Top 10 Social Media Scheduling Tools to Try Out in 2024

If you‘re looking for a way to see everything work as planned, social media scheduling tools help you save time. If you’re a social media marketer searching for the best way to save time, streamline your work, and help you grow your online presence, this guide is for you.

The social media scheduling tools go beyond lining up your content and scheduling social media posts. The best tools can help you enhance social media management, give you extra time to create excellent content, and build connections with your followers to improve your brand visibility.

So, if you’re tired of managing multiple accounts and doing time-consuming tasks, here’s a list of the best social media scheduling tools (free and paid) to help you. 

Let’s get started!

What Are Social Media Scheduling Tools?

A social media scheduling tool helps you plan and post on your social media in advance. It lets you schedule posts for multiple social media accounts and platforms. Although social media is ‘always on,’ you don’t have to be online all the time. You and your team can plan and stay focused on other tasks using a social media post scheduler.

Social media scheduling tools help you:

• Draft and review posts,
• Share content on various platforms,
• Schedule content for the future,
• Notify Stakeholders for approval,
• And many other features.

Thanks to these marketing tools, you can save your time to do other challenging stuff. Now, let’s dive into the top free & paid social media scheduling tools to boost your marketing efforts. Shall we?

List of Top Social Media Scheduling Tools

Many social media tools are on the market, but not all of them are reliable. We’ve selected ten social media scheduling tools that are free or at least come with a free trial. 

In this list, you can find schedulers to schedule Instagram posts, Facebook posts, and more.

1. Sprout Social

It’s a social media post scheduler that lets you use features like a smart inbox, detailed social media stats, Message approval workflows, Link bio for TikTok, URL tracking, and personalized reports. Sprout Social works with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Using its social media analytics software, you will gain valuable insights into your overall performance on social media. According to their claims, you can share your newest updates on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all simultaneously. 

Let’s dive into its pros and cons!

Sprout Social Pros

• You can easily create and control chatbots on Facebook Messenger. 
• It’s easy to navigate and has a user-friendly publishing calendar.
• You can use it to organize your team for improved teamwork.
• it allows you to integrate Zendesk and Hubspot directly from the dashboard to handle user issues efficiently.

Sprout Social Cons

• It’s too expensive and charges for each team member/user.
• You need to switch between social account streams separately.
• Its customer support is slow.
• It lacks some features like re-queue and post variants options.

Sprout Social Pricing

Its pricing plans range from $249 to $499 per month, and there’s a free trial for the first 30 days. Do you think it is affordable? I don’t think so. 🤨

So, let’s jump right into the second option.

2. CoSchedule

The social media post scheduler claims to make marketing more accessible for both teams and individuals. By integrating with WordPress blogs, it promises to enable brands to share content on social media at the same time they publish it. 

According to their official website, it offers scheduling features like AI Social Assistant, Social media automation, Recurring tasks and events, and Optimal post-time recommendations.

Whether you’re a social media influencer, you can coordinate your blog and social posts. For businesses, it asserts to organize various marketing activities in one place. Social media agencies can use it to manage projects for each client. 

You can create a social media campaign or include it in any project. This keeps your promotion and planning in one place, ensuring your entire team is aligned.

It seems great, but let’s look at its pros and cons!

CoSchedule Pros

• If you miss your social media posting schedule, the tool automatically fills the gap using top-performing posts.
• CoSchedule provides a Kanban Project dashboard for tracking your team’s progress and tasks, with customizable workflow statuses.
• It’s easy to use social media scheduling tool.

CoSchedule Cons

• The free plan offers very basic features.
• Despite its high cost, CoSchedule lacks enterprise-level features like social listening and monitoring.
• It has limitations on integrations and collaborations with other tools.
• The ReQueue feature has limitations (allowing only two queues for your posts).
• The pricing is noncompetitive in comparison to other scheduling tools.
• CoSchedule lacks sufficient customization options.
• Unfortunately, you must spend a long time loading the platform. Boring!

CoSchedule Pricing

It provides a free plan that lets you schedule up to 15 social media posts for just two social profiles. Want more? Well, you must pay $19 for each user per month and gain access to unlimited social media posting.

3. NapoleonCat 

This social media scheduling tool supports various social networks like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Google My Business. It claims to save your social media marketing teams up to 70% of time and energy. Even if this is not the case, this claim is a temptation!

They offer additional features like social tracking, campaign optimization, analytics, and reporting. According to their claims, after you set up your social media accounts, you can also review your competitors’ accounts. Just enter their social media account name, and it’ll be added to your watch list. 

But how true is it! Let’s see how well it works by analyzing its pros and cons in detail!

NapoleonCat Pros 

• All plans are flexible and tailored to your needs.
• You can gain in-depth insights into social profiles.
• Its social inbox consolidates messages.
• This scheduling tool for social media enables you to conduct multi-hashtag searches effortlessly.

