Buffer
Schedules posts across every social channel from one calendar, with AI rewriting each post to fit the platform it's going to.
What it costs
| Tier | Price | For | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | One person managing up to 3 channels casually. | 10 scheduled posts per channel, 1 user, AI Assistant, basic insights, a community inbox. |
| Essentials | $5/month per channel, or $60/year per channel billed annually | A single user who has outgrown Free's post limits. | Unlimited scheduled posts, advanced analytics, hashtag manager, first-comment scheduling. |
| Team | $10/month per channel, or $120/year per channel billed annually | A team that needs shared access and approval workflows. | Everything in Essentials, plus unlimited team members, approval workflows, custom permissions, branded reports. |
Read from Buffer's own pricing page on 25 Sep 2026. Vendors change prices without notice.
Where it breaks
Per-channel pricing means the sticker price is misleading until you count accounts — a business posting to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and X on the Team plan is paying $40/month before adding a single teammate, not the $10 headline figure. Volume discounts apply from the 11th channel onward.
Browser-based, with mobile apps for iOS and Android. Pricing is per connected channel rather than per user, so the real monthly cost scales with how many accounts you're posting to, not how many people are posting.
First entry in this reference. There is no previous check to compare it against.
Buffer’s whole job is removing “post it now, from your phone, while you remember” from the list of things a small business has to do live. Write a week of content in one sitting, queue it against a schedule, and it goes out on time whether or not anyone is watching a clock that afternoon.
The AI Assistant does the last-mile adaptation work — the caption that works on LinkedIn reads wrong on X, and rewriting each post by hand for every platform is exactly the kind of small, repetitive task that eats an afternoon. Buffer’s version drafts the platform-specific variant from one piece of source content, which you then edit rather than write from scratch.
Why the pricing model matters more than usual here
Most tools in this directory charge per user. Buffer charges per connected channel. That inverts the usual maths: a solo operator running five social accounts pays more than a five-person team sharing three accounts. Before comparing sticker prices with Hootsuite, count how many accounts you’d actually connect on each.
Against Hootsuite
Hootsuite is the older, heavier tool — more channels supported at the top end, deeper listening and monitoring features, and priced accordingly at roughly ten times Buffer’s per-seat cost once you’re past the entry tier. Buffer is the calmer choice for a small business that wants scheduling and basic analytics done well, without paying for enterprise monitoring it will never use.
What it does not do
Buffer schedules and reports on what you post. It does not manage a shared inbox at the depth Hootsuite or a dedicated support tool does, and it has no ambition to run ad campaigns.
Get Buffer
Buying the tool is not the hard part.
The ebook is about what to hand over, in what order, and how you find out when it goes wrong. One payment, no subscription.