Best Apps For Scheduling Instagram Posts

Instagram is a social media platform with over 700 million active users, and it’s the perfect place to build your brand. The only problem is that Instagram can be a little overwhelming, hence see the best app for scheduling instagram posts.

Luckily, there are apps out there that can help you schedule your posts ahead of time so you don’t have to worry about being glued to your phone while trying to keep up with the latest trends or post quality content every hour.

In this article, we’ll go through five of our favorite apps for scheduling Instagram posts.

What are the Best Apps for Scheduling Instagram Posts

Are you looking for the best Instagram scheduling tools to save you time and grow your profile faster?

According to Facebook, Instagram has over 500 million active users each day which makes it a great platform to build an audience on. So what is the best app for scheduling instagram posts?

You’re going to need to ensure you’ve got regular content being published at the right times.

In this post, we’re breaking down the best Instagram schedulers to consider. These tools can save you a huge amount of time and effort. And some of them can help with other aspects of your social media strategy.

The best Instagram scheduler tools compared

Here’s a quick summary of each tool:

Pallyy

Best Instagram scheduling tool overall. Also includes Instagram analytics, comment management, and more. Limited free plan available.

SocialBee

Best social scheduling tool overall. Designed to save you time with content categories.

Agorapulse

Best all-in-one social media platform with Instagram scheduling. Includes limited free plan.

Iconosquare

Another powerful Instagram scheduler. Their scheduler is designed around Instagram and includes hashtag/caption lists.

PromoRepublic

Powerful visual sharing tool. Includes a library of templates you can use to create & schedule Instagram posts fast. Includes social inbox on most plans.

ContentCal

Best Instagram scheduler for content teams.

Missinglettr

Turn your blog posts into social media campaigns on autopilot. Then schedule to Instagram and other social networks.

Sendible

Another powerful all-in-one social media tool that’s affordable for individuals. Includes great scheduling functionality.

Sprout Social

Feature-rich social media tool that includes Instagram scheduling. Best for enterprise customers and large businesses.

Crowdfire

Another solid all-in-one social media tool that includes an Instagram scheduler. Quite affordable.

Buffer Publish

Solid Instagram scheduler with a free plan.

Hootsuite

Popular social media tool that includes Instagram scheduling and has a limited free plan.
Now, let’s explore each tool in more detail:

1 – Pallyy

Pallyy is an industry leading Instagram scheduling tool that is surprisingly affordable & packed with features. You only pay for the number of social profiles you need. You will not pay extra for additional users, making it a great option for small teams.

Pallyy’s scheduler was built with visual content sharing in mind – particularly Instagram. This means it has some useful features such as grid preview, hashtag lists, and more.

That said, you’re not limited to Instagram scheduling. You can publish content to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Google My Business.

You can also manage your schedule with a social media calendar and design Instagram posts with a Canva integration.

You’ll even have access to a media library and a preview of your Instagram feed.

Pallyy also has a content curation tool built exclusively for Instagram that enables you to find content to repost and credit the original creator.

It even includes an Instagram bio link tool, Instagram comment moderation, analytics, and more.

Pricing: A free plan is available that offers limited scheduling and analytics functionality.

The premium plan is $15/month per social group and unlocks all features including unlimited team members. A discount is available if you need more than 5 social groups.

2 – SocialBee

SocialBee thrives at social media scheduling. It supports Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, TikTok and Google My Business.

This tool is based on category-based scheduling in which you organize the types of posts you publish into different categories.

Two of its most useful features allow you to add automation to your social media marketing strategy. By connecting your RSS feed to your account, you can promote your latest blog posts to social media automatically. Content curation is also possible through integrations with Quuu Promote and Pocket.

You can even label individual posts as evergreen and re-add them to your queue to repost at a later date. If you choose to repost, you can set up variations so your followers aren’t shown the exact same posts word for word.

SocialBee’s Instagram scheduler allows you to publish posts, carousels and stories. You can even schedule a first comment and start a hashtag collection.

The app also has integrations with Canva and Xara as well as its own image editor so you can create images without leaving the dashboard.

