Best Instagram Tools & Schedulers

Last Updated on January 18, 2024 by Ewen Finser

If you are looking for the best social media management scheduler & dashboard SPECIFICALLY to manage Instagram, this guide is for you.

For years I took a generalist approach, just using the most versatile all purpose social media scheduling apps (tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, etc…). They all do a pretty ok job at covering all the platforms.

But in the last few years I’ve seen some really specialized (amazing) tools pop up, dedicated to specific platforms. For Instagram, this can be a superpower that sets your marketing efforts apart from “the rest”.

I created this guide as “not another general roundup” post, but rather specifically with marketers looking to CRUSH IT on Instagram this year.

Here goes..

1. Later: Best Instagram Tool Overall

Later is one of my favorite Instagram social media tools due to its comprehensive features and user-friendly interface. It’s just nice to use!

It offers a seamless experience for scheduling and managing Instagram posts, making it an indispensable tool for BOTH individual marketers and business / enterprise marketing teams.

Key features I like about Later:

• Visual Content Calendar: Later provides a visual content calendar that allows users to plan and schedule their Instagram posts in a grid format, ensuring a cohesive and visually appealing feed.
• Auto-publishing: With Later, users can schedule their posts in advance and have them automatically published to Instagram at the designated times, eliminating the need for manual posting.
• User-friendly Mobile App: Later offers a mobile app that allows users to manage their Instagram account on the go, making it easy to schedule and publish posts from anywhere.
• Instagram Analytics: Later provides detailed analytics and insights, including engagement metrics, follower growth, and best-performing posts, enabling users to track their Instagram performance and make data-driven decisions.

Later vs Other Top Competitors:

• Later vs Buffer Compared
• Later vs Hootsuite Compared

2. SocialBee: Multichannel Management for Automation

SocialBee is a powerful all-in-one social media management solution suitable for small businesses, influencers, and agencies. The platform’s innovative publishing features allow you to organize and schedule your content, share it across platforms, and track performance.

If you do manage a lot of different Instagram accounts, SocialBee is a great triage platform for one-stop dashboard management.

Key features I like about SocialBee:

• Content Categories: Create different categories for various types of posts, ensuring a balanced content mix.
• Bulk Editor: Edit all posts in a category simultaneously, saving valuable time.
• Content Recycling: Create new variations of your top-performing posts and reschedule them to optimize engagement.
• Instagram Analytics: Track your Instagram metrics and get detailed reports on your performance.

SocialBee Compared to Top Competitors:

• SocialBee vs Hootsuite
• SocialBee vs MeetEdgar

3. Sendible: The Instagram Tool for Solopreneurs

Sendible is a popular Instagram management tool used by solopreneurs, bloggers, marketers, and brand managers. It offers a smooth publishing process, collaboration tools, detailed analytics, and social listening features.

I really like Sendible for freelancers (with dreams to grow!) withit’s approachable pricing ($29/month starting) and the flexibility to grow with you.

Key features I like about Sendible:

• Image Editor: Resize images and add filters directly from the Sendible dashboard.
• Canva Integration: Design graphics with Canva and schedule them in seconds.
• Approval Workflows: Seamlessly collaborate with team members and clients on content creation and scheduling.
• Mobile App: Manage your Instagram account on-the-go with Sendible’s mobile app.

Sendible Compared to Peers:

• Sendible vs Hootsuite
• Sendible vs Buffer

4. Missinglettr: Best for Post Timing

Missinglettr automatically turns your blog posts into social media campaigns for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It includes a powerful analytics feature that can help you track all of your Instagram metrics.

If you already have a content platform like a WordPress blog, Missinglettr is a nice growth hack that takes out a lot of the in between legwork to get distribution on Instagram.

Key features I like about MissingLettr:

• Automated Social Media Campaigns: Turn your blog posts into social media posts automatically.
• Scheduled Posts: Schedule your posts to go live at the best times for maximum engagement.
• In-depth Instagram Analytics: Get detailed insights into your Instagram performance.

5. Iconosquare: The Instagram Tool for Large Enterprise

Iconosquare is a powerful Instagram tool for businesses known for its in-depth analytics, publishing, and monitoring tools. It provides a wealth of data that you can use to optimize your Instagram marketing strategy.

Key features I like about Iconosquare:

• Instagram Stories Scheduling: Schedule photos, carousels, reels, and Instagram stories automatically.
• Conversations Feature: Monitor how your brand or competitors are being mentioned across Instagram and engage with your audience.
• Performance Analysis: Visualize key performance indicators like follower growth, average post engagement rates, reach, and impressions in easy-to-read graphs.

6. PromoRepublic: Great for Brick & Mortar Businesses

PromoRepublic is a leading social media marketing tool with powerful automation features built-in for platforms including Instagram. It can help reduce your workload by providing ready-made, industry-relevant social content for your campaigns.

Key features I like about PromoRepublic:

• Automatic Reposting: Re-queue Instagram content that performed well to maximize engagement.
• Efficient Workflows: Send social content to different team members or clients for quick approvals to avoid bottlenecks.
• In-depth Instagram Analytics: Track your Instagram metrics and get detailed reports on your performance.

