The 9 best social media management tools in 2026

Social media has had a wild few years. Twitter is now X, AI is everywhere, Threads is a thing, LinkedIn is back, and TikTok had a big will-it-be-banned-won't-it-be-banned fandango. But what the chaos has shown is that despite everything, social media is still one of the most powerful tools available to modern businesses. You can use it to find new clients, drive traffic to your site, and keep in touch with existing customers so that they stay engaged with your business—even as names change and headlines are made.

With social media more fractured than ever before, if you aren't careful, you can waste huge amounts of valuable time trying to manage multiple inboxes across five different apps, post the same things on all the different platforms, and keep on top of everything else. It's next to impossible using regular consumer apps. To do it properly, you need a social media management app.

The best social media management tools allow you to control your full social media presence in a single app. You can automate, analyze, and manage social media accounts, so you can focus on creating the kind of content your audience loves. 

I put almost 80 social media management apps to the test. You'll see some recognizable names on this list, like Buffer and Hootsuite, but I've also included some more niche and platform-specific apps like Iconosquare and Typefully. Based on my testing this year, here are the nine best.

The best social media management tools

• Buffer for social media scheduling

• Hootsuite for fully-featured social media management

• Sprout Social for premium social media scheduling

• Vista Social for small teams

• Agorapulse for social media inbox management 

• Metricool for social media analytics and reports

• Iconosquare for visual content

• Typefully for text-based social networks

• Sendible for an affordable all-in-one social media management app

What makes the best social media management tool?

The problem with social media management software is that every app is limited by the same thing: the features the various social networks give it access to. This means that not only do most social media scheduling tools offer very similar features, but those features vary between the social networks they support. TikTok, for example, gives a totally different set of analytics data than Facebook, while Instagram is different to post to than YouTube. 

And that's before we even talk about X-formerly-Twitter. Until Elon Musk bought it, it had one of the most permissive APIs. A lot of social media management apps relied on it to offer features like competitor monitoring and social media listening. But those kinds of features can now cost thousands of dollars per month, so they're only available in some of the most fully-featured enterprise apps or on the most expensive plans.

All this means that when it comes to the best social media manager software, you shouldn't expect wild standout features related to particular social networks. There's no social media management platform that can post directly to a personal Instagram profile or reply to comments on someone else's Facebook Page posts.

Still, there are some key features that the top social media managers have that set them apart. They generally make managing your business's social media presence easy and efficient. In particular, they offer:

• Support for multiple social networks, ideally including Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok at the very least, though since things have become more chaotic, I've had to relax this criteria a touch. Similarly, support for Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and the other Twitter replacements is increasingly relevant. The goal with any of these apps is to manage as many of your social networks as possible in one app—or at least to manage a more focused bunch of them really well.

• Powerful scheduling tools, so you could batch your social media posts at the start of the week or month, and then just let them run. (Access to your social media inboxes so you could reply to customers was a bonus, but not required for more affordable apps.)

• Detailed analytics on how your posts do. The more expensive the app, the more powerful the analytics I required—at least until they hit the limit of what the social media apps offer. For enterprise apps, for example, I required more powerful X features like social monitoring, where you can scan for posts about your business, or even your competitors. More basic apps can't afford the API access these otherwise require.

• Cost-effectiveness. With all social media software limited to offering the same kind of features, high prices need to be justified with additional features, stellar customer support, and team and collaboration tools. 

AI is already having a huge effect on how companies manage social media, though it hasn't dramatically changed the social media management app landscape in my experience. The existing big players have all added AI features faster than most of the AI-first apps have been able to build out social media features. If a big emphasis on AI is a priority for you, check out Zapier's list of the best AI-powered social media managers. Otherwise, almost every app on this list has AI built in—and they're all still tools that enable you to post whatever you want to social media—whether you, an AI, or an intern wrote it.

I've been covering tech for almost two decades and updating this list for the past five years, so I've spent a lot of time exploring and testing social media marketing software. After putting them through their paces, comparing the features and user experience they offer against other similarly priced apps, and generally assessing how good (or bad) they are to use, these nine social media planning tools are the ones I think will be the best fit for the majority of businesses.

