The Ultimate List of Instagram Tools – Analytics, Scheduling, Influencers, and More
It’s not enough to just have an Instagram business account — to make the most of your Instagram presence, you need the right tools. But with so many options out there, what are the best Instagram tools to use.
1. Instagram Insights
Instagram Insights is Instagram’s built-in analytics tool for business accounts. It offers some of the best free Instagram analytics you can get.
Through Insights, you can track and review the following metrics:
- Impressions: The number of times your post or story was seen
- Reach: The total number of unique users who saw it
- Engagement: The number of unique users who either liked, commented on or saved the post
- Views: The total number of times a video or story was viewed
- Saves: The number of users who saved the post
- Replies: The number of messages sent via your story
- Exits: The number of times a user skipped your story or exited out while viewing it
You can also get data on Instagram Stories, including reach, website clicks and more, as well as deep-dive info about your audience, like their location, gender, the busiest time of day, etc.
Instagram Insights is available via the Instagram app on iOS and Android.
Price: Instagram Insights is a free Instagram analytics tool. We wrote a whole post dedicated to Instagram Insights and Analytics – check it out and let us know how it works for you.
“We’re starting to see the shift for click-through commerce. We can now gauge whether or not an influencer is really making a sale and whether they’re contributing to the bottom dollar. Brands are going to move away from the vanity metrics of likes and follower counts,” Amar Braithwaite, Senior Vice President, Social Media, Tinuiti said in a recent interview.
2. Hashtagify
Hashtagify is an Instagram analytics tool that gives you Instagram hashtag analytics.
Hashtagify will tell you who the top influencers using a certain hashtag are, what time of day it’s being used most, how well it’s performing over time, and even projections on how well it will perform in the future. If you’re really active on Twitter, you’ll find the “Twitter Suggestions” tab helpful, too.
Hashtagify is available for web.
Price: Hashtagify offers both a free basic search engine and paid plans that will give you more features, including more Top Tweeters for each tracked hashtag, full access to the ranking of the most popular hashtags, and the ability to bookmark your favorite hashtags. Hashtagify offers a 7-day free trial to new users.
3. Iconosquare
Iconosquare is an Instagram analytics platform that lets you track engagement data and statistics about your followers, including how influential they are and where they’re located. These features let you discover which of your fans are the best candidates for influencer marketing campaigns and outreach. You can also compare your performance against your competitors’ Instagram profiles.
Iconosquare is available for web, iOS, and Android.
Price: Iconosquare starts at $29/month for the Pro plan, with an increase in price for additional profiles, users, and features. They also offer a 14-day free trial.
4. Union Metrics
The Union Metrics tool measures your effectiveness on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Start with the “Free Instagram account checkup” that will give you all of this data from the last 30 days:
- What’s the best time to post to Instagram?
- What hashtags should you use to get the most engagement?
- What should you post more (or less) of?
If you find the free report valuable, you might want to consider investing in the next level. The paid campaign reports are highly digestible and easy to share with your team or your clients. Insights and analytics can be as micro as the “best time to post” and as macro as “trend research” that can help inform the conversations you start and the content you create. It’s also fantastic if you’re looking to expand your social presence on a global scale. Union Metrics is available for web.
Price: Union Metrics offers a “free Instagram account checkup,” as well as a $49/month paid plan that includes three social profiles.
5. Pixlee
Pixlee gives you weekly reports on your Instagram analytics account performance including day-to-day data, follower growth, hashtag popularity, and more.
You’ll probably recognize some of the heavyweights who use their platform: Tarte, COLE HAAN, Kenneth Cole, Rawlings, Carnival, and Morphe.
In addition to analytics, Pixlee lets you create shoppable Instagram posts, offers user-generated content features, and gives you the ability to discover new influencers you can use to promote your brand. (We’ll share more tools for user-generated content and finding Instagram influencers later in this post.)
Pixlee is available for web, iOS, and Android.
Price: Licensing for Pixlee’s platform starts at $399/month, but they do offer a free demo.
6. Rival IQ
Competing in a saturated niche? Want to know how you measure up against your competitors? Rival IQ is a neat Instagram Analytics tool that allows you to compare your stats with any Instagram handle you want.
Using the free tool, you can gain access to how your Instagram stats compare to theirs in categories such as activity, engagement, and audience metrics. Paid features include boosted post detection, social post analysis, competitor alerts, landscapes and company features, post tagging, posted URL analysis, Facebook and Instagram ad analytics, and much more.
Rival IQ is available for web.
Price: Rival IQ offers free head-to-head reports; pricing for additional features starts at $199/month. Rival IQ also offers a free trial.