7. Shorby: The Instagram Tool for Creating Link-in-Bio Pages

Shorby is a tool that makes it easy to create “link in bio” pages for Instagram. It allows you to promote multiple pages through Instagram, overcoming the limitation of a single link in the bio.

This isn’t really a social media scheduler per se, BUT if they main pain point you are solving for is link management, it’s a great place to start.

Key features I like about Shorby:

• SmartPage Builder: Create a landing page filled with your priority links.
• Rich Links: Make your links look super-clickable to improve your click-through-rate (CTR).
• Retargeting: Retarget the people who click through your links.

8. SweepWidget: The Instagram Tool for Giveaways

SweepWidget is a powerful social media giveaway tool that can help grow your Instagram audience. It features an easy-to-use builder to create giveaway content and embed them on your blog to grow your Instagram following and website traffic.

Key features I like about SweepWidget:

• Entry Methods: Supports 90 entry methods to grow your Instagram account and other social profiles.
• Leaderboard Competition: Allows users to compete for the number one spot, incentivizing sharing and boosting engagement.
• Milestone Rewards: Set up tiered milestones so that when users earn a certain amount of points, they gain instant rewards or coupons.

9. Tailwind: Best for Pinterest + Instagram

Tailwind is a great Instagram tool that can help you schedule posts for both Instagram and Pinterest. You can use it to schedule your visual posts ahead of time and it also comes complete with analytics and creation features.

Key features I like about Tailwind:

• Instagram Bio Link Feature: Allows you to create a custom landing page with clickable images leading your Instagram followers to specific URLs.
• Hashtag Generator: Extremely useful for generating high-performing hashtags for your Instagram posts.

10. MetaHashtags: The Instagram Tool for Hashtag Research

MetaHashtags is a useful Instagram tool that can help you find the right hashtags for your post. The tool can generate unlimited hashtags and even provides metrics to help you select the right ones for your content.

If you consistently get stuck on the hashtag adding phase, MetaHashtags is a really cool tool that I had no idea existed until I started research for this article!

Even if you THINK you know hashtags, it’s an eye opening tool to try out & great for Instagram.

Key features I like about MetaHastags:

• Hashtag Generator: Generate relevant and top-performing hashtags for your posts.
• Hashtag Analytics: Analyze how well certain hashtags perform and inform your future hashtagging strategy.

11. KeywordTool.io: The Instagram Tool for Trending Topics

KeywordTool.io can help you find high-performing topics for Instagram and Twitter content. This is a paid hashtag tool (similar to MetaHashtags, but with topic research) and is perfect for anyone looking for an all-in-one solution that covers both keyword and hashtag research.

Key features I like about Keyword Tool:

• Hashtag Suggestions: Get access to up to 20x more hashtag suggestions related to your keywords.
• Keyword Research: Get information about keywords used on platforms like YouTube and Twitter.

12. Brand24: The Instagram Tool for Social Listening

Brand24 makes it easy to find discussions about your brand on Instagram and other platforms. It’s great for finding Instagram marketing opportunities.

Key features I like Brand24:

• Social Media Monitoring: View a mentions feed, showing every post or comment made about your brand across all social media platforms.
• Discussion Volumes: Monitor how much people are talking about you to judge the success of your ad campaigns.

13. All Hashtag: The Instagram Tool for Hashtag Management

All Hashtags is an Instagram tool that can help you manage and select the right hashtags for your posts. It offers a hashtag generator, a hashtag creation tool, and a hashtag analytics tool.

Key features about All Hashtag:

• Hashtag Generator: Generate relevant and top-performing hashtags for your posts.
• Hashtag Analytics: Analyze how well certain hashtags perform and inform your future hashtagging strategy.

14. Cyfe: The Instagram Tool for Reporting and Analytics

Cyfe is a unique Instagram tool designed to help you create a dashboard to monitor your efforts across Instagram and other social networks. You can use Cyfe to create a custom reporting and analytics dashboard that can be used to track all of your metrics in one place.

If you’ve been struggling to “tell the story” to internal or external stakeholders, Cyfe can be an excellent visual dashboard solution (in my experience).

Key features about Cyfe:

• Customizable Dashboards: Create a dashboard to monitor your social media efforts.
• Advanced Reporting and Analytics: Create reporting and analytics dashboards for your Instagram account and other networks.

So Which Tools are MUST HAVES for Instagram?

I’ll admit this is a fairly lengthy list. You don’t need EVERY tool to get started successfully on Instagram.

That said, I would at least recommend starting with these tools:

1. Later: To get a good dashboard, scheduler, and analytics built for exactly what you need for Instagram. This is the foundational building block for everything else. Yes, other social media schedulers “integrate with Instragram”, but this is THE best one for Instagram specifically. It also has a great Linken.bio integration which takes that off of your list.
2. MetaHashtags: To figure out what to add for hashtags, an often misapplied skill.
3. KeywordTool.io: To figure out what is trending and which topics are the best to focus on.