Top 9 Social Media Management Tools for Small Business 2021

The best small business social media management tool in 2021 is Zoho Social. It has the lowest price on the market, a good range of supported social networks, and a wide array of extra features.

In the age of the internet, a social media presence is a must for any business looking to grow its customer base. Juggling all of these accounts can be a monumental task, but using a social media management tool to organize and plan your campaigns can take a substantial load off your shoulders.

But it’s not just Zoho! We’ve looked at every major social media platform in order to make an informed decision, and make sure you’re making the right choice.

However, the software you choose is only one part of the puzzle. To get the most out of your social media campaign, check out some social media tips for your business.

• Zoho Social – Best for small businesses
• Hootsuite – Best for solo users
• Sendible – Best for functionality
• Loomly – Best for Snapchat and TikTok
• Sprout Social – Best for mid-sized businesses
• Constant Contact – Best for affordable marketing tools
• CoSchedule – Best for teams
• Buffer – Best for flexible pricing
• HubSpot – Best for customer support

In this guide:

• Sendinblue – Best for Facebook ads
• How we rated these providers
• Frequently asked questions

Zoho Social – Best for small businesses

Zoho Social is the best option for a small business looking to take full advantage of its social media presence. The main draw of Zoho is that it offers some next level bang for your buck – it has a generous free plan, while its cheapest paid tier is $10 per month.

But this thriftiness doesn’t mean you’ll be lacking in features. Even on the free plan, you’ll have unlimited posts and no limit on scheduling, all across up to seven profiles. However, if you want analytics, you’ll have to pay for Zoho Analytics – and a lot of Zoho's other functions are locked behind higher tiers.

This generosity on the free tier is great for a smaller business, but everything has limits. While you’ll be able to post a lot, Zoho doesn’t offer much else on its lower tiers. You can always opt for a higher tier (which are still very reasonably priced at $10, $25, or $37.50 per month) if you want more when it comes to your analytics, engagement, or organization.

Hootsuite – Best for solo users

Most small businesses rely on one person to run their social media, sometimes whilst also doing many other jobs. And for your money, Hootsuite is the best platform for a single user. Just like Zoho, Hootsuite offers unlimited posts and scheduling, all for a very fair price. The free plan is certainly worth considering – it allows you to queue up to 30 posts at a time, which may be more than enough.

For small businesses, we recommend the professional tier at $25 per month. While it only supports a single user, the scheduling limit is removed, and the number of social profiles is raised from three to ten – which should be more than enough to cover a small business’s needs. You’ll also be able to analyze your demographics, look at a calendar of your pipeline, and see a compiled inbox.

You’ll have to reach for higher tiers to make the most of the engagement or analytic functions (of which there are many), but for a solo user starting out and looking to get a grip on the basics, Hootsuite is a great option.

Sendible – Best for functionality

If you’re someone who likes to spend hours tinkering with all the different options, Sendible is a good move for you. They have a $25 tier that offers you some pretty important functions, like send time optimization, inbox message tagging, and listening for Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re looking for a platform that will supercharge your marketing and support rapid expansion, Sendible’s Growth tier is what you need. It’s not cheap at $170 permonth, but on top of the limitless scheduling (which comes with every plan) and 300 posts per day, you also get the following features:

• Profile and post analytics and audience demographics
• Pre-made and custom reports
• Listening for both Twitter and Facebook, as well as brand mention reports and sentiment analysis
• Fully enabled organization, letting you create calendars and dashboards to control your pipeline
• Compiled social media inbox with message tagging
• Content library, image editor, send time optimization, and more

We’ll cut the list there, but there are a lot more features on offer. A lot of their functions are not offered by other competitors on this list, so if you’re looking for the most kitted-out platform, Sendible is the one for you.

Loomly – Best for Snapchat and TikTok

If you’re looking to reach a younger audience, you can’t neglect Snapchat and TikTok, two of the hippest apps in town. And to maximize your impact on these apps, you might want to look at Loomly – the only platform on this list that can be implemented with both Snapchat and TikTok.

Obviously, Loomly doesn’t stop at those two though, covering the basics a small business should need.  Its organization functions are great, allowing you to stay on top of your team and project pipelines.

However it doesn't offer social listening, and the engagement features could use some beefing up. And some of the analytics are locked behind higher tiers, which can be frustrating for businesses looking to get a wider scope of their campaigns’ impacts.

Loomly doesn't offer a free plan, but there is a free trial – and with the base plan only costing $25 per month, it’s not the priciest tool on this list. On this lowest plan, you can control 10 social profiles with no posting or scheduling limits, so you’ll be able to snap and tik as much as you want.

Sprout Social – Best for mid-sized businesses

One of the reasons our small business winner, Zoho Social, earned its spot was due to its lower price point. However, if you’re a business with a bit more capital to throw around, you might want to consider Sprout Social.

Sprout Social is one of the pricier plans on this list, with its lowest tier at $99, and no free plan in sight. As you would hope with a price like this, there is no posting limit. However, Sprout Social does have a pretty restrictive limit on the amount of social profiles, only offering 5 on this plan and capping out at only 10 on its most expensive plan ($249 per month).

