Planoly vs. Later: Which Is Better for Scheduling Content on Instagram?

Tools for planning and scheduling are part and parcel of any meaningful Instagram strategy. 

Let’s compare two rather well-known and widely-used Instagram schedulers — Planoly and Later — and find out all the details of how they perform.

What characteristics will be compared:

• Functionality (pros and cons)
• Accuracy of publishing
• Usability
• Price

Related content: Top 10 Instagram Tools to Automate Your Scheduling and Posting.

Planoly App

Planoly is a service that offers you 3 products in one: StoriesEdit, IG Planner and Pin Planner (planners for Instagram and Pinterest respectively).  

According to its clients’ reviews, Planoly Instagram is a satisfying solution with a good feature set. However, users would like to be provided with a more robust analysis of their content performance. But let’s not dive into rumors and instead check the service ourselves. 

Functionality of Planoly

Pros

• Schedule posts for both Feed and Stories.
• Add filters to images (available only for paid plans).
• Create hashtag groups for fast copying and pasting:

• Discover feature will enable the search for popular posts by hashtags, other business profiles by username and free stock photos:

• Browse simple post analytics — followers, post and Story engagement and content performance totals such as likes, comments, impressions, reach, saved, viewed, and replies. In fact, all that information you can find by clicking View Insights. 
• See and respond to comments on your posts right within the service.
• Create a shoplink for placing shopping tags on your posts.

Cons

• Both manual and auto-posting are available only in the official Planoly app.
• Auto-post is available only for business Instagram accounts with Facebook authentication.
• Detailed analytics of engagement and audience is available only for paid plans.
• Constant branded Planoly hashtag and a “sent via” tag:

• You can not auto-post carousels.

Accuracy of publishing

Auto-post functionality works great — no delays or unpublished posts. 

Usability

The web service and the app are well developed and have pleasant interfaces couched in pastel tones. 

The service can be called user-friendly enough — figuring out what to tap will be a piece of cake. Plus, the interface will remind you of Instagram a little.

Here is how the app looks:

Planoly pricing

You can use the app for free, but this free plan will include only scheduling photos, comments inbox and basic analytics. The full pricing:

Later

Later (previously Latergram) is an Instagram partner, so it’s considered a safe method to schedule and auto-publish content. 

But Later is a multi-purpose platform on which you can not only plan and schedule posts and Stories but also get Instagram analytics, create multiple links in Bio, track user-generated content and work with Instagram hashtags. 

Functionality of Later 

Pros:

• Schedule posts, carousels, video posts and Stories.
• Drag-and-drop bulk images upload.

• Schedule the first comment to a post.
• Preview separate posts and whole Feed.
• Get posts and Stories analytics.
• Possible to share your content plan with other people and efficiently work as a team.

Cons:

• Only business Instagram profiles have access to auto-publishing. For others, only notification methods are available — i.e., when the scheduled time comes, you get the notification on your device that it’s time. 
• Auto-posts isn’t available for carousels.

Accuracy of publishing

Auto-post functionality works great — no delays or unpublished posts. 

Usability

As Later makes use of a drag-and-drop interface, the whole service is super easy to manage from your PC or laptop. As for the Later app, it’s also simple and does allow even a beginner to start scheduling in just a few minutes. 

Later pricing

It ranges from $0 for individuals to $41 for teams.

However, it is a standard practice to limit the possibilities of a free plan. Below you will find the functionality of each plan:

Why do you need a tool for scheduling and auto-posting on Instagram?

1. The aesthetics of your profile is unified. You can estimate what your posts will look like in a grid in advance. That will help you present your content in such a way so that people who come across your profile will immediately decide to follow you. 

2. You have more time for other projects or businesses. When you set up auto-posting, you aren’t distracted from vital stuff to post another photo or video. You can focus on what is really important.

3. Publish more often and engage the audience better. When you post regularly, your audience sees that and becomes more active and interacts with you and your content more willingly. 

Bottom line: Planoly vs Later

As you can see, the functionality of the services is pretty similar. The difference is that Planoly offers scheduling content for Instagram and Pinterest, while Later has scheduling for Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. 

In the end, the question may be, “Which interface will be more pleasant for you to use?” Both services offer free trials  to try things out so you can easily decide for yourself what you prefer.