A visually pleasing and informative social media presence can be a game-changer these days, especially on Instagram. Instagram is a giant social media platform today, with over 2 billion monthly users. That is why having a great online presence on this huge platform is essential for the digital growth of businesses. However, social media marketing can be hectic and time-consuming if you don’t have the right tools for it. They will make scheduling content easy and quick for you. They will also help you stay active across all social platforms.
What is Instagram Automation?
Instagram automation means the use of third-party software to manage your social account and automatically interact with your audience.
There are 2 types of Instagram automation. The first one is fully automated whereas the second type of automation is limited to scheduling posts etc. The risk with the first one is that it can get your Instagram account banned or shadowbanned.
However, the second one only makes your social media management easy and efficient. It lets you schedule your Instagram posts and stories, and it is entirely safe to use.
So, if you are worried about your account getting banned, then we suggest avoiding full automation tools and choosing the 2nd type of automation tool aka social media management tools that are safe to use.
Later vs Tailwind vs SocialBu
We will discuss and compare three of these safe automation tools, SocialBu, Later, and Tailwind. All of them are official Instagram Partners.
1. Pricing
Later, Tailwind and SocialBu prices are compared below;
A. Later
Later offers a free plan and a free trial of their paid plans. It also offers a custom plan to meet your business needs.
Free Plan
- 1 social set
- Add-ons are not available
- 30 posts per social profile
- 1 user
- Unlimited media
- Chrome extension available
- 1 access group
Starter Plan
- $12.50/month
- 1 social set
- 60 posts per social profile
- 1 user
- Live chat unavailable
- No shared calendar
- No calendar notes
- Tags, mentions, and contributors are unavailable
- Instagram analytics unavailable
- 1 access groups
Growth Plan
- $20.83/month
- 150 posts per social profile
- 1 user
- Live chat unavailable
- Share calendar available
- Calendar notes available
- Tags, mentions, and contributors are available
- Instagram analytics available
- Unlimited access groups
Advanced Plan
- $33.33/month
- Unlimited posts
- 6 users
- Live chat available
- Share calendar available
- Calendar notes available
- Tags, mentions, and contributors are available
- Instagram analytics available
- Unlimited access groups
All the other features are similar to all the paid plans.
B. Tailwind
Tailwind offers a free trial and 3 paid plans.
Free Plan
- 1 Instagram profile
- 1 Pinterest profile
- 100 Pinterest pins scheduled per month
- Instagram link in bio tool
- Smart schedule
- Photo and video support
- Bulk uploads
- 30 monthly social post designs
Pro Plan
- $9.99/month
- 1 Instagram profile
- 200 monthly social post designs
- Smart schedule
- Photo and video support
- Bulk uploads
- 100 posts scheduling per month
Advanced Plan
- $19.99/month
- 2 Instagram profiles
- unlimited social post designs
- Smart schedule
- Photo and video support
- Bulk uploads
- 1000 posts scheduling per month
Max Plan
- $39.99/month
- 3 Instagram profiles
- unlimited social post designs
- Smart schedule
- Photo and video support
- Bulk uploads
- Unlimited posts scheduling per month
C. SocialBu
SocialBu offers a generous free plan and free trial for its paid plans.
Free Plan
- 2 social accounts
- 40 monthly posts
- Drafts available
- Post preview
- Hashtag suggestions
- Post insights
Starter Plan
- $8/month
- 150 posts/month
- 4 social accounts
- 2 custom queues
- No Instagram story stickers
- 4 automation
- 1 feed
Standard Plan
- $19/month
- 800 posts/month
- 12 social accounts
- No phone support
- 16 automation
- 5 feeds
- 5 custom queues
Super Plan
- $59/month
- 30 social accounts
- 60 automation
- 15 feeds
- 15 custom queues
- Unlimited monthly posts
Supreme Plan
- $199/month
- 400 automation
- 150 social accounts
- 50 feeds
- 50 custom queues
- Unlimited monthly posts
All great features like post recycling, post approvals, hashtag suggestions, bulk import, etc, are available in all the paid plans.
Winner
SocialBu is the winner because it offers the most reasonable prices. Also, the features offered in their free plan are better than Later and Tailwind.
2. Instagram Post Scheduling
SocialBu and Tailwind offer unlimited Instagram post scheduling in all their paid plans whereas Later doesn’t offer unlimited post scheduling. You can schedule up to 250 posts only. Tailwind is impressive. It picks out the most engaging times itself and schedules your posts accordingly.
All of these tools offer a social calendar, scheduling hashtags in the first comment, multi-image scheduling, video scheduling, and Instagram location tagging. Post approvals which are very essential, are also offered by all of these tools.
Winner
Tailwind.
3. Instagram Story Scheduling
Instagram story scheduling isn’t available in the free plan of any software. All of them support story scheduling by adding stickers, swipe-up links, and sharing Instagram posts on the story.
