Later

Later is unbelievably EASY to use! Whether you choose weekly or monthly view, , scheduling with Later could not be any easier!! I have Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram, plus you can connect Twitter as well. They now have scheduling for Insta Stories which is a REALLY BIG DEAL!!! The analytics tools are pure gold because they will help you see exactly how your posts are performing and focus on how to steer your campaigns moving forward. The newly released hashtags analytics will also let you see exactly how well each and every hashtag you're using is performing, so you'll know if you should be using them or research more and replace those hashtags with new ones. Especially if you are handling multiple accounts across a multitude of platforms, and you want to stay on top of your social media, Later is ABSOLUTELY a tool that anyone with a business should use nowadays!!!

I started using Later about two years ago and I can already tell how much they have evolved in just the two years since I've been a user. in the beginning they did not have a placeholder for images, just in case I just had an idea and had the text/copy, but would add the image later. Well, they just rolled this out. So this is just one example of one shortcoming I used to not like about the software, but they are making huge huge strides in constantly improving the platform!

Later is an incredibly well-designed platform that offers the best user-interface and planning features I've encountered across social media management platforms. Setting up Later with our Instagram & Facebook accounts was a breeze, as was configuring the platform to fit my specific needs with custom post-schedules, and their visual planner (offering week views, monthly views & even a profile view) - all available at their free tiered platform. Pay a couple bucks a month, and you get access to even more features - such as suggested posting times (truly an incredible feature), video posting, instagram story posting, and team management options (such as Contributors) that are truly unbeatable at the price Later offers them.

While Later's platform was absolutely stunning & incredibly user-friendly, my issue with Later stemmed from the continued issue of Later failing to post scheduled Instagram posts. I will say, I haven't used Later since late 2018 (so this issue may have been resolved); but I was continually dealing with this issue for over 6 months - with a scheduled post failing to post, the Later platform marking the post as "failed to post", and Later refusing to notify me of the failure - despite their fallback feature of notifying the user via the app when a post fails to get posted.

With this issue I contacted support, but got given the run-around "Instagram's API" was down (seems to have happened a lot while I was with Later and never when I switched to another platform), so I begrudgingly made the decision to switch to a more expensive & less featured platform that would auto-post to instagram.

As I mentioned previously however, this issue may have been resolved in the past 1.5 years since I used the platform.

I loved this tool when we first got it because of the interface. The calendar view in which you're able to schedule your social posts by dragging and dropping them on your desired dates was very helpful and allowed me to quickly schedule posts for my clients. It's also pretty user friendly in that it's intuitive and it feels like you know where to click and what to do in order to get from A to B when scheduling your social media posts.

We ended up moving away from Later for a few reasons. First, we spent so much time resizing and adjusting image sizes to fit the specifications that Later required. It got to the point where we were spending hours doing this and it took away from the time we were able to spend doing impactful work for our clients. Second, some posts had horrible, pixelated image quality that we would have to catch while reviewing already published social posts in order to delete and repost. Lastly, we needed to ability to post to more platforms that Later had integrations with. I'm not sure whether it's been added since we left, but there wasn't a connection with Google My Business at that time.