricing plans and approval workflows make this clear right from the start.

In this guide, I’ll compare the two platforms so you can see which one is right for you.

Key takeaways

• Buffer has a permanent free plan that includes three channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel (refillable once they’re published), an AI assistant, API and MCP access, and basic analytics. Loomly’s free plan includes three channels and a maximum of five posts per month across all channels.
• Buffer’s paid plans scale per channel; Loomly’s paid plans have fixed channel and user limits. Buffer’s Essentials plan is $6/channel per month for one user. Loomly’s lowest paid plan is the Starter plan at $65 per month for three users and 12 channels, regardless of how many channels you actually use. There’s no paid option below that for one person. 
• Buffer’s Team plan ($12/channel per month) includes unlimited users. Loomly’s Starter plan caps at three users. If you’re a team or agency that wants to add a fourth user (or more than 12 channels), you need the Beyond plan that goes straight to $332 per month.
• Buffer’s API is available on all plans including Free. Loomly has no public API for managing your social media presence. There is a status API for monitoring planned maintenance, but nothing for creating posts, pulling analytics, or connecting to external tools.
• Buffer’s AI Assistant is unlimited on all plans. Loomly caps AI usage on Starter with “limited monthly usage” but doesn't publish the actual number. On Loomly’s Free plan, you get "minimal monthly usage.”
• Buffer supports 12 platform types, including X/Twitter on all plans. Loomly supports 11, including Snapchat and a custom connection type.

Buffer vs. Loomly at a glance

Let’s dig into these a little more.

Plans and pricing

Before I go into what each tool costs, it’s worth flagging: Loomly increased its pricing in 2025, with some users reporting an increase of 400% for their plan. This comparison doesn’t go into whether that’s fair, and there are plenty of social media tools out there that cost just as much or more. But if that increase is what sent you looking for alternatives — or you just want a sense of what Buffer and Loomly may look like for your setup — I’ll cover that below.

Buffer pricing (billed monthly, annual saves 20%)

• Free: 3 channels, 1 user, 10 posts per channel (refillable at any time), AI Assistant (unlimited), analytics, API and MCP access, community inbox.
• Essentials: $6/channel per month. Unlimited posts, 1 user, advanced analytics, first comment scheduling, analytics exports.
• Team: $12/channel per month. Unlimited users, unlimited posts, approval workflows, custom permissions.

It’s worth a note that Buffer’s paid plans use tiered per-channel pricing that drops as you connect more channels — the more you manage, the lower your average cost per channel gets. I’ll show you what that looks like soon.

See Buffer’s full pricing guide here →

Loomly pricing (billed monthly, annual saves 25%)

• Free: 1 user, 3 social accounts, 1 calendar, 5 posts per month total, AI Assistant (minimal usage). A slot from the 5-post allowance becomes available again exactly one month from the date on which you created it.
• Starter: $65/month for three users, 12 social accounts, unlimited calendars, AI assistant (limited usage), scheduling, approval workflows, advanced analytics, basic social listening (2 queries/month), bulk posting, recurring posts.
• Beyond: $332/month for 60 social accounts, unlimited users, custom branding, scheduled analytics reports, extended AI usage, 5 social listening queries/month.
• Enterprise: custom pricing for more than 61 social accounts, unlimited users, and priority support.

A calendar on Loomly includes one account on each supported social channel. They’re a great way for agencies to keep clients’ social channels separate for planning, permissions, and analytics.

On the flip side, if you’re a solo creator or founder managing a LinkedIn company page and a profile, you’ll need the Starter plan so you can add each to a separate calendar.

See Loomly’s full pricing guide here → 

What this means in practice

Let’s look at how this plays out in a few different scenarios for a creator, small team, and an agency.

This volume is where Buffer’s tiered pricing comes into play. For 13 channels, you’re paying just over $10/channel per month. For 60, that number drops down to less than $5/channel per month.

If it comes down to price alone, Buffer is the stronger of the two in nearly every scenario (including the Free plans, because of the features available) except a small team with three users managing eight channels. If that’s you, Loomly is more attractive on cost.

This math is also simplified — it doesn’t take Loomly’s calendar setup into account. If you’re an agency managing four or more accounts on one platform for different clients, you’ll need to be on the Beyond plan even if you manage less than 12 channels in total.

Both Buffer and Loomly have free trials of their paid plans so you can test out the features for yourself. Buffer’s free trial is 14 days, with no credit card required. 

Loomly has a 7-day free trial. Once I was on the trial, some of the features available on the Starter plan — best time to post, bulk posting — prompted me to upgrade to Beyond (not Starter) and add credit card details before I could test them out. Loomly didn’t charge my card, but I won’t lie — I felt a little hoodwinked that I wasn’t able to get the full experience without adding card details, when the website says “No credit card required.” 😔

Scheduling and publishing

Buffer’s scheduling is low-friction: write a post, pick your channels, customize per platform in the same composer window, and schedule it or send it for approval. You can publish right away, pick a date and time, or slot it in the queue.

You can set different posting times for each channel, either picking the day and time yourself or using Buffer’s data-backed recommendations on the best times to post.

If you’re picking a custom time from the composer, Buffer’s recommended posting times show up there for you, too.

If you’re noodling on an idea that’s not yet ready to publish, you can store it in Buffer’s Create space. Think of it like your scratchpad, where you can jot down quick notes before you lose them and then flesh them out into full drafts. When you’re ready, move them to the scheduling workflow with one click.

Buffer also supports bulk scheduling up to 100 posts on paid plans (or 10, if you’re on the Free plan) by uploading a CSV file. Bulk scheduling works at the channel level, so if you need to bulk upload to multiple connected social channels, you’ll have to upload a different CSV file for each one.

Loomly organizes things a bit differently. Each calendar functions as its own workspace, and the posting slots are set at the calendar level for all connected channels. That means you can't set different times for LinkedIn and Instagram accounts on the same calendar. It’s not ideal, since the best times to post are pretty different for each platform. If you’re on a paid plan, you can select the best time to post from Loomly’s platform-specific suggestions while scheduling instead.

Loomly also supports bulk scheduling via a CSV file, but it’s limited to 60 rows per file and is only available on paid plans. Unlike Buffer, you can upload to multiple channels in one file. The CSV template also includes a column for what stage the post is in — draft, requires edits, pending approval, etc. — which is a nice touch for teams.

Loomly has a feature I really like when you’re customizing a post for a specific platform — you get live optimization tips that react to what you’re doing. On Threads, when I drafted a post without an image link, it flagged that posts with images perform better. The moment I added one, it flipped, responding to what was actually in the composer.

It’s worth keeping in mind that Loomly doesn’t pull in posts you publish directly on a platform or backfill posts when you connect a new channel. They show up in analytics and the inbox, but they’re missing from your calendar. Buffer syncs posts published natively and backfills posts when you connect a new channel. If you post across tools and want a complete content calendar in one place, that’s something you’ll get only on Buffer.

Loomly’s per-platform optimization tips are a really nice addition, but the posts that don’t sync in the calendar and generic posting slots make it feel like you’re working with a puzzle that’s missing some pieces. For day-to-day scheduling, Buffer is faster and gives you a complete picture of your social media presence.

Analytics and reporting

Buffer Insights are available on every plan and designed to help you make sense of your data. You get post-level, channel-level, and follower growth data in one dashboard for all your social channels. 

The insights go deeper for each individual channel with detailed metrics like reach, impressions, engagement rate, and comments. AI-powered takeaways analyze this data and share specific suggestions, like repurposing content that did well, or posting more often if you’ve been behind.

Because this is based on your actual data, you’ll see new takeaways every week that you can act on right away. If you’re on a paid plan, you can export your data in PDF formats to present to clients or stakeholders, or in CSV or Markdown formats for deeper analysis in a custom tool.

📍See Buffer’s full analytics breakdown →

Loomly’s analytics are available on all plans, although LinkedIn analytics are only available for company pages, not personal profiles. Basic analytics give you total and average numbers for post performance. 

Advanced analytics give you more detailed data, including follower growth, reposts, and link clicks. I'll be frank: getting to see them took a lot of waiting around. When I activated advanced analytics for Threads, it spent two hours trying to fetch data before I refreshed the page. It returned an error and asked me to reconnect the account, but nothing happened.

Eventually, three business days later, I finally had them — and they’re not accurate. The post-level data for Threads says I have three replies to a post, but the overview dashboard right above it says I have none.

Like Buffer, you can export your data from Loomly, too. Loomly offers exports in PDF or Excel formats. On the Beyond plan, you can auto-schedule up to three PDF reports per calendar. Either weekly or monthly, depending on what you choose, Loomly will automatically e-mail that report to up to 25 people.

Inbox and engagement

Buffer’s Community inbox is available on all plans, and it’s been a huge help for me to stay on top of conversations with my network. It tracks comments and mentions across all connected channels, so I can easily move from LinkedIn to Threads to Instagram conversations in one inbox instead of switching back and forth between platforms.

These are just the platforms I’m active on — it covers Facebook Pages, Instagram professional accounts, Threads, Bluesky, X/Twitter, LinkedIn profiles and pages, Google Business Profiles, TikTok, YouTube, and Mastodon.

You get AI reply suggestions for each comment to use as a starting point if you like, and you can save replies to questions you get most often. These saved replies are shared across your team, which helps everyone quickly answer questions like “What’s your refund policy?” without looking it up or typing the whole thing out again and again.

There’s also a Comment Score for the whole inbox plus each individual channel. It tracks how quickly and consistently the team responds — and shows you how you’re doing compared to the previous week — so you can stay on top of responses.

Loomly’s inbox is called Interactions, and it pulls in comments, mentions, and DMs from connected channels. It does the same thing Buffer does — help you stay on top of your conversations — but it’s set up very differently.

AI in these conversations takes the shape of auto-replies, and you can choose which channels to use them for. Select when to use them, whether they cover just the first reply or the full conversation, and which days of the week they’re active.

Setup happens in an AI Knowledge section where you add your support or help center URL for the AI to reference when it generates responses. You can even set a tone of voice and default translation language, and use the AI Replies Playground to test sample conversations before anything goes live.

This is a useful automation for anyone with a customer support-heavy inbox, especially if the questions you often get are specific enough that the AI can handle them accurately from your docs.

The inbox also lets you assign conversations so you can route a comment to a specific teammate. If you need to get input from someone with specific knowledge, or your support workflow is set up so one person manages conversations from start to finish, this is a handy feature to have.

For teams doing active community management and customer support, Loomly’s inbox has a meaningful edge. For solo users and teams where the goal is to stay on top of every comment and clear the inbox quickly, Buffer's inbox covers what's needed without the setup overhead.

Team collaboration

Buffer’s collaboration features live on the Team plan. Pricing is per channel, so you can have as many team members as you need at no additional cost.

You have full control over what permissions team members have: full access, needs approval, view only, or no access. A team member can have no access to LinkedIn and full access on Facebook, while needing approval on Instagram posts and view-only access to Instagram comments.

This granular permission setup makes it easy to invite clients and give them access to their channels. And because the Team plan comes with unlimited members, you can work easily with clients without increasing your cost right within Buffer.

The approval workflow is straightforward: when someone without posting access finishes a draft, they click “Submit for Approval,” and anyone with admin or full access to that channel can approve or reject. 

Team members — including clients — with access to the channel can leave comments on the draft, so all work happens within Buffer itself. It’s designed to make it easy to get posts out into the queue.

Loomly’s approval system goes considerably further. You can set up automated workflows where a post hitting a particular state — pending approval, requires edits — automatically gets assigned to one or more specific team members.

