Buffer vs. Meta Business Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Buffer
Score 8.4 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Buffer is a social sharing tool. When browsing content, clicking on the Buffer icon automatically stores the content and schedules posts to social media channels throughout the day.
$0
Meta Business Suite
Score 6.6 out of 10
N/A
Formerly known as Facebook Business Suite or Facebook for Business, a solution for small businesses used to manage all business activity on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram from one place. It is presented as a one-stop shop where business owners can manage all marketing and advertising activities on Facebook and Instagram. It centralizes tools that help the user to connect with customers on all apps and get better business results.N/A
Pricing
BufferMeta Business Suite
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Essentials
$6
per month per channel
Team
$12
per month per channel
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BufferMeta Business Suite
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsA discount is offered for annual billing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BufferMeta Business Suite
Features
BufferMeta Business Suite
Publishing
Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Buffer
8.6
Ratings
7% above category average
Meta Business Suite
6.3
Ratings
24% below category average
Content planning and scheduling9.00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Content optimization8.00 Ratings5.30 Ratings
Workflow management8.80 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Audience targeting00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Reporting/analytics
Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
Buffer
8.3
Ratings
5% above category average
Meta Business Suite
6.3
Ratings
23% below category average
Campaign success analytics8.30 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Real-time tracking00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Competitor analysis00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Account management
Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
Buffer
9.0
Ratings
12% above category average
Meta Business Suite
4.8
Ratings
50% below category average
Role-based user permissions & privileges9.00 Ratings4.90 Ratings
Mobile access9.00 Ratings4.80 Ratings
Listening/monitoring
Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Buffer
-
Ratings
Meta Business Suite
4.6
Ratings
51% below category average
Boolean keyword searches00 Ratings4.00 Ratings
Filtering out noise/spam00 Ratings4.30 Ratings
Sentiment analysis00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Broad channel coverage00 Ratings5.30 Ratings
Engagement
Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
Buffer
-
Ratings
Meta Business Suite
5.3
Ratings
40% below category average
Automated routing and prioritization00 Ratings5.80 Ratings
Customer interaction histories00 Ratings4.10 Ratings
Bulk actions00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Marketing
Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Buffer
-
Ratings
Meta Business Suite
7.0
Ratings
10% below category average
Lead generation00 Ratings5.90 Ratings
Content marketing00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Paid media management00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Channel coverage/integration
Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
Buffer
-
Ratings
Meta Business Suite
6.2
Ratings
30% below category average
Twitter00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Facebook00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
LinkedIn00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Google+00 Ratings4.50 Ratings
Instagram00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Pinterest00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
YouTube00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
User Ratings
BufferMeta Business Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(0 ratings)
5.4
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
4.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BufferMeta Business Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
It is a very interesting tool for entrepreneurs or CEOs of startups who do not have much time to manage social media communication and also have few resources at the beginning of their venture. It can also be convenient for small companies that do not have specific personnel with training in community management and require easy-to-use tools to carry out the basic actions of scheduled publication on social media.
Read full review
Meta Business Suite is great if you are a business that is heavily reliant on paid media performance. It is also a great platform if we are looking to scale paid performance and look to send partnership ads live with existent creators and influencers we are working with.
Read full review
Pros
  • I can plan and publish content on social channels.
  • Buffer's interface is quite tidy and generates the necessary facilities to save us time in publishing consistent content.
  • It has a special price; it is pretty affordable.
  • It has the possibility of integrating with other tools to improve its functions.
Read full review
  • Allows you to upload current email lists and drive ads to them more passively than email.
  • Audience segmentation tools make it easy to target prospects based on actions taken on specific pages.
  • Lookalike tools allow you to build new prospect lists based on common interests of your current clients.
  • The ability to test multiple variations of ads against each other and report on them directly from the dashboard simplifies the decision-making process to optimize advertising efforts.
Read full review
Cons
  • Analytics-- The analytics on the Pro plan are limited at best. You can simply review your posts from the past 30 days, but you can't access any analysis (or even simple tallying of Likes, Shares, etc.) without upgrading to the Premium or Business plans, which are otherwise more than we need at the moment.
  • Publish+Reply+Analyze-- It's a bit tedious to have these basic social media functions/tools separated out as three distinct products, as well as overkill for a small nonprofit without a dedicated social media team. I imagine each tool is good at its job if you need 'em.
  • Linking to Accounts-- Buffer seems to lose touch with Facebook and LinkedIn somewhat frequently. It's vaguely annoying but very simple to fix, so I just roll with it.
Read full review
  • Reporting, especially as you drill down. For example, it won't show you purchases by region or hour of the day.
  • Consistency has been an issue. Top-performing campaigns/ad sets/ads will hit a wall overnight for no apparent reason.
