Searching for a tool to schedule posts on Instagram isn’t a tough challenge. Picking a tool, however, isn’t so simple. Beyond creating and scheduling posts, you may want a little more for your spend.
But what should you be on the lookout for? In this blog post, we’ll share 11 tools for you to consider. Some include basic functionality and other more advanced features.
Year founded: 2016 Location: Los Angeles, CA, United States Best for: Social media managers, from brands to agencies & individuals Loomly was developed for social media managers. In fact, it’s the brainchild of two former social media managers who couldn’t bear the inefficiencies of the tools they used. So, they set out to create something that would get the job done. And we think Loomly’s worth trying out. Some of the most attractive features we’ve seen in the tool include: One other feature we found useful was the ability to fine-tune posts for a specific social platform. If you’ve created content for more than one platform, you know that variables like text character counts and image dimensions tend to make the process a little more time-consuming. Loomly’s fine-tuning solution allows you to create posts and tweak them for each platform you’ll post to. The result? Tailored social posts that look perfect every time. Unlimited calendars, content exports, live analysis, automated publishing, advanced analytics, post preview, post ideas and unlimited file uploads. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Year founded: 2010 Location: Chicago, IL, United States Best for: Brands and organizations of all sizes Beyond being one of the more intuitive and easy-to-use tools around, Sprout Social also comes with a set of valuable features. For example, you get a media library, tagging functionality to quickly locate assets, and the ability to collaborate with team members. But that’s not all. Sprout Social also comes with analytics and listening capabilities. These help you measure the performance of your Instagram account(s) and derive meaningful insights through quantitative, qualitative and contextual analysis. You can track hashtags, keywords and topics and use your findings to strengthen your social presence. Post scheduling tools, tasking and CRM tools, competitive reports for Facebook, incoming outgoing message content tagging, scheduling for optimal content send times, Spike Alerts for specific mentions or keywords, digital asset and content library, and chatbots with automation tools. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, Shopify Year founded: 2007 Location: Brighton, United Kingdom Best for: Mid to Large-sized Businesses Brandwatch aims to give brands a definite competitive advantage by offering the best and most accurate data to make informed decisions. It includes a unified calendar, with posts scheduled by date and clearly identifiable by social platforms. You can plan, schedule, edit, and post across multiple networks. With Brandwatch’s Campaign Planner, you can develop social campaigns in collaboration with team members across all your social platforms. Brandwatch supports image, video, Instagram Stories, and Facebook carousels. You store your content in Brandwatch’s version of a shared media library called the Content Pool, which integrates with your digital asset management tool and your favorite cloud storage platform. Brandwatch encourages collaboration with a set of roles, approval processes, and an audit trail to boost quality. These streamline content planning and creation and ensure everybody meets quality standards. You can promote posts through Facebook and Instagram ads within Publish, Brandwatch’s clean and intuitive tool that manages all ads in one place. Brandwatch includes social listening tools that let you track trends, monitor your brand, create custom queries, track sentiment, and monitor multiple languages. Analytics, automated publishing, content management, keyword filtering, multi-account management, post scheduling, and social media management Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, LinkedIn Full Suite, Contact for pricing Year founded: 2008 Location: London, United Kingdom Best for: SMMs, corporate marketing teams and digital agencies Sendible was founded back in 2008, and they’re still going stronger than ever. Clients include Pan Macmillan, PWC and the Queensland Government. Sendible has also evolved its solution over time. Today, they offer 23 integrations to help streamline social media management. Integrations include Google Analytics, Google Drive, Canva, Dropbox and Slack. When it comes to tools to schedule posts on Instagram, Sendible makes for a good choice. You can plan and collaborate around content, making it a dream for busy social media teams. Sendible’s model for social media management is slightly different from all others. In fact, we haven’t come across anything quite like as yet. They see the ability to publish and receive social content as two unique actions that are called services. You, therefore, require one service to publish a post on Instagram and another to read an Instagram direct message. Beyond services, everything else about Sendible makes it an easy tool to use. They offer a well-structured and useful education hub for clients. It includes all you’ll need to know how to use Sendible like a pro in no time. Content publishing & workflows and engagement & monitoring. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile Year founded: 2011 Location: Paris, France Best for: Small and large businesses and agencies Agora Pulse’s clean design is likely the first thing you’ll notice. It makes it look and feel like an easy platform to use, especially if you’re looking for a less complex alternative. And easy it is. Running social media on more than one platform is a challenge and Agora Pulse, like many other platforms, knows this. They offer the ability to post to all your accounts at once. And while that seems very convenient, we can’t help but wonder when the ability to tailor posts for each platform will become a feature. Wish lists aside, Agora Pulse allows you to schedule posts and also choose those to be recycled (think evergreen content). You also get an inbox that shows all incoming posts, comments and direct messages, making it easier to handle engagement across more than your Instagram account. Team members collaboration, social inbox, listening, publishing, reporting, user profiling, competitor analysis, ads per profile and team workflow. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Google Business Profile Year founded: 2011 Location: Berlin, Germany Best for: Medium-sized to enterprise companies and agencies Iconosquare is primarily an analytics, management, and scheduling platform. It provides in-depth analytics and gives you a range of easy-to-read graphs that display brand performance. It then offers detailed statistics relating to your community, content, engagement, reach and impressions, profile activity, page performance, detailed post analytics, Stories analytics, industry benchmarks, tags and mentions, hashtags, competitors, and much more. Iconosquare comes with a customizable dashboard, which you can build to capture insights important to your brand and campaigns, and each social profile you manage. You can export your dashboards as reports, which you can share with team members and clients. With Monitoring, Iconsquare lets brands listen to and engage with their audiences. You can respond to, moderate, and export what’s being said on your posts. You can break down your mentions on Instagram using metrics like mentions by type (either photo, caption, or comments), mentions by post type, mention history, and more. Iconosquare includes a versatile and easy-to-use post scheduler. Posts offer previews to ensure your content is optimized before publication. You can add photo and video posts automatically to Instagram and Facebook. Analytics, automated publishing, contact management, keyword filtering, multi-account management, post scheduling, and social media management. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn Year founded: 2014 Locations: California, New York, Kyiv, London, and Helsinki Best for: Multi-location businesses, local businesses, and marketing agencies Promo Republic is one of the more visually appealing platform designs we’ve ever seen. And while beautiful to look at, it doesn’t fall short of the functionality you’ll need in a tool to schedule posts on Instagram. You’ll have access to smart posting which is Promo Republic’s scheduling and post automation feature. All posts are displayed on a content calendar for easy viewing. Something that caught our eye was their range of editable templates. These are the perfect solution for busy designers or copywriters. They can easily be edited and scheduled to help keep your social profiles alive and filled with great content. And yes, that means you can edit these templates or build your own post from within the tool. Besides its heavy design focus, you’ll still be able to get specific through their reporting feature and export your data in easy-to-read PDFs. Add team members for collaboration, workflows and approvals, content reporting, post scheduling, content calendar, post ideas library, graphics editor, time slots, basic post statistics. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Google, Yelp Year founded: 2008 Location: Moncton, Canada Best for: Individuals and businesses Looking for a no-frills tool to schedule posts on Instagram? Try SocialOomph. It debuted in 2008 and comes packed with many of the features you’d expect from a social media management tool, and others that will make you raise your eyebrows. For example, post queues are common, but have you heard of self-destruct posts? These posts can be created in SocialOomph and set to disappear after a certain period of time. The rationale? Outdated information confuses followers, but if they no longer exist, you don’t have to worry about incorrect or misleading information about your brand, products or services. In addition to scheduling, bulk uploads and the ability to send social posts to Discord, Mastodon, Pinterest, Twitter and more, you can also create post tags. Post tags help group post together, making it easier to locate them later. Multiple social profiles, blogs, RSS feeds, queues, webhooks, scheduled posts, can add additional associates and teams. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Discord, Tumblr, WordPress Year founded: 2010 Location: San Francisco, CA, United States Best for: Publishers, mid-stage startup teams, non-profits, higher education, sports teams, e-commerce, solopreneurs, businesses Team collaboration, workflows, content scheduling and a content calendar are all features you’d come to expect from a social media management platform. And Buffer has it all. It also comes with the ability to tailor posts for each social platform (like Loomly) and packs a strong performance data tool called Analyze (sold separately) to help you track how effective your social efforts are. If the idea of data analysis being sold separately makes you feel uncomfortable, there’s more you should know. Buffer offers its solution as three products. These include: Three products may seem like too much, and possibly even a little unconventional. Competitors offer all of the above as one solution, and for bargain finders, Buffer may be a hard sell. Directly Schedule Posts, create a posting schedule, calendar view, custom video thumbnails and create, manage draft posts and invite additional users. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, Pinterest, Shopify, Mastodon Year founded: 2008 Location: Vancouver, Canada Best for: Businesses of all sizes Hootsuite’s been around for a while. And in their time, they’ve built one of the most competitive social media management tools around. Beyond a tool to schedule posts on Instagram, Hootsuite also offers monitoring to help you gauge what people are saying about your brand and products. Why is monitoring a big deal? Well, we’ve spent time reviewing many social tools and we’ve spotted a trend in the way platforms have begun to think about analytics and data. Concepts like sentiment analysis are no longer only within the sphere monitoring tool. Hootsuite proves that you can get them as additional features with some social media management platforms. We’re all for the idea of monitoring. It enables brands to gain more intelligence and use it to build better social marketing campaigns. Because of Hootsuite’s age and ingenuity, they’ve pretty much found the perfect mix of features and functionality. Automated post-scheduling is a given, so are analytics, team collaboration and content curation. Automated post scheduling, key performance metrics, team message assignments, analytics, exportable reports, flexible approval workflows, onboarding and ad spend to boost posts. