Best social media management tools for SMEs right now

According to our expert research, the best social media management platform is Hootsuite, due to its in-depth reporting functionality, excellent customer support, and affordable cost.

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FEATURED PROVIDER	OUR TOP PICK
Provider Planable	Provider Hootsuite	Provider Sprout Social	Provider Buffer	Provider Iconosquare	Provider Zoho Social
Best for Collaborating with freelancers and clients	Best for Best all round social media management tool	Best for Understanding your target audience	Best for Affordability, and scheduling all social content in one place	Best for Uploading imagery quickly and easily	Best for Pausing content in emergency situations
Plans from £10 per user per month	Plans from £39 per month per user	Plans from £75 per user per month	Plans from £0 per month	Plans from £49 per month for two users	Plans from £8 per user per month
Free plan	Free plan	Free plan	Free plan	Free plan	Free plan

Planable is our current top pick if you want smooth collaboration within your team but also with freelancers Visit Planable

But that’s not to say Hootsuite will suit every business, and there are other social media management tools on the market that may be more tailored to the needs of your business.

For example, Sprout Social provides comprehensive social media training resources, and Buffer offers excellent affordability.

Either way, mastering these platforms yourself can become costly if you don’t manage to achieve a healthy ROI.

This is why we’d recommend getting support from a digital marketing agency to help you use these tools effectively.

Why not use our free, custom-built quote comparison tool to compare agencies directly? It’s zero obligation and only takes two minutes to use.

Or read on to find out more about the best social media management tools on the market for small businesses.

1. Hootsuite – best all round social media management tool

Plans from: £39 per month per user

Hootsuite is arguably the world’s first social media management platform. The software helps businesses of all sizes successfully manage its social media, from startups to large enterprises.

It’s our top-rated social media management tool, and for good reason.

Its fully customisable reports allow users to generate insights across a whole range of platforms. This in turn will help you – and your stakeholders – monitor the success of your marketing campaigns in a quick and easily digestible way.

Although this is a feature offered by other management tools, no software produces visual reports as efficiently and effectively as Hootsuite. And, when it comes to social media management, reporting is paramount.

It has a number of clever interaction tools to ensure engagement with your followers remains consistent, which is a key driver of social media growth for brands. You can respond to posts quickly by routing posts to the right person in the right department.

Plus, you can also create specific approval workflows, to ensure all posts are consistent and compliant with your brand’s tone of voice, no matter who is managing which platform.

There are many other amazing features, which we have summarised in the pros section below. But the fact you can manage up to 10 social accounts for just £39 per user per month, is evidence enough that Hootsuite rightfully earns the top spot as our number one social media management tool for startups.

Although it isn’t without its drawbacks. It offers no free plan, unlike Buffer.

And although its starter plan is relatively cheap compared to the likes of Sprout Social, to get access to features such as roles and permissions you’ll need to be on one of Hootsuite’s premium plans. This will set you back at least £139 per month.

3. Planable: best for collaborating with freelancers and clients

Plans from: £10 per user per month 

Planable may be the new kid on the block, but it certainly doesn’t hold any punches when it comes to its social media management offering.

For starters, its customers can create, tweak, and preview social posts all in one place. This saves the effort and time-consuming task of jumping from tab to tab (previewing posts and making edits on different pages is not anyone’s idea of fun).

You can even jazz up your posts with emojis, hashtags, and GIFs all in one centralised place, unlike other social media management tools such as CoSchedule that don’t let you add emojis on platforms like Instagram unless you post directly onto the app. And without emojis, Instagram posts struggle to gain traction.

As well as its time-saving, streamlined content creation functionality, Planable boasts an efficient arsenal of collaboration features that are ideal for small businesses working with freelancers. Posts can be previewed exactly as they’ll look live, and can be shared with any clients or team members as a second (or third) pair of eyes.

You can even set different permission levels for each collaborator, allowing you to determine who has the ability to make changes to posts, and who can simply view them. Plus, collaborators can freely comment next to the post to share their ideas and feedback, meaning you can collaborate in one place, rather than wasting time messaging on Slack or sending an email.

Like Iconosquare, Planable comes with extensive media storage, allowing you to keep all your media in one central location, and even see how many posts an asset has been used in (nobody likes a GIF overkill). This is just the tip of the feature iceberg for Planable, which at £10 per month for up to 4 social media pages (including TikTok) and unlimited posts is an absolute steal.

It has drawbacks of course. It offers a free plan but this is nothing more than a tester page that gives users no access to any social media pages for their workspace.

Support is also minimal with the basic plan, with only the help (knowledge) centre to guide you if you have any issues (and no access to direct live chat or priority support).

4. Buffer – best for affordability, and scheduling all social content in one place

Plans from: Free plan available

One of the key benefits that set Buffer apart from other social media management tools, such as Sprout and Hootsuite, is the fact it offers its users a free plan.

And although you only have access to 3 social channels, it is the perfect solution for any startup or small brand that needs assistance managing its socials on a micro-level. Particularly as it still comes with some useful features, including tailored posts and Instagram reel scheduling.

