An In-Depth Review of Social Pilot
Features and Pricing of the
Social Media Marketing Tool
Do you have a social media strategy? Are you actively engaged with your target audience? As a digital marketer, small business, or enterprise you must be well-aware of the importance of a well-defined and well-coordinated social media marketing strategy.
It’s through platforms likes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or even TikTok that brands gain the recognitions and engagement they need. In fact, industry statistics show that roughly 5 in every 10 online users turn to social media for recommendations and reviews before making a buying decision. And if it all goes well, more than 70% of satisfied customers are likely to spread the word to their friends and family.
“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”
—Jeff Bezos
Sure, social media is great and all—but how do you manage all your accounts and keep the customers happy as Jeff Bezos affirms?
Well, Social Pilot is a social media marketing tool that’s touted to offer “Everything you Need to Hit Your Social Media Marketing Goals at an AMAZING Price!” (lifted word for word from their website, socialpilot.co).
With the likes of Buffer, Hootsuite, and Agora competing for the same target audience, it takes a lot of cojones to make such a claim. The question that follows is; does the social media marketing tool live up to its audaciously bold remarks? To figure this out, I analyzed the software solution—including an in-depth review of internet source, user testimonials, and a hands-on experience.
Here’s everything marketing teams, small businesses, and enterprises need to know about Social Pilot before making a buying decision.
What is SocialPilot? The Social Media Marketing Tool in a Nutshell
In simple terms, SocialPilot is a SaaS (software as a solution) product that helps automate social media management. The tool is marketed towards marketing teams or professionals who need to keep track of their clients’ different accounts from one platform.
In a way, the product offering of Social Pilot is rather familiar to that of competitors such as Hootsuite and Buffer. It treads a fine line between trying to outclass its competitors by offering value for money and mixing it up with innovative solutions.
The social media marketing tool supports nearly every major platform—including Pinterest, Google My Business, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and of course, Facebook. It’s more geared towards handy solutions to make task completion more effective than high-tech features.
As we’ll cover in the “Features” section later in this article, Social Pilot allows businesses and teams to create a social media calendar, schedule content (even in bulk), and analyze metrics to improve performance/strategies.
What Problems Does SocialPilot Solve?
The only reason you’re willing to consider Social Pilot is if the tool actually meets your needs. It needs to solve your problems; get rid of hurdles in your workflow; streamline your process; make your social media marketing efforts generally easier and more effective.
With this in mind, below are some of the main problems that haunt digital marketers—and ones that Social Pilot touts to solve:
The Cost of Marketing
As a marketer or small business, your primary aim when launching any digital media campaign is a decent ROI (return on investment). This means that you should either cut down on the costs or maximize your returns (or both).
Throughout SocialPilot’s website, you’ll see mentions of their competitive pricing—and how they offer the same services as more established brand names like Hootsuite, but a fraction of the price
Time!
A typical day of social media marketing involves researching relevant hashtags, replying to comments or audience questions, designing graphics, creating relevant content for your followers, posting on time, sending reports, and getting approval from clients or top managers, to name a few activities.
Repeating this process every day across a multitude of platforms could easily overwhelm even the most badass marketer out there.
Social Pilot offers automation, curation, and collaboration features that could hypothetically help you put your ‘house’ in order.
Integration and Targeting the Right Platform
When it comes to social media, having a uniform brand voice is a necessity. But this is easier said than done. Different platforms have different ambiences. You can’t simply copy-paste the post you published on LinkedIn to a TikTok account – i.e., the audiences and characteristics of the platforms differ.
You need a way to balance all the content needs (regardless of the platform) expertly to best results. As a tool that gathers all your social media platforms and gets them to sit at the same for you to strategize, SocialPilot might just be the platform you need.
Quality Vs Quantity
Ah…the age-old battle; quality vs quantity. Should you focus on churning content like a rabbit on a sugar rush, or take it slow to ensure quality content? In an ideal, utopian setting, the best solution is both—but any sensible digital marketer understands that this more of a losing battle.
The best you can do is manage your time effectively to publish quality content in a reasonable time frame. The end goal is to keep your audience engaged and your content is visible. Read on to find out how SocialPilot can help with this.
