The Best 6 Metricool Alternatives for Smooth Social Media Management

Metricool alternatives help social marketers boost productivity and stay on track regardless of the number of channels, clients, and approvals involved. Marketing teams use social media automation tools like Metricool for many reasons, the core being to stay in control and creative in the whirlpool of content management with a calendar tool.

In this article, find six best Metricool substitutes that fit different budgets and cater to various needs. All tried and tested, so let’s delve!

Why should you consider a Metricool alternative?

Like any other social media management tool, Metricool allows you to schedule content, analyze social media performance across various platforms, and gather data on a single dashboard instead of hopping around tabs.

But Metricool isn’t my personal first choice. And some things might become a deal breaker for your team as well.

Here’s what I pay the most attention to when choosing a platform for social media automation:

Calendar

The content calendar is the backbone of any successful content strategy. Easy to use, straightforward, and visual, a social media calendar should help you gain an overview of your efforts and stay on track.

Metricool’s calendar allows you to schedule posts for several social media channels simultaneously. The background color indicates the most active times of your audience across each platform.

However, it lacks tags to differentiate campaigns, content pillars, or USPs. It makes it harder to identify content gaps and filter posts by campaigns or purpose.

Collaboration & Approval

Collaboration features and approval workflows are vital for social media content, especially if you work for an agency or have several contributors within your organization.

In Metricool, collaboration and approval features are only included in the Advanced plan since the Starter plan has no team members. You can leave notes on the posts and send them for approval directly from the calendar tab where you schedule content.

The notes are sufficient for a small team: you can leave short comments on social media posts and tag your colleagues if you have the Advanced plan, but that’s it.

Pricing: Metricool has no trial period but offers a free plan with 50 monthly posts. However, this plan is quite limited: for example, it doesn’t include LinkedIn (which is a deal breaker for me).

Metricool’s three paid plans start at $18/month, paid annually. Team collaborations and approvals are only included in the Advanced plan.

Here’s why social media managers should consider a Metricool alternative in 2024

• Confusing user interface. Many social media marketers opt for third-party platforms because native scheduling tools can be overwhelming. Some parts of Metricool serve the Meta Business Suite vibe.
• Lack of historical data. Metricool only allows you to access two months of historical data for your social media accounts. Plus, for Instagram, it only tracks followers and stories starting the day you connect your account.
• No customization. One set-in-stone dashboard you can’t customize and no tags for social media content calendar makes it hard to skim through your content situation.
• Expensive pricing for hashtag tracking. Metricool tracks hashtags across X and Instagram, but it costs $9.99 per day separately. A hashtag tracker is helpful for marketing campaigns, but the realization seems a bit clumsy.

1. Planable – best social media management tool for collaboration and approvals

If you value collaboration and swift content creation, Planable is your best Metricool replacement. Planable’s biggest green flag is active collaboration with colleagues, which is extremely important in a fast-paced social media world.

Planable helps you manage content for multiple platforms and even curate multiple brands. To do so, divide your brands into dedicated workspaces, each with its own channels, team members, and permissions.

Calendar

Planable’s content calendar is simple, flexible, and intuitive. Its drag-and-drop interface lets you quickly move content around and stay flexible when something changes.

What I like the most about Planable’s calendar is the labels that help you filter content and give you much more transparency regarding your current content strategy. Use them to tag specific campaigns or divide your social media posts by content pillar.

With Planable, you can plan and schedule content across social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and Google My Business.

Collaboration

Collaboration rules in Planable. Team members can leave real-time comments and tag each other in the comment section to stay on the same page and ensure feedback is fast, straightforward, and on point.

Besides the comment section, there are also annotations and internal notes that help you make content curation easier. So instead of “turn the brand name into a hashtag in the second line of the post,” you can pinpoint the exact place you’d like to change.

You can create different roles for your clients and team members to ease the collaboration and ensure everybody sees only what they need to see. If you use “Internal notes,” your client won’t see these suggestions.

Approvals

“This meme is so on point, but I must get approval first.” Relatable, right? Planable’s approval workflows help you push content down the pipeline in a blink, even if you need to get a green light from multiple decision-makers.

You can set up a customizable multi-level approval workflow. Whether you run your social media post through only one checkpoint or multiple customers, the platform allows you to keep it simple and swift.

You can take automation one step further and put your content in a queue once approved.

Pricing: Planable offers 50 free posts to explore the platform. Afterward, you can upgrade for $11/month per user, paid annually. The price per user depends on the features included and the number of workspaces you need. This makes Planable’s billing very flexible.

Drawbacks: Planable has no social inbox feature and no direct integrations with CMS platforms for publishing content to your blog.

Planable vs. Metricool

• Unlike Metricool, Planable is rich in collaboration features, making it easier to gather feedback from teammates and customers.
• Both Planable and Metricool support multiple channels where you can publish content. However, Planable doesn’t cut off LinkedIn like Metricool does.
• Planable is much more intuitive than Metricool and has less of a learning curve for new users. I also value its Help Center, which has tons of helpful info for newcomers.

Takeaway: Planable is a valuable tool that takes collaboration to another level. Unlike Metricool, Planable is intuitive and flexible, so you can easily tweak it to your particular conditions.

It helps you manage the whole cycle of social media content creation, making Planable an excellent option for any team — from small businesses to agencies.

