10 Best Buffer Alternatives for Social Media Automation

Before we talk about the best Buffer alternatives lets look into the importance of social media automation.

Any decent digital marketing strategy must include social media. Social media planning enables the brand to get a good outreach among the target audience.  But since there are lots of social media platforms available, it nearly becomes difficult to manage each and everything. 

Social media marketers must multitask and manage their time in addition to dealing with the ever-changing world of social media, where trends emerge like weeds and dissipate like smoke.

So to save time and handle multiple social media accounts, marketers often rely on social media automation tools. 

One such tool is Buffer. Buffer, which was launched in November 2010, soon became the go-to tool for social media marketers looking to easily schedule posts across various platforms.

However, we now have more Buffer alternatives in this segment, and many of these tools, in comparison to Buffer, integrate with more social media channels, provide more detailed data, and make team collaboration much easier. 

Let’s first look into what Buffer does and what are its key benefits. 

Buffer As A Social Media Management Tool

Buffer is a well-rounded and simple-to-use social media application that allows you to publish social media posts in one go, track engagement, and collaborate with others.

It is a social media management software that is trusted by brands, corporations, agencies, and people to help them achieve meaningful interaction and results on social media channels.

Although Buffer lacks some advanced features like influencer search and a restricted client management support system, it is an extremely user-friendly application that makes it easier to schedule and publish posts on various platforms.

Benefits of using Buffer 

• Monitoring Multiple Accounts in One Place: This tool’s brilliance is that it allows you to manage multiple social media accounts in one place. You don’t have to sign in to each platform separately.

• Scheduling: Buffer allows you to schedule your postings ahead of time. This means you can post at key periods when you’re more likely to reach your target audience. You must choose the day and hour. In a calendar style interface, you can evaluate your scheduled postings.

• Precise Analytics Data: The analytics data can assist you to figure out how effective your plan is. It allows you to keep track of all of your favorite platforms’ progress. It also aids in the creation of professional-looking business reports.

• Team Management: It enables you to add team members to different social media platforms. It also allows you to keep track of your team’s activity, update posts, and allocate tasks to team members depending on their capabilities.

Pros

Easy to use: The key advantage of Buffer is that it is simple to use. If you’ve used a social media management tool previously, you’ll be able to navigate it easily. There’s no need to waste hours reading their help guide or interacting with their customer support.

Image Editing: Buffer easily integrates with Canva and one can easily edit the images or post right from Canva and use it for their social media.

Analytics: Buffer’s analytics can be used to track the performance of each post. Keep track of all of your social media accounts’ conversations and involvement. On each platform,  the Buffer stats shows the types of content that your audience responds to the most. Shares, clicks, reach, comments, likes, mentions, and retweets are just a few of the metrics you can look at.

Cons

Expensive: Buffer is made up of three apps: Buffer Analyze, Buffer Reply, and Buffer Publish. To take benefit of all of Buffer’s capabilities, you’ll need to purchase each package separately.

No AI: Buffer’s fundamental static data reports become restricted in the face of AI-powered social media platforms that deliver excellent content generation ideas. 

Limited Team Collaboration Options: Buffer’s plans do not include team collaboration elements because the company’s focus is on easy scheduling and social media analytics.

Characteristics of A Useful Social Media Tool:

A smart social media automation tool will make it simple to implement a diversified social media strategy. Here are a few features that every social media management tool should have:

• Integrations: Not all social media management tools are made to function with all  the social media platforms. Make sure your social media tool is compatible with the social media networks that your company prioritizes.

• Content Management: Content curation, repurposing, and building market-specific content calendars are all important components of social media content management for today’s digital marketer. Check to see if your tool has good content management features.

• Budget-Friendly: The cost of every social media automation tool varies with each other. You may take a small package or the premium/advanced ones offering more accounts. So it all depends on your requirements. The majority of tools provide you with different pricing options include additional functionality which can meet your budget. 

The cost of SMM tools vary substantially based on the features they offer. Keep your requirements in mind and don’t buy more than you require. Let get into our list of top 10 curated Buffer alternatives.

Our Top 10 Curated Best Buffer Alternatives

We’ve compiled a list of the top ten Buffer alternatives to help you manage your social media accounts. They are quite effective and suitable for businesses, agencies, professionals, and others that want to market items or information with minimal effort.

Table of contents, list of Buffer alternatives

• Curatora.io
• HootSuite
• Agorapulse
• MavSocial
• SocialPilot
• SproutSocial
• Sendible
• Tailwind
• Loomly
• Later

1. Buffer Alternative – Curatora.io

A distinguishable Buffer alternative is Curatora.io. It is a content discovery and curation platform that automatically picks information from a large number of online sources and makes it easy for you to choose the most relevant post which has the potential to engage well with your audience. It also includes scheduling and automatic publishing on multiple platforms. 

Curatora.io includes powerful features right from discovery to the publishing right from their dashboard:

Discover

It gives you the opportunity to choose your sources from hundreds of topics or add your own custom sources. It even uses AI to suggest relevant content that can perform well with your audience. 

Curate

The intuitive and easy-to-use interface will save you time in reviewing, shortlisting content to publish on your social media channels. It also includes a great reading view that lets users scan through the entire article with one quick glance!

Once the article is shortlisted, you can add annotation captions and even add images with overlaid text within no time.

Publish

It supports all the major social media platforms and makes collaboration with your team easy.

This social media automation tool is a one-stop-shop for scheduling your week’s worth of posts in just an hour. It also comes with its own app so you can schedule it on the go!

Curatora vs. Buffer

Curatora has Artificial Intelligence (AI) for content suggestions. It uses both the current performance of a content piece as well as takes into consideration how a specific type of content has performed with your audience in the past. This way, you can find the most likely post that will work well with your target audience and get more engagement. Buffer’s fundamental static data reports become inadequate when compared to AI-powered social media solutions that supply excellent content generation suggestions.

Curatora allows you to collaborate and curate with your team. It doesn’t matter whether you manage a small business or a large agency because Curatora has a space for you. Buffer’s plans do not include team collaboration elements because the company’s focus is on easy scheduling and social media analytics.

2. HootSuite

Hootsuite is one of the most popular Buffer alternatives. It’s a well-liked social media management platform with features such as scheduling, monitoring, and team management.

Hootsuite has a multi-column design which makes it easy to use. Its strong features allow you to easily manage and schedule your social media posts. 

From scheduling social media posts to handling direct messages, Hootsuite gives users an unrivaled experience. It connects a variety of apps for project management, team collaboration, and other purposes.

Hootsuite vs. Buffer

Hootsuite offers more than just publishing and analytics. ‘Composer’ allows you to create a post, all while giving a sneak peek of how it will appear on your page! It also lets users incorporate various social media pages into their plan- making things easier by bringing everything in one place

They offer 30 days’ worth of free service which gives users plenty of time to get acquainted with their interface before making a purchase decision.

3. Agorapulse

AgoraPulse is a powerful social media marketing tool for businesses. It can be used for product promotion, content marketing, and network building, among other things.

It’s easily customizable, so you may customize the posts to your taste. While sharing content, custom photos and videos can be uploaded to replace the default post thumbnails and make the sharing experience more appealing.

Content recycling is another significant element of AgoraPulse. Set the number of times the posts should be recycled, and AgoraPulse will handle the rest. It’s a great way to cut down on your marketing workload and reuse content intelligently.

AgoraPulse also provides full social media engagement and expansion solutions. It integrates with the most widely used referral sites and apps to help you manage your social media traffic.

Agorapulse vs. Buffer

Agorapulse is a powerful tool with actionable metrics. Communication from multiple social media accounts can be managed in one place. It’s clever, yet it’s also really simple to use.

Buffer, on the other hand, only provides the most basic automation features. Anything above that is an additional expense. Unlike Buffer, Agorapulse offers more than just online help, including webinars, courses, and other useful tools.

4. MavSocial

MavSocial is the all-in-one social media marketing solution that will assist you with everything from curating to analysis. It comes with a built-in bank of stock photos, so you won’t have to waste time creating visuals for your posts. Make the most of social listening to dominate your social media audience.

MavSocial vs. Buffer

MavSocial is a campaign management solution that can save you a lot of time and effort. Its intuitive features will assist you in doing most social media promotion activities without difficulty. Its content management mechanism is also superior to Buffer.

Buffer offers essential capabilities as add-ons, while MavSocial provides the majority of them as part of its bundle choices, so you won’t be confused.

5. SocialPilot

SocialPilot is one of the cleanest and most efficient Buffer alternatives. You can easily schedule posts and track them using a desktop or a mobile app.

Sending a campaign to a large number of accounts, pages, and groups is straightforward with SocialPilot. You may schedule tweets and postings months in advance using custom photographs, videos, and GIF files.