Social Pilot Pricing
As their main selling point, it’s only fair that we dissect exactly what makes their pricing “AMAZING.”
Social Pilot basically has 3 publicly described pricing plans—including Professional, Small Team, and the Agency plan. There’s a 4th dubbed the Enterprise plan that only reserved for customers who want more than what’s on offer.
Billing is either monthly or annually—with the latter attracting a 17% discount in exchange for a year-long commitment to the social media marketing tool.
Now to the main point of discussing; what do each of the SocialPilot pricing options offer to users?
Small Team Social Pilot Pricing Plan
According to Social Pilot, the “Small Team” pricing plan is their most popular option—and it’s easy to see why. It gives users control over up to 50 social media accounts, 5 Facebook Ad accounts, White label PDF reports, social inbox, and unlimited client management, all for $50/month (billed monthly).
If you do the math, this amounts to $1 per account—and I have no reason whatsoever to complain about such a deal. Considering you’re likely to rake in way more from your social media marketing services.
Agency Social Pilot Pricing Plan
If you do the math, this amounts to $1 per account—and I have no reason whatsoever to complain about such a deal. Considering you’re likely to rake in way more from your social media marketing services.
Enterprise Social Pilot Pricing Plan
The standout offering of the Enterprise pricing plan is the white-labelling feature. This basically allows marketing teams the leverage the full power of SocialPilot, while taking all the credit – i.e., it appears as if you’re providing the services when in fact, you’re using the SaaS solution under the hood.
Subscribing to the Enterprise plan also gets rid of any limit in prior plans. And as you might have noticed, the price is not publicly stated—meaning there’s some negotiation that goes on behind closed doors.
14-day FREE trial
If you like freebies or you’re a cautious type who demands a test run before putting your money on the line (PS: A very wise mindset), SocialPilot has something for you. There’s a 14-day FREE trial offer that’s applicable to all pricing options except the “Enterprise” plan.
And while most SaaS products today require credit card details before subscribing to trials (*sic), SocialPilot doesn’t. The trial starts immediately you hit the “sign up” button and you can cancel anytime.
Features and Review of SocialPilot Social Media Scheduling Tool
Wondering which features SocialPilot offers? The company offers a simple and comprehensive; “SocialPilot is your one-stop destination for all major social media marketing purposes – right from scheduling posts to create content in teams.”
Social Media Calendar
Let’s be real for a moment; scheduling post on Instagram, then Facebook, and later Twitter is a remedy for exhaustion and mishaps. It only gets worse when you have to meet the needs of different clients, with different needs, and in different time zones.
SocialPilot’s social calendar attempts to sort the burden by allowing you to view all your accounts in one comprehensive calendar. Interacting with this feature is fairly easy and you can even filter content to your liking for an improved user experience.
Social Media Calendar
Social media marketing stand to gain the most via the bulk scheduling feature available at Social Pilot. You basically upload a CSV file with all your posts and schedule them for publishing. This solves the headache of logging in and out of one account after another.
Bulk scheduling is time-saving and effective—both perk every digital marketer yearns for. I also admire the fact that you can review and edit your scheduled post to fix any mistake. And did I mention that there a sample CSV file to guide you on the recommended format?
Content Curation
“Content is king!” This is a phrase that you have heard severally as a small online business or digital marketer. While it’s most definitely true, there’s more to content than meets the eye. Creating relevant, targeted, and optimized content is a tedious process.
Social Pilot’s Content Curation feature uses a complex algorithm to search for possible content ideas based on your keywords. The suggestions may prove to be a defining factor in creating and sharing information that meets the needs of the target audience.
Social Inbox
If you’re subscribed to the “Small Teams” and “Agency” pricing plans, you gain access to a Social Inbox feature that basically gathers all your social media conversations in one screen.
I don’t know about you, but I find the idea of managing all your messages from one central point highly convenient and time-saving. You get to respond faster and more effectively—hence driving up your level of engagement.
URL Shortening
I don’t know who needs to hear this but long URLs are an eyesore – they look boring, clumsy, and are an outright hassle to share. No one wants to paste a 2-line long URL in their email, product description, or social media post. Shortening URLs makes your content more social media friendly and easier to share.
