Planning posts for multiple social media platforms is often more frustrating and time-consuming than it should be, especially when you’re running a business. Every platform has a different layout and design, as well as quirks related to posting content (the inability to place clickable links in Instagram pots, for instance). There's no doubt juggling multiple social accounts can turn out to be a significant time waster. So, to bring some order to the chaos, many businesses use a social media management tool.

There are quite a few choices for managing your social media accounts, but Hootsuite and Buffer are some of the most popular. However, many social media management platforms, including Hootsuite and Buffer, are vague about whether or not they offer a completely free plan. Many have a free trial that includes their more advanced features, but only some allow you to keep using their product without paying.

Fortunately, we’ve uncovered five completely free Buffer and Hootsuite alternatives to help you amplify your social reach. Keep in mind that free trial versions have limited capability compared to their paid counterparts, but you can retain a free account with each of these tools.

1) Later

If you use Instagram for advertising and engaging your customers, Later is arguably the best choice for social media management. It's a fairly comprehensive tool that does everything from scheduling an entire week's worth of posts in less than 20 minutes to scoping out days and times for optimal engagement. It also offers in-depth analytics covering crucial growth categories.

While Later touts itself as a great social media management platform for Instagram, you can also use it for Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. The free plan lets you manage one profile between multiple platforms, but you're limited to 30 posts per month for Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest (50 posts per month for Twitter).

Later offers a forever-free plan with no credit card required at signup.

2) Zoho

With Zoho, you can control every aspect of your social media accounts — spreadsheet scheduling, content queues, keyword and mentions tracking, an activity live stream, and more. You can check plenty of detailed reports on individual post performance and engagement, as well as track significant trends. Aside from offering a robust social media management platform, Zoho also includes a broad suite of useful productivity tools.

When you initially sign up for Zoho, you receive a 15-day trial to test out its advanced features and premium services. After the 15-day window, you can keep your free account or upgrade.

3) Crowdfire

Crowdfire is relatively new to the social media management scene compared to a tool like Hootsuite, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s any less effective. It now boasts more than 19 million users worldwide! The app provides useful features like the ability to preschedule all of your content and connect your shop or blog to share updates to your social accounts automatically. Crowdfire also analyzes your content and helps you discover other relevant content you can share with your audience. Our favorite thing about Crowdfire is that it automatically customizes your posts to fit with the various requirements of social media platforms.

Crowdfire offers a free account with limited capability. Similar to Zoho, you can test out the more advanced features with a 15-day free trial before deciding if you want to upgrade or stick with the free version.

4) SumAll

SumAll is a simple yet powerful software that automates your marketing and social media. And it’s 100% free to use! While it isn’t as versatile as other tools, it provides excellent automation features focused on reaching and engaging your customers. It offers a detailed data analysis of ad performance, sales, engagements, and more.

SumAll is entirely free to use. There are no subscriptions and no credit card required at signup.

Boost your social strategy with SEO-driven content

What you publish on social media should align with your broader content strategy. B12's SEO Pro plan focuses on developing both your search engine optimization (SEO) and content, which will inform and strengthen your social media presence.

SEO Pro sends you a custom blog post each month to reinforce your website optimization and expand your search profile. Because search engines like Google value websites that are consistently updated, our copywriters produce and publish unique content for you regularly. This content connects you with visitors who are searching for keywords relevant to what you offer.

When you upgrade to SEO Pro, you’ll receive a content calendar tailored to your business. The calendar is flexible, and you have a say in every step of the process, from topic choice to the final blog post approval. You don’t have to do any of the heavy lifting, but you reap the benefits of an up-to-date and accurate SEO strategy.

While SEO Pro is not a free service, it's more affordable than working with an agency and is entirely worth it to keep your content and SEO fresh. Search engines constantly undergo algorithmic changes that are hard to keep up with, so investing in a service that predicts and reacts to those changes can have an enormous impact on your success.