Buffer is touted as a simple yet effective social media toolkit for small businesses. It's just one of many social media management tools available on the market, but Buffer emphasizes affordability, which is always welcome given today's business challenges.
If you're looking for a comprehensive social media management solution, Buffer should work, even within the limits of its free edition. To unleash its full potential, you'll need to invest more time and money to access its full set of tools. The best example is the Essentials package, but the Team edition is more suitable for collaborative work.
Packages and rates
Buffer has been very attentive to simplicity with its pricing plans. There is something for most, if not all types of businesses, and payment can be made on a monthly or yearly basis. If you're just starting out and want to gain experience using a social media management tool, the free package (opens in a new tab) makes a lot of sense. Best of all, it's zero priced, which is great if you're on a tight budget, and allows you to manage up to three channels.
Next up is the Essentials Pack (Opens in a new tab). It costs €6 per month / €5 per year per social channel. It's easy to add extra channels when and if you need them, and by paying annually, you'll save £12 off the total cost over a year. You can try this free for 14 days, and it's suitable for professionals who need to use publishing, analytics, and engagement tools as part of their daily roundup.
A robust agency package (opens in a new tab) is also available, which works well for marketing agencies with 10 or more social channels on board. However, the price is €120 per month for 10 social channels, although that goes up from €1440 to €1200 per year if you choose to pay annually. You get all the features of the Team package, plus custom access and permissions, and more.
The more robust Team package (opens in a new tab) is aimed directly at all companies that have more than one collaboration agreement in progress. This gives users much more flexibility, it costs €12 per month or you can reduce the price by €24 by paying €120 per year. Additional channels can be added as required, which means a lot of freedom.
Features
As with any scalable social media management tool, Buffer can be used in its most basic form, which is fine if you're just starting out. You'll get a variety of basic publishing tools and a helpful landing page builder, but if you really want to up your social media management potential, head on over to the Essentials package and up.
By upgrading, you'll instantly have the ability to do so much more. For example, scheduled posts per channel are limited to just 10 per social channel with the free edition. Get a paid plan and go up to 2000 for starters. Of course, it's easy to work with the obvious social networks including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest with any edition of Buffer.
Similarly, there are several scheduling options, a calendar view, and handy features for everyday use, such as a link shortening capability and another to set custom links. But the paid editions also offer features like custom video thumbnails, multi-channel campaign delivery, and lots of great options for tweaking Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook posts.
Numerical analysis
Buffer also contains vital ingredients for more effective social media management, such as powerful tools to verify audience demographics with machine learning insights. The latter is like a smart way to tweak and refine your results to get the most out of posts.
Buffer is also excellent for its tools that cover the range of analysis and reporting demands of business users. The ability to get an overview of performance is essential and is provided in Essentials editions and above, along with more specific historical details in individual posts, as well as historical information that helps companies build a larger story.
digital reports
The wide range of reporting tools adds to Buffer's appeal. After all, if you don't have data to present at meetings, the validity of the purchase will soon be questioned. Buffer offers custom reporting tools, though you'll need to invest in the higher-end editions for customizable and exportable reports. However, business users will find these options invaluable and probably won't mind the additional expense of obtaining them.
Interface and in use
One of the best things about Buffer was how the designers made the interface fun to use. This is largely due to the simplicity of the design, with few obstacles to increasing its social media management potential. This also extends to the more complex and feature-rich premium products, even those with powerful built-in reporting tools and comprehensive data analytics.
Support
We were really impressed with the attention to detail in the area of buffer support. Like everyone else, there's a great place to start through an online help center. It contains a searchable database of help topics, as well as a wealth of tutorials and other information on how to get the most out of your Buffer package.
Anyone who needs additional help, on an individual basis, can contact Buffer's support team. It's very simple as you simply create a ticket using one of the many domain options to trigger a response. Buffer Community is another aspect of the support options found in this package that provides a broader range of contact options for users.
Competition
While users with fairly basic needs will be able to use Buffer, this is a social media management package that will suit larger companies. So while Hootsuite, SocialPilot, Buffer, eClincher, Sendible, Statusbrew, Loomly, and Zoho Social are all competitors worth considering, this package offers great scalability.
final verdict
Buffer is one of the best full-service social media management suites (opens in a new tab) you can get, and there's a package for all types of users. Naturally, the free edition lacks the punch that comes with the premium editions, so it's worth spending the money if you really want to boost your social media management potential. Aside from its ease of use, the power of Buffer is beyond question, while the ability to expand its capabilities is also built in.
For example, there are over 30 different third-party integration options, allowing you to take advantage of Buffer like Zapier, IFTTT, Quuu, Pocket, and Feedly. We're also very interested in being able to use Buffer quickly and easily in iOS and Android app editions, allowing for greater efficiency when you can't do those social media management tasks on your desktop. . Overall, it's easy to see why Buffer continues to attract so many new customers.