There’s also a feature called state guards, where you can require that multiple assigned people all take action before a post can move to the next state. If something is marked as pending approval and has state guard rules, it literally cannot be scheduled until everyone assigned to that workflow has signed off.

For high-stakes content in regulated industries or anything with legal review in the loop, that’s a level of control Buffer doesn’t offer. And it comes with a price tag that jumps a lot the moment you need more than three team members, clients included.

For a team that has strict rules around approvals, Loomly’s collaboration setup is stronger. For teams where approval is simpler, Buffer is easier to manage without the additional configuration.

AI features

Buffer and Loomly also offer AI features to help with publishing, engagement, and analytics. Where they differ is how you interact with them, and how much you can use them based on your plan.

Buffer’s AI Assistant for publishing posts is on every plan, including Free, with no cap. You can generate post ideas, write drafts, repurpose content — just tell it what your business is about and who the target audience for the post is, and it’ll spin up what you need. Customize it, and save it directly to your ideas board or as a draft in one click.

You’ll find AI-powered replies for every comment in the Community inbox on all paid plans, with the Free plan giving you five per week. We’ve heard it from our community members and experienced it ourselves — if you’re dealing with a large volume of comments to clear, they keep conversations moving without you needing to jump from one tool to another. And on Insights, you get weekly AI-powered takeaways that go through your performance data and come back with specific suggestions on what you can do next.

Loomly’s AI has more surface area, but it’s capped. You get “minimal” monthly usage on the Free plan and “limited” on Starter, which is shared across your calendars. I used it across a handful of idea and drafting sessions and went through 10% of my monthly credits in just one day. If you rely heavily on AI for content, you might find yourself running out of credits faster than you think.

What sets Loomly’s AI apart is the onboarding. During setup, Loomly analyzed my brand website and accurately pulled what I do, plus messaging and positioning guidelines based on the website to help the AI understand my voice. There’s an AI knowledge section in settings where, in addition to the information for auto-replies I shared above, you can add custom instructions to give Loomly more context about your brand.

Loomly’s AI works as a chat interface. You describe what you need and attach any files that may help, and it generates ideas or drafts for you, even searching the web when generating ideas. I like that you can pick up old conversations if there’s a topic you’d like to revisit.

If you use AI heavily and don’t want to worry about hitting any limits, Buffer’s AI has you covered. Loomly’s approach to defining and storing brand context can be incredibly useful when you’re managing multiple clients or brands — just keep an eye on the Starter cap.

API and MCP

The API is one area where Buffer and Loomly have completely different approaches.

Buffer’s API is available on all plans including Free, and the number of API keys and requests available depend on your plan. It’s incredibly easy to use, even if you’re non-technical. Many Buffer users (including me) have built automated publishing workflows and custom apps that handle everything from generating ideas to analyzing performance.

Buffer also has an MCP server. You can connect it to AI tools like ChatGPT and Raycast for building automated content workflows where you can ask what's scheduled, draft and schedule posts, or pull performance data without leaving the tool you’re already working in.

Loomly does have an API, but it’s a status API only. It exposes planned maintenance states and incident data, so you could build a Slack alert for when Loomly goes down (or will be down). That’s the full extent of it. You can’t create posts, pull analytics, manage content, or interact with your account in any way, and there’s no MCP either.

Social listening

Loomly includes social listening on all paid plans, and how many queries you get depends on the plan you’re on. You select which connected profiles to run it on, hit “Run Social Listening,” and Loomly gives you a detailed breakdown of topics and themes plus sentiment analysis that goes beyond just positive, neutral, and negative.

This sounds really good in theory. In practice, I didn’t get a result I could use. I ran it on both my connected accounts — Threads and LinkedIn — and the themes it surfaced had nothing to do with what I actually post about. Apparently I have poor makeup skills (rude!) and post children’s photos publicly. On the plus side, it seems I have great dancing skills and my video production quality is high.

In reality, my LinkedIn posts are mostly about content marketing, operations, freelancing, or macOS tips. On Threads, I post a lot about music, TV shows, and swimming. No children appear anywhere in the mix, and I post maybe one video a year.

I’ll give Loomly the benefit of the doubt — my first and last name combination is common enough that it may be pulling in content from other people who share it. But my accounts are linked, and it claims to be analyzing interactions with those accounts specifically. Either way, my results weren’t something I could act on.

Buffer doesn’t offer social listening as a feature. But based on my testing, Loomly’s social listening isn’t a feature you can currently rely on in its current state.

Supported platforms and integrations

Both Buffer and Loomly cover the core platforms most teams need, with a handful of gaps on both sides.

Loomly’s custom channel feature lets you connect to a platform it doesn’t support, like Reddit or even a newsletter. Unlike with supported channels, you can’t auto-publish posts to a custom channel. Instead, Loomly will send you an email at the scheduled time. You can either manually publish or use a Zapier automation if the custom channel has a Zapier integration.

Loomly also connects with Zapier, Slack, Teams, Canva, Giphy, Google Drive, and Unsplash. Buffer covers all of those except Giphy, and goes further — tools like n8n, Raycast, and Notion via MCP, plus Dropbox and OneDrive for media storage, Google Photos, and IFTTT and Make for automation, among others.

Who should pick which tool

Creators and solopreneurs

Pick Buffer. The pricing alone settles it. Loomly’s paid plans start at $65 per month, whether you want 12 channels and two more users or not. If you’re managing fewer than 10 channels, Buffer’s Essentials plan at $6/channel per month works out much lighter on the wallet. Buffer's Free plan is more generous too: 10 posts per channel (refillable) versus Loomly's five posts per month total across all connected channels. Loomly simply isn’t priced for solo users.

Small businesses and growing teams

It depends. Buffer’s per channel pricing is flexible, meaning you pay for only the channels you need, whether you have two users or 10. Loomly’s pricing is fixed and depends on your channels and users. The fourth user or 13th channel takes you straight from the $65 per month Starter plan to the $332 per month Beyond plan. If you’re fewer than three people and managing 12 channels and less — and you won’t grow beyond this — then Loomly’s Starter plan is cheaper. If you’re growing or plan to grow, Buffer is the stronger long-term bet.

Marketing agencies

Pick Buffer. At 13+ channels, Buffer’s per-channel pricing scales better than Loomly’s flat rate (60 channels on Buffer Team works out to $275 per month vs. Loomly Beyond at $332 per month). Buffer’s API and MCP support let you build content workflows and connect to AI tools. Loomly’s features are definitely agency-friendly — calendars per client, role-based access, structured workflows, custom branding on Beyond. But the pricing jump from three users to four and 12 channels to 13, plus needing an Enterprise plan if you manage more than 60 channels, undercuts it for anything above a small agency.

Enterprise teams

Neither tool fits the bill for enterprise needs. Buffer isn’t designed for enterprise teams, and that’s a deliberate decision on our part. Loomly has an Enterprise tier and features like structured approval workflows, inbox assignment, social listening, and advanced analytics — but the latter two were completely unusable in testing. If you’re looking for a platform for enterprise social operations, it’s worth comparing evaluating Loomly against tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite that compete in this category.

The bottom line

For most people reading this — solo creators, growing teams, agencies, anyone who builds workflows or posts to X — Buffer is the stronger fit. The per-channel pricing scales with how you actually use it, the free plan is usable, and the API and MCP open up automation options that Loomly just doesn’t offer.

Loomly earns its price tag for a specific situation: a team of fewer than three people who need structured, multi-step content approvals, aren’t posting to X, and manage up to 12 channels. Within that window, the collaboration features are strong and the flat-rate pricing is competitive. Outside of it, the math stops working quickly.

Both tools have free plans and paid plan trials, so if you’re still on the fence, the best way to decide is to try them out and see which one works better for you. We’d love for you to try Buffer. Sign up to use our free plan or to test paid plans for free, no credit card required.

Frequently asked questions

Does Loomly have a free plan?

Yes, but it’s not advertised. Loomly’s free plan is only visible inside the billing section of your account after you sign up. It's limited to 1 user, 3 social accounts, 1 calendar, and 5 posts per month total across all channels. Bulk posting and best time to post data is not available on Loomly’s free plan, and there’s minimal monthly usage of the AI features. Buffer’s free plan gives you 1 user, 3 channels, and 10 posts per channel (refillable at any time), plus bulk posting, best time to post data, and unlimited use of the AI assistant (AI reply suggestions are capped at 5 per week). It’s meaningfully more generous for anyone just getting started.

How much does Loomly cost per month?

Loomly has three paid plans: Starter is priced $65/month on monthly billing or $49/month on annual billing, covering 12 social channels and up to 3 users. Beyond includes unlimited users and up to 60 social channels at $332/month monthly or $249/month annually. Enterprise pricing is custom for 61 or more accounts. 

Which is cheaper, Buffer or Loomly?

It depends on your team size and channel count. Both tools have Free plans. For creators and solo users who want more advanced features, it depends on how many channels you’re managing. Buffer’s Essentials plan starts at $6/channel per month. Loomly has no paid plan for solo users, and its Starter plan for teams is priced at a flat rate of $65 per month for up to 12 channels and 3 team members.

For teams of up to 3 people managing up to 12 channels, Loomly’s Starter plan costs $65 per month. Buffer’s Team plan pricing starts at $12/channel per month, with tiered per-channel pricing for teams managing a large number of social channels. Add a fourth user and Loomly jumps to $332 per month. Buffer Team has unlimited users, so adding a fourth — or 40th — user won’t increase your bill.

Does Loomly support X/Twitter?

No, Loomly doesn’t support X/Twitter on any plan. If posting to X is part of your workflow, Loomly isn't the right tool. Buffer supports X/Twitter on all plans including Free.

Does Loomly have an API?

Loomly has a status API for monitoring planned maintenance and incidents, but there’s no public API for creating posts, managing content, pulling analytics, or building integrations. Buffer’s API and MCP are available on all plans including Free.

Is Loomly good for agencies?

It depends on scale. The custom roles and approval workflows can be useful for agencies. But pricing jumps sharply once you need more than 3 users or 12 channels, from $65 per month straight to $332. Custom Enterprise rates kick in if you need more than 60 channels. For small agencies with a tight client set, Loomly can work. For anything larger, Buffer’s tiered per channel pricing, unlimited users, and API access make it the stronger long-term option.

Every September, our Discord fills up with a version of the same message: "I fell off. How do I start again?"

So Creator Camp is back on the consistency beat, the format this whole program was built on.

Creator Camp: Consistency edition is a free, four-week challenge for creators who want to build a posting habit. It runs August 31 to September 25, and sign-ups are open.

Ready to grow? Sign up below

What is Creator Camp: Consistency?

Consistency is for anyone who's starting, restarting, or stuck and whose problem is keeping a regular posting rhythm.

Every prompt hands you a specific memory to dig into instead of a topic to brainstorm. Not "share a lesson from your career." More like:

• The unglamorous task that holds your week together.
• The part of your work you'd never hand to AI.
• What looks like procrastination but isn't.

None of them reference a platform or a job title. That way, a freelance illustrator and a B2B marketing manager can both answer prompt six and end up with completely different posts.

The four weeks

• Week 1: Beginnings (Aug 31 to Sept 4). Early jobs, mentors, the person who gave you a chance before you were ready.
• Week 2: How the work works (Sept 7 to 11). Routines, judgment calls, how you know something is finished.
• Week 3: The unfinished and the unflattering (Sept 14 to 18). Mistakes, feedback that stung and turned out to be right, the thing you're still working on.
• Week 4: Saying the real thing (Sept 21 to 25). The fuller answer to the question you get asked constantly, the time you asked for more, the win you're weirdly proud of.