One last thing: every tool that made the list has a free trial—and sometimes even a free plan—so don't be afraid to dive in and try them out. The best social media management app for you will be the one that best fits your needs and price point.

The best social media management tools at a glance

Best social media scheduling tool

Buffer (Web, iOS, Android)

Buffer pros:

• Dead simple scheduling for all your social media accounts 

• Decent free tier and per-channel pricing keeps costs low for small businesses 

Buffer cons:

• Buffer has a history of changing up its pricing and features quite drastically

Buffer is one of the longest-running social media tools aimed primarily at scheduling posts, although it's gone through multiple updates, shifts, and iterations to keep up with the times. It now supports Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, Pinterest, and Google Business Profile. Free users can connect up to three social accounts, including Facebook Pages and groups, though you're limited to scheduling 10 posts for each channel.

While Buffer's free plan is good enough for small businesses to line up a week or so's worth of posts, if you want a more complete social media management solution or to control more than three social media accounts at once, you'll need to pay $6/month per social channel for the Essentials plan. This gives you access to detailed analytics and community features, which let you interact with your audience directly from Buffer. (Also, if you want to bring team members on board, Buffer goes up to $12/month per social channel.)

Like many other social media apps, Buffer has added an AI assistant. It can generate posts, rephrase your drafts, help you create ideas, and otherwise do all the other AI content generating you'd expect. It's nice to have, but Buffer's real standout feature is its value for money.

With Zapier, it's easy to link any other service you use to Buffer. For example, you can automatically add new blog posts to your schedule, either directly from WordPress or through an RSS feed, or add new Instagram photos to Buffer. Learn how to automate Buffer with Zapier, or get started with a pre-made workflow.

Buffer price: Free plan includes 1 user, 3 accounts, and 10 scheduled posts per profile; from $6/month per social channel for the Essentials plan that offers unlimited scheduled posts per profile; from $12/month per social channel for the Team plan that offers unlimited users.

Best fully-featured social media management tool

Hootsuite (Web, iOS, Android, Chrome)

Hootsuite pros:

• A complete social media management platform that includes scheduling messages, inbox monitoring, and managing posts 

• All in on AI

Hootsuite cons:

• Increasingly expensive

If you're looking for a complete solution to all of your social media management needs, Hootsuite will cover all your bases. It's an all-in-one social media app: you can use it to schedule messages, create and manage potential posts, monitor your various inboxes, run boosted post advertising campaigns, and pretty much anything else you would want a social media management app to do. Plus, it's gone all in on AI over the last few years. 

The aptly named OwlyGPT can generate posts, help you brainstorm, catch spelling mistakes, and analyze post metrics and performance—it can even flag "risks" in your posts that could get you canceled or on the wrong side of a culture war. It works as a standalone chatbot or a sidebar throughout the rest of the app. When I said at the top that the big players had all pivoted to AI, these are the kind of integrations I was talking about.

Analytics and social listening are another standout feature, which is important for the price Hootsuite charges. In addition to offering a full suite of analytics tools that can help you understand how your social media accounts are performing, Hootsuite also pulls in statistics from other businesses in similar industries, so you can see how you stack up to the competition. 

Hootsuite is really aimed at businesses that can convert social engagement into revenue. As it's added AI features, the cheapest plan has more than doubled in price. I considered cutting it on that basis, but the reality is, if you're paying someone a salary or retainer to manage your social media, then the cost of Hootsuite isn't the most expensive part of your social strategy. If that describes your business, Hootsuite might be exactly what you want—but if it doesn't, there are more affordable options on this list.

Hootsuite also integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like automatically create new messages directly from a spreadsheet or RSS feed and build AI-powered systems that automate all of your social media workflows. Learn more about how to automate Hootsuite, or get started with a pre-made template.

Hootsuite price: From $199/user/month (billed annually) for the Standard plan that includes 10 social profiles, basic analytics, and unlimited scheduling.

