Over the years, VIA Studio has worked with various social media publishing tools, including 

, and more. However, two tools have truly stood out and won our hearts — 

. These tools have consistently delivered exceptional results, making us confident recommending them to our clients and partners.

Social media posting tools allow marketers to manage their social media profiles and accounts through one central hub. Their primary function is scheduling and posting content directly from the tool. Managing social media profiles individually can be time-consuming and make reporting difficult, as metrics, features, and capabilities can differ across social media platforms.
Beyond that service, they can offer additional functions like content and graphic creation, social listening, inbox/comment management, and more!

The first platform we have had a lot of success with for our clients is 

. Agorapulse has a streamlined and easy-to-use interface, and once all of your profiles are connected, the post calendar can clearly show everything that has been recently published, as well as what is scheduled for posting in the future.

Another benefit of Agorapulse is its social listening system. With social listening, marketers can understand how their brand is perceived on social media and the web. Users can create actionable searches to discover what their audience says about their brand — and competitors. Agorapulse listens and captures conversations from social networks, thousands of news websites, and millions of blogs.

In addition to its ease of use and social listening capabilities, Agorapulse’s reporting features are an excellent way to evaluate social performance and discover ideas for future content. We have found particular success with grouping our posts by content type (service offerings, holidays, direct marketing, etc.) using tags to get ideas on what platforms best support different types of content and what days/times are ideal for specific posts. Additionally, marketers using Agorapulse may discover that specific platforms are best suited for certain post types - Agorapulse makes these sorts of insights possible. Finally, all of this reporting can help provide marketers with ROI on their tactics to discover their right social strategy.

The base Agorapulse package costs $49 per user/month. Since the cost is per user, we recommend setting it up with a shared email if multiple team members need to use it. Otherwise, that cost applies to each user.

We typically recommend the Professional pricing plan for our clients ($79/month), especially since plans can be upgraded anytime if additional features are needed.

This is a huge benefit if a member of the creative team is managing your social media. You can easily create and schedule well-designed and well-branded posts using Creative Cloud Libraries and/or Brands, Adobe Cloud files, and Adobe Stock. Having creation and scheduling in one place is a huge productivity boost.

Even if you don’t fancy yourself a designer, 

 has A LOT of templates for you to use, which can give your postings a professional look.

Since Adobe is all about design and creative, the app is very good at developing content like video reels, stories, etc. Scheduling is also built into the mobile app.

Adobe Express allows you to collaborate with other team members on the same files and content.

Adobe Express currently allows up to 3 accounts per channel (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and Twitter)

The biggest downside is the lack of monitoring and response, which is why we also love AgoraPulse!

Adobe Express is less expensive than Agorapulse but also doesn’t have the “social listening” features. Pricing starts at $9.99/month per user.

Whether you are an agency, an in-house marketer, or a small business owner, a social posting tool can help elevate your social content and make your work more efficient.

VIA Studio also recognizes that some tools suit certain needs better than others. We would definitely recommend Adobe Express for users focused on content and graphic creation. Meanwhile, Agorapulse is a better option for marketing-oriented users who are concerned about performance, market share, and ROI. If you need both, they can even be used together!

If you are interested in onboarding a social posting tool but don’t know where to start, 

! We can get you started on social media marketing, create a social media strategy specific to your business and needs, and even provide social graphics art direction to elevate your social presence.

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Summer 2023 Social Media Management Platform Review

From time to time, we do a deep dive and a comparison of social media platforms and tools, but it’s been a while and a lot has changed so we’re back!

We know that staying up-to-date with all the social media platforms and tools out there can feel overwhelming, but when it’s in your wheelhouse like it is ours, it’s simple. This blog offers an uncomplicated overview of our top social media management tools, their features and functionality, and more.

Even if you have no intention of switching up your tool, having an awareness of options helps keep your perspective open — especially if you need to make a change in the future.

