15 Best Buffer Alternative Tools for Social Media Management

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Creating a winning LinkedIn content strategy takes time and effort. You're not alone if pressured to produce and promote well-performing content. Many LinkedIn users experience anxiety when it comes to sharing content on the platform. There's a lot on the line.

You want to impress your boss, land a new job, and establish credibility in your industry. The stakes are high, and no one wants to flop publicly on LinkedIn. So, you set out to craft thoughtful content, and you're feeling good about it.

But then you get stuck on the following steps: promoting it and getting it in front of the right people. That's where this guide comes in. We'll explore the benefits of using a Buffer alternative to help execute your LinkedIn content strategy, like boosting your content performance and going viral.

One promising Buffer alternative is Megaphone's viral on-demand platform. This tool can help ease your promotion worries and improve your chances of going viral.

What is Buffer?

Buffer is a social media management tool that helps small businesses schedule, publish, and analyze social media posts across various social networks. We mainly evaluated it for social media scheduling. Upon connecting our social media accounts, Buffer even pulled in all our past content and displayed it on a calendar, giving us a fantastic bird ' s-eye view of our past content schedule. Buffer has a modern interface makes it easy to use and visually pleasing to work with, especially compared to rivals Metricool and Hootsuite, which feel dated and old.

Features: What Can You Do with Buffer?

As with any scalable social media management tool, Buffer can be used in its most basic incarnation, which is most suitable if you’re just starting. Buffer users get an array of essential publishing tools and a handy landing page builder as standard, but if you want to boost your potential, head for the Essentials or upwards. The free tier comes with three channels, basic scheduling, a landing page, the ability to schedule 10 posts per channel at any time (with no monthly limit), and a valuable new AI assistant.

Meanwhile, the Essentials plan includes everything in the free tier, plus as many channels as you wish, unlimited post-scheduling, analytics, and engagement tracking. The last two might prove the difference between paying nothing and going for the $5 per month per channel option. All teams get iOS and Android apps, which make working on the go much more straightforward and support 30+ app integrations and two-factor authentication.

Upgrading to either a Team or an Agency means your business can instantly do much more. For example, scheduled posts per channel are limited to just 10 on the free tier, rising to up to 2,000 on the higher tiers. Of course, on any Buffer edition, it’s easy to work with prominent social outlets, including Instagram, Facebook, X (or Twitter), LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Similarly, on the higher tiers, there are assorted scheduling options, a calendar view, handy day-to-day features such as a link shortener capability, and one for tweaking custom links.

The paid-for editions also deliver features such as custom video thumbnails, multi-channel campaign delivery, and many incredible options for tweaking Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook posts. To cut to the chase, the main features of the non-free tier options are analytics, insights, and reporting. Essentials, Team, and Agency all get a performance overview, data access, and much more, while Team and Agency gain branded reposts and a cover page.

Buffer Price Plans

Free Buffer Plan: What’s Included?

Buffer’s free plan is an excellent option for beginners looking to get started with social media scheduling. It allows you to connect up to three social accounts and schedule 10 posts per profile per month.

Essentials Plan: What’s Included?

The essential plan starts at $6 per month for each social channel you add beyond the three included in the free plan. This plan includes everything you need for effective social media management.

Team Plan: What’s Included?

The team plan costs $12 monthly for each social channel you add. This plan allows for team collaboration, so you can invite your coworkers to help manage your profiles.

Agency Plan: What’s Included?

The agency plan is perfect for marketing agencies that manage social media for clients. It starts at $120 per month for 10 social channels. You can add additional channels for $6 each. This plan also allows for team collaboration, so you can invite your team members and clients to help manage social media profiles.

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1. Megaphone: The Platform for Authentic Growth

Megaphone is a viral on-demand platform designed to boost your online presence authentically. Our software connects you with influential creators in your niche, helping you grow impressions, followers, and leads without relying on paid ads. Key features include A sophisticated engagement network, Private engagement pod service (coming soon), and Diverse creator partnerships for sponsored posts, X spaces, and newsletter ads (coming soon).

Megaphone caters to startup founders, marketers, emerging creators, and ghostwriting agencies seeking to amplify their digital footprint and social proof. Our complex matching algorithm ensures you partner with your field's most suitable and valuable creators. Go viral today with our viral on-demand platform.

2. SocialPilot: Potential and Usability for Agencies

SocialPilot is an all-in-one social media management app that's made for social media marketing agencies. You can schedule to all the most important social media platforms, like X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Google Business.