7. Socialbakers
Socialbakers offers an entire suite of free Instagram analytic tools, including:
- Persona Mapping Tool
- Influencer Hashtag Search Tool
- Instagram Quadrant Report
- Influencer Search Tool
- Instagram Analytics Tool
- Social Content Inspiration Tool
- Social Customer Care Tool
We’re especially intrigued by the “Instagram Performance Quadrant Report” which allows you to see how you stack up against your competitors.
But if we had to choose one Sociabakers tool, we’d say their “Free Instagram Analytics Tool” pretty much fits the bill. You’ll need to log in with your Instagram account to get started; there aren’t really any previews available.
Socialbakers’ paid platform includes a wide variety of social media features, including:
- Social Media Marketing Suite
- Audience Analysis
- Influencer tools
- Content Intelligence
- Publishing & Scheduling
- Analytics & Benchmarks
- Community Management
Socialbakers is available for web, iOS, and Android.
Price: If you want to go beyond Socialbakers’ free tools, pricing starts at $200/month for 10 profiles.
Instagram Post Scheduling Tools
8. Combin
Combin is an Instagram scheduling and audience management plan that also delivers Instagram stats and growth analytics and tools.
The free “Starter” plan allows you to schedule your Instagram stories and posts as well as track user activity and audience growth—but it’s pretty limited. You’ll get to manage one Instagram account and you’ll get access to 50 search results for posts, 25 search results for users, and 100 “daily actions”.
Combin is available for download on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux.
Price: If you want more than the free “Starter” plan offers, pricing starts at $10/month for their “Personal” plan, which gives you a much better selection of instant search results and statistics. You can also demo their Growth and Scheduler features for free.
9. Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a freemium Instagram analytics service that allows you to schedule and publish posts and also offers a dedicated Chrome extension for sharing articles. Its content curation features are pretty great as well, considering you get unlimited recommended articles and images with the free plan.
Crowdfire also offers analytics for your audience and engagement, as well as the ability to automatically customize your posts for all your social profiles, so you don’t have to craft separate posts for each individual social network.
Crowdfire is available for web, iOS, and Android.
Price: Crowdfire does offer a free version of their app that lets you have one connected account per social network. The Plus plan starts at $9.99/month, while the VIP plan costs $99.99/month.
10. Sked
Sked is an Instagram scheduling platform that comes with built-in image-editing features and mass editing tools. One thing that makes Sked extra valuable to marketers is that it offers web-based Instagram scheduling for both posts and stories, which many tools do not.
In addition to Instagram, Sked will also automatically post for you across Facebook and Twitter profiles. Sked also offers Instagram metrics and reporting, including the best post times, detailed story analytics, and audience demographic reporting.
Sked is available for web, iOS, and Android.
Price: Sked offers a 7-day free trial, then starts at $25/month for the Freelancer plan.
11. Later
Later is a scheduling platform for Instagram. Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Later lets you plan out campaigns, explore hashtags, and share user-generated content. With Later, you can:
- Create a content calendar that offers you a broader view of your social content plans,
- Preview your Instagram feed before publishing a new post
- Save captions and grouped hashtags for repeated use on Instagram
Later is available for web, iOS, and Android.
Price: Later offers a free plan for a single user to schedule up to 30 posts per month. Paid tiers start at $9/month for the Plus plan and go up to $49/month for the Brand plan.
12. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a powerful social media management platform that lets you schedule, publish, and analyze posts across different platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Youtube, and, of course, Instagram.
Hootsuite offers social media tools for:
- Scheduling posts
- Monitoring social media feeds and mentions
- Content curation
- Analytics
- Social media team management
- Security
- Promotion and paid social ad planning and strategy
Hootsuite is available for web, iOS, and Android.
Price: After a 30-day free trial, Hootsuite starts at $29/month for the Professional plan.
13. Buffer
Buffer is one of the most popular social media scheduling tools for Facebook and Twitter — but it also can be a valuable tool for scheduling Instagram posts and stories. With the Premium plan, Buffer also lets you embed a shoppable Instagram grid on your ecommerce website.
In addition to scheduling features, Buffer offers detailed analytics on your Instagram stories’ and posts’ performance. Buffer’s unique collaboration features also allow you to work with your team to create, approve, and share content for your social platforms and audiences.
Buffer is available for web, iOS, and Android.
Price: Buffer is free for one user, three social accounts, and 10 scheduled posts per month. After a seven-day free trial, the Pro plan starts at $15/month, and the Premium plan starts at $65/month.
Instagram User-Generated Content (UGC) Tools
14. Squarelovin
Squarelovin is one of those tools that will reel you in with its beautiful content. Just look at the home page:
Squarelovin lets you amass user-generated content (UGC), which can help you increase engagement and provide inspiration and social proof to your Instagram audience. They call it “earning content from your consumers”. You can then take that valuable UGC and spin it into shoppable content.
