Alternatives to Buffer: What options do we have for social media management

Buffer is a benchmark in social media scheduling. It is a management tool that allows planning, scheduling, and monitoring content across various social media platforms, facilitating centralized management of accounts like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. With its simple and efficient queue system, and its straightforward yet feature-rich interface, anyone, even without prior experience, can schedule and post on multiple accounts with ease.

When moving to business use, however, it is very likely that we will want to look for tools that offer greater depth in analysis and better collaboration. Choosing the right solution for our business can mean an exponential improvement in our social media marketing strategy.

Let's talk in detail about five alternatives to Buffer to better meet our objectives of visibility, engagement, and efficiency in the team responsible for our social media channels. These alternatives aim to improve audience engagement and offer advanced features for managing social media platforms. Each is a solution with specific features for different social media management needs.

The Best Alternatives to Buffer: Quick Comparison

Before checking the following comparison table, keep in mind that the rating of each tool is based on its performance, features, and suitability for different user profiles.

Hootsuite: Ideal for omnichannel management through collaboration

Hootsuite stands out as the top choice for its ability to manage multiple profiles across various channels completely simultaneously. This includes efficient management of different social media channels and the ability to closely track performance on each one, allowing analysis of metrics such as engagement, reach, and brand mentions.

Hootsuite offers dashboards — always customizable — that gather mentions, messages, and trends so that we always have a panoramic view of our presence. It also allows us to monitor keywords and hashtags in real time, something key for our social listening strategy.

We recommend Hootsuite for companies that need to focus on social listening and team coordination to respond to comments and trends across multiple networks simultaneously.

Key features of Hootsuite

• Full scheduling with interactive calendar
• Social Listening to detect mentions and trends in conversation
• Customizable reports with performance metrics
• Integrations with over 150 external apps and support services

Pros and cons of Hootsuite

Hootsuite is, as its name suggests, a whole suite of tools ready to expand our visibility and coordinate teamwork in social media management. Its learning curve, that is true, is quite steeper than Buffer’s, although it makes up for it with its professional-level analysis and collaboration options.

Hootsuite Plans and Pricing

Plans start at €99/month for one user and up to 10 social profiles. The Team plan starts at €249/month for three users and 20 profiles and includes more detailed reports. Additionally, Hootsuite often launches special offers and promotions on its plans, so it is advisable to check if there is any offer available before subscribing.

Sprout Social: Team Engagement Based on Analysis

Sprout Social stands out for its carefully designed interface and its unified inbox that greatly optimizes our response to interactions. This social inbox allows managing messages, monitoring conversations, and centralizing interaction with followers in one place, facilitating the management and strengthening of relationships with clients and audience. It offers good tools for social listening and report generation, making it easier to make data-driven decisions.

It is recommended for large teams or agencies that require truly detailed reports and the ability to provide agile customer service on their social networks.

Key Features of Sprout Social

• Smart Inbox to centralize all conversations across all networks
• Social Listening with sentiment analysis
• Customizable reports with export capability in PDF and CSV
• Collaboration system with task assignment and approvals
• Optimized content collaboration and approval process, allowing efficient management of each stage from creation to publication.

Pros and Cons of Sprout Social

Sprout Social stands out for centralizing more than any other tool a comprehensive analysis of sentiment and interactions. Its price, however, makes it an investment to consider. Meanwhile, the results for teams that value in-depth analysis and efficiency in interaction management are remarkable.

Sprout Social Plans and Pricing

The Standard plan starts at €249/user/month billed annually, with a 30-day free trial period.

Each plan offers different levels of access to tools, resources, and support, allowing users to manage accounts and digital assets according to their needs.

Later: Visual Planning Made Stylish

Later is one of the best options in managing graphic content, with a visual planner where we simply drag and drop to organize our schedule. Additionally, Later makes content management easy with a visual timeline, allowing scheduling and coordinating posts across different social media platforms efficiently. Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Later includes Linkin.bio support to turn Instagram into a real traffic channel.

We recommend using Later for brands that focus their strategy on visual content and seek organic growth on platforms like Instagram or TikTok, mainly.

Key Features of Later

• Visual calendar with grid view
• Linkin.bio tool to optimize Instagram links
• Media library with tagging and search capabilities
• Excellent post performance analytics with media

Pros and Cons of Later

Later greatly facilitates the creation and organization of visual content. Although its social listening features are less comprehensive than other alternatives, its interface is a productivity benchmark on networks like Instagram and TikTok.

Later Plans and Pricing

Offers a free plan with 1 profile on each network. The Starter plan starts at €15/month for 1 user and 1 profile per network. Currently, Later also has special offers on some of its plans, allowing access to exclusive promotions and discounts depending on the season.

SocialPilot: For teams with multiple social media accounts

SocialPilot catches our attention with a scheduling system capable of managing up to 500 posts at a very competitive cost. Its capacity makes it a valuable option for small businesses and agencies handling a high volume of social media posts. Additionally, SocialPilot is one of the management tools preferred by small and medium enterprises, as it facilitates efficient client and campaign administration on social networks tailored to their needs.