How it works

• Weekly drops in the Template Library. Every Sunday, you'll get the five action prompts for that week, dropped all at once, so you can plan ahead. Open Buffer, head to Create → Templates, and they'll be waiting.
• Daily prompts in Discord. The same five prompts also drop daily in the #creator-camp channel, so the cohort moves together. Share your post link, react to other Campers' work, and swap notes on what's landing.
• Weekly check-ins. Every Friday, we do a pulse check in Discord. How did the week feel? What worked? What didn't?
• Mid-camp happy hour on Zoom, September 16. Camera optional, no agenda slides, open Q&A.
• A friendly Discord cohort. This is still the heart of Camp. The whole thing works because there's a group of creators doing the same actions in the same week. You're not posting into the void.

How much time do I need?

Most Campers will spend 30 minutes a day doing the action, writing the post, and checking in with the cohort. Some prompts take less. A few take longer if you spend more time reflecting.

If you tack on the mid-camp happy hour and the Friday check-ins, you're looking at about two to three hours a week, total.

Ready to make posting a habit?

Camp opens August 31 and runs through September 25, and it's free.

Here's what happens when you sign up:

1. Fill out the Typeform. It takes about 30 seconds.
2. You'll get a welcome email with Discord access and a few pre-Camp notes.
3. On August 31, your first prompt drops in Discord and the Week 1 templates go live in Buffer's Template Library.

That's it. Show up, take action, post the receipts, and share with the cohort.

See you at Camp.

Share the invite

Know a creator who's been asking themselves the same growth question? Send this blog post their way. The bigger the cohort, the better the conversations in Discord.

More resources

• 7 Simple Habits to Help You Flex the Content Creation Muscle
• Our Community — drop into Buffer's Discord any time, Camp or no Camp.

They say comparison is the thief of joy, but I’d argue that comparison (when done right) can be one of the core ingredients of social media success. It can help you understand what keeps your social media audience coming back.

Here’s a list of the 11 best competitor analysis tools to help you get detailed data on your competitors, analyze trends they use, and get a clearer picture of competitor performance benchmarked against yours. These picks span social media monitoring, SEO analysis, audience research, and brand tracking, so there’s something here no matter where you focus your efforts.

Key takeaways

• Best for YouTube channels: vidIQ — free plan covers 150 AI Credits every month, paid from $19/month with 2,000 AI Credits
• Best on a tight budget: Social Status — competitor analytics from $9/month
• Best for SEO gaps: Ahrefs — free tier available, paid from $29/month
• Best for tracking every channel at once: Competitors App — from $29.90 per competitor per month
• Best for audience research: SparkToro — 3 free reports a month, paid from $50/month
• Best for cross-network social benchmarking: Socialinsider — from $99/month
• Best for website traffic and market share: Similarweb — from $125/month
• Best for search and AI visibility: Semrush — free plan available, paid from $139/month
• Best for trending content: BuzzSumo — from $199/month
• Best for agency reporting: Rival IQ — from $239/month
• Best for brand mentions: Brand24 — from $249/month
• Cheapest way to start: vidIQ, SparkToro, Ahrefs, Semrush, and Social Status all offer free accounts, although competitor-analysis features vary by plan.

The 11 best competitor analysis tools compared

Here's how the 11 tools compare in terms of coverage, free access, and entry price. Rows are ordered from cheapest to most expensive.

Pricing verified August 2026. Annual billing, taxes, promotional discounts, add-ons, seats, and usage-based charges may change the final cost.

What is a competitor analysis tool?

A competitor analysis tool is software that collects and reports public data about your competitors (their social posts and engagement, search rankings, ads, email campaigns, brand mentions, and audience), so you can benchmark your own performance against theirs.

Most fall into one of four categories:

• Social media monitoring: engagement, follower growth, mentions, and post performance
• SEO analysis: organic keywords, backlinks, estimated traffic, and content gaps
• Direct marketing tracking: email campaigns, SMS, and paid ads
• Competitive intelligence: market positioning, funding, headcount, and historical performance

Knowing which category you need is the fastest way to avoid paying for features you'll never use.

Do you need a competitor analysis tool?

You don't always need a tool for competitor analysis. If you're in the early stages of forming your social media marketing strategy, I'd argue you don't need to focus on what your competitors are doing at all. Focus on refining your systems, creating a solid content calendar, and building a community. Watching what the competition is doing comes later, if it comes at all.

Manual competitor analysis

If you're on a tight budget, you can skip the software entirely:

1. Identify your top three direct competitors.
2. Find gaps in their strategy or product offerings.
3. Meet your audience's needs better, based on those gaps.

It's also worth learning to audit your own accounts first. Most of what a competitor tool tells you only makes sense once you know your own numbers.

How to choose the right competitor analysis software

Look for a tool that shows you more than your direct rivals. You'll need the big picture too. Think broader trends, even outside your industry) and the ability to surface patterns across more than one of your channels.

The weird thing about social media is that, in a way, everyone is your competition. Not just the top ten industry leaders. Every creator and small business wants a slice of their audience's limited attention.

Go deep on your direct competitors by all means, but the more interesting ideas usually come from outside your niche. If every skincare brand is running the same three formats, the one worth copying is probably running in food, or fitness, or somewhere you're not looking.

Here's what I looked at when I put this list together:

• Does it show you broader trends, or only the competitors you name? A tool that reports on five companies you already watch will keep you making the same content they do.
• How many marketing channels does it cover? Most of these tools are on the expensive side. I've included cheaper single-channel options where they're worth it, but the picks near the top cover more than one thing: organic traffic, paid campaigns, and social engagement in the same dashboard.
• Can you get something useful out of it the same afternoon? Nobody wants to sit through another onboarding call because the software is too complicated to work out alone. I've favored tools you can sign up for and get a first report from without a demo.
• Does it cover the type of analysis you actually need? See the four categories above. Paying for competitive intelligence when what you wanted was engagement benchmarking is the most common way to waste money here.
• Does it track AI search visibility? AI search visibility is becoming a super helpful part of competitor research. Availability and depth vary by tool and plan, so check the current feature set before choosing one.

👀 Before you look at that pricing column and panic: four of these start at $139 a month or more, and they're priced for teams with a reporting line to answer to. If you're a solo creator or running social for a small business, vidIQ's free tier and SparkToro's three monthly reports will cover most of what you need, and our free competitor analysis guide covers the rest with a spreadsheet.

Right, onto the tools.

1. vidIQ: best competitor analysis tool for YouTube

Best for: YouTube competitor tracking

Channels covered: YouTube

Free option: Free plan with 150 AI Credits every month

Pricing: From $19/month (Boost)

Alternatives: TubeBuddy, Tubular

Top features:

• Track a competitor's subscriber growth, best-performing videos, and views per hour
• Has a Chrome extension for easy and convenient competitor analysis
• Export competitors’ keywords in a few clicks

vidIQ is a YouTube tool through and through. It can help you find keyword ideas, create video thumbnails, and audit your competitors’ channels against yours.

For a competitor analysis, all you have to do is enter your competitors’ channel(s), and vidIQ will analyze and compare your YouTube channel’s performance with theirs. You'll get a list of their best-performing videos, and from there you can sort by views per hour (VPH), publish date, total views, and engagement.

What I love about vidIQ is that you can find evergreen topics for your YouTube videos by spotting patterns in your competitors’ VPH metrics. If you're a productivity creator and every competitor's "time management" video is still climbing three years on, that's a topic that will always be relevant for your audience.

vidIQ is the right pick if YouTube is your main channel and you want competitor data without paying for a platform that also covers five networks you don't use.

2. Social Status: best cheap competitor analysis tool for solo creators

Best for: Competitor analytics on the smallest budget that still works

Channels covered: All major social networks

Free option: Free plan, but it excludes competitor analytics

Pricing: Competitor analytics starts on Micro at $9/month

Alternatives: Socialinsider, Rival IQ

Top features:

• Benchmark your likes, comments, and shares against named competitors
• Cross-network reporting without an agency price tag
• Exportable reports on the lower tiers, not just enterprise

Social Status is the cheapest entry point in this list, and it's the one I'd point a solo creator at first. It benchmarks your performance against competitors on the basic metrics (likes, comments, shares, follower growth) across the major networks.

The free plan does not include competitor analytics, so the real starting price is $9. And the interface is noticeably plainer than Rival IQ's, which matters if you're putting screenshots in front of a client.

Social Status suits creators and small businesses who want competitor numbers in a spreadsheet-style tool and don't need the reporting polish they'd pay four times as much for elsewhere.

3. Ahrefs: best SEO competitor analysis tool for backlink and keyword gaps

Best for: Finding the keywords and backlinks your competitors have, and you don't

Channels covered: SEO, PPC, AI search

Free option: Ahrefs Free, limited Site Explorer and Site Audit

Pricing: From $29/month (Starter)

Alternatives: Semrush, Moz

Top features:

• Content Gap shows the terms competitors rank for, and you don't
• Backlink profiles for any domain, including who links to your rivals and not you
• Brand Radar tracks how often you and your competitors appear in AI answers

Ahrefs earns its place for anyone whose competitors are winning on search and who wants to know exactly which pages and links are doing it. You can monitor a competitor's organic traffic, pinpoint content gaps, and take some of that search traffic for yourself.

There's a free tier, and the paid entry point is $29/month with the Starter plan, which puts serious SEO competitor data within reach of a solo marketer for the first time. Ahrefs also offers Brand Radar AI as a separate add-on, starting at $199/month for a single AI platform.

4. Competitors App: best competitor monitoring tool for every marketing channel at once

Best for: Watching social, email, ads, and SEO for the same competitor in one place

Channels covered: Social, email, PPC, SEO

Free option: No free plan; 15-day trial

Pricing: From $29.90 per competitor per month (currently discounted to $14.95)

Alternatives: Similarweb, Mention

Top features:

• Track your competitors’ social media, email marketing, paid traffic, PPC research, and keyword tracking
• Monitor competitors’ reviews to adjust your brand positioning
• Get all the competitor research delivered to your inbox

Competitors App covers a lot of ground. You can get a detailed view into every single one of your competitors, including their website changes, PPC campaigns for Google Ads, competitor email campaigns, and keyword rankings. It's added AI summaries and sales battle cards since I last looked, though it has no AI-search visibility tracking.

Competitors App is a great fit if you’re managing multiple marketing channels (think social media, email, and SEO) and want all your competitor data in one place. Enter your competitor websites, and the software will do real-time monitoring for you.

The pricing model is the catch: $29.90 is per competitor per month, so tracking five rivals is $149.50 before you've added a second seat. Worth doing the arithmetic before the trial ends.

5. SparkToro: best competitor research tool for audience insights

Best for: Working out where your competitors' audience already spends time

Channels covered: Audience, search, podcasts, newsletters, social

Free option: Free plan, 3 reports a month (preview data only)

Pricing: From $50/month (Personal)

Alternatives: Audiense, YouScan

Top features:

• Shows the podcasts, newsletters, and accounts a competitor's audience follows
• Finds advertising opportunities by mapping where that audience actually is
• Surfaces the search keywords your audience uses

SparkToro is technically an audience research tool, but it doubles as a seriously useful competitive intelligence platform, especially for small and medium businesses.

Comprehensive data about your audience is one of the most crucial parts of a cohesive social media strategy. The problem? You don't have an audience when you're starting out. You're at zero followers. How do you understand your audience then? You borrow someone else's. Your competitors' audience is, more or less, your audience; they just found them first.

Enter a competitor's website and SparkToro tells you which podcasts their audience listens to, which newsletters they subscribe to, and which accounts they already follow. That last one is the useful bit — it's a ready-made list of people to study, or to pitch.

That's pretty helpful for social listening when you're still building a community, though if listening is the main job you want, dedicated social listening tools will go deeper.