SocialBee also has collaboration and performance reports.

3 – Agorapulse

Agorapulse is one of the best all-in-one social media management tools on the market. It’s especially a suitable option for teams and social media marketing agencies.

The inbox tool enables you to respond to comments on multiple platforms, including Facebook and Instagram ad comments. You can even label conversations and assign them to different team members.

You can publish to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube with Agorapulse. Certain plans allow you to manage everything with a unified social media calendar.

You can crop images, save commonly used hashtags and preview your posts before you schedule them. For Instagram, you can schedule posts, carousels and stories.

Agorapulse even allows you to reschedule content as many times as you want so your queue is always filled with evergreen content well into the future.

The analytics tool allows you to view detailed reports on your performance, keep track of trends in your industry and monitor your team’s response times.

Pricing: A limited free forever plan is available. Premium plans start at $99/month or $948/year (advertised as $79/month).

4 – Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a fantastic all-in-one social media management tool that offers publishing, inbox features, social listening and analytics. You can use it to publish to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. LinkedIn is included in the analytics dashboard, but you can’t post to it.

Iconosquare has built its app around visual content, so it’s mostly optimized for Instagram. When you use it to publish to the platform, you can schedule regular Instagram posts alongside carousels and stories and view your upcoming schedule in an image-based visual calendar.

When you schedule a post, you can schedule a first comment and hashtags with it. Iconosquare will even suggest your most recently used hashtags to you as you add them to your caption.

Speaking of captions, Iconosquare has a separate library you can use to store captions in advance and choose them when you create new posts. You can also upload images in bulk with Dropbox or OneDrive and categorize them so you can find them later.

When you schedule multiple posts in advance, you can preview what it’ll look like on Instagram’s grid-based profile pages. This enables you to plan out grid layouts in advance.

A lot of Iconosquare’s free tools are also Instagram based. These include an Instagram bio link tool, a random comment picker to help you run Instagram contests, a free audit of your Instagram account and Twinsta, a nifty tool that generates Instagram posts using tweets you’ve posted.

Pricing: Plans start at $59/month or $588/year (advertised as $49/month).

5 – PromoRepublic

PromoRepublic is an Instagram scheduling tool that focuses on multiple social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google My Business. For Instagram, it supports posts and stories but not carousels. It also has analytics and plenty of collaborative features.

You can’t respond to Instagram comments through the tool’s dashboard, but you can manage your Instagram schedule with a well-designed, image-based social media calendar.

PromoRepublic has a content library you can use to store your brand’s own personal assets. However, it also has a few unique features perfect for Instagram users. This includes a graphics editor and 100,000+ premade assets you can use to quickly create graphics on the fly without integrating third-party services.

The app also allows you to repost evergreen content within a 99-day timeframe.

In addition, you’ll find powerful analytics and a social inbox available on most plans.

Pricing: A limited plan for small solo bloggers is available for $108/year (advertised as $9/month). Pricing for regular plans starts at $49/month or $468/year (advertised as $39/month).

6 – ContentCal

ContentCal is a powerful social media management tool built around a calendar-centric dashboard. It allows you to monitor mentions of your brand and engage with your audience across multiple platforms.

ContentCal supports publishing posts, carousels and stories to Instagram. A preview of your profile’s grid is also available, allowing you to plan ahead for more elaborate marketing campaigns.

You can even build a collection of your most-used hashtags.

The app has a feature called Content Hub you and your team can use to build a content library and reuse your account’s top-performing posts. There’s even sections within the dashboard you and your team can use to build a list and pinboard of ideas.

ContentCal also has analytics that make it easy to keep an eye on your performance across multiple platforms.

Pricing: Plans start at $37/month or $360/year (advertised as $30/month).

Try ContentCal Free

7 – Missinglettr

Missinglettr is a social media management tool designed around automation. Its primary function is to scan your blog posts and YouTube videos to come up with a year’s worth of content by extracting text, images and short clips.

For quote posts, you can use one of the app’s bubble quote templates or design your own without leaving the dashboard.