NapoleonCat Cons

• It has a complicated user interface.
• It is difficult to navigate.
• It has a poor connection, especially with Facebook pages.
• This social media post scheduler is slow and takes time to load.

NapoleonCat Pricing

Unlike most social media scheduling tools, NapoleonCat allows you to choose how many social media profiles and users you want. The basic plan for one person starts at $27 and allows you to handle up to 3 social profiles. Moreover, Napoleoncat Pro costs $63 per month, with annual billing. 

4. SocialBee

If you are looking for a social media scheduling tool for startups or small businesses, you may have heard the name SocialBee. SocialBee has a mobile app for managing social media. You can group posts into categories to schedule various types easily. According to their official website, it will notify you about scheduling issues.

In addition, it promises to help you analyze Twitter competitors’ followers and suggest good ones. SocialBee is one of the affordable social media scheduling tools, but let’s take a closer look at its pros and cons.

SocialBee Pros

• It provides a posting schedule and preview for upcoming content.
• You can share your content seamlessly across multiple social media platforms.
• It offers key features like an Automatic hashtag generator for Instagram, AI-generated Instagram caption generator, and images.
• Using the Canva integration makes your content more engaging.

SocialBee Cons

• It has limited functionality for enterprises due to web-only access.
• There are issues with the proper functioning of the AI image creator.

SocialBee Pricing

For businesses, the plans start at $24 each month, and for agencies, the plans start at $149 per month. You can try it free for 14 days, and there’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee.

5. Hootsuite

It is one of the most popular scheduling tools among social media marketing agencies. Hootsuite promises to help you schedule social media posts and content, follow customer chats, handle organic content, and see instant analytics. Using this tool, you can quickly view someone’s social media info and find relevant searches, keywords, and other valuable data.

It offers automatic features for managing social media on different platforms simultaneously and saving time. While Hootsuite’s main page has many features, it seems a bit complex for new users and takes some practice to get used to.

When looking at options like Hootsuite, it’s important to consider its advantages and disadvantages to make an informed decision!

Hootsuite Pros

• It helps you publish content on many platforms.
• With the help of an advanced scheduling feature, you can post content quickly and regularly.
• The content calendar enables you to see strategy and easily postpone posts.

Hootsuite Cons

• It lacks a free plan.
• It has steep pricing for advanced features.
• Some users reported some issues with live posting capabilities.
• It’s not a user-friendly platform.
• You may face some bugs and errors while publishing content.
• The process of scheduling social media posts seems so complicated.

Hootsuite Pricing

Its plan starts from $99 per month with a 30-day free trial. That’s too expensive! I think it’s not worth it!

6. Sendible

This post scheduler lets you schedule social media posts on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, as well as on WordPress, Tumblr, and Medium blogs. Moreover, you can get post ideas from RSS feeds and suggestions on content and trends.

Sendible asserts to help you schedule lots of content simultaneously and personalize images to match your brand. It’s also useful for tracking how well your campaigns work. 

Sendible Pros

• You can track your brand, competitors, and industry terms with Social Inbox.
• Receive email or Slack notifications for mentions.
• Create detailed custom reports and schedule them to be sent automatically via email to clients.

Sendible Cons

• It requires additional third-party integrations for advanced social listening and sentiment analysis.
• The cost and structure of Sendible’s plans depend on the number of services you use.
• When responding to conversations or mentions through Sendible, the platform doesn’t display responses immediately.
• You may experience a learning curve with its dashboard.

Sendible Pricing

Sendible provides four pricing plans to meet different requirements:

• Creator Plan: $24 per month, perfect for freelancers.
• Traction Plan: $75 per month, created for startup agencies and brands.
• White Label: $165 per month, the top choice for growing agencies and brands.
• White Label+: $675 per month, Specifically designed for large teams and agencies.

7. Later

It is one of the popular social media scheduling tools for planning content that has many useful features such as Optimal post-time recommendations, Feed previews, and Instagram hashtag suggestions. It will help you organize your content calendar visually and keep all your media in one place. Each piece of media can have notes, labels, and stars for quick sorting.

With Later’s Quick Schedule, you can drag and drop your posts into specific time slots. It’s like a lineup for your posts, and Later automatically fills your next open time slot with your media content. 

Additionally, there are also plenty of ready-made templates, so you don’t have to create everything from the beginning. But how can we trust it without knowing all its aspects? Let’s take a closer look at its pros and cons!

Later Pros

• The platform has an easy-to-use interface, ensuring a seamless user experience.
• The platform offers competitive pricing plans compared to other social media content scheduling tools.
• The inclusion of a ‘Best Time to Publish’ feature assists users in optimizing their content release strategy for maximum reach and increasing Instagram engagement.

Later Cons

• All users are required to have business accounts on social media platforms.
• The free version of the platform provides only basic features, limiting the range of capabilities available to users.
• It lacks some features like bulk upload, so the users can’t upload multiple items simultaneously.
• It doesn’t let you publish a post without images.