Best premium social media scheduler

Sprout Social (Web, iOS, Android)

Sprout Social pros:

• A premium enterprise product with all the features you'd expect

• Actual human support agents available on all plans

Sprout Social cons:

• You can probably hire an agency to run your social media for the same amount as a Sprout Social subscription

Sprout Social is the other big name in social media scheduling apps. For the longest time, I didn't include it on this list because I felt Hootsuite offered better value for most people, and if you were the kind of social media professional who knew they wanted what Sprout Social offered, you weren't taking my opinion too seriously. But as Hootsuite's price has crept up, the value proposition has diminished. With that in mind, Sprout Social is back on the list.

So, what does between $2,400 and $6,000 a year per user (before add-ons) get you? Polish, best-in-class features, and professional support. Even the cheapest (lol) plan includes 24/5 live phone support, onboarding, and recorded training sessions. It's not that your posts get any more scheduled than they do with more affordable options; it's that when things go wrong, there's someone available to help. 

Of course, Sprout Social also has features like influencer marketing, employee advocacy, and even professional strategic consultations available, and there's deep analytics, listening, competitor analysis, and everything else you'd expect from a premium service. And the employee advocacy platform integrates with Zapier, so you can help your employees automatically create and post content.

Sprout Social price: From $249/user/month for Standard with 5 social profiles.

Best social media management tool for small teams to schedule posts

Vista Social (Web, iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox)

Vista Social pros:

• Offers team features for a significantly better price than most competitors 

• Lots of other features, like scheduling, inbox monitoring, and task management 

Vista Social cons:

• Web app feels a bit basic

With many apps in this category, if you want to delegate social media management to someone else in your organization, you'll have to pay a serious premium for the privilege—Hootsuite, for example, charges $7,200 per year for a team of three and thousands of dollars more if you want to have some kind of post approval workflow. (You could always give other people your Hootsuite login credentials to save money, but that comes with a whole host of security concerns.)

With Vista Social, though, the Professional plan starts at $79/month and includes two other team members who can manage up to 15 social media accounts. That's thousands of dollars less than Hootsuite—though it does lack some polish.

Vista Social is a solid social media scheduler and also includes messaging, social listening, DM automations, and even basic task management so your team can keep track of who has to do what. It supports Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, Threads, Snapchat, Reddit, Bluesky, and even Tumblr. Really, all the features you need from a good social media management app are there, including the now obligatory AI assistant.

Vista Social also integrates with Zapier so you can automatically add content to your Vista Social schedule whenever something happens in the other apps you use most, or send data from Vista Social to those apps.

Vista Social price: From $79/month for the Professional plan with 3 users and 15 accounts starts at $79/month.

Best social media management app for social media inbox management

Agorapulse (Web, iOS, Android)

Agorapulse pros:

• A solid social media scheduler with a focus on your social inbox

• Continues to get better each year; they just added a Zapier integration

Agorapulse cons:

• Team plans can get expensive

There are a lot of solid social media scheduling apps in the $60 to $100/user/month range. They're nicer to use than some of the cheaper apps and tend to have better analytics, reports, and support, but they don't charge enough to be able to provide white-glove service. 

Agorapulse sits squarely in that category: it's a good, professional social media management tool. You can connect Facebook, Google Business Profile, and LinkedIn Pages; Instagram, Threads, X, TikTok, Pinterest, and Bluesky accounts; YouTube Channels; and ad profiles from Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok. There's an AI writing assistant, team features, approval workflows, and every post can be tied into a specific campaign. 

Where Agorapulse stands out a bit is the focus on its Inbox. It allows you to manage all the replies to your organic and paid posts, mentions, DMs, and reviews in the one place. There's an Inbox Assistant that can automatically sort things, and you can share them with your team to delegate replies to the most appropriate person. 

Agorapulse recently launched a Zapier integration, and—full disclosure—I wrote a couple of articles for them about how to set it up. I don't feel it affected my decision to include Agorapulse here, but just so everything is upfront and clear. The integration means you can use Zapier to do things like add notes to Agorapulse from Google Calendar events, schedule posts from an app like HubSpot, and generally connect Agorapulse to all the other apps you use at work.