The app also has a Curate tool you and other Missinglettr users can use to share and promote each other’s content. This means you’ll always have something related to your niche to share with your audience.

There’s even stock libraries integrated into the dashboard, giving you access to images and GIFs from Unsplash and Giphy.

You’ll manage your entire social media schedule with a well-designed calendar and can even schedule posts manually. Analytics are also available.

Pricing: A limited free forever plan is available. Premium plans start at $19/month or $190/year (advertised as $15/month).

8 – Sendible

Sendible is a complete social media management app that allows you to publish to multiple platforms, manage your social media inbox and track your performance. Collaboration is also a core feature.

A social media calendar makes up the majority of the UI for the dashboard of the Publish tool. It allows you to post to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google My Business. You can also publish content to platforms like WordPress, Medium, Tumblr and Blogger.

You can schedule regular posts for Instagram directly and even set up a first comment. You’ll need to set up reminders within the app for carousels and stories, then use mobile push notifications to post them to Instagram’s own app.

Sendible has a basic image editor, but you can also integrate Canva to create graphics from within the dashboard. The app has an asset library for these features.

Automation is also possible. The app will suggest popular content to you and even set up an RSS feed to promote your own blog’s content automatically. Recycling evergreen content is also possible.

Pricing: Plans start at $29/month or $300/year (advertised as $25/month).

9 – Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a complete social media management tool. Along with publishing, it allows you to monitor mentions of your brand, respond to comments and direct messages, and keep an eye on your performance.

The app allows you to use a social media calendar to publish to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn. It has a content library you can use to store images and videos. You can even use the analytics dashboard to monitor hashtag performance.

Sprout Social also has numerous collaborative features, even if it is an expensive app to use for more than one user.

Pricing: Plans start at $99/month per user or $1,068/year per user (advertised as $89/month).

10 – Crowdfire

Crowdfire is an all-in-one social media management tool you can use to handle publishing, customer service and other conversations, and performance tracking.

The Publish tool supports Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn. However, only the higher tiers support the social media calendar, scheduling posts in bulk and accessing your social inbox.

You can schedule regular Instagram posts and stories with Crowdfire.

Crowdfire also has a curation tool you can use to find popular content to share on the fly.

Pricing: A limited free forever plan is available. Premium plans start at $9.99/month or $89.76/year (advertised as $7.48/year).

11 – Buffer

Buffer is an all-in-one social media management app with tools for publishing, engagement and analytics. It allows you to publish to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

The tool uses an image-based social media calendar for publishing. For Instagram, it schedules posts and stories. You can even schedule a first comment and include commonly-used hashtags with your very own hashtag collection.

Buffer also has its own bio link tool you can use to create a shop grid connected directly to your Instagram account.

Pricing: Buffer has a free forever plan, but many of the Instagram features are in the premium plan. Pricing for this plan starts at $6/month per social channel or $60/year per social channel (advertised as $5/month).

12 – Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a complete social media management app with tools for publishing, engagement and monitoring, analytics, and advertising. It allows you to publish to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

It uses a visual-based social media calendar, and allows you to publish regular posts, carousels and stories. You can even design images, carousels and stories from within the app.

The analytics even allow you to keep track of competitors and your favorite hashtags alongside your own performance on the platform.

Hootsuite even has its own Instagram apps that make monitoring your ads, performance and analytics even easier.

Pricing: A limited free plan is available. Premium plans start at $588/year (advertised as $49/month).

instagram post scheduler online

Have you noticed that the big accounts on Instagram post a lot? It’s because they use an Instagram scheduler that allows them to automatically post during ideal times which boosts their likes and followers.

Now before I show you how to schedule on Instagram, let me give you a quick background so that way you can get the best results.

Out of all of the major social networks, Instagram has remained one of the most closed.

It doesn’t let you put links in your captions.
It hasn’t added as many other functions, though we do now have Instagram Stories.
For a long time, it didn’t allow third-party apps to post to the platform.
That last point was especially tricky for digital marketers.