That said, there are some good features that come with this steep price point, on top of standard post scheduling and analytics. You’ll also get an image editor, send time optimization, a taggable inbox, and all the organization options you’d want, like a task dashboard and management functionality.

Sprout is a pricey option, but if you’re growing beyond a small business, you could benefit from these more expensive plans.

Constant Contact – Best for affordable marketing tools

If you’re looking for something that doesn’t just control your social media, but also controls your email marketing campaigns, then Constant Contact is a good place to start. This is a package deal, so you’ll only want to opt for Constant Contact if you’re definitely going to use email marketing.

In fact, Constant Contact is primarily an email marketing service, meaning its social media functionality is treated a bit like an add-on rather than the main event. This is shown by the way that the price ($20–$335 per month) is dictated by your email list size, rather than a specific plan structure.

The spotlight being placed more on email marketing means that there aren’t many big social media features to highlight, as most of what’s offered here is pretty standard stuff. But if you’re after a two-in-one, Constant Contact is a great option for filling both roles at a reasonable price.

CoSchedule – Best for teams

If your business involves just a handful of people assuming different roles, you might have a number of people who need access to your social media. If that’s the case, then a social media tool with just one user just won’t cut it. So let’s look at CoSchedule – a platform which offers a max of ten users if you’re using their Marketing Calendar ($29 per month).

As far as social media management goes, it's a middling product. Not terrible, by any means, but it doesn't have features like an ad builder, RSS autoposter, or message tagging for your inbox. However, CoSchedule hits on all the basics pretty well.

However, it does excel when you look at it from a team perspective. On top of its generous limits, CoSchedule also has great organization functionality, with task management, team comments, and a task dashboard all included in its plans.

To have this many organization features at such a low price point is quite rare, and paints CoSchedule as an admirable product for those with multiple contributors.

Buffer – Best for pure posting

Buffer is one of the cheapest social media management tools out there, and for good reason. It's not completely bare bones, but not exactly packed with features, either. It has a pretty low limit on scheduling and users (2,000 scheduled posts and 6 users), and the amount of social profiles you can connect is pretty slim (a max of 8, unless you spring for the highest tier).

However, if you’re not looking for features or the ability to create endless streams of posts, and just want a low-key way of engaging with your audience, Buffer might be the best option for you. Even the step above its free tier, the Pro tier ($12/mo), is an affordable way of making sure your social media presence is consistent and reliable.

Buffer has also recently added some engagement features, turning one of their biggest weaknesses into a strength.

Beyond its posting capabilities, there’s not much else to say about Buffer. In an industry that's home to all sorts of different terminology, it can be helpful to have an app that does one thing well, rather than having a bunch of features you need to figure out.

HubSpot – Best for customer support

We’ll be honest – we’re only including HubSpot on this list because they’re a pretty big name in the world of social media marketing. But being realistic, their price point is far too high to really recommend this software to a small business.

At its cheapest, the software costs $800 per month, which is simply unfeasible for most small businesses. Despite this price point, HubSpot still imposes limits of 10,000 posts per month. This is a fairly high limit, so a small business would probably never reach it – but for software this expensive, post limits are the last thing you’d expect to see.

And again, despite this price, HubSpot is missing a lot of functions that are offered by other products. It doesn’t have an ad builder, sentiment analysis, custom reports for its analytics, or any automation in its engagement

The platform's support lines are the best thing it has going for it, offering email, phone, and live chat support, as well as a knowledge center and online courses. However, for the price, we can’t say that HubSpot is the right choice for a small business.

Honorable mention: Sendinblue – Good for Facebook ads

We can’t in good conscience rate Sendinblue as a social media management tool, since it’s actually an email marketing software. However, this email marketing tool does have a Facebook ad builder, which falls under the umbrella of social media marketing. This comes packaged with a Premium plan, which can cost anywhere from $58.50 to $539.10 per month, depending on the email volume.

As far as social media marketing goes, that’s all Sendinblue can do for you – but considering the fact that email marketing is also a useful tool for small businesses, you can see how this ad builder is a potentially powerful add-on to an already useful tool. If your marketing strategy focuses on email and Facebook advertising, this is a great choice.

This can be especially useful if you’re looking to use Buffer, Sendible, CoSchedule, or HubSpot, since these tools don’t have ad building capabilities. So if you’re looking at one of these, but can’t do without an ad builder, using Sendinblue as an email marketing tool can help pick up the slack.

How we rated the providers

There are a lot of factors to consider when rating a social media management platform. Our main criteria were:

• Integrations
• Publishing
• Engagement
• Organization
• Listening
• Analytics
• Value for money
• Support

We’ve done extensive research into each piece of software mentioned here, and scored them based on the quality of their services. We then weighed these traits based on importance (for instance, publishing is more crucial than organization).

The scores we’ve used in our scorecards are a culmination of these assessments. However, these scores were specifically intended for small businesses. If you're interested, check out our favourite social media management tools.

Frequently asked questions