Free and cheap social media schedulers for entrepreneur artists

Social media presence is essential marketing for authors and artists who hope to reach a fanbase beyond their local venues and social circles. If you’re already managing social media accounts, you don’t need me to tell you how much time it takes to produce and share content. You are with me today looking for an easier way. If you are just getting started with social media, congratulations for seeking a social media scheduler early in your learning process!

Let me introduce you to a few web-based schedulers that allow you to manage many of your social media accounts from one place. Yes, one site to post to them all! As a bonus, these tools also provide analytics about followers and interactions to help you grow with your audience. Get even more excited because four of these options provide free plans that let you explore and learn without investing any money. Toward the bottom of this page, find a comparison table with links to other low-cost options you can try if the free plans are too limited for you. Many of these paid options offer a free trial (usually 14 days).

DISCLAIMER: I am not associated with nor do I receive any payments from any of these providers. I am an artist who benefits from these technologies and resources. OK, fine–I’m also a nerd who enjoys turning what I know and learn into tutorials for writers, artists, and others with tight budgets.

Try a free social media scheduler

If you are new to social media schedulers, start with one of the free options to get a feel for what they do and how they fit into your marketing strategy. If, after some time, you see the value, you can invest in a paid plan.

Where to start?

Social Champ and Pallyy both provide free plans, but with different limitations. Social Champ allows for unlimited posts, but only to three social accounts (excluding Twitter and TikTok). Pallyy gives access to a whole social set (seven possible accounts, excluding YouTube) but only allows you to schedule 15 posts at a time. Social Champ provides access to 12 accounts, including Twitter, for $26/mo. and Pallyy will provide unlimited postings to the full set for $15/mo.

The option you choose will depend upon the social media channels you use and how many posts you expect to schedule in a month.

I gave Pallyy a try since it provides a full social set, including TikTok. I would have liked to have YouTube, as well, but having a couple manual uploads is better than having eight (you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, YouTube, Pinterest, Google Business, and LinkedIn). Connecting my socials to Pallyy was easy, and it only took about 10 minutes of poking around to figure out how to use the basic features in the app. It’s intuitive enough for beginners.

Pallyy also provides a mobile app for notifications and content scheduling.

Other cool stuff:

• Create Hashtag lists to apply to new posts.
• Create post templates that include default first comments.
• Create reusable captions.
• Generate five (5) AI-generated captions per month.

Given Pallyy’s 15-post limitation, however, it’s not going to work for me. I’m going to need a few more monthly postings. Remember, the Pallyy upgrade is $15 a month (cheaper if you pay annually) for unlimited posts and a few other perks. To keep it free and get a few more posts per month, I decided to also give the Metricool a try. Metricool allows you to connect to the major social channels (excluding LinkedIn) with 50 total posts per month. You can also connect to ad services for Google, Facebook, and TikTok for analytics. For $22 ($18 if paid annually) a month, upgrade posting capacity to up to 2,000 posts per month.

Metricool setup was easy, as well, but it took a little extra poking around to get the hang of features.

Other cool stuff:

• Create autolists to schedule recurring posts to your socials.
• Install a WordPress plugin to connect to your website/blog for site analytics.
• Set up email and SMS notifications.
• Choose the best times to post using performance data from your social accounts.

Pallyy has a smoother interface for beginners and the cheaper paid plan, but Metricool is a step up with access to more social channels and ad services. Social Champ looks great, too, but I did not set up a Social Champ account because I need access to more than 3 social accounts. If that works for you as you are getting the hang of social media scheduling, do consider Social Champ as a free get-started option. Among paid plans, I had used Zoho Social for years until the beginning of this year. My budget needed a trim, so my social media scheduler was one of the nixed expenses. The only complaint I had was the limited number of social accounts you could connect to, but it looks like they have expanded connections since then.

Here is a 6-minute overview and review of Pallyy on YouTube to give you a sneak peek before creating an account. Social Champ has its own YouTube channel and provides this 6-minute overview of its free plan. Metricool also has its own YouTube channel with lots of tutorials, including this 13-minute video overview of scheduling on Metricool.

Comparison table for free and low-cost social media schedulers

The table below does not include some of the more expensive schedulers, which cater to social media managers and agencies rather than individuals.

I hope this helps you get your artwork into the hands of people who will love it with less effort and better analytics! Check out the Tutorials category for more helpful technology resources for artists.