One caveat worth knowing: the free tier is narrower than it used to be, with three reports a month, preview data only. And the data thins out fast for niches with small online audiences.

6. Socialinsider: best social media competitor analysis tool for cross-network benchmarking

Best for: Comparing your social performance with named competitors and industry averages

Channels covered: All major social networks

Free option: No free plan; 14-day trial, no card

Pricing: From $99/month (Adapt)

Alternatives: Rival IQ, Social Status

Top features:

• Competitor benchmarking included on every plan, not just the top tier
• Cross-network comparison in a single report
• Industry averages to check whether a bad month is you or the platform

Socialinsider is the sensible middle option for in-house social teams who need real benchmarking without an agency budget. It sits in the gap between Social Status and Rival IQ — more depth than the budget option, roughly a third of the price of the agency one. Competitor benchmarking is on every plan, which is not true of most tools here.

7. Similarweb: best competitor website analysis tool for traffic and market share

Best for: Estimating how much traffic a competitor's website gets and where it comes from

Channels covered: Web, referral, search, apps

Free option: Free trial (length not published)

Pricing: From $125/month

Alternatives: SpyFu, Semrush

Top features:

• Traffic estimates and traffic sources for any domain
• Market share and audience overlap against a set of competitors
• Referral and channel breakdown, including which partners send them visitors

Similarweb answers a different question from everything else here: not "what are they posting" but "is it working". It estimates a competitor's website traffic, where that traffic comes from, and how much of the category they hold.

For a social-first reader, the most useful view is the referral breakdown. It shows you which social networks are actually sending a competitor visitors, rather than which ones they post on most. Those are often not the same network, and it's a cheap way to find out you've been investing in the wrong channel.

For what it's worth: The estimates are estimates, and they're least reliable for small sites, so treat the numbers as directional at best.

Similarweb is worth it if you're benchmarking a business against named competitors and need traffic and market-share figures rather than engagement metrics.

8. Semrush: best competitor analysis tool for SEO competitive analysis

Best for: Seeing a competitor's whole search presence, including AI search

Channels covered: SEO, PPC, social, AI search

Free option: Free plan (1 project, no card); 7-day trial on paid plans

Pricing: From $139/mo (SEO plan); $117.33/mo billed annually. Starter $199, Pro+ $299

Alternatives: Ahrefs, Phlanx

Top features:

• Benchmark your website traffic against competing domains and find keyword gaps
• Social media tracker for competitor content and audience growth
• AI visibility tracking across Google AI, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, built into paid plans

Semrush is one of the top SEO competitor analysis tools. Although it also has a social media tracker to keep tabs on your competitors' social media activity, it’s best suited for businesses with a search engine optimization strategy.

You can benchmark your website traffic against competing websites, find keyword gaps, and get an in-depth analysis of your competitors’ ads. Semrush has also expanded into market analysis and AI brand sentiment tracking, so you can get a broader view of how competitors are positioned — not just in search, but across their entire digital presence. 

In social media, you can track your competitors’ content and audience growth. Semrush also provides valuable insights about the most successful hashtags, posts, and accounts in your niche.

All you have to do is add your and your competitors’ social media profiles. Even if you enter just their domain name, Semrush will try to find their profiles across social networks. You can view their top posts, most popular hashtags, and dive deep into multiple social networks.

Semrush is perfect for any creator or business with a strong SEO content strategy. Its SEO competitor research features are powerful, but it doesn’t go that deep into social media competitor strategies. You can work both in tandem and do a combined competitor analysis.

9. BuzzSumo: best competitor content analysis tool for trending posts and shares

Best for: Finding which of a competitor's content actually travels

Channels covered: Blogs, content, Facebook Pages

Free option: No free plan

Pricing: From $199/month (Content Creation)

Alternatives: Brandwatch, Meltwater

Top features:

• See which of a competitor's posts and articles earned the most shares
• Spot content trends and engagement patterns over time
• Compare up to 10 competitor Facebook Pages (on the PR & Comms plan)

BuzzSumo is a content marketing tool at its core, but its features lend themselves well to competitor analysis, too. You can quickly analyze your competitors’ content and check out what’s working well for them: Which blogs are getting the most social media shares? Which social channel is working the best?

It also compares Facebook Pages, but the comparison is capped at 10 pages and sits on the $299/month PR & Comms plan, not the $199 entry tier. And Meta deprecated deep post-level Facebook analysis back in 2020, so what you get now is page-level aggregate trends rather than a breakdown of individual competitor posts. If Facebook Pages are your main channel, know what you're buying before you upgrade.

BuzzSumo suits content teams who need to know which topics travel in their category, not just how a rival's social accounts are performing. At $199/month, this is hard to justify for competitor content research alone. It earns its keep if you're also using it for your own content planning and keyword research from the same subscription.

10. Rival IQ: best social media competitor analysis tool for agency reporting

Best for: Benchmarking reports you're going to put in front of a client

Channels covered: All major social networks

Free option: No free plan; 14-day trial, no card. Free head-to-head reports available without a subscription

Pricing: From $239/month (Drive)

Alternatives: Socialinsider, Social Status

Top features:

• Get notified every time a competitor posts on social media
• Compare your social media performance with industry averages
• Receive raw data on market position, too

Rival IQ is a bit like a social media management tool that doubles as the most thorough competitor analysis tool in this list. It tracks competitors' social media bios, organic posts, boosted posts, hashtags, and follower growth, and flags when any of them change.

You can set up alerts to get notified every time a competitor posts on their social media channels. Even more usefully, you can compare your own performance against industry benchmarks alongside specific competitors. (Industry-average benchmarking is the feature agencies actually pay for here — it's what turns a screenshot into a client report.)

At $239 per month, Rival IQ is especially well-suited for social media managers and agencies that need to deliver benchmarking reports, whether for a single brand or multiple clients. You get a comprehensive dashboard full of focus companies (your direct competitors) and industry averages.

11. Brand24: best competitor monitoring software for brand mentions

Best for: Knowing what people say about your competitors, and where

Channels covered: Social, web, news, AI search

Free option: No free plan; 14-day trial, no card

Pricing: From $249/month (Individual)

Alternatives: Meltwater, Mentionlytics

Top features:

• Track mentions and reach for any competitor keyword
• See which of their content and topics earns the most conversation
• Sentiment analysis on how people talk about them

Brand24 is an AI-powered monitoring tool for keeping tabs on competitor activity like mentions, reach, and best-performing content. Enter the keywords you want to watch, and it handles the social media monitoring for you, showing where a competitor gets most of its mentions and how people feel about them.

It's also added Chatbeat, an AI-visibility add-on starting at $99/month on top of a subscription, which tracks how you and your competitors appear in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, and Perplexity. That's a real differentiator in this list, though the add-on pricing stings on top of an already expensive plan.

Brand24 is worth the money if reputation and share of voice are what you're actually measuring, rather than post performance.

Know when to close the tab

It's easy to get swayed by competitor research, getting overly invested in a rival's growth or decline, comparing your metrics with theirs, constantly checking what they're up to.

We're a bit wary of competitor analysis at Buffer, if we're honest. Not because it doesn't work (it does), but because it's the easiest kind of work to hide in. Checking a rival's follower count feels productive in a way that writing your ninth draft doesn't.

So here's the test worth applying: after a competitor analysis session, can you name one thing you'll do differently this week? If yes, the tool earned its money. If you just feel vaguely behind, close the tab. That feeling has never once made anyone's content better.

If you've got a tool on this list working well for you or you've tried one and bounced off it, I'd like to know which. Come and tell me what I got wrong.

FAQ about competitor analysis tools

What is the best way to do competitor analysis?

Pick three to five direct competitors, choose the two or three metrics that actually map to your goals, and track those on a fixed schedule rather than watching everything at once. A workable monthly loop: record each competitor's follower growth, engagement rate, and top three posts; note any new campaign, pricing change, or positioning shift; then write down one thing you'll do differently.

Tools make this faster, but the cadence matters more than the software. An inconsistent analysis with an expensive tool loses to a consistent one done by hand. Our full walkthrough with a downloadable template covers the whole process.

What are some effective SEO tools for competitor analysis?

Semrush (free plan, paid from $139/month) and Ahrefs (free tier, paid from $29/month) are the two most widely used. Both show a competitor's organic keywords, estimated traffic, backlink profile, and paid ads, and both surface keyword gaps (terms your competitors rank for and you don't).

Semrush has the broader marketing toolkit, including a social tracker; Ahrefs is stronger for backlink and content-gap research. Moz and SE Ranking are cheaper alternatives worth a look, and Similarweb answers the adjacent question of how much traffic a competitor's site gets overall. SEO competitor analysis and social competitor analysis are different jobs, and very few tools do both well.

How do you use ChatGPT for competitor analysis?

ChatGPT can’t pull live data directly from competitor websites, but it’s a useful thinking partner throughout the research process. You can ask it to:

• Help you build a competitor analysis framework or template
• Summarize publicly available information, like a competitor’s product page or pricing copy
• Spot patterns in data you’ve already gathered
• Generate questions to guide your research

For real-time metrics like traffic, keyword rankings, and brand mentions, you’ll still need a dedicated tool like Semrush or Brand24. Think of ChatGPT as a research assistant, not a data source.

What's the difference between competitor monitoring and competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis is a point-in-time assessment: You look at where a rival stands today and decide what it means. Competitor monitoring is continuous and alert-driven, telling you when something changes. Most of the tools here lean one way: Competitors App, Brand24, and Mention monitor, while SparkToro, Similarweb, and Semrush analyze. Rival IQ and Socialinsider both do this, which is part of what you're paying for. If you only look at competitors once a quarter, you want an analysis tool, and you're wasting money on alerts.

Which tools track competitors in AI search and AI Overviews?

This is the fastest-moving part of the category, and coverage is uneven. As of August 2026:

• Semrush has some AI visibility built into paid plans, but also sells AI Visibility as its own $99/month toolkit
• Ahrefs sells Brand Radar AI as a separate product from $199/month
• Brand24 offers Chatbeat as a $99/month add-on
• Meltwater shipped AI Visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot, and Cision added AI Search Visibility to its stack
• Rival IQ, Competitors App, Socialinsider, Social Status, vidIQ, and BuzzSumo have nothing here yet

Can I do competitor analysis without paid tools?

Yes. If you’re just starting out or working with a tight budget, you don’t need a paid subscription to gather useful competitive insights. You can manually review competitors’ social media profiles, website copy, and content strategy to spot patterns and gaps.

If you want some data without committing to a paid plan, a couple of the tools on this list offer free tiers: SparkToro (three free reports per month) and vidIQ, which also has a free plan.

For a step-by-step walkthrough, Buffer’s free competitor analysis guide includes a downloadable template to help you get started without any tools at all.

Last updated: 25 August 2026 · Tools reviewed: 11 picks and 14 alternatives · Pricing verified: August 2026

More social media marketing resources

• Buffer vs. Hootsuite: Which Social Media Management Tool Is Better For You?
• The Best Social Media Scheduling Tools (+ How to Find the Perfect Fit)
• The 11 Best Social Media Management Tools — Tried + Tested
• 13 Best URL Shorteners to Shrink Your Links
• Buffer vs. Meta Business Suite: How Do They Compare?
• Top 11 Social Media Engagement Tools to Build Your Community

Last week, 72 people at Buffer stopped their regular work and spent the week building.

It was our third company Build Week, and our most impressive, with 112 projects completed.

This Build Week was different for us. In previous years, we’d pair into teams to work on a few pre-selected projects. This time around, we decided to have each person use AI to assist them with building and have everyone direct their own project. This allowed everyone to follow their own learning path while still leaning on experts across the company.

