6 Best Sked Social Alternatives for Simplified Social Media Management

Sked Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that helps users plan, create, collaborate, publish, and analyze their social media posts.

However, it’s far from perfect when it comes to publishing a post. The lack of automatic content publishing from RSS feeds, limiting content options, and pricing are only some drawbacks that can become unnecessary headaches.

So, if you’re looking for alternatives, you’re in luck. In this post, you’ll find 6 of the best Sked Social alternatives currently available, complete with pros, cons, and quirks.

1. Planable – best for collaboration and approval
2. Hootsuite – best for large organizations
3. Sprout Social – best for brand engagement
4. Buffer – best for organic growth and analytics
5. Later – best for visual content scheduling
6. Agorapulse – best for social inbox management

Why should you consider a Sked Social alternative?

Sked Social is a social media management solution for agency owners, influencers, small businesses, and freelancers. It offers publishing and management features, including post scheduling, inbox management, team collaboration, and reporting.

However, the platform has certain drawbacks. Users report that Sked Social can get expensive, especially if you’re managing many social profiles. This can be tough for those trying to expand their social media on a tight budget.

Users also mention occasional clunkiness and glitches, such as delayed posts, slow content loading, message timeouts, and cropping issues that blur posted images.

After thoroughly testing Sked Social and exploring other alternatives, here’s my take on its performance when it comes to the three essential elements for streamlined content management: social media calendar, collaboration, and approvals.

Calendar

Sked Social’s calendar lets you see your scheduled posts and easily plan them for different platforms with just a few clicks.

You can filter the view by month, week, or day and check your past and upcoming posts by selecting an option above the calendar. You can even add a holiday list to be aware of upcoming events for planning campaigns.

Sked Social’s calendar takeaway: Overall, it works well. However, multiple users found using the grid view on mobile devices challenging, especially when dragging and dropping. This can make planning tricky when using the platform on your phone.

Collaboration

Sked Social allows you to work with unlimited team members at no extra cost, showcasing its great collaboration features.

You have complete control over creating a custom approval workflow and defining the various touchpoints before publishing a post. The system also provides automatic notifications to ensure team members and clients are alerted at the right time.

Sked Social enables real-time collaboration with both internal and external team members. It ensures everyone is aligned and can contribute effectively to social media planning.

Sked Social’s collaboration takeaway: While the tool has good collaborative features, multiple client views would be useful to provide clients with a more comprehensive overview of scheduled and approved content.

Plus, the fundamental plan has only three months of analytics history. It’d be great to have extended data retention for better analysis and strategy development.

Approvals

Sked Social’s approval feature offers full control over the content review process. You can establish a personalized approval workflow and outline a post’s various stages before it is published.

But here’s the catch – the approval feature is available only for professional plans. Testing the approval process is not available in the trial or team plans. To experience it in action, you have to schedule a demo.

Sked Social’s approval takeaway: The tool offers pretty good flexibility when it comes to approval flows, but it has some limitations. For example, reviewers using the approval link cannot edit the copy, which I found quite unpractical.

Pricing: Sked Social offers new users a 7-day free trial. Its Fundamentals plan is fixed at $25/month for one user, one account. Other plans start at $59/month for three accounts, with any additional accounts priced at $9/month. All billed yearly. This makes Sked Social more well-suited for large organizations and companies rather than small teams.

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

• Synchronization issues: Sked Social users experience glitches and delays in scheduling posts, which impacts the timeliness of social media updates.
• Limited platform focus: Sked Social’s main focus on Instagram and Facebook may limit functionality for users on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Customer support challenges: There have been instances where complaints led to account cancellations by Sked Social’s support team because of inadequate resolution or support.
• Lack of comprehensive analytics: The platform limits users’ ability to track and analyze content performance effectively.

1. Planable – best social media scheduling platform with collaboration and approval features

My first choice when it comes to Sked Social alternatives is Planable. This content collaboration and social media management tool is designed for effective collaboration on various types of written content, including social media posts, content briefs, emails, and blogs.

With Planable, marketers can:

• Collaborate in real-time using comments, annotations, text suggestions, and even attachments.
• Label content for a clear view of social media efforts and easy post sorting.
• Automatically schedule content on one or more social media channels simultaneously with a sync on/off option.
• See all scheduled posts and published content on a feed, grid, list, or calendar for a quick overview and streamlined planning.
• Check social media performance and generate easy-to-understand reports to make informed strategy decisions and share results with clients.
• Use the built-in image and video editing tools that eliminate the need to open a separate software for tweaking and resizing.