With Social Pilot, you can shorten your URLs via integrations such as Bitly, Rebrandly, and Sniply. You only have to pick your favourite integration and it will shorten your URLs automatically.
Client Management
Riddle me this; what is the key to a long-lasting and fruitful relationship with a client? Before you start making random guesses, the answer I’m looking for is transparency. The need to keep your clients in the loop cannot be understated.
SocialPilot’s Client Management feature allows marketing teams and agencies to invite their clients—giving them an opportunity to see how things are going. This ensures you’re both on the same page, while the continuous need for requesting permission for admin privileges.
RSS Feed Automation
Let’s assume you have an awesome blog that consistently delivers amazing content; you probably want to share this content on social media to boost traffic, generate leads, and increase engagement.
For this, the RSS Feed Automation feature allows you to share the website content using its URL. You can even schedule the frequency and time of sharing the content to your liking.
Team and Collaboration
Teamwork makes the dream work, right? SocialPilot is basically built around the concept of collaboration and supporting teams. The social media management tool gives admin users the ability to assign roles and control the level of access awarded to each team member.
You can invite freelancers to contribute, assign a manager to approve content before publishing, or even a content scheduler to take care of the queues. Each of these team members gets to log in their accounts using individual credentials. But keep in mind that the number of users is limited—depending on the subscribed plan.
Analytics and Reporting
Analytics and reporting are typically at the heart of every successful digital marketing strategy—and SocialPilot seems to be well-aware of this fact. You’re able to analyze content using the in-built analytics and reporting feature that manages to balance simplicity and sophistication.
You can check the growth rate of posts published, total fans, page clicks, post engagement, total reach, and total likes, among other metrics. While their effort is commendable and they’re definitely on the right track, Social Pilot lags behind some of its competitors with regard to their analytics and reporting.
Ease of Use
Social Pilot boasts of a surprisingly friendly user interface that’s both well-structured and simple enough to facilitate a distraction-free and productive experience.
The dashboard gives your easy access to all your accounts, the posting history, and daily usage charts that offer an overview of your posted content. The rest of the features are also dialled down to make the platform friendly from beginners and tech-savvy pros alike. It’s also worth reiterating the time-saving and inspiring perks of the content curation tools.
Support and Resources
The company clearly takes pride in its customer support services—which include calls, the mobile app, chat, and mail. All subscriptions give you access to a support package, but “Enterprise” users enjoy priority support.
Several users claim that Social Pilot’s support team is responsive in answering questions and resolving issues in a timely manner. The social media management tool also offers a comprehensive knowledge base through its blog, eBooks, video tutorials, and social media content.
Pros and Cons of Social Pilot
If you’re looking for a good reason to here’s a simplified list of its pros and cons. I hope it helps you made an informed buying decision as you rate you can or can’t stomach about the social media marketing tool.
Pros – What I Liked About SocialPilot
The 14-day FREE trial is a great touch—especially since you don’t have to provide your credit card details and you can cancel at your pleasure.
Social Pilot offers value for money – the tool is relatively affordable compared to competitors.
The dashboard is easy to navigate and intuitive for a seamless user experience.
It allows clients access to the management platform.
The bulk scheduling feature is quite useful.
The support team know their stuff—and they’re responsive (at least according to my experience) and some testimonials.
It comes with a browser extension and mobile apps for improved accessibility.
Social Pilots supports a ton of integrations that extend its functionality.
Cons – What I Disliked About the SaaS Tool
While I appreciate the fact that they offer a FREE trial, 14-days is too short and some users claim that they can’t access the offer from their countries.
You post videos with the bulk feature (bummer!).
At times the content curation feature gets…Ummm, what’s the right word for this…bland and uninspiring.
The team at Social Pilot should definitely work on adding some depth to their analytics feature.
Testimonials – How do Real Users Rate SocialPilot?
As unbiased and in-depth as I try to make this Social Pilot review, it can never be complete without the opinion of actual users. Below are screenshots of testimonials from different sources:
Positive Testimonials
“SocialPilot rivals Hootsuite and Buffer as one of the top social media automation tools around…The app team is great about fixing bugs and engaging with the community across social media and the app stores. Great support makes for a better user experience.”
—Neil Patrick, Co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics
Like Neil Patrick, most users admired SocialPilot’s customer services and affordability.