Plus, you get unique white-label features to manage, collaborate, and share analytics with clients. SocialPilot's pricing is reasonable if you manage many social media accounts. However, more affordable options (like Post Planner) exist if you manage only a few accounts.

Pros

Supports all of the most popular social media platforms. Great if you have a lot of social media accounts to manage. It is easy to optimize your posts for each platform—white-label customization features.

Cons

More complex user experience compared to alternatives. You can only add one social account for each platform for each brand.

SocialLadder is an end-to-end brand ambassador management solution. It primarily helps with influencer, ambassador, and affiliate marketing by letting you automate workflows, streamline communication, and monitor engagement. Improve influencer collaboration using in-app chatting options, feed announcements, and custom push notifications.

The platform lets you assign tasks and keep records of earned media value on different platforms. Identify your top performers with SocialLadder’s reporting tools. You can keep them motivated through a gamified reward or payment system. Access your reward inventory from a centralized dashboard. Conduct an in-depth analysis to calculate ROI (return on investment) from the amount spent on hired collaborators and relevant influencers.

Pros

Simplifies social media and influencer marketing campaigns. Includes ROI tracking. Point-based reward system. Chat function for smooth communication.

Cons

You cannot approve submitted content in bulk. The chat feature can be improved compared to other influencer marketing software.

Hootsuite is the best tool for larger companies because of its more complex features and higher price tag. It allows you to manage almost every aspect of social media posts. This tool enables social media managers to Publish and schedule content, including auto-schedule. Research and identify engaging content.

Engage with the community. View many aspects of engagement with a multi-stream view. Analyze progress and analytics. One of the strongest points of Hootsuite compared to other tools is the ability to directly reply to comments on your posts from the Hootsuite dashboard.

Pros

Strong analytics and reporting. Paid ads management. DM and comment management features that are great for customer service. Plenty of integrations. Great for social listening to manage your online reputation.

Cons

Much more expensive than Buffer. The free plan is only for 30 days.

Awario is a social media monitoring software that helps position your brand through influencer activities that trigger word-of-mouth marketing. It tracks brand mentions, content performance, and engagement statistics. Find influencers in your niche using the Mention Feed. Go through their content and profiles to lock down on potential collaborators.

Once partnered with the right people, monitor their commitment by tracking brand hashtags, keywords, and mentions in their respective feeds. With Influencer Analysis, you can gather social listening data to measure each influencer’s performance. Generate influencer comparison and post sentiment reports to analyze what worked for your campaign and what didn’t.

Pros

Ideal for online brand monitoring. Influencer discovery features help find niche influencers—influencer monitoring through keyword and hashtag alerts. Start conversations easily.

Cons

Some users desire more training materials for the influencer marketing platform. Tuning search filters can be a lot of work.

Sendible is a scalable social media management software with features that would be an excellent fit for agencies. After signing up for their free trial, I was delighted with how easily their dashboard navigated. I could quickly figure out how to use each feature. If I were a social media marketing agency, I'd strongly consider using Sendible because of its collaboration and white labeling features, which can help you better manage clients.

When scouring online reviews, I struggled to find many cons about using Sendible that weren't inherent to most social media management platforms. It's not the most cost-friendly tool on the list, but I'd still consider it a high-value option for its agency-focused features.

Pros

Allows team collaboration. Unlimited post-scheduling for every pricing plan. Known for quick customer support. White-label features.

Cons

It costs more than alternatives like Buffer and Post Planner. It lacks a content creator explicitly designed for UGC like Buffer has.

The first step to launching a kickass influencer marketing campaign is identifying influencers aligned with your brand. Social Blade is a social media analytics tool perfect for the job! Keep tabs on desirable influencers for target social media platforms—for example, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube—and generate a list sortable by metrics like followers, likes, views, and uploads.

Click on the profile you’re interested in to explore more relevant stats, like the number of likes and uploads the influencer gets every week, and determine who can provide the most exposure to your brand right now. Social Blade is great for YouTube marketing—if you want to collaborate with popular YouTubers, find them by looking at curated lists based on subscriber count, countries they’re popular in, and categories like comedy, education, music, sports, and travel.

Pros

Locates influencers across multiple social media platforms. Handy search filters. Numerous metrics to monitor influencer activities. Special YouTube consultations are available.