By Friday: 57 new internal tools live on our own domain, from 41 different people. 1,083 pull requests merged across 26 repositories. 15 changes shipped into our admin product. Six people merged their first-ever pull request. And many more ‘side quests’ were completed.

It was a monumental week for Buffer, and this post is a recap of everything we built. We’ll be sharing a bit more about Build Week in the coming weeks — reach out to us on social if you have a specific question.

1. Work someone was repeating every week

• Customer Advocacy Scheduling by Hannah. Replaces our Advocacy coverage spreadsheet and an old Slack command, pulling approved time off so the grid shows who's genuinely online. Its best feature is one a spreadsheet could never have: everyone can read the whole thing in their own time zone.
• Buffer Love, in the Wild by Sabreen. A wall of real things customers have said about Buffer — paste a link, drop in a screenshot, and it fills in the quote, the summary, and the features they praised.
• Content Calendar by Kirsti. One hub for everything the Content team publishes, bringing blogs, newsletters, and social together with month, pipeline, and agenda views. Card tints deepen and fade with a piece's status, and you can push social posts straight into the Buffer queue.
• Ensemble by Juliet. The control center for Customer Office Hours, replacing a Notion database, several Slack workflows, and a lot of manual reminding. It also produces a report we didn't have before.
• Carta benchmark automation by Suzanne. Our quarterly compensation benchmark pull used to mean downloading 34 separate CSV files and pasting them into a spreadsheet. Claude now does it.
• Weekend Update by Octa. Friday-to-Sunday activity, so advocates start the week with context, posted automatically on Sunday evening with the data refreshed just beforehand.
• Automatic incident surveys by Raf. When an incident resolves, everyone who took part now gets a short survey, because in practice, only the incident lead writes the post-mortem. Rather than build a new app, he extended Tally, our internal survey tool, so surveys can now be created from a webhook for anything.
• Public incident write-up skill by Raf. Takes the internal post-mortem and drafts the public status page version against our template, validated with our brand voice skill. The reviewer gets a file to adjust before publishing.
• Culture digest bot by Lexi. Scans all of our culture channels monthly and writes one snackable highlight per active channel without naming names, flagging new channels and nudging the quiet ones. It also builds a live channel guide for each new hire when their onboarding checklist reaches that step.
• Pulse by Kateryna. A lightweight Slack check-in that asks each person two rotating questions every few weeks, so we get a continuous read on how the team is doing between the big surveys. It syncs the roster and time off, so it never messages someone while they're away.
• Prorate by Nate. Works out the refund owed on an annual plan from the price and the dates. It had been living as a Claude artifact that a few advocates passed around, and it's now a tool anyone can reach.
• A guided voice interview by Dave. An interactive tool that learns how you write and speak, then generates a voice skill with far deeper context than a style guide. The framing came from a comment by Jess: we don't just want our writing to sound less like AI, we want it to sound more like us.
• Ash, an Ashby screening agent by Simon. Hiring managers configure what "good" looks like for a role, and Ash reads every application and scores candidates on completeness, role fit, and cultural alignment, then commits the result back to Ashby in one click. It tracks how often the human agrees with it over time. Currently in security review, so it runs locally.
• Design at Social pipeline by Alicja. A complete flow for designers to make carousels about how we build Buffer: a Claude project holding the agreed themes, a design system with slide variants, and two templates. The one honest gap is that moving assets between the two Claude surfaces is still copy and paste.
• Social asset export skill by Alicja. Converts an HTML carousel export into JPGs that are ready to post.
• Social Studio by Andy. Create on-brand Buffer social images from templates, then export a PNG.

2. Docs someone had to remember to update

• Tool Access by Mick. A directory of the 133 tools we have accounts for, answering whether a teammate has an account, what level of access they have, and what needs to happen if they leave. Where a tool's API allows it, the page reads live data every time you open it, so the answer can't go stale.
• Team directory by Hamish. A brand new teammate directory, and the important part is one line: no more data pulled from Notion. Our own app is the source of truth now, which means you update your own details in it.
• Teammates Dashboard by Kasia. People Ops views of teammate data, starting with time off per person and per team.
• Team Calendar by Jenna. One place to see what's happening across Buffer and what's coming, with category filters, month, week, and list views, and a toggle for everyone's Bufferversaries. The bigger idea is that each event eventually carries its own context — the project, the recording, the post.
• Advocacy by Åsa. Answers in one place what Customer Advocacy is trying to do and how it's actually going, with strategy as the home page, so a newcomer meets it before any numbers. Each key metric carries two comparisons and a 12-period trend line, and the current inbox reads Help Scout live.
• Cool School by Sabreen. An interactive campus for Buffer's Team of Creators, built to replace the static resources hub we keep in Notion. Find your angle, your platform, and your rhythm at your own pace.
• HC Changelog MCP by Kelly. A connector anyone can add in Settings, showing every change made to the Help Center over any seven-day period.
• HC Review Queue and HC Audit by Kelly. A queue of suggested Help Center edits driven by product changes, and an audit that surfaces the five oldest articles for accuracy. Both are paused: fixing a bug surfaced real questions about security and write access, and she'd rather wait for the answer than ship past it.
• Buffer API What's New by Justina. Makes our API changelog readable, with a playground so you can run each example against your own account and a share button that drafts a post. It's built with AI and uses AI inside as a feature.
• Recommended content from HQ by Rathes. Moved our recommended-content prototype off a Notion database and a GitHub Actions sync, onto real data straight from HQ.
• Openly by Hailley. Reads what we're already talking about internally, groups it into idea cards, and checks each one against everything we've published on this blog, so a good idea doesn't slip by.

3. Answers that took too long to find

• Ask Design by Kate. One hub for every brand resource, because our rules, guidelines, and assets currently live across Figma, Notion, and nested Dropbox links. It leads with search, so "what hex code is our brand green?" gets an answer.
• How We Marketed It by Maggie. Look up any Buffer feature and see how it's been marketed across product, email, and social.
• Onboarding request triage by Ben. Hand it a support conversation, and it separates every request in the thread, classifies each one, says whether we can accommodate it, and drafts a reply. It points to our live handbook rather than containing a copy, so there's nothing to update when a process changes.
• Billing Context by Nate. Adds a note to billing conversations laying out what actually happened to someone's subscription, reconstructed from Stripe events and Mixpanel. It also suggests whether we should approve a refund, based on our own Help Center guides and leaning toward generosity.
• High-value call brief by Daniel S. Give it an organization and get back a one-page brief for the two minutes before a call: plan and channels, what they've contacted us about, what's failing, what's open. His write-up is the most useful one on the board, and most of it is about being wrong — he built six rows and deleted all six.
• Customer insights library by Mike E. A database autopopulated by an agent reviewing NPS responses, support tickets, research interviews, and in-app feedback, organized so an agent can read it back. Install the plugin, and you can ask why customers switch to Buffer, or how they feel about our pricing.
• Advocacy UI extension by Mau. A browser extension that rebuilds the interfaces advocates live in, starting with Mixpanel — platform, caption, media specs, error labels, and IDs all at a glance, instead of one click per event. He used it himself all week while troubleshooting for customers.
• Popcorn Token Atlas by Daniel P. Describe what you need a color to do — "helper text under a field" — and get the web, iOS, and Android token side by side. The bet is that if a token records what it's for, a model has something to reason about instead of guessing from a hex value.
• Sourcing for hiring by Steph. An attempt to invert the search: rather than waiting for applications, find people in the technical space who already have a public voice. Out of a pool of 3,000 people, she has five names worth looking into, which is itself a useful finding.
• Overlap by Hailley. Finds the best time to meet across our time zones using declared working hours and time off rather than reading anyone's calendar. It defaults to protecting whoever's worst off in a slot rather than optimizing the average.

4. Things we couldn't see about the product

• Customer Themes by Darcy. Took 11,428 customer conversations from one month and turned them into 24 themes, saying for each whether the fix is a better help article, a product change, or an expectation we set wrong. It found that 135 of 136 questions about failed posts were answered with zero negative feedback — and 98 of those customers escalated to a human anyway.
• Checkup by Dace. A consolidated view of errors across Buffer, showing which areas cause the most and what's safe to filter out as noise. It also tracks how long we take to go from an error happening to acting on it.
• API health dashboard by Joe B. Four views of our public API: adoption and growth, which features are exposed and which aren't, schema health against the rules we set for external developers, and quality via incidents and error rates.
• Apps Team Hub by Joe B. Everything the Apps team needs in one place — current work, incidents, bugs, ships, roadmap, and web parity.
• a11y Dashboard by Daisy. Weekly automated accessibility scans against the real product, with AI reasoning about the findings rather than just listing them. The very first run found a real bug: with a dialog open, you could tab into the page behind it.
• Community Radar by Esther. An error radar for the workers behind Buffer's Community feature, with week-over-week observations.
• Quality Dashboard by Ross. A review tool for the Advocacy team: pull conversations, set your review categories, and send feedback to a teammate. Claude can run its own analysis first if a lead wants an AI-informed starting point.
• Cleanup entities dashboard by Dinos. Inspect and requeue failed deletion workflows directly in HQ, instead of checking Datadog, checking the database, and running a script. A daily job posts to our alerts channel when something fails, with a link straight to the fix.
• Webhook subscription status by Dinos. Shows whether a channel's webhook subscription is live, with actions to check or re-subscribe. It matters because subscriptions can drop on a platform's side without us noticing.
• Mobile Beta Testers by Amanda. Aggregates beta usage by app build and reconciles it against product surface areas, sorting testers into power users, new testers, and people who haven't tested yet. It drafts the right follow-up for each segment and captures the responses.
• Jars by Abeeb. Tracks four of our tech debt jars — legacy files, type suppressions, feature flags, and TODOs — as they empty.

5. Things we couldn't see about finances

• AI spend dashboard by Jenny. Brings AI spend across six vendors and our stipend onto one consistent basis, separating committed from usage-based cost. It produced our first company-wide 2026 forecast.
• Financial consolidation by Kyle. Produces Buffer's consolidated financials for any month back to December 2012, reading both legal entities nightly from Xero and handling the currency translation and intercompany eliminations. It replaces an external tool we were paying for.
• Datadog cost dashboard by Miguel. A live dashboard and notebook drilling into where our Datadog spend goes, so nobody scrambles for detail before a contract negotiation. Visible to every teammate.
• Media Storage by Steven. How our production media bucket grew each month — files, bytes, and what they cost to keep — for the largest and least visible thing we store. Building it meant querying inventory data with Athena and shipping it to Cloudflare via Lambda, neither of which he'd done before.
• Lifecycle Experiments by Maggie. Every lifecycle experiment we're running has a live effect on the primary metric, plus a catalog of everything we've run since October 2024 with hypotheses and learnings. It also surfaces the patterns that emerge across all of them.
• Churn and revenue exploration by Steve. A dashboard connecting churn data with revenue data to understand how well our cancel-deflection flows actually work, and to pave the way for better-connected insights.
• Bid Radar by Pierre. Finds keywords Buffer should bid on in Google Ads, based on how we're already performing organically.