Later Pricing

Later offers four different plans, including 14 14-day free trial.

• Free plan: 1 social set, 30 posts per social profile, one user.
• Starter plan ($25/ mo).
• Growth plan ($45/ mo).
• Advanced plan ($80/ mo).

8. Zoho Social

It is a handy tool designed to boost your business or agency’s social media presence. Zoho Social helps you connect with the right audience at the right moments through messages.

According to their claims, you can schedule and publish content that matters to your audience. You may ask how. Well, the platform’s prediction engine and social listening help you analyze data and suggest the best time to share your posts for more audience engagement.

Zoho Social Pros

• Its SmartQ feature identifies and suggests the optimal time slots to schedule your social media posts.
• You can integrate with CRM systems.
• It promises to generate automated reports tailored to your preferences, and you can share these reports with clients.

Zoho Social Cons

• The analytics and reporting in Zoho Social are insufficient. It lacks a combined analytics feature.
• Unlike other social media scheduling tools, it doesn’t have RSS Feed integration.
• Unfortunately, it is too pricey considering the features and user interface it provides.

Zoho Social Pricing

For companies, its plans start from €10 to €40 for companies. And for agencies, it starts at €230 to €330 per month.

9. SocialPilot

It’s a social media scheduling tool that simplifies creating social media schedules to optimize marketing efforts, especially Instagram marketing. According to their claims, it supports Instagram Direct Publishing, simplifying your posting process by allowing you to manage and publish directly to multiple accounts. 

You can even schedule and publish the first comment on your Instagram posts, adding hashtags strategically in the first comment to expand your post’s reach without distracting from your main message.

How about scheduling TikTok videos? Well, SocialPilot now enables you to create and schedule multiple videos on TikTok. You can schedule video content for various TikTok accounts by setting up individual posting schedules. But it’s not enough to just trust their claims; it’s essential to examine their pros and cons!

SocialPilot Pros

• It’s one of the budget-friendly social media post-scheduling tools.
• It simplifies post-creation by integration with Canva.
• It has an easy-to-navigate dashboard for a smooth user experience.

SocialPilot Cons

• It does not support automated posting on TikTok.
• It lacks advanced functionalities that might be appealing to larger businesses and enterprises.
• It has limited options for third-party apps and integrations.

SocialPilot Pricing

SocialPilot offers a free 14-day trial (no credit card required). For individuals, pricing starts at $30 per month, and for agencies, it starts at $100. You can save 25% by switching to yearly billing.

10. Iconosquare

Iconosquare’s scheduling tool lets you plan posts on your computer or using the app. According to their website, it comes with key features like saved captions, hashtag lists, scheduling the first comment, and cross-posting to multiple profiles. The drag-and-drop feature also makes it simple to rearrange your feed effortlessly.

Iconosquare promises to streamline the content creation, allowing you to pre-create captions and frequently used hashtag lists. This will help you copy and paste during content scheduling, ensuring your posts are scheduled.

Iconosquare Pros

• The software constantly updates and improves its features over time.
• It provides tools for analyzing and staying ahead of competitors.
• Iconosquare offers reliable and efficient automated posting capabilities.

Iconosquare Cons

• Its support team isn’t responsible.
• Users may encounter occasional issues or bugs in certain features.
• The software may not support all platforms, like YouTube and TikTok.

Iconosquare Pricing

Iconosquare offers free and three paid plans, including:

• Single Plan: 59€.
• Teams Plan: 99€
• Custom Plan: Custom Price.

Now, you may be wondering:

What Features to Look for in Social Media Scheduling Tools?

When choosing a social media scheduler, finding one with the features your business needs is crucial.

#1 Support for Multiple Social Networks

Most businesses are on a few major social networks. Make sure the scheduler you choose lets you handle all your social media posts from one central calendar. Look for tools that cover Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business.

#2 Easy-to-Use Social Media Calendar

Planning your posts should be simple. Tools like SocialBee, have user-friendly content calendars. These help you see what’s scheduled and make it easy to stay on top of your social campaigns.

#3 Curation and Collaboration Features

Content creation takes time. Choosing a scheduler helps you find interesting content and allows easy collaboration with clients through a shared calendar.

#4 Additional Social Media Management Features

If you don’t already use a social media management tool, consider an all-in-one solution. Tools like Sendible go beyond scheduling, offering features like a content calendar, publishing, social media inbox, listening, analytics, and more. This way, you have everything you need in one place.

To Wrap Things Up

There are so many social media scheduling tools, but only a few are good and reliable. Some paid ones cost a lot, and some don’t have the features you want. And the others don’t work well. That’s why we made a list of the best and most free social media scheduling tools to help you make informed decisions. With these tools, you can easily post on social media without wasting time.

FAQs