Later, from Instagram Scheduler to All In One Social Marketing Platform

Later is a tool that started as an Instagram scheduler. but over the years it has evolved into a complete tool for social media marketing management, used by more than 7 million people.

In this Later Review, you will discover all the features of this tool, and why it is loved by so many users around the world.

Later features

Let’s start analyzing what makes this piece of software a solution to consider for your social marketing needs.

Multiplatform

By multiplatform, I don’t mean that in addition to the web, the app is also available for iOS and Android.

What I mean is that as a social media management tool, you will be able to integrate it with the most used platforms today:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Pinterest
• TikTok
• Twitter
• And LinkedIn

Once you sign-up, connecting your social network profiles is as simple as login in with each of them.

• In Later’s Free Plan, you will be able to connect a profile in each of these social networks

Detailed organization

Later is not an application where you simply connect your social networks and that’s it.

It goes much further on an organizational level.

You can see this if you go to the “Social Sets & Access Groups” section in the sidebar.

Later works through social sets.

A social set is a set of the 6 social profiles that the application allows you to connect (Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok & LinkedIn)

In addition, these social sets can be controlled (if you want) by other users (members of your team).

These groupings of members are what is known in Later as an “Access Group”.

This is where the tricky part comes in if you are not an entrepreneur with a single account in each of these networks.

• The FREE Plan, only allows you to connect 1 set of social networks, everything under the roof of 1 Access Group, with just 1 user (you)
• The Starter Plan ($15/mo) is also limited to 1 social set, 1 Access Group, and 1 user. (this plan has other features over the free plan, but none related to the management of users, accounts, and teams.)

• The Growth Plan ($40/mo) lets you add up to 3 social sets and up to 3 users in unlimited access groups (you can have one or several). Remember that each access group will be able to manage specific social networks.
  • Additionally, you can add extra social sets ($15 per set per month) and extra users ($5 per user per month) Unfortunately, these extras are not available on the Starter Plan

• There is an Advanced plan for $80 per month that has several improvements over the Growth plan, such as managing up to 6 social sets and/or 6 users in unlimited access groups.

Instagram Planner

Later became famous for his visual planner for Instagram.

In the calendar tab, you just have to (after having selected the social network) double click on the days of the week and times where you would like to create posts in the future.

You can create different time slots for different social networks.

After that, you just need to drag the items from the sidebar to the quick post area, so that the post goes directly to the next available slot.

However, first of all, you will have to complete the content of it.

Here you will see many of the other top features of Later:

• The ability to add Instagram locations
• User tagging
• Hashtags suggestions (only available on paid plans)
• Link in bio integration
• Auto publish a first comment (only available on paid plans)

You can even edit the media from the Later Web App itself, cropping it, adding filters, or even text.

As an extra, if you are planning your Instagram calendar content, you could even:

• Discover the Best time to post (paid feature) Later will create the best time slots for you.
• Autopublish carousels (multi photo post) – Location and user tagging are not available here.
• Stories Schedule. Schedule ≠ Autopublish. With the schedule you’ll get a notification on your smartphone and you’ll have to finish the publication from there.

It’s noticeable that Instagram was the application for which this service was developed, as it is the most powerful.

Others, such as Twitter, don’t even allow you to schedule Twitter threads, so if that’s what you’re looking for, it’s better to use other tools such as Typefully.

Conversations

If you receive numerous messages via Instagram or TikTok, you’ll be happy to know that Later has a tool called “Conversations”, which allows you to manage all messages received on these platforms from a single place.

This is a paid feature, so it’s especially useful if you use this contact method for collaborations.

• Note: This tool will mark Instagram DMs as read, if you want to read Instagram messages without being seen, check our guide on that topic.

Analytics

Like any good social media tool, Later offers detailed analytics, especially for Instagram and TikTok, that will allow you to easily see how well you are doing with your social actions.

Specifically, here you’ll be able to see:

• Instagram Analytics:
  • Post and Story performance
  • Instagram Audience Insights
  • Instagram Hashtag analytics
  • Instagram performance report
• Link in bio analytics (more on this below)
• Twitter and Pinterest Analytics
• TikTok Analytics:
  • TikTok Audience Insights
  • TikTok Post Performance

Media Management

One of the best features of Later is that it allows you to easily manage all the content you want to use to create your publications.