Negative Testimonials
Most drawback according to customers mainly revolves around the underwhelming intuitiveness of the features and occasional crushing.
Social Pilot Alternatives
Looking to explore other options by alternative social media marketing tools – i.e., SocialPilot’s competition? Here I pit some of the closest and most logical alternatives to Social Pilot against the SaaS product. The idea is to help you determine the tool that best meets your needs as a digital marketer and small business.
SocialPilot Vs Buffer
Buffer is an established and well-respected social media management platform. It’s significantly more popular, it has a wider consumer base, and it boasts of more high-end features for professionals.
While it may seem like a long shot to pit Social Pilot against the well-established Buffer, the former still manages to sneak in a few punches. Case in point; SocialPilot is relatively cheaper and a better option if you’re just starting out.
Social Pilot Vs Hootsuite
Hootsuite has grown into a household as far as social media schedulers are concerned. Part of me feels like it has been there since the earliest days of Facebook. It offers a unified platform for users to manage multiple social media accounts with minimal hassle. But how does this titan compare to Social Pilot?
Both solutions come in 3 plans and custom 4th option—dubbed “Enterprise” by each company. While Hootsuite appears cheaper at a glance, Social Pilot offer better value for money. For example, the $19 “Professional” plan only gives you access to 10 social profiles compared to SocialPilot’s 25 accounts for $25.
Social Pilot takes the cake when it comes to affordability, ease of use, and allowance of manageable accounts—while Hootsuite has more professional features such as social media certification.
SocialPilot Vs AgoraPulse
If tons of features are your drug when it comes to SaaS products, then AgoraPulse fits right up your alley.
The social media management tool offers a roller-coaster of features—including an intuitive queuing system to recycle evergreen content, inbox zero to whiz through your messages, an inbox assistant to automate processes, and some of the best reports you’ll ever come across (*no kidding). Oh, and they’re official partners of Instagram and Facebook.
The only caveat to their otherwise immaculate offer is the price. Their basic offer is priced at $99 for 10 social profile. This is equivalent to SocialPilot’s “Agency” price plan ($100), which accommodates not 10 but 100 social media accounts.
Both solutions come in 3 plans and custom 4th option—dubbed “Enterprise” by each company. While Hootsuite appears cheaper at a glance, Social Pilot offer better value for money. For example, the $19 “Professional” plan only gives you access to 10 social profiles compared to SocialPilot’s 25 accounts for $25.
Social Pilot takes the cake when it comes to affordability, ease of use, and allowance of manageable accounts—while Hootsuite has more professional features such as social media certification.
Social Pilot Vs Sprout Social
Sprout Social is another social media management tool that’s been building a name for itself over the years. It integrates seamlessly with major social media platforms and offers a truckload of useful features. But just like most alternatives on this list, it’s outclassed by Social Pilot in terms of value for money.
I’d say Sprout Social wipes the floor with SocialPilot in 3 key areas:
A 30-day FREE trial, compared to SocialPilot’s 14-day FREE trial. Who doesn’t love more free time?
Sprout Social has a far more superior online presence. I bet you’ve come across their statistics and content at one time or another as a digital marketer.
Sprout Social offers better monitoring and social listening solutions that Social Pilot—though the latter does give much of a fight in that sector.
Final Thoughts – Hit or Miss?
Is Social Pilot worth it? If the value for money is key to your buying decision, then yes. Social Pilot arguably offers the best mix of features/capabilities and pocket-friendly prices in its niche.
It’s an easy pick for small marketing agencies and teams that need a professional-level solution at a price point that feels like a giveaway compared some more established competitors. Most of the shortcomings are negligible for the average user—making Social Pilot a definite HIT!
But don’t take my word for it, give the SaaS product a try – it’s FREE for 14 days.
Affiliate Disclosure: Please note that the review or the Social Pilot contains affiliate links. I am an independent affiliate of Social Pilot products and not an employee. The review and opinion highlighted in this article are my own and they are in no way official statements by Etison LLC or Social Pilot.
Gary is the founder and owner at Digital Review Boss & Snappy Sales Video, a Brighton-based video production companies, who has a deep obsession with making videos as often as possible and how to optimise websites for brand awareness and conversions.