14 Affordable Instagram Marketing Tools For All Users
Take a dive into the pool of endless social media marketing tools and you’ll find you can spend a pretty penny trying to keep up with it all. Especially with how crucial it is for your brand or business to be successful on Instagram, it’s no wonder there are so many options. We understand how hard it is to keep up with the aesthetic of your feed – and all the planning, scheduling, researching, analyzing, editing, and captioning that goes into it.
Lucky for you, we’re here to tell you which apps are not only the best in the game in terms of Instagram, but also affordable tools you can use to free up your time and make sure your Instagram is the absolute best it can be.
Here’s a list of 14 affordable Instagram marketing tools that are not only low-cost but very user-friendly!
FOR CONTENT CREATION
1.VSCO
Surely you’ve seen the hashtag #vscocam and maybe even wondered how the majority of the images under this hashtag are colored so beautifully. Well, the secret’s out! Welcome to VSCO, the app that is going to transform your photos from good to AMAZING. It’s also very helpful in keeping your color palette consistent throughout your feed.
Features:
- Access to many different unique VSCO filters and editing tools.
- Adjust brightness, contrast, temperature, sharpness and more on the app.
Price: Free, Filter packages vary
2. CANVA
Hands down one of the best platforms to create standout images and really improve your social media marketing efforts. Add text, borders, frames and many other elements. Canva is a social media manager’s dream when it comes to creating memorable social media campaigns and great graphics. Say goodbye to boring photos and hello to your new graphic designer!
Features:
- Access to over 8,000 templates
- Upload your own images or choose from Canva’s image database
- Preset size dimensions for creating content to be shared on all major social networks including Instagram.
- Fonts, photo filters, stickers, shapes and graphics can be added to any photo.
- Download easily with the option of saving work to your desktop or sending via email, text message or even directly to Instagram.
- Large variety of stock photos available at a low cost ($1 per photo).
Price: Free or upgrade to Canva for work at $12.95/month
3. QUIK
Instagram videos are becoming increasingly popular whether it be for Instagram stories or posts. However, creating a video clip can seem like one of the most daunting tasks to accomplish. What if I told you all you need to do is upload content directly from your phone onto an app and the APP will work it’s magic? Well look no further because Quik is here to help you create amazing videos within minutes (maybe even seconds)! Designed by the team over at GoPro, Quik is one of the most user-friendly apps around, allowing you to create the perfect Instagram video sans the headache.
Features:
- Many pre-made video templates to choose from.
- Choose video style and customize edits exactly the way you want them. Or have the app do all the legwork for you!
- Add music to your videos.
- Share directly to multiple social media platforms including Instagram stories, Instagram posts, text or email.
Price: Free
4. OVER
Ever wonder how Instagram users added stunning fonts and graphics to their photos? Surely you’ve been looking to step up your Instagram story game and the app Over is here to help you with just that. Choose from millions of templates, graphics, and fonts to add to your photos directly from your phone. A great way to spice up your Instagram stories!
Features:
- Share directly to all major social media platforms including Instagram or via email or text message.
- Large selection of fonts and artwork to add to your photos.
Price: Free or $80/year for Pro
5. TOUCHRETOUCH
Have you been struck by a photobomber? Or perhaps there’s a piece of trash in your image that you really wish wasn’t there. It happens to the best of us. Luckily, the tool TouchRetouch allows you to remove any unwanted items from your image. It may take a couple of test runs to get used to the app, but once you’ve put in a bit of practice, you’ll be a photo editing master!
Features:
- Clone parts of your image.
- Object removal
- Blemish remover
Price: Free
6. BOOSTLY
With Instagram being the social media platform with the highest level of ur engagement around the world, it’s obvious how important it is to ensure you’re engaging with the appropriate audience in order to properly grow your fanbase. But the real questions is, do you have the time? The team at Boostly does, and they’re here to help you convert potential fans into loyal followers. Designed to help you engage with new followers and gain exposure you may not have had otherwise, the service is a sure way to save you and your team a lot of time and effort all while successfully growing your following.
Features:
- Engagement with members of your target audience via liking and following to draw attention to your page.
- Advanced targeting to target users in your ideal demographic based on similar accounts, hashtags or geographic locations.
- Reporting dashboard to help you keep track of progress on your account in real time.
- Whitelist existing followings so they are not re-followed or un-followed.
- Blacklist specific accounts, keywords or hashtags to avoid engaging with unwanted accounts.
- Direct message your new followers with a targeted call-to-action.
- Dedicated account manager.
Price: 10-day free trial, $150/month
7. SPROUT SOCIAL
An all-in-one social media marketing tool to make the life of social media managers that much easier. Sprout Social allows you to schedule, publish, analyze, and engage with your audience. Ideal for larger corporations or agencies.