Cons

The search feature has room for improvement compared to other influencer marketing tools in this list. It is not as helpful for social media platforms besides YouTube, which could limit tracking your influencer marketing campaigns.

Eclincher is a social media and online reputation management software that was made for multi-location businesses like healthcare clinics. I recommend trying Eclincher's free trial if you're a business with multiple locations looking for more advanced features like inbox management, social listening, and business listing management. After trying their Basic plan, I was more pleased with the user interface than other reviewers who mentioned it was unaesthetic.

If you don't need more advanced features and are just looking for a tool that helps with social media content and scheduling, I'd recommend other options because the number of features won't be necessary. I also found the limitations with the Basic plan to be limiting for the price tag. For example, the Basic plan doesn't have access to the media library and reporting, which should be standard.

Pros

Feature-rich with tools that help you manage your online presence. It comes with tools for social listening and managing your DMs. You can get a local SEO tool (for additional cost). Attentive customer support.

Cons

It is less intuitive with the overload of features. I can't schedule stories.

9. Upfluence: Find Influencers and Manage Campaigns

Upfluence helps you find creators based on audience, content, and performance across platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. Besides bringing you complimentary creators, it is a central hub for monitoring submissions and issuing payments. The Upfluence database consists of millions of influencers, micro-influencers, and celebrities.

Narrow your search with over 20 filters, including keywords, audience size, and social platforms. You can even drill down to find influencers who already mention your brand, making them more likely to commit to collaborations. Try automated emails to get in touch with them. Upfluence offers influencer templates for contracts and outreach emails to save you time.

Pros

Data-rich influencer profiles across multiple social media platforms. Simplifies outreach through automated emails. 20+ filters to help with influencer discovery. Chrome plugin available.

Cons

No cancellation policy is available. It is not as user-friendly as other influencer marketing tools.

HeyOrca customers love HeyOrca for two main reasons: It's simple to use, AND they have fast customer support. They make it super easy to switch to different calendars, which is helpful if you're an agency that manages multiple clients' social media. After signing up for the free trial, I can confirm they have one of the most straightforward social calendars. It might lack tools that its competitors have (like better content curation), but I do like how they limit their features so users don't get overwhelmed.

Pros

Quick customer service (a lot of customer reviews rave about this). Simple social media scheduler. Helpful community of users. Can manage comments and DMs from their social inbox. It comes with a post-approval system for managing clients.

Cons

It is less affordable than Buffer or alternatives like Post Planner, which is a limited basic plan.

11. Hunter: The Email Finder

Hunter is an email finder that helps you gather the contact information of various professionals, including business influencers, to improve your outreach. Just access its database and define the type of collaborators you wish to connect with, and Hunter will suggest matching results from its repository of 100 million email addresses. The Domain Search function assists in locating influencers within a specific business domain.

This feature is convenient if you’re looking for guest bloggers with niche expertise. Hunter ensures you get valid email addresses through the Email Verifier function. It’s worth noting that Hunter prioritizes fetching professional email addresses instead of those of common domains like Gmail and Yahoo—link Hunter to platforms like Salesforce and Google Workspace to gather leads and streamline your business outreach.

Pros

A huge database of professional email addresses. Handy email verifier tool. Enables search by domain or a person’s name. Influencer marketing Campaigns feature helps you send outreach emails on autopilot.

Cons

It is hard for smaller companies to find contact info. The influencer marketing platform UX needs optimizations.

12. Loomly: A Feature-Rich Buffer Alternative

Loomly is an excellent option if you're looking for a more feature-heavy Buffer alternative that can be used across a large team and is much more affordable. It’s designed to help businesses manage their entire publishing process from start to finish. Its user interface is a little old-school-looking. However, I found it easy to navigate, and its onboarding process is easy to follow. One standout feature Loomly has that most other alternatives don't is that it supports Snapchat.

Pros

Intuitive to use. The approval feature makes managing client content easier. Can manage comments and DMs from one place. Responsive customer support. Recommends posts based on holidays.

Cons

Older-looking user interface. Although it has some content curation features, it doesn't help you find viral content like Post Planner.

13. Klear: Influencer Marketing Made Easy

Klear (formerly Twtrland) is an end-to-end tool for discovering influencers, monitoring campaigns, and managing payments. The user-friendly platform has a discovery portal with smart search filters to find influencers with unique physical and skill-based attributes.

Pros

Easy-to-use influencer discovery tool. Rich filter criteria. Brand Search feature to find value-compatible creators. Campaign progress metrics available. Insights into competitor marketing strategies.

Cons

Payment integrations can be complicated to set up. It's not best to find micro-influencers with an ultra-niche audience.

14. Planable: Collaborate With Clients and Team Members

Planable is another Buffer alternative that fits agencies that manage many clients well. They offer content collaboration features that allow you to communicate with your team internally to manage your social posts.

My favorite feature — a common theme across Planable's user experience — is its ability to generate AI captions based on an image in one click. I'd say that they have one of the better user experiences out of most alternatives because of how quickly you can get to any feature in 1-2 clicks.

They also offer features to plan your blog posts and newsletters in the same place as your social posts, although most companies won't use those features because they'll already have software for those use cases. It lacks a feature for curating content. They offer GIFs, but I couldn't find any other form of media that comes with the platform.

Pros

Easy-to-use user experience. Helpful customer support. Quick AI content features. Easily swap between posts views.

Cons

Doesn't offer stock images or videos. Pricing is scalable but can get pricey if you have a lot of users.

15. BuzzSumo: The Research and Analytics Tool for Influencer Marketing

BuzzSumo supports idea-based search of influencers and trending content. Identify and enroll influencers according to their value in terms of genuine connections, reach, and authority. The platform also has a database of 500,000+ influential journalists who can hype your brand with strategic articles. The Content Analyzer feature gets you a list of the most shared content relevant to your brand.

Select View Top Sharers to discover influencers with significant clout in the field. Dive deeper by exploring the average number of retweets to learn about a creator’s audience engagement. You should focus on these influencers, as they’re more likely to orchestrate your desired exposure. If you’re benchmarking, find the right competitors by generating Content Analysis reports and cherry-pick strategies that drive more engagement over time.

Pros

Cross-platform influencer discovery search. Offers a journalist database. Engagement-based analysis is ideal for detailed influencer marketing campaigns. Allows data exports in CSV and Excel formats.

Cons

Not for businesses with low content budgets. The user interface is not the best in this list of influencer marketing software options.

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Pros and Cons of Buffer

The Good Stuff: Buffer’s Pros

Buffer makes social media management easy with its simple cross-posting feature. You can create a post for one platform and, with a click, share it on all your other accounts, too. Buffer even customizes the post for each platform.

For example, if you post a video on Facebook and Twitter, Buffer will change the text to reflect the different audience expectations for each platform. This saves you time and helps you avoid embarrassing mistakes like referencing “tweets” in a Facebook post.

Buffer also has a straightforward calendar view that allows you to visualize your social media posts over time. This makes it easy to see how your content is organized, spot gaps, and ensure you have a diverse range of topics covered. Finally, Buffer integrates with almost every social platform imaginable.

The Drawbacks: Buffer’s Cons

While Buffer has plenty of great features, it has drawbacks. Some users may find the analytics tool Buffer Analyze a bit basic for their needs. For example, it helps you understand how your social media posts perform over time, but it doesn’t provide any actionable recommendations for improvement. Also, Buffer may glitch with Instagram when you try to schedule posts. While it does have a decent number of features for Instagram, the integration isn’t always smooth.

Finally, Buffer has arbitrary character limits for Facebook and Twitter, making cross-posting difficult. There’s also a pay-as-you-go packaging system. You must purchase separate plans to get more advanced features, like Buffer Analyze and Instagram posting capabilities.

Go Viral Today with Our Viral on Demand Platform

Megaphone’s engagement network is the ultimate Buffer alternative for businesses seeking organic social media growth. Rather than relying on paid ads to reach new audiences, Megaphone connects you with influential creators in your industry to help amplify your social media posts. The platform’s sophisticated matching algorithm ensures you partner with the most suitable creators to authentically grow your social media presence.

Private Engagement Pod Service

The first wave of our private engagement pod service is set to launch soon. We’re building these private pods to help you further boost your organic reach and social media presence. Once you join a pod, you’ll work with a small group of complementary creators to strengthen each other’s posts. These pods will be open to all Megaphone users at the beginning. As we learn more about optimizing their functionality, we’ll create rules for pod operation and structure to make them even more effective at improving your organic reach.

Diverse Sponsored Content Options

Megaphone helps you access diverse creator partnerships for sponsored posts, newsletter ads, and other content types. Sponsored posts boost your online presence by putting your business in front of a new, highly targeted audience. By working with influential creators in your niche, you can improve your social proof and get more visibility on your pages.