Supported platforms

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Google Business Profile and Threads. Plus Universal Content, which supports any type of long-form posts.

‘I am so grateful to have found Planable. I can spend a couple hours a week and schedule my posts on 3 platforms. No more daily struggle to post. I set it up and forget about it. Very easy to use. I plan my posting 2 weeks at a time and set it up. Their support has been very responsive and helpful.’

– Verified Planable review on G2

Wondering what more you can do with Planable? I’ll explain all the details below.

Calendar

Planable’s social media calendar gives you an easy overview of your content — what needs to go live and when. What posts are scheduled, approved, and where do you still need to take action? Keep everything organized by using color-coded labels that match campaigns, content pillars, responsible team members, or anything that suits your workflow. And when you need to adjust plans, simply drag-and-drop posts.

Here’s what you can do with Planable’s content calendar:

• Set preferred time slots

Define your timetable for scheduling posts and never start from scratch.

• Sync content across social media platforms

Particularly when you need to share similar content but make adjustments like hashtags or page tags for each channel, toggle the sync option on or off.

• Set custom color labels

Categorize and organize posts by topic, team, or content pillars and filter by label when you need to focus on one thing at a time.

• Drag-and-drop posts

Streamline your content management for lightning-fast planning and adaptations.

• Add filters and save custom views

Sort posts based on criteria such as new, approved, scheduled, or “with feedback”. Save custom views that are visible only for yourself, for your team, or shared with your clients.

Collaboration

Planable is a flexible content collaboration solution for streamlined teamwork. One thing that stands out for me is how easy it is to get feedback from your team or clients. All you need to do is paste your content, and your team can dive in, share their thoughts, and give you some high-fives when it’s spot on. The collaborative working process makes creating content more efficient and enjoyable.

Here’s how collaboration works in Planable:

• Create dedicated workspaces for each of your clients or brands

Each with its own settings, custom permissions, and approval workflows.

• Exchange clear feedback with annotations and text suggestions

Tag people in the comments and reduce the back-and-forth to the minimum.

• Collaborate with your team via internal posts and notes

Lightly share thoughts and feedback before showing the content to clients.

• Keep all your assets neatly organized in the Media Library

All your team can take what they need from the batch of brand-approved assets already in Planable.

• Share a public link to a post with sporadic collaborators

Think John from legal who’s rarely involved, or the client’s CEO who’s interested in that one launch post. Since they’re not regulars, they don’t need to have an account.

• Create mock-up pages to see how your content will look once it’s live

This feature is super useful for presenting work to clients without connecting their actual pages.

Approvals

One of Planable’s strong suits is its flexible approval options. You can tailor the workflow to your team’s specific needs.

Here’s how:

• Choose from four types of approval processes: None (no approval is required to publish content), Optional (approval is optional but available if needed), Required (approval from at least one user is mandatory before publishing), and Multi-level (configurable multi-stage approval process for complex marketing campaigns).
• View a comprehensive log of all post activities, allowing you to track every change, comment, and approval made to a post.
• Revoke an approval with just one click if you change your mind or approve by mistake.
• Request approval from one or all collaborators simultaneously, which is particularly useful for workspaces with optional or required approval settings.

Pricing: Planable’s free version allows you to use all the features and schedule up to 50 posts. Paid plans start at $11/user/month if you pay annually. The pricing changes based on the number of workspaces and users you want to include.

Drawbacks: Even though it includes intuitive social media analytics, the platform lacks social listening features.

Planable vs. Sked Social

• Planable offers greater functionality at a lower cost than Sked Social.
• While both tools include content calendars and support various content formats, Planable’s interface has a more modern design and supports better collaboration flows.
• Planable makes it easy to track and analyze content performance, unlike Sked Social.

Takeaway: Planable is the best alternative to Sked Social if your priority is seamless collaboration.

2. Hootsuite – best social media management platform for large organizations

Hootsuite is a versatile social media platform that was established in 2008. It offers a comprehensive platform for managing multiple social media accounts from a single dashboard. The platform allows social media marketers to easily create content for various social media platforms and schedule posts.

Key features

• Social media reports offer metrics for each channel’s performance or overall results across all major social platforms.
• Hootsuite’s social media monitoring and listening capabilities enable you to track brand mentions, engage with audiences, and analyze sentiment in real-time.
• Comprehensive analytics and reporting tools provide insights into metrics such as engagement, reach, and audience demographics.
• Built-in analytics and reports help you evaluate marketing campaign results.