Features:
- Multi level access, allowing you to assign and track tasks for team members.
- Full scheduling capabilities.
- Export reports to PDF or Excel.
- Discovery feature to find new people to engage with or follow.
- Detailed analytics including a social listening platform to better understand how your demographic use social media.
Price: $99/user
8. HOOTSUITE
An app to help you find, schedule, and manage social media content. The organizational aspect of Hootsuite is really up there allowing you to manage all social networks in one spot. There is even a customizable dashboard that allows you to see different feeds at once.
Features
- Measure the impact of your social media campaigns through comprehensive reporting with the ability to separate analytics between paid and organic media.
- Find and filter social conversations by keyword, hashtag, and location to hear what people are saying about your brand competitors and industry.
- Dashboard with multi-columned tabs making it easy to monitor different metrics at once.
Price: Free, Hootsuite Professional $29/month
9. SENDIBLE
Share and schedule posts as well as monitor the performance of each post. Sendible is a great tool for marketing teams and digital agencies, as you can manage all of your clients from one platform. In fact, they guarantee to make your day much more time efficient.
Features:
- Manage all social networks in one app.
- Schedule updates directly to Instagram
- Post updates on the go or schedule for later.
- Shorten links with bit.ly.
- Monitor mentions and sentiment of your brand across entire social web.
- Track fans, follower growth, clicks, reach, referrers, shares, comments and more.
- Measure effectiveness and engagement levels of your individual posts and social profiles.
Price: $49/month
FOR SMALLER BUSINESSES AND INDIVIDUALS
10. BUFFER
In Buffer you can schedule posts, track the performance of your content on Instagram as well as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google+. Designed primarily for easy scheduling and auto-posting and a price ideal for small businesses and agencies.
Features:
- Share to multiple social media accounts from one place.
- Analytics for every post you share.
- Auto-post scheduling directly to Instagram.
- Access to Instagram reposting.
Price: Free, Pro Plan $14.99/month, or Small Business Plan $99.99/month
11. ICONOSQUARE
An app that really allows you to connect with your followers and learn about the social media community. Iconosquare organizes all the seemingly difficult tasks of Instagram into a seamless and easy to use interface. Keep tabs on how your posts and stories are performing, figure out when your audience is most active, and even use the tool to reply to comments!!
Features:
- Plan out your content for Instagram.
- Amazing analytics which allow you to see overall growth, follower gain and loss, engaging media and more.
- Track Instagram hashtag performance, hashtag growth, daily posts on hashtag and most engaging posts (only available for upgraded plan).
- Track competition on Instagram and compare your performance to theirs.
- Monitor comments on Instagram. Reply to comments, mark them as read, or delete inappropriate comments.
Price: Free 14-day trial, $9/month
12. LATER
The perfect tool to increase your reach on Instagram. It allows you to schedule all of your content weeks in advance from your phone or desktop. In addition, free analytics allow you to learn more about the performance of your posts and discover what type of content received the most engagement. Later truly allows you to kickback and relax once you’ve organized your content for the upcoming weeks.
Features:
- 30 auto-posts per month on the free subscription
- Search and repost user generated content
- Basic Analytics
Price: Free or $9/month
13. PLANN
Back in the early stages of Instagram, we could simply post whatever we wanted whenever we wanted without a second thought about color palette or photo flow. However, today it’s extremely important to have some fluidity when it comes to your Instagram feed. Why? Well, people want to see nice things! With Plann, you’re able to organize your content, move it around and preview what your feed will look like so that you’ll be able to successfully achieve all your feed goals!
Features:
- Rearrange and schedule posts.
- Photo editor, allowing you to retouch, resize, use filters, borders or even text.
- Repost content from Instagram.
- Hashtag Finder and hashtag analytics.
- Full analytics for Instagram and compare with competitors.
Price: Free
FOR EVERYONE
14. HASHTAG EXPERT
Let’s face it, figuring out which hashtags to use when structuring your social media marketing strategy is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. There are so many options out there and who knows which hashtags are the most effective. Plus, this changes with time! Hashtag Expert doesn’t do away with the concept of trial and error, however, this tool has made hashtag searching easier than ever. Type in a few base hashtags that are relevant to your account and the app will create a list of suggestions for you to try out!
Features:
- Helps you find relevant hashtags to use on Instagram.
- Search hashtags by category or trending tags.
- Full analysis of hashtags.
Price: Free
We know, this can be a lot of information to take in! Our suggestion would be to use one tool at a time to see which you prefer. Perhaps you’ll end up liking a few of them for different features. Plus there’s nothing to lose! If it isn’t free initially, there is always a free trial for you to test out the waters.
Boostly is the #1 Instagram Growth Service to help you build an engaged audience, drive traffic and generate sales from Instagram! Get started for free today: