Have you narrowed down your list of social media management tools to just three options—Gain, Planable, and Later—but find yourself uncertain about which one to choose?
Each tool offers distinct advantages, but selecting the one that perfectly aligns with your agency’s specific needs and pain points can be challenging.
This guide is designed to offer clear, comparative insights into Gain, Planable, and Later, helping you make an informed decision that optimizes your agency’s social media operations in 2024.
Overview of Gain
Gain is a content approval tool designed for social media marketing agencies but presents a variety of nifty features that work together to help you provide the best possible service.
Approval Workflows
One of Gain’s most robust features is its customizable content approval workflows. With Gain, agencies can effortlessly create custom approval processes, ensuring each piece of content receives the necessary checks before it’s published. The system’s flexibility allows for any number of reviewers and multiple rounds of feedback.
Once the content gets approved by the last collaborator in the chain, it gets automatically scheduled and published—you don’t need to do anything else.
Content Management
Gain also offers super helpful content management capabilities, perfect for organizing content assets with its diverse viewing options. It allows you to set up distinct workspaces for each client, enabling the organization of content in dedicated folders.
Additionally, Gain facilitates easy content retrieval through advanced filters and searchable tags, keeping everything well-organized and accessible.
Collaboration
Collaboration on content assets within marketing teams is often tricky. You need to coordinate ideas and ensure consistency while effectively communicating among multiple contributors. Gain makes collaboration within your team and with clients easy.
With Gain, you can tag your colleagues with mentions to alert them to edits. It’s also possible to leave annotations on specific pieces of content and create role-specific access to certain areas. For those outside of Gain, a public preview link can be shared, allowing for easy external reviews.
AI Writer
Another great feature for those who use AI in social media is Gain’s AI Writer, which can assist you with your creative process, spelling, grammar, and translation. The AI Writer is integrated directly into Gain, allowing you to stay on the platform and save time while eliminating the frustration of switching between multiple tools and software.
White Labelling
Finally, one of Gain’s newest features is the ability to white label your workspace for your clients and team, so every page they use with Gain is branded with your logo. If you’re an agency that wants to provide a unified experience for your clients, this feature definitely comes in handy.
Pros and Cons of Using Gain
Pros:
- Automated content approval workflows and one-click approvals
- Role-specific access and customization
- Plenty of collaboration features
- Easy on your budget
Cons:
- Gain’s analytics feature covers basic performance metrics, including likes, engagement, views, and comments. To access more detailed insights, you’ll need to use Gain in conjunction with a specialized analytics tool.
What Users Have to Say about Gain
As of January 2024, Gain maintains 4.7/5 stars on G2 with users praising approval and review tools and citing how helpful Gain is for the organization. One five-star review described Gain as ‘a super-streamlined godsend.’
Pricing
Gain offers a 14-day free trial. After the trial, you can choose from three packages depending on your needs. The Starter plan costs $99 per month when billed annually.
Overview of Later
Later is content management software specifically designed to manage content scheduling and works with the most popular social media platforms. They also have a suite of tools to help you create content.
Scheduling
Later’s content scheduling helps you to curate a consistent social media presence. By bulk scheduling using their Visual Planner, you can preview your entire Instagram grid in one go.
Content Creation Tools
With Later’s content creation tools, you can re-share user-created content easily, as Later automatically adds credit to the content you repost. You can also search for content using hashtags, and Later provides hashtag suggestions to optimize your content.
You can also seamlessly export all your original Canva content designs into your Later Media Library.
Link in Bio
Later’s ‘Link in Bio’ feature allows you to easily incorporate links into your social media profiles and therefore drive traffic to your client’s web pages.
Pros and Cons of Using Later
Pros:
- Accessible user interface
- Affordable pricing tiers
- Extensive social media integration
Cons:
- The analytics are quite limited.
User Reviews
Later maintains an average of 4.5/5 on G2. Most reviews, however, do mention that this particular tool is best for small businesses or individuals rather than social media marketing agencies.
Pricing
Pricing comes in three tiers, starting at just $25 a month for the Starter package for individuals. The Growth package, designed for small teams, is priced at $45 a month, while the Advanced package for growing teams is $80 a month. Discounts are available for annual packages.
Overview of Planable
Planable promises to automate your entire social media process by enabling you to create, review, approve, and publish content, all in one place.
Centralized Content Management
Planable supports the integration of various types of content, including blogs, newsletters, emails, and social media posts, into a single platform. This centralization eliminates the need for multiple tools, streamlining your content management process.
Visual Content Management Capabilities
Planable supports a bunch of views for efficient content planning and visualization: the Feed View for realistic previews of posts as they would appear on social media, the Calendar View for an overarching view of content over time, and the Grid View specifically for Instagram layout planning. The List View offers a quick overview and management of posts across multiple pages.
Analytics
Whilst not yet available, Planable is rolling out an analytics tool that will track followers, engagement, and reach which might give it an edge when considering Planable vs. Later.
Pros and Cons of using Planable
Pros:
- Visual approach to content planning
- Good for small businesses/individuals
- Free tier available
Cons:
- Pricing per user can be costly for social media marketing agencies.
User Reviews
Planable has a 4.6/5 rating on G2 and reviewers praise its intuitive user interface. They do, however, note problems with deleting scheduled posts and cite the price as high for the functionality.
Pricing
There is a Free tier with limited features and the Basic plan starts at $13 per user (per month). The Pro plan is $26 per user and offers extra features. Both the Basic and Pro plans offer a discount if you prepay for a year. Enterprise pricing is available on request. In terms of Planable vs. Later, Planable may be less affordable for some.
Conclusion—Choosing the Right Tool for You
Wrapping up, the decision to choose between Gain vs. Planable vs. Later is a significant one. While all three tools share some similarities, they do have their stark differences.
Gain shines with its robust approval workflows, reducing the hassle of client communications. Planable stands out for seamless real-time collaboration, ensuring content accuracy across platforms. Meanwhile, Later excels in visual content planning, particularly for Instagram-centric strategies.
To choose the best social media management software for you, it is important to assess the specific needs of your agency and identify the areas where you most need a boost.
If client communication and content approvals are a pain for your agency, Gain might be the ideal tool for you. Try Gain for free (no credit card required), and you’ll be in good company with brands from 51 countries worldwide who trust Gain to streamline their social media tasks.