It offers a colorful design and an easy-to-use layout. SocialPilot takes team collaboration to the next level with built-in advanced controls and rich reports. It supports all of the networks you’ll need to reach a large audience and promote your brand.

SocialPilot vs. Buffer

Despite the fact that SocialPilot and Buffer have a lot in common, the former steals the deal.

More social media outlets can be connected to SocialPilot. Aside from that, compared to Buffer’s 2,000 posts, it can schedule up to 5,000 posts.

There are also other things that SocialPilot has that Buffer doesn’t, such as the ability to control your Facebook advertisements directly from the marketing tool.

Another useful feature is SocialPilot’s Social Inbox, which lets your team manage posts, comments, and messages across multiple Facebook Pages.

6. SproutSocial

SproutSocial is another well-known social media management tool. The tool helps you listen in on your social media channels and stay up-to-date with what’s going around, besides just publishing engagement or analytics.

Create your campaigns, schedule them for maximum impact, and track their performance across all platforms. Group your postings and assign them to a distinct team to ensure a quick response to user concerns, complaints, and other issues.

Sprout Social is a terrific alternative for businesses trying to boost their social media presence and increase revenue. It connects to prominent social media platforms and apps to simplify your digital marketing tasks.

Sprout Social vs. Buffer

Sprout Social is unique in that it includes CRM and listening add-ons that can help you enhance your marketing approach by providing insights and conversations about your company.

They also provide a 30-day trial, which is twice as long as Buffer.

7. Sendible

Sendible is a company that specializes in advanced brand monitoring. Sendible is a mobile app that helps you manage engagement across social streams, making it a great tool for agencies. The scheduling flexibility and ability to put up recurrent articles are quite popular among users. It also has excellent customer service.

Sendible vs. Buffer

Sendible provides a lot more than merely posting your content. Its CRM functionality, which shows you information about the person you’re talking to and your previous encounters with them, is one of its standout features. You’ll be able to send more personalized communications to your customers as a result of this.

8. Tailwind

Tailwind is the perfect social media marketing solution for anyone looking to boost their engagement on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram. Tailwind is an official Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram partner with a visual-focused social media marketing solution. This also allows you to choose the best times to post and use suggested hashtags to boost interaction. With sophisticated scheduling features and essential metrics, you can double your reach.

Tailwind vs. Buffer

Tailwind is the tool for you if your business relies on visual dynamics. The creative possibilities, as well as the preview tools, can dramatically boost your Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest results.

Another benefit of Tailwind is its communities, which allows you to connect with worldwide influencers in your niche. Buffer doesn’t have such community integration to boost your reach.

9. Loomly

Loomly simplifies and expedites collaboration, allowing you to build a successful brand name. It also publishes and tracks content to ensure that only the best information reaches your target audience, resulting in increased sales.

Loomly collaborates with a wide range of clients, including agencies, SMEs, non-profits, and large corporations of various sizes, as well as teams of all kinds. It offers useful workflows and resources to help you improve your company’s brand and social presence.

Loomly helps with idea posting, content production in its content library, asset management from a single platform, and even professional post and ad optimization in no time. It also allows you to visualize what you’re presenting and how potential viewers will react to it, ensuring that your entire team is on the same page. Automatic publication allows you to focus on your actual work while saving you a lot of time.

Loomly vs. Buffer

The primary distinction is that Loomly concentrates on content development with tips and previews, whereas Buffer leaves content creation to your team and focuses on what happens next.

10. Later

Later is best known for its Instagram scheduling tool, but you can also manage your Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter accounts with it. Create a shoppable Instagram feed similar to the Buffer shop grid and add several links to a single post for a shoppable IG feed. Larger layouts can also be used to organize stories. Plan out your Pinterest image and video pins. You can even adapt posts from one site to another with Later, allowing you to truly Gary Vee your content.

Later vs. Buffer

While Buffer just features an Instagram hashtag manager that stores your most-used hashtags, Later takes it a step further by suggesting hashtags for improved discovery. Buffer, on the other hand, lacks a content library where you can post an endless amount of photos.

Brands like Hippeas have taken advantage of the platform to expand their social media presence. They were eventually able to establish relationships with well-known companies like Starbucks and Whole Foods. Their products are now sold in over 30,000 locations.

Conclusion

It’s as simple as that! For managing your social media accounts, these are some of the finest Buffer alternatives. The Buffer alternatives mentioned above are among the best available.

If you want to automate your social media management operations and ensure that your social media strategy is one of the best, you’ll need the best tools for your team. With our broad list, you’re sure to find the one that’s right for your squad!