Buffer is also specially tailored to Instagram marketing management, which includes direct scheduling across all channels and automated first comments on your posts (to help drive engagement).

As well as this, Buffer has exclusively designed the Instagram shop grid, which enables brands and retail businesses to link to multiple products in their bio, without a third-party tool (goodbye Linktr.ee!). This makes it even easier for you to sell products and services to your customers, as it is one less action required of them before purchase.

In terms of drawbacks, Buffer is heavily tailored to Instagram, and this becomes clear when you use the tool for the management of other platforms such as LinkedIn. So for brands that aren’t focusing on Instagram marketing, you will not be getting the most out of this tool if you decide to use it.

5. Iconosquare: best for uploading imagery quickly and easily

Plans from: £49 per month for two users

Iconosquare might not be as well-known and celebrated as the likes of Hootsuite and Sprout Social, but that doesn’t make it any less of an excellent social media management tool.

Recommended as the best tool to track Instagram analytics by marketing consultant Neil Patel, Iconosquare has everything a small business needs to make data-driven marketing decisions.

Its customisable dashboard allows you to produce in-depth analytics reports across the majority of social media platforms, saving you the time and effort of putting them together yourself. And ensuring you know which campaigns are performing well, and which aren’t.

You can also manage all of your social accounts in one place, streamlining the user interaction and engagement process by enabling multi-profile management from a single dashboard.

However, easily the handiest feature of Iconosquare’s social media management offering, is its media library. Users can bulk upload images and store them for later, making it super quick and easy to attach assets to your content and keep all of your creatives in one place. It even tags images that have already been used in your content, so you don’t risk posting twice!

This is in comparison to the likes of Sprout Social and CoSchedule, in which you have to upload images individually each time you schedule a post.

Even though Iconosquare has plenty of great features at its user’s disposal, many of them aren’t accessible until you sign up for its advanced or enterprise plan, which is costly, particularly for startups.

6. Zoho Social – best for pausing content in emergency situations

Plans from: £8 per user per month

Many business owners will know Zoho for its excellent CRM system. But it also offers an efficient, and incredibly affordable, social media management solution for small businesses.

Its standard plan is one of the cheapest on the market (at £8 per month) and lets you post on up to 7 channels, although it only allows for 1 team member. This is good but isn’t quite as affordable as Buffer, which allows for unlimited channels and is only £5 per month.

As for its features, the stand-out for Zoho is its pause post feature. If your brand is having some sort of crisis, or there is a national/international emergency (such as the pandemic or war) and it isn’t the right time to push your campaign, you are able to pause all of your pending posts.

Once the dust has settled and things have returned to normality, you can simply continue your social media campaign by clicking the resume button. Zoho is one of the only management tools to offer this functionality, which is very useful considering the state of the world right now.

Zoho also offers a listening dashboard, much like Sprout Social. This enables you to create listening columns to track brand reviews, ‘@’ mentions and create a list of brand keywords that will alert you to a conversation on socials that your brand should be getting involved with.

Support however isn’t available 24/7, and you can only contact Zoho via email which is frustrating if you need to sort an issue out urgently.

How do I choose the right social media management tool?

When choosing a social media management tool for your small business, you should hone in on these five important aspects. To get in your good books, the right tool should tick the following boxes and criteria:

• User experience – consider how friendly and accessible the software is to use. Think about if you need training or advanced knowledge, or if you can simply set it up and start scheduling. Will it require support from a social media marketing agency? Hootsuite has solid customer reviews, often cited because of its ease of use and simple, clear dashboard layout
• Features – assess the features each tool offers: do you need the basic elements or a package with plenty of options? You should also ensure that your chosen tool works with all major social networks. Zoho for example has some incredibly helpful features accessible to users, including its AI functionality
• Affordability – will it work for your startup’s budget? And more importantly, does it offer great value for money? Buffer offers a free plan that lets you schedule content and manage a number of social media accounts which is ideal for any business on a minimal budget
• Customer support – find out how you can contact customer service, as well as how responsive and helpful the team is
• Marketing goals – think about what you are hoping to achieve with social media marketing. Will the tool you choose help you achieve your goals in a simple way?

If the software shines in these areas, it’s bound to work well for you.

Next steps: hiring a marketing agency to help you use these tools effectively

To summarise, the best social media management tools for small businesses are:

1. Hootsuite
2. Sprout Social
3. Planable
4. Buffer
5. Iconosquare
6. Zoho Social

Hootsuite has everything you need to master your social media marketing strategy. Its scheduling and analytics are unmatched, and it is incredibly affordable considering the vast number of features it offers.

Sprout Social is a close contender, not least because of its excellent social listening functionality that lets you identify consumer trends and understand your brand’s equity.

Regardless of our opinion, we recommend you hire a digital marketing agency to support you. Agencies have years of experience in the industry, working with multiple social media management tools at once.

They are best equipped to ensure you get the most out of these social media management tools, and after all, you don’t want a poor ROI do you?

To compare quotes from some of the UK’s top digital marketing agencies, simply use our free cost comparison tool, and we will put you in touch with providers like Yell.

The form takes just minutes to complete, and we will do the rest!