2. Hootsuite – best for large businesses handling various social networks

Hootsuite is among the top Metricool alternatives for big brands that need comprehensive analytics, historical data, and customizable reports to present to the customers.

Hootsuite is a big gun: besides classic content planning and auto-posting, it has many features, including social listening, white-label reporting, batch scheduling, OwlyAI, etc. It takes some time to get a handle on streams and dashboards, though.

Key features

• Social inbox. Keep all your brand communications in one place — in a unified social inbox for all your mentions, tags, and direct messages. Great for swiftly jumping into the convo online.
• Customizable white-label reports. Users can generate reports on audience engagement, content performance, and other insights using their brand assets instead of Hootsuite’s.
• Approval workflows. For more advanced plans, Hootsuite provides customizable approval workflows that help users get approval from their clients faster.

Pricing: Hootsuite is pricey — its cheapest plan starts at $99/user/month, paid annually.

Drawbacks: I think Hootsuite is a little outdated in its UX. Also, the platform required credit card data for a trial period, and it’s a bit of a commitment for some.

3. Loomly – best for unified social media campaigns and engagement monitoring for small business

If you’re a small to mid business looking for Metricool alternatives that are easy to use yet efficient, look at Loomly.

Loomly’s creators wanted a simple tool to manage and analyze social media content — and they succeeded. The platform helps you streamline your social media efforts and provides valuable insights based on your performance, such as engagement rate, reach, follower count, etc.

Key features

• Multi-platform integration. Loomly supports many social media platforms, including popular and custom ones. It allows users to manage and monitor their social media presence across various channels from a centralized dashboard.
• Content Inspiration. Loomly goes the extra mile by suggesting content ideas based on your industry, special events, and news. As a social media manager, I greatly value new and compelling ideas.
• Analytics dashboard. Loomly collects data in real time. Social media professionals can access data for all their social media posts, including those published not through Loomly.

Pricing: Loomly offers four paid plans, with pricing starting at just $26 per month.

Drawbacks: Despite supporting Snapchat and some additional custom channels, Loomly can’t post directly to them.

4. Social Pilot – best for marketing agencies

SocialPilot is a comprehensive social media management platform that gives teams a 360-degree view on their social efforts.

If you’re an agency working with multiple customers, you might also like the white label reporting feature that allows you to customize your reports with your logo and colors instead of default ones. Looks hand-picked, even though it’s not wink.

Key features

• Actionable data. SocialPilot provides Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and Twitter analytics reports you can combine, customize, and automate to hit your client’s email monthly.
• Unified inbox. Manage your social interactions and declutter your inbox across social channels. Users can handle Facebook and Google reviews directly and engage with the community through comments and DMs.
• Collaboration features. Coordinate, collaborate, receive real-time approval notifications, establish roles, and maintain a seamless approval workflow.

Pricing: SocialPilot has four paid plans with a free trial, the cheapest one starts at $25.50/month, paid annually.

Drawbacks: It’s pricey if you want to benefit from all features, like social inbox, team management, and advanced analytics — those are only included in more expensive packages.

5. Later – best for Instagram-oriented businesses

Later was created as a tool for managing Instagram content. Eventually, it grew to work with other social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube.

If you gravitate towards Instagram and other visual platforms like TikTok, Later checks many boxes for you. Besides a social media calendar and detailed Instagram analytics, Later allows you to schedule Stories, use hashtag recommendations, and leverage other content insights.

Key features

• Visual social media calendar. Later has a clear and highly visual calendar that helps you see your content straight ahead. Unlike Metricool, Later puts picture first, caption second.
• AI Writer. Later’s AI caption generator creates Instagram-worthy content fast and helps users beat writer’s block when they have a great visual but come short of words.
• In-app content creation. Later offers many tools to edit your visuals inside the app, so if you often have last-minute tweaks, you can do it straight from the planning tab.

Pricing: Later has three paid plans, starting at $16.67/month, paid annually.

Drawbacks: Most fancy features like AI caption writing, analytics, and a visual grid planner are only available for Instagram. Other platforms are content with calendar and auto-publishing.

6. Buffer – best for small businesses running multiple platforms

Buffer deserves a place among straightforward Metricool alternatives. In my experience, Buffer is a solid option if you need three simple and very ordinary, down-to-earth things: plan your content, collect data on social media performance, and create reports.

That’s it, that’s the tool.

Key features

• Content planning and auto-publishing. Manage your content across several platforms, including quite specific ones like Shopify and Mastodon. Plan, schedule, re-schedule, and publish automatically from one dashboard.
• Buffer’s idea space. I find this one very helpful. Buffer has a Chrome extension that allows you to save an exciting post or piece of data to your idea board in one click.

Pricing: Buffer charges based on the number of channels and feature set. The cheapest plan starts at $6/month, paid annually. It also has a free plan.

Drawbacks: If you’re a big company or need in-depth data, especially on paid promos, Buffer might be insufficient — its analytics is a little unreliable and mostly organic-centered.

Riding into social media — hassle-free!

When evaluating your Metricool alternatives, consider the tools and features your team needs the most.

Remember: the social media management tool you choose should 100% support your team and streamline the processes. Planable does this for thousands of marketing teams.

Try Planable now and use 50 free posts to get a grip on the tool. No commitment just yet — only the taste of hassle-free social media management.