Agorapulse price: Free for 1 user and 3 social profiles; from $99/user/month for Standard with 10 social profiles. 

Best social media management tool for social media analytics and reporting

Metricool (Web, iOS, Android)

Metricool pros:

• Excellent social media analytics and reports

• Legitimate free plan and affordable paid plans

Metricool cons:

• Pure scheduling takes a bit of a back seat

Metricool sits at the intersection of your whole web presence. As well as the usual Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, TikTok, and YouTube accounts, you can also connect to Twitch, and your own website and blog—plus Google, Meta, and TikTok ads. This means you can see how your ads drive traffic to your Twitch channel and your Twitch channel drives traffic to your online store, and so on. You can also track your competitors to see how they're doing. Metricool can also connect to Looker Studio so you can put everything in one dashboard.

Of course, it also has a social inbox, social scheduling, a link-in-bio service, and everything you'd expect from a social media scheduling app. But the focus is definitely a bit more on analytics and using the data you get from them, rather than just executing a content plan.  

On top of all that, Metricool is both affordable—the $25/month Starter plan allows you to manage 10 brands—and has a legitimate free plan. Even on the free plan, you can compare your socials to five competitors, though you can't change them once you pick them. 

Metricool also connects with Zapier, so you can do things like exporting the data to a Google Sheet or planning your social strategy in a project management app and posting from there.

Metricool: Free for one brand, 20 posts per month, and 5 competitors; from $25/month for Starter with 5 brands and 100 competitors.

Best social media management tool for visual social networks

Iconosquare (Web, iOS, Android)  

Iconosquare pros:

• Some of the best Instagram features in any app at any price

• Competent across the board

Iconosquare cons:

• Features for other social media accounts aren't as powerful

If you really prioritize super visual social networks like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest, then Iconosquare might be the app for you. While it supports Facebook Pages, X accounts, Threads accounts, and LinkedIn Company pages, it definitely puts more focus on visuals than it does text posts.

That's clear in the kinds of things you can schedule. With an Instagram account, you can schedule single photo posts, carousels of multiple photos, Reels, and Stories—and you can cross-post them all to multiple Instagram accounts at the same time. If you want, you can also schedule the first comment. 

TikTok isn't quite as thoroughly supported, but you can still schedule videos and photos, and pull content from a shared media library. Of course, you can also share versions of all these things on Facebook, X, or Threads, but it feels like a small step back in terms of features. 

Similarly, Iconosquare has surprisingly good reports, analytics, and even social listening features—especially for Instagram and TikTok. You can track your competitors, monitor specific hashtags, see how your followers are growing, and loads more. 

And like with almost every other app, you can use an AI to generate captions. It's more limited than some of the other offerings but useful if you want it.  

Iconosquare price: Free for 1 user and 2 social profiles; From $46/month for the Launch plan with 1 user and up to 5 social profiles.

Best social media management tool for text-based social networks

Typefully (Web, macOS)  

Typefully pros:

• The best way to manage content on Twitter replacements

• Very affordable

Typefully cons:

• Really limited to a small corner of the social media landscape

Last year, I said that while Twitter hasn't exactly died, its transition to X has been fraught with drama—and wow, did that undersell things. I think we can safely say that whatever Twitter was is dead, and X is now very much its own thing. 

While X is still a major platform, it still has competitors that are increasingly relevant and mature: Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky are all slightly different takes on short-form text-based social networks, and even LinkedIn posts are having a moment (though the majority of them are apparently written by AI).

A few years ago, the idea of a social media manager just for text-based social networks would have been a bit ridiculous—Twitter had the most permissive API, so every app made managing it easy. Now, Typefully provides a useful service for anyone trying to stay active across the increasingly fragmented microblogging/short-form text/Twitter-replacements network. 