It does this mainly thanks to its media library, and multimedia collection tools. 

Media Library

Do you like to plan things in advance?

Upload all the photos you want to publish via browser, Dropbox or Google Drive.

Organize them by tags, favorites, content type…

It will be very easy to find from the “calendar” tab what you want to publish.

Collect Media

Unfortunately, this is also a paid feature.

But if you find it hard to create your own content, an alternative is to use (legally and correctly) other people’s content.

Later makes it very easy for you thanks to its Media Collect tools.

You can search for Stock photos, or content from a hashtag or a specific profile, as well as collect content from mentions or tags.

Link in Bio

Although I am in favor of creating link-in-bio pages with Carrd, it’s appreciated that Later has this feature that although it does not serve to schedule your social networks, it’s a good addition to them.

You can get your own link type https://linkin.bio/crjstobal, and then, you’ll be able to quickly design a simple page with your name, and custom buttons that point for instance to your website, link to your social networks…

But what is most interesting, is that if you’ve connected your Instagram or TikTok account, you’ll be able to easily replicate your timeline there, and thus, add links to your publications, something that for instance Instagram, doesn’t allow.

Some of these design features, however, are only available on paid plans.

Starting with the Growth plan you can even connect your Shopify account!

Later Pricing

Later offers a free plan which is enough to start working with the application, if you need a little more power, it offers 3 paid plans.

Later FREE Plan

As you have seen, with the Free plan you can connect all 6 social networks (1 profile of each) under 1 access group, managed by 1 user (you)

You’ll be able to schedule up to 30 post per social network (monthly), this is basically 1 post per day, more than enough for a free plan and/or a solopreneur digital presence.

Although a bit limited (especially in terms of design), you will also have access to the link in bio tool, which is very useful for social networks such as Instagram.

The major shortcomings of the free plan are mostly related to Instagram:

• You won’t be able to discover the best time to post, auto-post carousels nor schedule stories, add locations nor tag users…
• You will not be able to use the conversation tool.
• And the Analytics will be very limited, being for example non-existent for TikTok.

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Later Paid Plans

If you need more, there are 3 plans that you can get by a monthly or yearly payment: Starter, Growth, and Advance.

Starter Plan

The Starter plan unlocks some cool features:

• Best time to post on instagram
• Carousel auto-posting and Story scheduling.
• Add locations and tag users
• More customization on link-in-bio
• Auto-post first comment on Instagram

Its only downsides are that Analytics, and the Conversations tool, are still unavailable.

You also won’t be able to add extra social sets, but that shouldn’t be important as I understand this plan is focused on freelancers, and not companies with several profiles.

Growth and Advanced

These plans are focused on larger projects, as they will allow you to manage teams, add more social media sets, access detailed statistics, or connect your LinkInBio to Shopify, as well as schedule much more content in advance (150 and unlimited, respectively)

Later, is it worth it? Pros and Cons

The best

• The Visual planner is very easy to use.
• Instagram tools are very powerful, although they are only available on paid plans.
• Being able to Edit Media on the website before publishing is pretty handy
• The Link in bio additional tool is very useful for some social networks, especially Instagram.
• The media management capabilities will save you tons of time.
• Generous Free Plan, you can schedule content for each day of the month for all your social networks!
• Detailed Analytics.
• The Chrome Extension and the Mobile App.

The worst

• The way social sets work is detrimental to those who, for example, only want to use a couple of Twitter profiles but nothing else. If you want to schedule content on two different accounts, you’ll have to join the Growth Plan
• The Stories can’t be published automatically, you have to finish the publication with the mobile phone, although this is not the platform’s fault, but a limitation of Instagram.

Later, opinion and recommendation

Later is a pretty solid app.

If until now you were posting your images on Instagram without doing batch-working, the free plan will make you more productive.

So I recommend you give it a try.

However, if you want to manage several social networks because you have several projects (something common), you may find it a bit expensive, so it is better to use a tool like Metricool.

To sum up, it could be said that Later is a very good tool, but if you need a paid plan, it’s advisable to take a look at some alternatives, as they might better fit your needs.