6. Limits customers ran into

• Text-to-image builder by Sofía. Turns a written post into an image post right in the composer — type presets, a small palette, automatic alt text, and Shift+Enter for a new slide, so text carousels work. In 2015, we built Pablo with the same pitch: that MVP took about a month; this one took a week.
• Carousels composer by José. A carousel editor for images and text, meant to live as a tab in the Create space. Built and demoed but deliberately not deployed, so it can reuse Sofía's UI elements, and the two features don't diverge.
• Mark a comment as spam by Diego. Hides a spam comment from Community for everyone in the organization, removes it from the comment score, and drops it into a reversible hidden-comments section. It also lays the groundwork for detecting repeat spammers automatically.
• WordPress plugin by Arek. A free, open-source plugin that schedules WordPress content through Buffer and keeps posts in sync with the queue. Arek works on our API internally, and building against it as an outsider produced a real proposal: a dry-run option, so you learn about a character limit before you publish, not after.
• Postwise by Iggy. Reads your own post history and tests each pattern — media type, frequency, day of week, themes — against a held-out 30%, then tells you plainly when a pattern doesn't survive. Below 100 posts a year, personalized day-of-week advice survives 32% to 46% of the time, which is worse than a coin flip.
• Buffer Pulse by Amaan. One headline score for how healthy your social habits are, built from the streaks, goals, and channel health we already track and measure over six months. Built locally for now, because storing the historical data it needs isn't worth the cost until the feature is real.
• Apple TV dashboard by Andy. A single-screen overview of your Buffer organization on tvOS, inspired by the dashboards that used to hang in the old Twitter and Pinterest offices.
• Discord streak bot by Andy. Surfaces your Buffer posting streak as a Discord role, built on a self-imposed one-hour challenge.
• Buffer Zap by Miguel. A minimalist macOS menu bar app for sharing to Buffer, built on the public API.
• BufferDrop by Mau. Drag a file onto this desktop app, and it becomes a draft post in Buffer, or point it at a folder, and anything added there does the same. Building it took him through the TUS upload protocol, Tauri, Rust, and macOS app signing, all new to him.
• Buffer Wrap by Abeeb. A quarterly summary of a customer's content and the fun highlights they might have missed.
• Post to Template by Ismail and Amaan. Paste a link to any high-performing social post and get a reusable Buffer template out of it.
• Ideas list view by Rathes. A simple list view for Ideas with the editor opening in a panel, which makes tapping through and updating them much faster than the gallery or board.

7. Friction in building Buffer itself

• Snag by Ismail. Spot a UI issue while using Buffer, annotate it in place, and Snag captures the screenshot and context, files the Linear ticket, and hands it to Roo, which opens a pull request. With the extension installed, you can also see captures made by anyone else on the team, in the product.
• Manual canaries dashboard by Peter. Diverting real traffic to an unmerged pull request used to mean posting GitHub comments in exactly the right syntax at exactly the right time. Where one codebase affects 21 deployments, engineers used to post 21 separate comments and hope — there's now a single slider.
• Mocktail by Andreas. Lets admins configure pretend accounts and channel setups and save them as profiles, so you can test how a feature behaves with no channels or a great many without creating an account for each. Kept on a branch environment rather than merged, because he didn't want to risk app load times for customers before he was certain.
• Sound Buffet by Andreas. A browsable library of quirky, self-recorded UI sound effects, with previews, downloads, and a ready-to-paste snippet.
• Help Scout connector by Andreas. Improvements to the shared connector that several other Build Week projects then used.
• StarDeps Valley by Bruno. Dependency maintenance as a Stardew Valley-style garden: our two most critical repositories are rendered as garden beds, and claiming a plant triggers a workflow that opens the pull request for you. Boring, necessary work, made into something you might want to do.
• Roo HQ by Kateryna. A home for our agents platform, showing what Roo is doing now, full session history across Slack, GitHub, Linear, and scheduled routines, and detailed views with reasoning, tool use, costs, and traces.
• Ambient mode for Roo by Kateryna. Roo can now be given standing instructions and decide to engage on its own without being tagged. It also reads a burst of thread replies together and answers once, instead of treating each as a separate task.
• Coach-a-Roo by Adam. Anyone can review how Roo, our internal agent, would have handled a real past support conversation, rate it, and leave feedback. That crowdsourced feedback then improves the persona.
• Clockwork by Kateryna. One place for Buffer's scheduled automations — the reports, reminders, and digests that run on their own.
• Buffer Skills proposal by Kateryna. Research into how we should organize the Claude skills currently scattered across repos and personal setups. Deliberately written up as a proposal rather than shipped, because it needed alignment, and she didn't want to interrupt anyone's Build Week.
• Popcorn motion system by Héctor. One shared set of timings and easings, with dialogs, drawers, toasts, loaders, and page headers all moved onto it across 30 pull requests. Loading indicators now wait 300 milliseconds before appearing and stay for at least 400, so nothing flashes on a quick load. (Popcorn is what we call our design system.)
• Popcorn Kernel by Andy. A condensed version of our design system built for product previews on the marketing site, so we can show real animating components instead of static screenshots. It adjusts typography, spacing, and radii for small-scale views rather than just scaling everything down.
• Popcorn RichTextField by Mw. A first version of a modular, reusable rich text component supporting a large set of Markdown features plus mentions and character limits, with plugins consumers can include, edit, or overwrite.
• Popcorn styler skill by Sofía. A Claude skill that applies our product's look and feel, so anyone can mock up something that looks like Buffer.
• Front-end standards for agents by Mw. A composition rule file that loads whenever an agent opens a React file, plus a new lint rule, tested with two different models to confirm that both read it. The decision behind it: invest in linting and context files, because evals are expensive and often don't pay off.
• Feedback widget improvements by Brandon. Our in-product feedback form now asks more pointed questions and has a lightweight spam check, which should improve the quality of what we get.
• Feedback routing and moderation by Brandon. Routes in-product feedback to our central hub instead of a clunky Google Sheet we can now decommission, plus a recurring routine that reviews new suggestions, merges obvious duplicates, removes spam, and hands him a one-click list of the rest.
• Inbox & Chill by Brandon. A macOS menu bar app that puts Slack, Linear, Notion, GitHub, Sentry, Apple Mail, and your terminal sessions into one queue you can empty. Built while waiting on feedback for his main project.

8. Builds for personal workflows

• The Evoker Assistant by Jess. A second brain pairing Claude with Obsidian to replace Notion and Dropbox Paper and keep her notes local. She realized four half-days weren't enough to migrate everything, so she deliberately built the framework and left the import for later.
• A work vault that actually works by Mel. She set out to build a task tracker, built it, and while building it, concluded it wouldn't solve her problem — most of what she needs to track is too small to be worth opening an app for. She came out with a much better vault and a clear read on what the tool is and isn't for.
• Recipe capture skills by Mel. Two skills that turn screenshots and links into searchable recipe notes, each with a full ingredient list and a line on how to adapt it so her kids will actually eat it. A day-four pivot that finished the week with something she'll use.
• Mark, an exam technique coach by Edu. A tutoring agent for A Level Psychology that picks a real past-paper question, reads a photo of a handwritten answer, marks it against the marking scheme, and suggests improvements without writing the answer. He built a bank of 70 questions and used evals for the first time to check the marking against real examiner notes.
• Trip Photos Autopilot by Esther. Scans a Drive folder of travel photos, detects duplicates, converts files within Instagram's format rules, writes captions, and sends each post to Buffer 24 hours before it publishes so there's time to review.
• Create from Everyday Actions by Cheryl. A skill that reads her own Slack messages, Linear issues, and troubleshooting investigations, finds the human dynamic under a work problem, and saves a parenting-themed draft to her Threads queue. When she asked Claude to evaluate it, it noticed she'd edited every draft, found the pattern, and suggested saving that as a learning.
• Time-off return routine by Cheryl. Scans our time-off channel and DMs people returning from leave in the next three days to ask whether they'd like to share how it went, with three ways to answer.
• Blog-to-social routine by Rathes. A Claude routine that checks his blog weekly and drafts the social posts for four channels. It turned out far simpler than he expected, which freed the rest of his week.
• A revamped second brain by Mw. Cleaned, sorted, and rebuilt around atomic notes, with AI allowed to find missing links and tags but never to edit note contents.
• Downstream by Juliet. Measures rather than estimates her own AI usage, and has already turned up something she didn't expect: 45% of hers came from subagents she'd spawned.

9. Just for fun!

• Bufferverse by Tami. Buffer as a universe: all 78 of us are stars, and the sky lights up by nine things we might share, from team and tenure to Chinese zodiac and birth order. Click any star to see what you have in common with that person, and there's a daily "guess the star" quiz with the same puzzle for everyone.
• Houseswap by Pierre. An internal home exchange — list your place, manage availability, browse where other Bufferoos live, and send or accept swap requests, with airports, weather, and budget pulled in. During the week, it grew an entire pet-sitting feature and local guides, both from feedback.
• Confetti by Steve. Buffer crossed $26 million in ARR on 18 August, in the middle of Build Week. Replay the moment, and click the emoji as often as you like.
• Creative Brain Games by Kate. Seven small games for flexing creative thinking, all based on real, researched exercises and deliberately unrelated to work: sketch as many things as you can in a minute, find as many uses as you can for one ordinary object, chain two unrelated words together. Her reason: it matters that we keep practicing creative thinking as we pass more and more over to AI.
• TWST Leaderboard by Juliet. Counts everyone's contribution live during a Team Wide Support Time session and throws confetti at the end. It started as a throwaway artifact for Build Week itself and became a tool we'll use at retreats.
• Team of Creators board by Diego C. Connect your Buffer account, and you get a cell showing what you published this week, plus a level, which is simply how many posts you published. Posts published natively count too, not only the ones sent through Buffer.
• Roll by Hailley. Roll two dice, get a true fact about Buffer. Anyone can add their own.
• Guess the Pets of Buffer by Hailley. Guess which teammate each Buffer pet belongs to.
• Buffer Jeopardy by Hailley. Host a Jeopardy-style trivia game for an in-person team activity, built from a CSV of clues.
• Screensaver by Hailley. The Buffer logo, bouncing. Wait for it to hit a corner.
• Hop-a-Roo by Kateryna. A one-key hopping game with our agent as the character, and a leaderboard for the whole team.
• Full House by Suzanne. Compares Buffer's customer count to stadiums, cities, and Olympic Park villages, because someone had to.
• Month Wrap by Daisy. Your last 30 days in Buffer, as a short animated wrap in seven slides.
• Drop by Kateryna. Run a swag drop: pick the merch, open it to the team, and let people claim theirs.
• Value-led growth page by Mike E. A marketing page that externalizes how we think about generosity as a strategy, so other businesses can take inspiration from it. Previewed, not live yet.

We're incredibly impressed with everything our team built, and we hope some of it makes its way to you. Reach out any time on social media or in our Community with any thoughts or questions!

More resources on how we work

• Our Team Built 17 Improvements to Buffer This Week, Here's The Recap
• We Added a $250 AI Tools Stipend for the Buffer Team
• The AI Mindset Shift: How I Use AI Every Day
• 35 Side Projects From the Buffer Team
• Build Week at Buffer

When I first started posting on LinkedIn consistently, I couldn’t understand why some posts were a huge hit, while others flopped. That is, until I started monitoring my social media analytics.

Suddenly, it all became much clearer: I had data that pointed to which hooks grabbed the most attention, what posting times worked best, and the ideal post length. Everything clicked.

The clues are out there for you, too, right in your analytics. But if you're running multiple platforms, manually piecing together insights from each one's native dashboard is a real time sink, and native analytics have some frustrating blind spots too (LinkedIn, for instance, doesn't show timestamps on past posts, which makes it really tricky to figure out your best posting times).

That's where third-party social media analytics tools come in. I've tested 11 of them for this list and organized everything by use case, so you can skip straight to what fits your needs. Creator, marketer, small business, enterprise; there's something here for everyone.