Pricing: Hootsuite starts at $99/month after a 30-day free trial.

Drawbacks: The platform has a high price tag. Users often mention a clunky user interface and a steep learning curve for newbies.

3. Sprout Social – best social media management tool for brand engagement

Sprout Social is a feature-rich social media automation tool suitable for businesses of all sizes across different categories, including large corporations and social media agencies.

If you’re a big team looking for Sked Social alternatives, this is a solid option for large corporate marketing teams and agencies with ample budgets and a requirement for robust insights and tools.

Key features

• You can use analytics and reporting tools to monitor performance metrics, evaluate campaign effectiveness, and gain valuable insights into audience behavior.
• Social media marketers can analyze their audience and gather actionable insights on trends, brand mentions, and customer satisfaction.
• The bulk scheduling feature speeds up the workflow by simultaneously scheduling up to 350 posts.
• It includes CRM capabilities to help businesses manage customer interactions, track leads, and deliver personalized responses across social channels.

Pricing: The starting price is $199/month, and each additional user is $199/month, when billed yearly.

Drawbacks: Users have encountered a steep learning curve and occasional bugs, such as scheduled content failing to post or linked profiles disconnecting.

4. Buffer – best for organic growth and analytics

Buffer is a social media management tool for small and medium-sized businesses. It uses data to help you grow your social media following organically and make sure your posts and marketing efforts get tangible results. It supports all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Mastodon, and Google My Business.

Key features

• With Buffer, you get tools to see how well your posts are doing, engage with your audience, and schedule posts for different social media platforms.
• You can also use Buffer to keep track of conversations, reply to comments, and connect with your followers on Instagram and Facebook, making your brand more visible.
• Buffer’s Pablo photo editor lets you create images with text and branding. You can choose from a library of images and easily schedule them for social media posting.

Pricing: The free plan allows users to connect up to three social channels. The essential plan starts at $5/month per social channel when paid annually.

Drawbacks: Buffer’s social listening capabilities are not as extensive as other platforms like Hootsuite, which may limit the ability to monitor mentions, searches, and hashtags directly within the tool. The platform only provides analytics for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, leaving other platforms unattended.

5. Later – best for visual content scheduling

Later is a simple social media tool that helps with planning, scheduling, creating content, and other tasks. It focuses on visual content scheduling and management, especially for the Instagram feed. Later also supports LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube.

Key features

• You can create customizable Link in Bio web pages for Instagram or TikTok bios, making content clickable and shoppable.
• It has an image editor for optimizing content on various platforms.
• It offers smart suggestions like relevant hashtags, trending content, and best posting times.

Pricing: Later offers a forever free plan that provides access to basic features without cost. The starter plan includes features for one user, one social set, and 30 posts per social platform and is $16.67/month, billed annually.

Drawbacks: Most of Later’s features are exclusive to Instagram. Additionally, it doesn’t permit publishing a post without attaching media.

6. Agorapulse – best for social inbox management

Agorapulse handles essential social media tasks like managing messages, posting content, tracking performance, and collaborating with your team. It also provides detailed insights about your audience and useful tools for analyzing your team’s performance and organizing your social inbox. This tool is ideal for big businesses that manage multiple accounts.

Key features

• It allows you to handle messages and responses across various platforms.
• It provides custom report options with label tracking for multiple profiles, offering detailed insights into campaign performance and tailored reporting.
• Agorapulse’s Shared Calendar feature facilitates collaboration with clients by allowing them to view scheduled and published posts, provide feedback, and approve content.

Pricing: Agorapulse offers various pricing plans to suit different needs and budgets. Paid options begin at $49/user/month, billed annually. A free plan allows users to schedule up to 10 posts on three social channels.

Drawbacks: Users have noted the lack of advanced Twitter power tools within Agorapulse, which may impact the social media platform’s functionality. For users relying heavily on Twitter for their social media strategies, this may impact the platform’s functionality. Agorapulse also lacks a unified feed feature, which could make it challenging for users to view and manage all social media content in one consolidated view.

Choose the right Sked Social alternative

Sked Social has limited historical data retention, no Facebook story schedule, issues with post scheduling accuracy, and a slow support response time.

That’s why I’ve curated this guide on the best Sked Social alternatives. In addition to the tools reviewed here, you can check out popular software options like CoSchedule, ContentStudio, and Statusbrew.

But if you need a solution to establish your social management flow quickly, sign up for Planable and get cooking! With 50 scheduled posts for free and no strings attached — no time limits, no reduced functionality — you get the full experience and the freedom to decide later.