These requirements are focused on small-to-medium-sized businesses or brands that are seeking a robust, thoughtful, but economical way to manage their social media with one person or even a small team. Here are the basic requirements:

3. Customer support / response management

While these are the non-negotiables, we decided to cover some additional features that your team might find valuable within this review, too.

The use of social media for businesses is overflowing with opportunity — and the importance of having a tool that’s reliable, ever-evolving, and easy to use is paramount to the success of your workflow and social media presence.

We reviewed the following four well-known and trusted social media management tools. They fit our top six requirements, with varying levels of features and quality:

 and gets you all the basics in the list above plus a few handy features such as profiles, keywords, location monitoring, group, profile, and post-level reporting, paid social tools, CRM tools, and more. At VIA, we’ve used the Professional Plan with a few more features and have found that it’s reliable and easy to use, but the reporting isn’t advanced for the price — however, if you use it in tandem with other tools, you’ll find it more useful.

Sprout doesn’t have a “grid-view” feature for platforms like Instagram which has become increasingly important over the years for brands that want to curate an aesthetically pleasing feed, or have a specific order of content they need to stick to. This plan only includes one user and five profiles, so if your business has over five profiles and needs to set up a workflow, you’ll need to upgrade to a different plan or consider a different tool.


✅ 5 profiles, 1 user, response management, TikTok, Google My Business, basic reporting features

❌ Team workflows, advanced reporting features, grid view

 offers quite a bit. We recently presented one of our long-time clients with several social media tools and this one fits their needs best for their budget and needs. They even added one additional user for an extra $10/month — allowing VIA to manage from one login, and their team to approve and comment on content with the other. We’ve set up a nice workflow with our client, have helped them save time monthly, and allow them to manage two brands for a good price.

Let’s get into the features of this plan! You get team workflows, calendar notes with the ability to “assign”, IG grid view, social listening, and posting to 10 profiles.

This platform isn’t as user-friendly as Sprout. There are a lot of buttons everywhere so if you aren’t tech-savvy or don’t have someone to teach you about all of these features and which are most important to your needs, it might not be the best option. They currently don’t include TikTok which is a big con for a lot of businesses.


✅ 10 profiles, 1 user, response management, grid view, basic reporting, calendar notes

❌ TikTok, not the best UI /  UX, advanced reporting

They have three more plans for your consideration 

Hootsuite is highly esteemed for its social media management tool that boasts a robust set of features and plugins, at a pretty standard price. Their 

grants three users access to manage, schedule, post, and analyze data on up to 20 social profiles. Hootsuite's reporting features are a bit more advanced than some of the others mentioned in this blog — with the capability to measure against two competitors, create customizable reports, and more.

On the downside, Hootsuite has countless features and buttons that can be confusing to navigate, and even redundant for some social media marketers.

✅ 20 profiles, 3 users, response management, TikTok, team workflows, reporting features, grid view

❌ Lots of features and buttons that can be difficult to use 

Find a plan that fits your business or brand needs 

Loomly is similar to Agorapulse and even HeyOrca (which we aren’t covering in this blog), in many aspects. Our team at VIA hasn’t spent a ton of time on Loomly, but we’re no strangers to this tool. Their most basic plan starts at only $26/month, but we’re going to explore Loomly’s 

 since it meets the requirements we’ve outlined above. For 

, this plan gets 14 users access to 35 social accounts, team workflows, response management, and some pretty standard reporting for the price.

Loomly isn’t as competitive of an option as some of the others in our review, but it’s a decent option that meets the basic requirements.

✅ 5 profiles, 14 users, response management, TikTok, basic reporting

❌ Not the best UI/UX, advanced reporting

Overall, Hootsuite offers the best mix of features for the requirements listed above, and the best set of optional plugins, all for the best price in the market.

Sprout Social is a close second, but its higher cost, lack of extensibility, and lower-quality reporting make it second best.

Agorapulse and Loomly are solid options if you or your team are looking to spend less money on a social media management tool and aren’t in need of a ton of features and reporting capabilities.

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