  • Cloning ads doesn't work between certain campaign types. It seems like they could make it so that even a partial copy can be made, with other required fields left empty.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Ease of use, affordability, time saved and just love for the app and the team. It's not a miracle tool that will suddenly increase your company's value or leads, you still need to put in quality posts, thoughts and content but when used regularly and with thought, you'll be happy in the long run
Read full review
We have to continue using this tool in order to be effective on this marketing platform. Though there are several changes I wish we could see, the fact is that we will still need to use this product to provide customers with the information they need.
Read full review
Usability
Easy enough to use even my boss got it right away. It helps to off-set the workload to less active times, and we can preschedule way in advance, which also helps to keep the team on track as we know what we have planned and want to reach our milestones before posts go online.
Read full review
The main barriers is that Facebook has stitched together so many legacy systems and verifications and whatnot that it's sometimes hard to onboard new people or get all of the accounts to work together. Once it does, it does work very well.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Buffer is always on hand and very reliable, their software suite rarely has outages
Read full review
I've only dealt with the API having issues a couple times, but as you can imagine an outage is not something an advertiser would find acceptable, especially during any ecommerce-heavy time of year. The overall platform could use some help with availability when it comes to authentication, as it struggles with consistency in authentication.
Read full review
Performance
Buffer performs well on both desktop and mobile platforms. The one area as I have stated before is that it does not always want to automatically push to Instagram and the user will have to go do it manually. Buffer works very well pushing to other platforms. The instagram issue is the only reason buffer does not get a 10 on this section
Read full review
There are a lot of shortcomings when it comes to performance. There are pages that I do not expect to have much information to load on the page, yet it takes an incredibly long time (10+ secondes). I have not had experience with the integration slowing other platforms down too much.
Read full review
Support Rating
  1. It really helped to my business to grow online.
  2. I was able to take actions mindfully as the analytics are damn good.
  3. Also used for managing clients social media accounts and it proved to be a best resource.
  4. Clients were really happy as they got high demand and growth on internet and the secret is Buffer.
  5. The user interface is really easy to understand and manage. Support is 24/7 available to help.
Read full review
I've found the Facebook for Business support to be hit or miss. For billing questions they're timely and helpful. For complex questions about specific services I've often received a longer wait and a less helpful experience. I'm often redirected to their docs, which are often not particularly helpful.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
We were very satisfied with the implementation of Buffer. We had no issues switching from the platform that we were using over to buffer. Our staff did not even miss a beat when it came to posting content. It was an easy transition and I feel that is something that buffer has really done well. They have an "out of the box" usability platform
Read full review
If you don't want to display your feed to your boss before going over scheduled posts for the week, use the Business site and it will be less awkward instantly. Having someone lean over your shoulder is always a bit awkward, you think about how you smell, maybe consider offering them gum because they have bad breath
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Both of them are great at their own levels but I find Buffer quite easy to go and the way they perform every task is quite like my way of work so I personally like Buffer more, it has helped me save my most of the time hence improved my work efficiency and also the creativity they put into my work is outstanding. The support I get whenever I run into problems they provide a quick response every time.
Read full review
Meta Business Suite is a good paid media option that offers several features for building ad campaigns, which other paid media channels lack. The usability is generally good, but it probably isn't quite as intuitive as Google, as a comparison. LinkedIn is behind all of these platforms, as its ad features are not as advanced. Overall, Meta is highly ranked.
Read full review
Scalability
Buffer does what it say on tin as they say! you can always count on Buffer. Buffer can be scale to 25 social account with 2,000 scheduled post which is enough for most agencies or businesses
Read full review
This product is definitely able to run at scale, but it would be wise to have enough eyeballs to oversee it and the tools for keeping the campaigns, adsets, and ads organized could use some improvement. I can also see the UI interfering with usability at greater amounts of scale.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • It has saved money by allowing us to automate our social using one person
  • It allows us to connect one channel at a time instead of wasting money on larger account management tools
  • We are making money, because it has already delivered several clients
Read full review
  • Definitely has a positive ROI with increasing sales, but beware because it's not easy to measure on every stage of the funnel (how much does an ad in the very top of the funnel should be accounted for on a sale?). Attribution is hard sometimes.
  • Managing is expensive and time-consuming. So far we haven't been able to find any solution to automate this. We are using automatic rules but you still need to be on top of things (considering how much budget we are spending on this).
  • Beware on Facebook suspending your account. As I said before, the suspension was completely unjustified (they ended up activating it again) but don't over-rely on this platform because they just don't care if you spend your money there or elsewhere. They just don't give a damn about the customer (you).
Read full review
ScreenShots

Buffer Screenshots

Screenshot of The Buffer dashboardScreenshot of Customizable posting scheduleScreenshot of Tailored PostsScreenshot of List or calendar view of scheduled postsScreenshot of Browser extensionScreenshot of Social media analytics