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok Year founded: 2014 Location: Vancouver, Canada Best for: Businesses of all sizes Imagine being able to plan a week’s worth of Instagram posts in just 20 minutes. Sound like a dream, right? Well, that’s exactly what Later helps you do. It’s a social media management platform geared towards Instagram. In fact, the process of creating a social post mirrors Instagram’s. You start with an image, then add text. And while that may seem a little weird and almost counter-intuitive, it’s something you’ll quickly get used to. Later features a visual content calendar with drag and drop functionality (very helpful for anyone trying to shave time off their post-scheduling process). You’re also able to source post content from Dropbox, your desktop and Google Drive. Something we think makes Later special is its ability to collect user content and repost it. This a feature less than a handful of other platforms offer. It’s smart and makes sense. Building a strong community means interacting and shining a spotlight on followers. Being able to do so with a social media management tool as intuitive as Later makes the process a breeze. Analyse content performance, engage with Facebook fans, plan and schedule content, work with team contributors, collect and share content from any URL on the web. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest1. Loomly
Features list:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
2. Top 11 Instagram Scheduler Apps & Tools To Automate your Instagram Posts
Features list:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
3. Top 11 Instagram Scheduler Apps & Tools To Automate your Instagram Posts
Features List:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
4. Top 11 Instagram Scheduler Apps & Tools To Automate your Instagram Posts
Features list:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
5. Top 11 Instagram Scheduler Apps & Tools To Automate your Instagram Posts
Features list:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
6. Top 11 Instagram Scheduler Apps & Tools To Automate your Instagram Posts
Features List:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
7. Promo Republic
Features list:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
8. Top 11 Instagram Scheduler Apps & Tools To Automate your Instagram Posts
Features list:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
9. Top 11 Instagram Scheduler Apps & Tools To Automate your Instagram Posts
Features list:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
10. Top 11 Instagram Scheduler Apps & Tools To Automate your Instagram Posts
Features list:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
11. Top 11 Instagram Scheduler Apps & Tools To Automate your Instagram Posts
Features list:
Supported Channels:
Plans:
Conclusion
Using Instagram can be instrumental to your business’s success. After all, nearly 25% of marketers predicted that Instagram would offer brands the most significant audience growth potential in 2023. If you’re searching for a tool to schedule posts on Instagram, you’ll find that many offer similar functionality. With the exception of extras like graphics design capability and social media monitoring, most tools will help you get the job done.
If you’re looking for more than just the ability to automate posts, then gauging social media sentiment and in-depth reporting should be items on your list. Together, these advanced features will help your brand find new ways to strengthen your message in a loud and often distracting social media world.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Loomly good?
Loomly is one of the best Instagram schedulers to automate your Instagram posts. It offers attractive features like a media library for storing assets like photos, videos, notes, links and post templates and RSS feeds based on trends and events for content inspiration. It also lets you fine-tune posts for a specific social platform. This way you can create posts and then tweak them for each platform depending on variables like character limit and image dimensions.
Is Sendible easy to use?
Overall, Sendible is an easy-to-use tool for automating Instagram posts. While its unique way of using Services can be hard to understand at first, it does not take long to figure it out. Beyond this Services feature, everything else about this tool makes it easy to use. They also provide a well-structured and useful education hub for clients. It includes everything you need to know about how to use Sendible like a real pro in no time at all.
Is PromoRepublic a good tool for Instagram?
PromoRepublic is one of the top Instagram schedulers to automate your Instagram posts. One of the features that set PromoRepublic apart is its focus on design. It makes it easy to design beautiful posts without having to leave the app to use another graphics software. It also concentrates a lot on post ideas. It has 100,000 post ideas for a wide range of topics. Most of these post ideas are pre-designed with graphics that you can customize to fit your niche.
Are there any good Instagram schedulers that I can use for free?
You can try Later. Later offers a free plan as one of its three paid plans. The free plan includes 1 social set, 1 user, 30 posts per social profile and basic Instagram analytics. The number of photos you can upload to the Media Library is unlimited, though you will be able to schedule only static images. The free plan also does not offer stats relating to Pinterest posts, analytics about Instagram hashtags or the Conversation and Contributor feature.
What makes Agorapulse good?
Arguably the best feature of Agorapulse is its clean design. The interface is intuitive which makes it easy to set up and use, even if you will use it to schedule Instagram posts which can be more difficult. Also, thanks to its inbox that has all the incoming posts, comments and direct messages, it is easier to handle engagement across more than one Instagram account.