The benefits that services like Hootsuite and Buffer brought to managing other social networks didn’t carry over to Instagram.

You couldn’t plan your content ahead of time and publish it automatically like you could on Twitter or Facebook. That means when you wanted to post something to Instagram, you had to be there to push the Share button.

Having an Instagram community is part of a crucial strategy of social proof, something you can leverage to increase your conversions.

This means you might be ready to explore scheduling apps that let you organize, upload, and preview your Instagram posts.

To help you succeed on Instagram, I’m going to show you how to use four different tools to automate your Instagram content scheduling.

Let’s get started.

Tools to Automate Instagram Scheduling

One of the best ways to engage your Instagram audience is to post engaging content on a regular basis. These tools make that much easier — you can schedule posts, so they go live when your audience is most active.

1. Later for Instagram Scheduling

The first app I’m going to show you is called Later. It’s a social media scheduling tool that works with Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Later Upload schedule manage your Instagram posts formerly Latergramme
The best part about Later is that it’s free for up to 30 scheduled posts per month. If you’re posting once a day, this is really good news.

But you will need a premium plan if you’re going to use video, so keep that in mind.

As a tool, Later has two primary benefits.

The first benefit is that it lets you preview your posts so you can see what they will look like as part of the bigger picture — your entire Instagram account.

This is very helpful for marketers who want to have a harmonious Instagram page.

The second benefit is that you can synchronize your images directly from services like Dropbox and Google Drive.

That means skipping the pesky step of saving your images to your camera roll on your iPhone before posting through to Instagram.

Let me show you how it works.

You need to create an account to get started. Once you’ve entered your Instagram information and chosen a name and timezone, you arrive at the main dashboard.

To be able to schedule posts on Later, you need to download and sign in to the Later mobile app.

To get started using Later, you need to add media. You can either drag images to the media library or connect to Google Drive or Dropbox.

Later is great because it lets you organize a lot of content quickly in two different ways.

First, you can select the option to see only the content you haven’t posted or content that you’ve starred.

The more in-depth option is to add labels to your images, which you can then filter to only see certain types of images.

• To add a label, click on the image.
• Then create your label.
• Now you can go back and filter your images.

If you don’t have a lot of images in your media library, it probably isn’t worth your time to go through and label them.

But if you have thousands of images, taking some time to organize them can save you a lot of scrolling over the long run.

There are a couple of different ways you can create a post in Later.

The first is by clicking directly on the image itself.

The post creation window posts up. You can edit your crop and add a caption for the post.

Then, at the bottom of the window, you select the date and time you want leaving the scheduled post on your calendar.

You could also just drag and drop the content from the media library into the calendar at the slot for the time and date you want.
When you do this, it automatically opens the pop up to write in the caption. The date and time are already added to the bottom.

When it comes time to post your content, they will automatically post your content.

2. Agorapulse for Instagram Scheduling

Agorapulse promises to centralize your social planning in one place. There’s an option with a free trial to see if it’s right for you.
Like Later, it provides scheduling for the major social networks. I’m going to focus on the Instagram scheduling for this article.

To get started, click on the “Start my free trial” button at the top.

There is a caveat, however. You have to connect with your Facebook account. You cannot just create an account with your email address.

Then there are a couple of different authentication steps before Agorapulse asks you which accounts and pages you want to connect with. You can skip the Facebook and Twitter step and just do the Instagram account.

When you get logged in, the first screen you see is your inbox. Your inbox is a collection of all the comments from your Instagram posts.

This is a great way to be able to engage with people who have engaged with you. For a community manager, this is especially convenient.

What we’re concerned about for this article is publishing, so click on the Publishing tab.

The Publishing tab gives you a calendar view showing when you’ve already posted. For days in the future, you have the option to click on the calendar date to schedule a post.

You can also click on the Schedule Post button on the menu on the right.

The pop-up box allows you to create your post. You can upload media directly through this box.

AgoraPulse Manager instagram scheduling tool
Once you’ve uploaded your media, you will get the prompt to download and install the Agorapulse mobile app, which works more or less exactly like the Later app I showed you above.