Key takeaways

• Analytics tools vs. management tools: Dedicated analytics tools focus purely on measurement. Social media management tools (like Buffer) bundle analytics with scheduling, engagement, and more. For most creators and small teams, the all-in-one option is often the best choice.
• Native platform analytics have real gaps: Most social media networks offer built-in insights, but they don't always show what you need. And if you're running multiple platforms, you'll spend a lot of time manually piecing data together. Third-party tools solve both problems.
• Prices range from free to $239+/month: Buffer, Social Status, and Tailwind offer free tiers. Rival IQ starts at $239/month. Most mid-market tools fall in the $49–$100/month range. Creators and small teams rarely need the enterprise-tier options.

What is social media analytics?

Social media analytics are the metrics that show how your content performs across social platforms — data like reach, impressions, engagement rate, click-through rate, and follower growth. Tracking them tells you not just how many likes a post earned, but why it worked so you can make smarter decisions about what to publish next, when to post it, and where to focus your energy.

It answers questions like:

• Which are my best content types?
• When is my audience the most engaged?
• What kind of content gets followers talking?
• What kind of content is best for reaching new followers?

Social media analytics help you measure your performance and benchmark it against your social media goals.

You'll sometimes see this called social media data analysis, and the two are close cousins. Social media analytics are the numbers themselves, like reach, engagement, and follower growth. Social media data analysis is the act of digging into those numbers to spot patterns and decide what to do next.

Do all social media platforms offer native analytics?

Yes, they do. All major social media networks provide native insights within their platform. But there are a few issues when you rely solely on them:

Social media networks don't always provide the insights you need. For instance, LinkedIn doesn't show timestamps on past posts, making it tricky to understand what days and times are best to reach your audience. And most native dashboards don't let you view organic and paid performance side by side, so if you're running ads alongside your regular posts, you're toggling between two completely separate views.

Relying on native insights alone won't give you the full picture. Let's say you're running a large-scale social media campaign and using multiple social media networks. You'll have to manually cobble insights from all of them if you rely only on each channel's native insights. In contrast, on many social media analytics tools, you can gather all posts under one tab and monitor collective insights on how your campaign performed across channels.

Social media analytics software collects and helps you make sense of your performance data so you can spend less time tracking and more time improving your social media strategy.

What's the difference between analytics and reporting?

These terms get used interchangeably, but they're actually two parts of the same process. Analytics is the act of collecting and measuring data. It answers the "what happened?" and "why did it happen?" questions. Reporting takes that analysis and presents it in a clear, shareable format for stakeholders, clients, or your own team.

In practice, the best social media reporting tools handle both. They pull your raw data (analytics) and organize it into dashboards, PDFs, or branded presentations (reporting).

Some tools lean more heavily into one or the other. Buffer, for instance, does both. It surfaces the analytics you need and lets you export polished reports to share with your team, clients, or stakeholders.

Knowing which you need matters: if you're a solo creator, you probably just want the analytics dashboard. If you're an agency managing client accounts, automated, white-label reporting is a game-changer.

The 4 types of social media analytics

Understanding the different types of analytics helps you know what to look for in a tool:

1. Descriptive analytics: What happened? Raw metrics like impressions, clicks, and engagement counts. Every analytics tool starts here.
2. Diagnostic analytics: Why did it happen? Why did this post outperform that one? Tools that dig into content type, posting time, and audience behavior sit here.
3. Predictive analytics: What will happen? Based on past performance, which content types will your audience engage with next? A common example: tools that recommend your best time to post based on when your audience has historically been most active. More advanced tools push further into this territory.
4. Prescriptive analytics: What should you do? Not just predicting what will happen, but recommending the exact action to take. Some advanced tools venture here.

Social media analytics tools vs. management tools

There are dedicated social media analytics tools that only show insights from social media posts. And then there is social media management software that encompasses social media analytics along with scheduling posts, engaging with your audience, storing ideas, etc. This list contains options for both. But which one should you choose?

Choose social media management software if you're a creator, a one-person team, or a small marketing team managing your entire social media strategy.

Choose a dedicated social media analytics tool if you've already covered other aspects of your social media strategy (either manually or with another tool) and/or if you need specific insights about your social media efforts that a management tool can't provide.

In most cases, social media managers and creators will likely prefer one-stop social media management tools. Having everything in one place just makes life easier.

That said, there are times when standalone social media analytics tools might make more sense:

• When you need very specific insights (like competitive analysis), standalone tools often work better. Many social management tools offer competitor analysis, but a standalone tool often digs deeper and can provide more useful insights.
• When you're on a shoestring budget and managing your content calendar and social media engagement manually. Maybe you can't afford comprehensive social management software for multiple social media channels. But you might be able to swing a social media analytics tool that's a bit more budget-friendly.

What makes the best social media analytics tool?

After testing these 11 tools, here's what I looked for and what I'd suggest you weigh up when picking one:

• Platform coverage: Does it support the social networks you actually use? Some tools cover 12+ platforms; others only handle 3–4. Check before you commit.
• Ease of use: Can you find the metrics you need without a tutorial? The best tools surface key insights immediately, not behind five clicks and a custom report builder.
• Reporting capabilities: If you need to share results with a team, client, or stakeholder, look for tools with automated, customizable reports — ideally ones you can schedule to send on a recurring basis. Check what export formats are supported too (PDF, CSV, and presentation-ready formats like PowerPoint or Google Slides are the most common). Manual copy-pasting from dashboards is a time sink.
• Competitor benchmarking: Can you see how your metrics stack up against competitors, or are you flying blind? A nice-to-have, but something most free tools don't offer.
• Pricing transparency: Some tools don't publish pricing. It's worth factoring this into your decision if you don't have the time for lengthy sales calls and negotiations.
• Integrations: Does it play nicely with your existing stack? Tools that connect to Google Analytics, your CRM, or your project management software save you time.
• Audience analytics: Can you see who's actually engaging (demographics, interests, and how your audience is growing) or just surface-level counts? Audience-level data can help you understand whether you're reaching the right people, rather than just more.
• Posting time optimization: Does the tool surface when your audience is most active and ideally, break that down by goal (reach, engagement, traffic)? Knowing what to post is only half the equation; knowing when to post it can meaningfully boost your results.

Quick summary of the 11 best social media analytics tools

1. Buffer

Best social media analytics tool for creators, growing teams, and agencies

I practically live in Buffer, and Insights, its social media analytics dashboard, is one of my favorite tabs. Instead of throwing a wall of numbers at you (a pet peeve of mine), it surfaces the metrics that matter and helps you work out what to do with them. Exactly what you need when you're a strapped-for-time creator, social media manager, or agency owner.

The part I lean on most is Takeaways: AI-powered observations that read your recent performance, flag what's working, point out older posts worth resharing, and even open the composer with a prompt based on what's been landing. It's the difference between staring at a chart and knowing your next move.

You also get the raw data when you want it, for a single channel or all of them at once:

• Follower growth over time
• Impressions and reach
• Engagement and engagement rate
• A Performance per Post table that ranks your posts by engagement rate, so your best content rises to the top
• Best time to post recommendations based on when your audience is most active
• Comparisons against the previous period, last month, or last year

You can filter any of it by tag to see how a content pillar or campaign performed, then export polished PDF or CSV reports (or copy your data as markdown straight into an AI tool, like Claude or ChatGPT) in a few clicks with no manual copy-pasting.

Pricing: Free plan for up to three channels, with the last 30 days of data. Historical data, custom date ranges, and exports are on paid plans, from $6 per month.

Supported social media platforms: Bluesky, Facebook, Google Business, Instagram, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube

2. Rival IQ

Best social media analytics tool for large agencies

Rival IQ stands out for its in-depth competitive benchmarking, making it the go-to choice for large social media agencies. It offers deep social media analytics and other related tools (like competitor analysis and social listening) built right into its analytics platform. Instead of paying for three separate tools, you can go with one.

Their pricing is designed for social media agencies:

• You can add at least 10 companies (your clients) to your account
• If you want to add more, you can add five companies for $50 per month
• You can swap the companies whose performance you're tracking

Compared to other social media analytics tools, I was impressed with its competitive benchmarking. Rival IQ shows when your competitors' posts are likely boosted, compares brand positioning (such as social media bios and other profile attributes), and benchmarks your performance within your social media niche and your chosen competitors.

As an agency, competitive analysis plays an important part in informing the social media strategy and social media reporting of your clients. Rival IQ makes that a breeze.

Pricing: Plans start at $239 per month. Free 14-day trial available.

Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok

3. Keyhole

Best social media analytics tool for market research

Keyhole excels at historical insights paired with market research, particularly if you need to understand how conversations on a topic have evolved over time. Like Rival IQ, it also has competitive analysis features (and even influencer marketing features), but its real strength is in long-range data.

In historical insights, you can unlock data going back a full decade, which opens up genuinely fascinating questions about how conversations and trends have shifted over time. What was your audience saying about an important topic five years ago? How has their opinion shifted today? What were the most engaging posts on this topic in this timeframe?

In market research, thanks to Keyhole's machine learning system, you can identify emerging trends on any topic. You can see a real-time evolution of how your audience's sentiments are evolving on a subject.

These social media analytics can give you powerful insights into developing your products and services: you can see what has stood the test of time and how the conversation on a topic has changed.

One catch is that the historical insights are only available for X (formerly Twitter). These reports cost extra, increasing depending on the volume of X posts you're analyzing.

Limited retrospective data is available for Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, depending on your specific plan and account watchlist settings.

Pricing: Not publicly available.

Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, YouTube

4. Social Status

Best social media analytics tool for small businesses running ads and influencer partnerships

Social Status is one of the top social media analytics tools for small businesses running ads and managing influencer partnerships as part of their social media strategy.

If you're a small business that just wants to measure its performance across organic and paid social strategies, Social Status is a pretty solid fit. It provides the key performance indicators (likes, impressions, comments, shares, etc.) and also:

• Ad analytics (only for Meta, LinkedIn, and X)
• Competitor analytics (only in the paid plan)
• Influencer analytics (only in the higher tier plans)
• Customized social media performance reports on higher-tier plans

Social media managers who are juggling paid ads, collecting user-generated content, and an organic social strategy all at once have a lot on their plate (to say the least). Social Status makes it easy to collate all your insights in a single dashboard.

Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $9 per month for small businesses, and $99 for other users.

Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, YouTube

5. Siftsy

Best social media analytics tool for analyzing your comments

Comments often reveal the "why" behind the numbers. Ever wish an analytics tool could surface those insights for you? Siftsy does exactly that.

Designed to pull sentiment from comments across multiple channels, Siftsy works like this: upload a CSV of post URLs, tag your campaign, and let the AI do the heavy lifting.

Analyzing your comments can be beneficial in various scenarios:

• When you want to do a qualitative analysis of an influencer partnership
• When you want to get feedback about a product or an experimental social media post
• When you want automated reports about the overall sentiment of a social media campaign

The numbers tell you what happened, but pairing them with what people are actually saying in the comments makes the picture a lot more complete. Siftsy's AI even summarizes the key takeaways and highlights valuable insights from specific conversations for you.

Pricing: Not publicly available.

Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, YouTube

6. Vista Social

Best social media analytics tool for tracking reviews and social metrics

Vista Social takes what Siftsy does a step further. It's not only a social media analytics tool; it can also help you schedule posts, manage your comments and social inbox, and practice social listening.

Where Vista Social really shines is review management. It pulls feedback from multiple sites into one dashboard so you can:

• See every new review from Facebook, Google Business, Yelp, and more side-by-side
• Reply to reviews and social comments without switching tabs
• Create filtered, branded reports that combine social metrics and review sentiment

Pricing: Plans start at $79 per month. Free 14-day trial available with each plan.

