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Introduction
Social media marketing tools have sprung up in thousands all over the internet. Their amount significantly outweighs the number of social media platforms themselves and thus competition is enormous.
The easiest way to describe a social media marketing tool is that these are websites/software which ease your social marketing game by allowing you to plan and schedule posts, dive deep into your channel insights, and perform a plethora of other tasks like analysis, AI-assisted marketing help, competitor analysis, and also help you to gain followers on your instagram profile.
Since social media marketing is evolving rapidly, the use of these marketing tools has become essential, especially if you want to save time by delegating this task to a computer. Even if you have an entire team of social media marketers on your payroll, these tools can come in handy.
The most common examples of marketing tools include HootSuite, SproutSocial, Buffer, Post Planner, etc. Since it can prove difficult to choose from such a wide variety of options, we are here to help. Today, we are going to discuss major points of differences between the last two of these names viz. Post Planner and Buffer.
1. Pricing
I found it most difficult to compare the two options and find a winner based solely on price. Let me summarize the options first and you will understand why.
Post planner has four plans you can choose from starter, solo, business, and venture. They cost $4, $12, and $24 per month, respectively when billed annually. The venture plan has custom pricing depending upon your needs and you will need to upgrade in-app for that. Major points of difference among these plans include the number of social profiles supported, number of users allowed, data library size, content types, etc. However, there is no free plan or trial available.
On the other hand, Buffer’s plans are doubly divided. First, you will need to select whether you want to sign up for publishing, or analytics. For publishing, you have free, pro, premium, and business plans, which costs $15, $65, and $99 per month, respectively. For analytics, you would need to buy a separate plan. Options include Pro and premium plans, costing $35 and $50 per month, respectively.
Now, you understand why comparing is hard. If you only want to manage the publishing part of your posts, Buffer wins since it has a free plan dedicated to that. Thus, more factors will need consideration before a winner can be decided.
2. Features
The list of features offered is comparable across both platforms. It is not like one has a clear advantage over the other. However, on Buffer, you will need to buy both Publishing as well as Analysis plans for the entire system to kick in. On the other hand, even though Post Planner does not offer a free plan, it offers more in each of its tiers.
Note that this does not mean Post Planner is the cheaper one. Despite having two separate plans, reviews have found Buffer to be less expensive of the two options.
Overall, Buffer provides a better set of features, including integration with several third parties, browser extensions, team management, hashtag manager, and a few others that are absent in Post Planner. Thus, Buffer wins this round.
3. Customer Support availability
There is not much to discuss under this factor. Just know that Buffer does not offer live chat support for any of its plans. Instead, you have a self-service knowledge base that includes FAQs and the Buffer community, you have email support, and you have support via social media platforms.
Post planner also offers chat support apart from the above-mentioned points. This is just something to keep in mind and not necessarily a deal-breaker or deal maker.
4. Utility
All major comparisons must take this factor into account. Under the utility section, we like to discuss whom a website or software is most suited for.
If one wants to decide a winner in this category, Buffer will emerge as the victor. While both marketing tools are perfectly fine for businesses of all shapes and sizes, Buffer suits freelancers more. This is due to the addition of a free plan in the publishing section that significantly boosts its score. Most freelancers prefer a cheaper and, if possible, free of cost alternative for their tasks and Buffer delivers on that desire. Except for tools there are many social media marketing agencies that can even help you to get maximum exposure of your business on social media. You simply need to search social media marketing Dallas and Google will show you some of the best results related to your search.
5. Prominent Clients
This is just a small point. Buffer’s list of clients includes Huckberry, Basecamp, Access Venture, etc. Meanwhile, Post Planner is said to be used by Microsoft, Nike, and Stanford University, among other names.
On Trustpilot, Buffer has a lower rating (2.7 stars) as compared to Post Planner (4.7).
Conclusion
In this article, we have compared Post Planner and Buffer based on five different criteria. However, there is no clear winner among the two since both have their own utilities and areas of use.
If you think there is more to this than what we have discussed so far, let us know in the comments below.