A cool feature of Agorapulse is the Instagram view, which gives you a preview of what your post is going to look like directly in the post creation pop up.

AgoraPulse Manager Instagram scheduling tool
Once you’ve installed the app, you can add your post to your queue.

Another cool feature is the time slots option for your queues.

You know how you can see your Insights in Instagram?

If you scroll down, you can see when your audience is most active for each day of the week.
Then, in Agorapulse, you can set up a default time slot for each day of the week. That way, when you add your posts to your queue, it’s automatically assigned to the best time for that day.

Agorapulse is also advanced when it comes to reporting and identifying your top followers. You can see who interacts with you the most in a glance and who your most influential followers are.

3. Autogrammer for Instagram Scheduling

Another platform that promises to centralize your social networks’ scheduling is Autogrammer, which offers a free seven-day trial.

It’s much faster to get started with Autogrammer than Agorapulse. Once you’re in, you can add your social network accounts from the menu on the right or from the green button in the middle.

To add an account, type in the details in the pop-up.

When your Instagram account is connected, you will see the prompt to add a post.

Just like with the other services I’ve outlined, you can upload an image directly, add a caption, select a time, and add multiple social networks if you want to publish to Instagram and Facebook at the same time.

The post comes up in your queue.

The interface is designed to be as simple as possible, but you can still access things like the calendar view by clicking on the Scheduled Posts option at the top.

Like the other services, you can add a new post directly from the calendar view by clicking on each date’s little plus button.

Finally, there’s a Bulk Upload option if you want to add multiple media files at one time.

4. Sprout Social for Instagram Scheduling

For a more robust option in terms of functionality, Sprout Social could be a way for you to go.
Like the other platforms, there is a free trial to get you started. It lets you evaluate if the interface and functionalities are what you’re looking for.

The free trial is super important for Sprout since the plans can get really pricey. It’s positioned more as an enterprise service.

You might want to take that into account before you get hooked.

I want to point out that if you’re just starting out, there’s a standard service that runs $59 per month instead of the basic plan that starts at $99 per month.

• You can find that option hidden below the other major plans.
• You can start your free trial with any of the options.
• After entering your email address, you can link your social accounts.

The more expensive plans let you add more social profiles. The standard plan lets you add five.

The next screen in the setup window. It will ask a little more about your business since Sprout catered more towards business and enterprise clients.

Since we’re concerned with scheduling on Instagram, click on the Publish & Schedule option.

You will still have access to the other features of the platform, but Sprout will immediately orient you towards the publishing features and a video explaining how to publish and schedule. That’s a nice touch.

To create a post on Sprout, you are always only one click away with the green Compose button on the top right. The pop-in window resembles the other services I’ve already shown you.

The publishing tab shows a calendar view that lines up your scheduled posts. You can adjust the date range on the right to see more or less time.

When it comes to Instagram scheduling, the mechanism is similar to the other services I already described. You download the app and connect your Instagram.

Then, you have to follow the steps to go through and share the content on Instagram via the Instagram app.

Sprout goes further than the other platforms I’ve outlined in both its project management capabilities and its focus on helping you grow your accounts.

As people interact with your Instagram account, you can manage your messages in the messages tab. By adding a task to a message, such as reply or contact this person, your task will show up in the tasks tab.

This is helpful when working in teams where a community manager can centralize the responses that are needed by going through and assigning who needs to do what.

You can also label someone as a potential lead, and make sure to follow up with them in a way that’s more sales-oriented than a simple response to a comment on an Instagram post.

The other cool feature on Sprout is the Discovery tab. The Discovery feature lets you created customized searches around hashtags to find people to interact with.

You can also use a geo-filter to narrow your search to a specific geographic area.

If you click on Suggestions on the menu on the left side of the screen, you will be able to find more people to follow who either follow you or who have interacted with you.

This is especially helpful if you’re managing a big community and you want to go through and find new, key people who are closer to helping you boost your business since they already know you.

Conclusion

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