Supported platforms: Bluesky, Facebook, Google Business, Google Play Store, Instagram, LinkedIn, OpenTable, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, TripAdvisor, Trustpilot, Tumblr, X, Yelp, YouTube, and more

7. Typefully

Best social media analytics tool if you’re only focused on X (formerly Twitter)

Typefully is one of the best social media analytics tools for X (formerly Twitter). While it supports multiple social media channels, it aces X like no other. I especially love writing X threads on it — the user experience is great. The "viral thread hooks" examples it contains are also top-notch for inspiration.

Typefully also provides social media metrics that are unique to X. For example, your dashboard would refer to comments as "replies" because that's the unique terminology for X.

A unique metric I love in Typefully is "profile conversion rate," which tells you how many people in your target audience who visited your X profile hit the follow button. This is such a helpful data point because it helps gain insights on:

• How effective is your profile image, bio, and pinned tweet in converting a visitor to a follower
• How your target audience discovers your social media profile through other sources (like web traffic, podcast mentions, etc.)

Apart from this, Typefully provides all the essential social media metrics such as number of posts, follower growth, impressions, profile visits, etc.

Pricing: Free plan available for 10 posts per month. Paid plans start at $8.25 per month and have compulsory yearly billing ($99 per year).

Supported platforms: Bluesky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Threads, X

8. Tailwind

Best social media analytics tool for businesses relying on Pinterest traffic

Tailwind is one of the best social media tools for small businesses focused on using Pinterest marketing to drive traffic. Since Pinterest functions differently (it's a social media channel and a search engine), Tailwind has designed its tool to complement both.

What stands out is the Google Analytics integration, which can help determine which pins drive the most traffic to your website. Using this data, you can double down on the most successful pins and recreate them.

For a Pinterest-specific social media analytics platform, you need many more key performance indicators because of how pins, boards, and trends function on the platform. Tailwind delivers. You can access Pinterest analytics from the high level to the individual pin:

• Track engagement metrics for your boards and pins, including trends for repins
• A "Pin Inspector" helps you monitor the insights for individual pins and understand which pins you should reschedule
• Interest heatmaps help you gain actionable insights into whether your social posts are resonating with your target audience
• Board insights help you understand which boards of yours are performing the best, and you can filter them for boards garnering the most outbound links, too

When it comes to Pinterest, few social media tools do a better job than Tailwind.

Pricing: Free plan available for five posts per month. Paid plans begin at $14.99 per month.

Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest

9. DashThis

Best social media analytics tool for an all-in-one marketing dashboard

DashThis isn't a social media tool, exactly; it's a marketing dashboard that happens to be really good at pulling social data into the bigger picture.

If you're the person on your team who has to show how social media fits into the overall marketing strategy (and prove it's worth the investment), DashThis makes that a lot easier. You can combine social metrics with Google Analytics, ad performance, and other marketing data into one report, which is handy when your stakeholders don't want to look at six different dashboards.

DashThis has over 30 integrations to help you connect Google Analytics, Ahrefs, HubSpot, and many more platforms. You can also keep an eye on paid marketing efforts (like TikTok Ads, Meta Business Suite, Pinterest Ads, and even Google Ads) to provide a combined report of your organic and paid strategy.

I wouldn't recommend using DashThis if you need in-depth social media performance insights. It provides the basic audience insights report: likes, comments, shares, impressions, etc. But it's the ability to connect with over 30 other marketing tools you're already using (like Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Ahrefs), that makes it stand out.

I also love that each plan has unlimited users, making DashThis perfect for a large marketing team. There's also no cap on how many data sources you can add, so don't worry if your marketing strategy has a ton of moving parts. You can combine them all in this one analytics tool.

Pricing: Plans begin at $54 per month. There's a 14-day free trial with every plan.

Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube

10. Socialinsider

Best social media analytics tool for AI-driven content pillar insights

Socialinsider is an advanced social media analytics tool that offers AI-driven insights about your content pillars. In the higher tier plans, you can also run an AI-driven competitor analysis that lets you check if a certain pillar works well for a competitor. You can then consider tailoring and using it in your own strategy.

I also love the post tagging feature. You can tag and group social media posts and monitor how they're performing collectively. It's just the feature you'd need when you want to monitor how your different social media campaigns or content pillars have performed.

The only catch is that the price of Socialinsider is prohibitive for most creators and small teams, since the best features of Socialinsider are restricted to the higher-tier plans.

Pricing: Plans start at $99 per month. All plans have a 14-day free trial.

Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, YouTube

11. Talkwalker

Best social media analytics tool for in-depth audience insights

Where Talkwalker stands out is in audience analytics. You can pull insights from customer calls, support tickets, and online communities, then slice your audience by demographics to see what each segment actually cares about, which is a real shortcut when you're hunting for content ideas.

I also love the audience segmentation features. You can slice and dice your data based on audience demographics. This helps you understand what different segments of your audience actually care about, which is really useful if your followers span different regions or backgrounds.

You can also chat with Talkwalker's AI assistant, Yeti, to ask questions about various audience demographics and access relevant insights at your fingertips.

If you wish Talkwalker could also help you manage your social media marketing efforts, you're in luck: Hootsuite acquired Talkwalker in 2024. With Hootsuite, you can schedule your posts, manage your inbox, and measure your social media performance, all in one place.

The catch is that most of Talkwalker's features are only available in higher-tier Hootsuite plans.

Pricing: Not publicly available.

Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, X, and more

How to track your social media metrics

Knowing which tool to use is half the job. The other half is actually using that data to adjust your social media strategy (and shape your next post).

Here's the process I follow.

1. Start with your goal, not the metric

It's tempting to track everything, but that's the fastest way to end up blinking at a page of numbers and graphs. Pick your social media goal first, then match the metric to it:

• Awareness: reach, impressions, follower growth
• Engagement: engagement rate, saves, shares, comments
• Traffic: click-through rate and link clicks
• Conversions: conversion rate and cost per lead

If a number doesn't tie back to a goal, you have my full permission to ignore it!

2. Get everything into one view

I'm a big believer in reducing the friction. Logging into Instagram Insights, then TikTok, then LinkedIn, then copying it all into a spreadsheet will take hours — and that's before you've actually analyzed anything.

Pulling every channel into one place is exactly what a tool like Buffer's Insights is built for.

You can compare performance across 10+ networks (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Threads, X, Pinterest, Bluesky, and Mastodon) in a single social media analytics dashboard.

The design doesn't hurt either. It's one of those dashboards you actually want to open.

3. Look for the 'why,' rather than just the 'what'

Raw numbers tell you what happened. The useful part is why. Which post type pulled in new followers? What topics got folks talking?

This is where Insights does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Its Takeaways feature analyzes your performance and spotlights patterns in an easy-to-understand way. It also makes helpful recommendations on what needs your attention next.

4. Set a cadence you'll stick to

Analytics only pay off when you check them consistently. A quick weekly review is enough to spot which posts are landing and when your audience engages with you. Save the deeper dive (month-over-month trends, what to shift in your strategy) for once a month. If you're running a campaign, check in daily until it wraps.

5. Turn it into a repeatable report

Once you know what you're tracking, build a report you can regenerate in a few clicks instead of rebuilding from scratch each time. If your tool supports it, schedule reports to send on a recurring basis (weekly or monthly) so they land in your inbox (or your client's) without you lifting a finger. If you're reporting to a client or a manager, exportable PDF and CSV reports save you the hassle of copy-pasting.

Bonus: You can use Buffer's MCP to connect Insights directly to your AI tool of choice.

Let your analytics tools deal with the data

Instead of spending hours crunching numbers, you can focus your time on analyzing what the data tells you: Which are my best types of posts? How can I replicate my previous success? What should I shift in my strategy to improve my return on investment?

And if the tool offers ready-made report templates, even better — you can spin up a polished, share-worthy deck in minutes and get back to the creative work.

Having tested all of these tools, I find Buffer to be one of the easiest to get up and running, especially if you're looking for something that covers both scheduling and analytics without the learning curve. The free plan lets you test whether the interface matches how you think before committing to anything. No credit card needed.

FAQ about social media analytics tools

What is a social media analytics tool?

A social media analytics tool collects data from your social media accounts and presents it in ways that help you understand what's working. This includes metrics like reach, impressions, engagement rate, click-through rate, and audience demographics. Some tools also add competitor comparison, social listening, and predictive insights. The goal is to turn raw numbers into something you can actually use — knowing not just that a post got 500 likes, but why it did and what to do next.

What is a social media analytics dashboard?

A social media analytics dashboard is a single screen that pulls your metrics from every platform into one place, so instead of checking Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn separately, you see reach, engagement, and follower growth side by side. The best ones go a step further and crunch the numbers for you to show you what is working and why. (Check out how we approach this in our guide to building a social media dashboard.)

Why are social media analytics important?

Social media analytics help you prove return on investment (ROI), identify which content drives traffic and conversions, and optimize your posting strategy based on real data instead of guesswork. Over time, this data helps you create more effective content, grow your audience faster, and make smarter marketing decisions. In our experience, tracking social media metrics and adjusting based on what you learn tends to pay off more than posting and crossing your fingers.

What metrics should you track on social media?

The most helpful metrics depend on your goals:

• For awareness: Reach, impressions, and follower growth
• For engagement: Engagement rate, saves, shares, and comments
• For traffic: Click-through rate and link clicks
• For conversions: Conversion rate, cost per lead, and attribution

Most teams should track at minimum: reach, impressions, engagement rate, click-through rate, audience growth, and conversion rate. Use these as your baseline, then drill deeper into the metrics tied to your specific business outcome.

How do you choose a social media analytics tool?

Start with these questions: How many accounts do you manage? Do you need competitor benchmarking or just your own data? Do you need automated reporting for clients or stakeholders? What's your budget? Then test the free tier or trial of 2–3 tools that fit your criteria. Look at ease of use, data accuracy, reporting capabilities, and integrations with your existing stack. Choose the simplest tool that solves your core problem without overpaying for unused features.

Do you need a social media analytics tool if platforms already provide data?

Native analytics are useful for basic performance tracking, but they have real limits. They only show your own data, don't compare you to competitors, are hard to customize, and don't integrate with the rest of your marketing stack. If you're managing multiple accounts, need competitor benchmarking, or build reports for stakeholders, a third-party tool is worth the investment. If you're a solo creator tracking basic performance on one platform, native analytics might be enough to start.

How often should you check your social media analytics?

Most creators and social media managers benefit from checking analytics at least once a week. A quick weekly review helps you spot patterns, like which posts performed best, when your audience was most active, and what topics resonated. A deeper monthly review is useful for evaluating long-term trends and refining your overall social media strategy. If you're running a campaign, daily check-ins make sense until it wraps up.

What's the difference between analytics tools and social media management tools?

Dedicated analytics tools focus purely on measuring performance and generating reports. Social media management tools combine analytics with other features like scheduling posts, managing comments, and storing content ideas. For many creators and small teams, a management tool with built-in analytics is the best option — having everything in one place just makes life easier. But if you need very deep analytics (like competitive benchmarking or sentiment analysis), a standalone analytics tool is worth adding to your stack.

Which social media analytics tools have a free plan?

A handful of tools on this list offer free plans, not just trials. Buffer's free plan covers up to three channels and shows the last 30 days of data. Social Status and Tailwind also have free tiers, though with limitations on features and posting volume.

Most other tools (like Rival IQ, Socialinsider, and Vista Social) offer time-limited trials rather than ongoing free access. If you're just getting started, Buffer's free plan is a solid way to test whether a dedicated analytics tool fits your workflow, with no credit card required.

More social media analytics resources

• 2026 Social Media Benchmarks You Can Use to Guide Your Strategy
• TikTok Analytics for Creators and Brands: The Metrics That Actually Matter
• New in Buffer: LinkedIn Profile Analytics
• 12 Social Media Metrics You Should Be Tracking (And Why)