Typefully allows you to write and schedule posts across X, Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, and LinkedIn from the one app. It can automatically split longer text posts into threads, and the built-in AI can help you tweak things and suggest new ideas. You can collaborate with a team and get feedback from clients. There are built-in analytics, and with X, you can respond to anyone who retweets or replies with an automatic DM. That way, you can run competitions or give away free resources to drive engagement. There's also a built-in site that can collect your threads, so you can share them as a resource. 

Typefully even integrates with Zapier, so you can log your posts in a database or post automatically when you publish a new blog post. Connect Typefully with the rest of the apps in your tech stack and build AI-powered systems for your social media management.

Typefully price: Free plan with 5 drafts and 15 posts/month on X and Bluesky. From $12.50/month with annual billing for unlimited posts on all networks.

Best affordable all-in-one social media management tool

Sendible (Web, iOS, Android)  

Sendible pros:

• Nails the basics at an affordable price

• Easy to use

Sendible cons:

• Lacks a few features of more expensive apps

Sendible is one of the best affordable all-in-one social media management apps. It supports Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, YouTube, WordPress, Threads, Bluesky, and X, and for the most part, offers a similar—if stripped down—experience to apps like Hootsuite that cost significantly more.

Take reports. While you won't get the same deep dives into your competitors, Sendible's quick reports give you a good overview of how your posts are performing—at least on the social networks it can support. Given the price point, there's no deep X analytics available, but one nice integration is Google Analytics, so you can see how social media is driving traffic to your site.

Similarly, you can schedule posts to go out at a specific time or get added to a queue to get posted automatically at the next appropriate slot, reply to comments on your Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn posts, add posts automatically from RSS feeds, or use the AI assistant to fine-tune captions. It's nothing that the other apps don't do, but it's well implemented and easy to use.

And really, that's what makes Sendible stand out: it does the basics really well, at a solid price. For many small businesses just looking to stay on top of social media, that's probably enough. 

Sendible also integrates with Zapier so you can automate your social media scheduling and connect Sendible to the rest of your tech stack. Build AI-powered workflows to streamline your marketing.

Sendible Price: From $29/month for the Creator plan with 1 user and 6 social accounts.

Which social media management tool is best for you?

As with most things, there's no one best way to manage social media—just the most appropriate for your business needs. These apps are all limited by the access the various social media networks offer to third parties, so most social media manager tools are capable of doing pretty similar things in much the same ways. All the tools that made this list stood out from the crowd for some specific reasons, but almost every app I tested worked well enough to schedule a week or two of social posts. You might well prefer how they implement certain features you rely on or otherwise find them a better fit for your needs.

If none of the apps on this list are quite what you're looking for, here are a few of the other great social media management tools to consider:

• Sprinklr and Meltwater are two of the real enterprise options. You can't even try them without requesting a demo. I can't even tell you how much they cost.

• At the midlevel, the likes of Sked Social and Statusbrew are all excellent Hootsuite competitors. Plans with most features generally start at well over $1,000/year, so you may need to get the purchasing department to sign off.

• SocialPilot, Nuelink, Publer, ContentStudio, Planable, MeetEdgar, and SocialBee all typically cost a little less, with entry-level plans coming in at between $100 and $600/year. Features vary wildly, and some apps are great at one thing (like automation or scheduling) and totally lacking in other areas. They can offer a solid bang for your buck, but you'll need a good idea of what features matter to you and your business.

Honestly, these apps can be difficult to compare as they all offer such a similar service. Whether any particular app is right for you depends on what features you need, how many team members you have, and what your budget is. If your customers notice or care what social media management app you're using, something weird is going on.

My main picks are a great place to start, and each one brings something special to the table. I suggest checking out their free trials and going from there.

Related reading:

• The best AI tools for social media management

• The best Twitter alternatives

• Social media marketing examples to inspire your next campaign

• The best campaign management software

• Bluesky vs. Threads: Which should you use?

• What is organic reach? And is it still useful?

• Social media calendar templates: Plan, schedule, and automate your content

This piece was originally published in September 2017 by Andrew Kunesh and has also had contributions from Tim Brookes. The most recent update was in March 2026.