In short, SocialPilot is an ideal option for teams that manage a large number of accounts and require large-scale scheduling without drastically increasing their investment.

Key features of SocialPilot

• Bulk upload of posts via CSV
• Inbox for comments and messages
• Shared content calendar among teams
• Analytics with cross-account comparisons

Pros and cons of SocialPilot

SocialPilot balances price and functionality like no other tool. Its interface may seem less modern, but its scheduling and curation tools are simply outstanding and a great support for projects with a high volume of posts.

SocialPilot Plans and Pricing

The Professional plan starts at €30/month for 25 accounts and one user, with upgrades available according to our needs.

Zoho Social: integration with CRM and automation

Zoho Social takes advantage of its connection with the Zoho ecosystem to unify our sales and marketing management in one place. In addition, it is presented as a software solution based on advanced technology, incorporating artificial intelligence for task automation and process optimization. The SmartQ feature allows us to schedule at optimal times automatically.

Softonic especially recommends its use for companies looking to centralize commercial and social media management under a single platform and, usually, team.

Key features of Zoho Social

• SmartQ that chooses the best times to post
• Monitoring of mentions and keywords
• Metrics dashboard integrated with Zoho CRM
• Collaboration with roles and approvals for content

Pros and cons of Zoho Social

Zoho Social offers us integration with our CRM tools that endows the tool with great management capacity. Its interface may require some adaptation at first, but in the long term, it substantially speeds up coordination between marketing and sales.

Zoho Social Plans and Pricing

It includes a free plan with basic features. The Standard plan starts at €15/month for one brand and one or more users.

Comparison by categories

Before analyzing the alternatives, it is important to highlight that this comparison is based on key terms such as security, implementation, hosting, and scalability. Verifying each of these aspects is essential to make an informed decision about the social media management tool that best suits our needs.

Having seen the five alternatives individually, let us now look at them from another perspective. Let’s compare them among themselves in terms of security, implementation, hosting, scalability, and more to see which one best fits our projects.

Security and Compliance

Hootsuite stands out in this area with its data encryption capability and customizable privacy policies. Information protection is a priority on these platforms, ensuring that user data is managed securely and transparently. Meanwhile, Zoho Social benefits from the security reputation of the suite it is part of, which guarantees greater GDPR compliance and reduces legal risks.

Ease of Implementation

Hootsuite and Sprout Social have a very intuitive onboarding process, and with pre-designed templates, we can greatly speed up the setup. SocialPilot also stands out in this area with its excellent step-by-step guides and very fast technical support.

Customization and Integrations

Zoho Social allows direct connections with our CRM and has several automation tools. Meanwhile, Hootsuite offers an impressive 150 third-party integrations, which means we can adapt it to practically any existing infrastructure.

Hosting

Given the nature of social media management and the need to connect to those networks, all the Buffer alternatives we have seen are SaaS, which means that although we won’t have to handle the infrastructure, we should carefully review the privacy policy to ensure it meets our requirements.

Additionally, website management and its integration with social media platforms are fundamental in the context of hosting, as it allows optimizing online presence, facilitating interaction with visitors, and boosting marketing strategy both for an individual website and for websites aimed at global audiences.

Scalability

Hootsuite and Sprout Social scale horizontally very easily by adding users and profiles. This scalability enables these platforms to position themselves competitively in the market, as they can adapt to the needs of different types of companies. Not to that extent, SocialPilot offers quite flexible plans to grow our service level as the volume of posts increases.

Price

Later stands out here with plans starting at €15/month, SocialPilot is at €30/month, and Hootsuite starts at €99/month.

Among the alternatives to Buffer: Which one to choose for my business?

Choosing one of the alternatives to Buffer will ultimately depend on our needs and what we expect from the tool. So, let's see which platform stands out for each possible profile:

• Teams with a limited budget will find Later a good tool with real-time reports and visual planning with plans that even surpass SocialPilot in cost per post.
• Larger companies usually opt for Hootsuite or Sprout Social, as they are the platforms that stand out most in social listening features and that allow collaborative management.
• For users who prioritize privacy, Zoho Social enjoys the security reputation of the suite it is part of. Key for complying with regulations such as GDPR or similar.

Distributed or remote teams see SocialPilot as a tool that facilitates approval workflows and live comments, making it ideal for real-time collaborative marketing that requires good social media management.

Conclusion: What is the best alternative to Buffer?

Both Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Later, SocialPilot, and Zoho Social are solutions that expand Buffer's possibilities in different ways, covering everything from social listening to visual scheduling and collaboration in management. 

Having a clear vision of the tools will help us find that social media management platform that best fits our projects. Testing our top candidates, however, will guarantee the best results. 

Results that should quickly lead us to evolve Buffer in our brand strategy and in our presence on the increasingly important social networks.