In addition to the UGC features, Squarelovin’s platform offers Instagram analytics, including a granular look at hourly performance. The tool is also great at helping you monitor your account performance over time, and you can even see how using different filters affect your post performance.
One of our fave stats is the “worst time to post”. It really is different for everyone.
Squarelovin is available for web.
Price: Squarelovin has free registration and offers a free demo — you need to contact their sales team for Premium pricing.
15. Repost for Instagram
Repost for Instagram is a free tool that lets you repost your customers’ user-generated content to your feed — while automatically giving them credit in the caption.
Here’s how it works:
- Copy the share URL from the post you want to repost
- Open the Repost app
- Repost will add a credit icon, copy the original caption, and create a post for your Instagram feed — almost instantly
Repost for Instagram is available for Android (though there are similar options for iOS, like this one from Sepia Software LLC.)
Price: Free!
16. ShortStack
Instagram giveaways and contests are a great way to boost engagement and generate user-generated content.
ShortStack is a platform that offers “customizable all-in-one contesting software.” Their Instagram contest tool organizes those UGC contests with a specific hashtag. ShortStack collects all of the photos posted to Instagram with your contest hashtag, then displays them for you. You can also use ShortStack to collect entrants’ information and contact contest winners.
ShortStack is available for web.
Price: ShortStack offers a free trial, with paid tiers starting at $99/month for the Business plan.
Tools to Track and Engage with Instagram Users
17. Followers Pro+
iOS app Followers Pro+ lets you track new followers and see those who’ve recently unfollowed you, and even tells you who you follow that doesn’t follow you back. Use it to determine what content drives your followers away or who you need to spend more time engaging with.
It’s definitely not perfect — we have heard a little about bugs that still need to be squashed — but overall it seems to be a useful tool to take for a spin.
Followers Pro+ is available for iOS.
Price: Free!
18. Social Rank
Social Rank is a tool that lets you track, sort, and categorize your followers. This lets you figure out:
- Which of your followers has the most influence on Instagram
- Which followers engage with your brand the most
- Which verified Instagram accounts follow you
You can also find followers based on bio keywords, the hashtags they use, and more. This lets you tailor your content and engagement to your most influential followers’ interests — which means they’re more likely to share your posts.
Social Rank is available for web, iOS, and Android.
Price: For Pricing, you’ll need to contact the Social Rank team.
Instagram tools for finding Influencers
19. UserGems
UserGems is a Shopify app that lets you identify which of your customers are influencers, use the word “blogger” or “journalist” in their profiles, or have the most engaged audiences.
The app pulls in your customers’ social media information so that you can figure out which customers to work with for a user-generated content or influencer marketing campaign.
UserGems is available for web via Shopify.
Price: UserGems is free for up to 100 customers/month. Paid plans start at $19/month for a Starter plan.
20. Klear
Klear is an influencer discovery platform with “the smartest influencer search engine on the market.” You can discover influencers based on category, location, social channel, audience demographics, and much more. Klear is a great tool to vet potential Instagram influencers that your brand might want to work with.
Klear also offers an “Influencer CRM” to help you manage influencer outreach and centralize communication, which can be helpful for brands with large influencer marketing programs.
Klear is available for web.
Pricing: Klear offers customer pricing models, including a startup plan for early-stage companies.
21. Awario
Awario is a social media tool focused on identifying influencers and social listening. With Awario, you can find Instagram influencers based on:
- Industry
- Brand
- Potential reach
- Keywords
- Location
Awario then shows you a list of Instagram influencers in your niche. The platform also helps you identify your brand advocates — and your competitors’ brand advocates.
Awario is available for web.
Price: Awario has a 14-day free trial. Pricing starts at $29/month.
22. Heepsy
Heepsy matches brands with Instagram influencers from its database of over 7 million influencers. Heepsy’s influencers have at least 5,000 followers each. Heepsy helps you identify the influencers that are the best fit for your brand based on:
- Industry or niche
- Engagement level
- Keywords
- Follower count
- Location
With Heepsy, you can also create influencer lists, communicate with potential influencers, and export data about potential influencer reach. Their reporting tools let you analyze influencer audiences, with reports on authenticity, audience demographics, cost estimations, brand collaborations, and more.
Heepsy is available for web.
Price: Heepsy offers a free version with limited features. Paid tiers start at $49/month.
Learn more about finding Instagram influencers in this post.
Instagram tools are a great way to boost your Instagram marketing strategy — but you need a human touch, too, which is why they’re best combined with help from an experienced marketing agency. The best Instagram strategies use the right technology and the right people.
What are your favorite Instagram tools? Let us know in the comments!
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