‘There’s no free lunch.’
Personally, I love this expression. It reminds me that even though some things appear to be free, you’ll be paying a price for it eventually.
That point has come for Iconosquare. The pioneer in Instagram tools used to provide engagement management, statistics, and an online Instagram viewer for free. Users only had to pay for their Instagram contest app when they wanted to use it. They’ve been very successful up to this point, gaining a lot of traction with their free tools.
But, they announced that they will no longer be in a position to support the free stuff, and they have updated their offering with a paid service. Their pricing model was announced today and it starts at $200/month. This is a pretty high price point for a lot of community managers out there and lot of users seem pretty unhappy about that.
Now comes the big question: what alternatives exist for those who need the tools but don’t have $200+ to spend on Instagram?
Here come 5 you should consider.
>>1 – Agorapulse
The all-in-one Social Media Management suite has recently added Instagram to its Facebook and Twitter management features. Agorapulse is “Social Media Management made simple”. All accounts have a streamlined Social Inbox, making it super easy to respond to fans and followers and save a ton of time doing so. The monitoring feature is also powerful, yet user friendly.
Create as many monitoring searches as you want for hashtag or location checkins.
Agorapulse’s stats for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram create good looking reports quickly.
You’ll have data about your Instagram audience growth:
Your daily engagement:
Your top users:
And many other stats such as your top photos, your top hashtags, the number of comments you’ve reviewed, etc.
You can also see your users ranked by activity (number of likes, comments for the last 30 days), tag them and filter them by tag, or just search for a specific user:
A convenient calendar view will finally allow you to see all your published photos by day and time:
The pros:
Manage multiple Instagram accounts
Advanced statistics
Comments management (inbox)
User ranking and identification
Monitoring (hashtags, location check-in, keywords)
Facebook and Twitter are included
1 low price for all features (beginning at $29 per month)
The cons:
You can’t publish on Instagram, you’ll need to use an app like Schedugr.am for that, see below.
Along with Facebook and Twitter account management, Agorapulse offers unlimited Facebook contests as well. It’s an all-in-one solution that’s been named one of the top 3 Social Media Management tools by G2Crowd, so it’s probably legit
The price point:
Agorapulse starts at $29 per month for 1 Facebook page, 1 Twitter account and 1 Instagram account. The price grows slightly as you add more accounts, and everything is included (unlimited statistics, unlimited facebook contests, unlimited admins, Social Inboxes, monitoring, etc.). Of course, you can start with a free trial.
>>2 – Hootsuite
Hootsuite does not natively support Instagram, but fortunately, you can add several apps to manage your Instagram accounts. One is free (but pretty basic) and others have a monthly fee, but they are affordable ($4 to $5 per month). Here’s a tutorial on how to add the free Instagram app.
Whether you love Hootsuite or hate it, it’s an affordable tool and it can do a lot of things on many Social Networks.
However, it will be limited to managing your Instagram feed, comments on your photos and tags. No statistics..
This is how your Instagram feed will look:
And here are the paid apps you can add to extend your Instagram monitoring features:
And yes, Iconosquare
The pros:
Manage multiple Instagram accounts
You can add paid apps for additional features (such as trending hashtags with Trendspotr). Learn more in this blog post.
Monitoring (hastags, location check-in, tags)
It’s Hootsuite, so you also have access to everything else they have to offer.
The cons:
The interface is a bit clunky. Certainly not as user-friendly as what Iconosquare has to offer.
No Instagram statistics in Hootsuite, so not an alternative on that front.
The price point:
The paid plan starts at $9.95/month, but you’ll need to add at least $30 for the reports. Hootsuite can become very expensive if you need more advanced features you’ll only find in their enterprise plan at $1,500 per month. Learn more about Hootsuite’s downsides in this great blog post.
>>3 – Collec.to
Collecto (previously Followgram) offers basic Instagram features for free. They also have a ridiculously cheap paid account at $9 per year.
It offers a web viewer, search feature, popular photos, location searches and stats. Don’t expect to find the depth of stats you were used to getting for free with Iconosquare, this is how they look:
The pros:
It’s free
You get some stats
The cons:
Very basic
The paid plan is cheap but won’t give you much better stats
The price point:
Free for the basic stuff, $9 per year for more search / browsing capabilities (top tags, top filters).
>>4 – Sumall
Sumall is a comprehensive analytics platform. It aggregates dozens of platforms, including most Social Networks, and Instagram. It offers a free version, but I have to admit that it is pretty limited. Definitely far from the kind of statistics you used to get for free from Iconosquare.
This is how the free stats look:
With the paid plan, you’ll have much better statistics and beautiful reports in pdf. Sumall is a must try if reports are the main thing you’re looking for:
The pros:
Basic stats are free
Sumall offers statistics on almost all social networks, but also on Google Analytics, Paypal and a lot of other stuff, very comprehensive.
The cons:
Sumall only does statistics, nothing else. You’ll have to subscribe to other tools to cover all your Social Media Management needs.
The interface is sleek, but can be hard to navigate sometimes. A bit too “advanced” for some.
The free plan is very super basic, most people will need the paid plan that is a bit expensive for just stats.
The price point:
The free stuff comes… Free (no joke!
The paid plan starts at $99/month
>>5 – Schedugr.am
One of the main pains with Instagram is the obligation to post from a mobile device. It is a bit of a headache for community managers who are managing their company’s account and a huge headache for agencies that manage multiple Instagram accounts for their clients.
There are a couple of solutions that allow you to schedule photos from the web, like Latergramme, but you still have to use your phone and login to Instagram on your mobile to complete publishing. Pretty complicated if you have multiple accounts.
Schedugr.am is the only tool that lets you do everything from the web without ever touching your phone. Set it, and forget it. A no brainer for agencies.
The pros:
Schedugr.am is the only tool that lets you publish on Instagram from the web, they use a pretty innovative and unique technical hack for that.
The cons:
It’s only helping you publish on your account, not other feature. No statistics, no user management, no comment management, nada.
The price point:
Starts at $20 per account with up to 10,000 followers. Up to $70 per account up to 1M followers. Pretty affordable given the headaches it will solve.
Article Collected from Here