SocialBu efficiently lets you plan, optimize, and schedule your Instagram stories so that you don’t have to rush at the time of posting. You can upload your content in bulk from a CSV file and SocialBu will publish it for you.
In order to bulk upload the stories, you have to prepare a CSV file with the following details:
- The direct link to the media attachment
- The name of the account on which you want to publish the story
- The account type (“Instagram” in the case of Instagram stories)
- Date and time at which you want your post to publish on
- The type of content. For a story, set it as a “story”
P.S., Unlike many other scheduling tools, there is no manual action while publishing stories. You will once schedule the story and it will be automatically published at the scheduled time.
Winner
The overall winner is SocialBu as it offers bulk story scheduling as well.
4. Social Media Monitoring
Tailwind and Later don’t offer social media monitoring at all whereas SocialBu offers advanced social media monitoring.
It lets you manage your online reputation, media monitoring, and tracking your competition as well. It helps you keep track of brand mentions and relevant hashtags etc on Instagram and Twitter.
- Click on Respond from the left menu. You can manage your SocialBu Feeds under Respond
- Create a new feed if there is none in your account. You can also use an existing Feed.
- While configuring your feed, select the social media account(s) and add keywords/hashtags to track.
Once it is set up, the feed will be populated by new posts/tweets found from those keywords/hashtags that you are tracking.
Winner
SocialBu
5. Analytics
Source: Pexels.com
Analytics help you learn the best timing to post on Instagram, taking data-driven actions by analyzing popular posts, and analyzing your follower growth.
Later offers advanced account analytics. It offers insights into your profile performance, your top-performing posts, and summary reports and calculates your Instagram engagement rates. But it’s available in higher-paid plans. Whereas SocialBu and Tailwind offer analytics as well but they aren’t so advanced.
Winner
So, the overall winner of this comparison is Later as it offers advanced post and profile analytics.
6. Team Collaboration
Perfect social media workflow involves team collaboration at multiple levels. These Instagram automation tools are developed considering it in mind.
Whenever a post is scheduled by a social media manager, higher-ups can approve or reject this post. They can also leave notes on social media calendars, which are immensely helpful. This makes it easier to manage social media content quality and publish higher quality content only.
Winner:
Overall, all three of them offer pretty much the same feature in terms of team collaboration. So it’s a tie.
7. Unified Inbox (Social Inbox)
A social inbox is a tool that lets you connect all of your social media inboxes into a unified inbox. It is a beneficial and time-saving feature as it lets you see and engage with all your social conversations from one place.
With Later and Tailwind, you can manage your Instagram conversation, respond to comments, like, and delete comments, all from the dashboard. As for Tailwind, the unified inbox feature is not available.
With SocialBu, you can easily manage all your social conversations from one place. SocialBu’s unified inbox is indeed one of the best as compared to Later and Tailwind. You don’t have to switch back and forth between all your social media accounts because you can manage them from a single place. This will save you a lot of time.
Winner
So, the winner is SocialBu as it offers an efficient unified inbox that is easy to use and time-saving.
8. Automations
Later and Tailwind doesn’t offer any automation at all. But SocialBu offers next-level automation. This improves your efficiency and makes it easier for you to handle your social media accounts. With SocialBu, you can automate any social media scenario. Like;
- Sending an automated reply when a message is received if a certain keyword appears in the message
- Alerting a specific user if a comment or message has a specific keyword in it
- Replying to a tweet if the tweeting user has a certain number of followers
- Notifying an external service when a new post is published
- Creating a new social media post when an RSS feed has a new item
- Creating a new post when a webhook is triggered
- Notifying the user when someone posts a negative review about them.
Winner
SocialBu.
9. Platforms Supported
The platforms supported by Later, Tailwind and SocialBu are;
Later
Tailwind
SocialBu
- GMB (Google My Business)
10. G2 Ratings
The G2 ratings of Later, Tailwind, and SocialBu are;
SocialBu:
4.8
Tailwind:
4.4
Later:
4.7
Winner
The winner according to G2 ratings is SocialBu because it’s the highest-rated social media management tool among the three platforms.
Conclusion
When it comes to features and pricing, SocialBu wins because it offers many features for a fraction of the price.
If we talk about scheduling content, SocialBu is the winner. You can bulk upload media files and bulk schedule Instagram posts and stories by posting a CSV file. The social media monitoring features offered by it are very powerful as well. However, when it comes to analytics, Later offers the most advanced features.
In terms of team collaboration, all of them offer pretty much the same features. As far as social inbox and automation are considered, nothing matches SocialBu.
Overall, SocialBu is the recommended social media management tool. It offers post scheduling across Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Google My Business. Our service, team, and features are smarter and more advanced than the other two platforms.
Still not convinced?
Try our free plan without entering credit card details and decide for yourself.
