Buffer vs. Smash Balloon

Buffer

Smash Balloon

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting 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
Smash Balloon	Score 0.0 out of 10	N/A	Smash Balloon is a plugin used to add social media content to WordPress, with the goal of displacing social media plugins that are complicated to set up, slow down the website site, aren’t customizable , or break anytime the platform makes a change. Smash Balloon plugins are designed to integrate seamlessly into Wordpress websites, where they help to display social media content that is unique to the business. The solution currently boasts over 1.6 million users.	N/A

Pricing

Buffer

Smash Balloon

Editions & Modules

Free: $0
Essentials: $6
per month per channel
Team: $12
per month per channel

No answers on this topic

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Buffer	Smash Balloon
Free Trial
Yes	No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

A discount is offered for annual billing.

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More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Buffer	Smash Balloon
Considered Both Products	Buffer Lauren Rich, aPHR™ Social Media Manager Chose Buffer Sprout social buffers content for accurately then Buffer Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Buffer Buffer is way easier to use and setup than Hubspot and Meta. You'd think Meta would make it easy to post on both Facebook and Instagram, but I have consistently run into issues when uploading files. I've never had an issue with Buffer. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Buffer Buffer is simple and easy to use and has a great free version. Incentivized Helpful? Allie Cobb Digital Director Chose Buffer Buffer is much more affordable than Hootsuite. Another benefit is that Buffer allows more accounts to be loaded onto the platform. Hootsuite charges in tiered levels based on how many accounts you want to load onto the software. This makes it difficult to schedule and post for … Incentivized Helpful? James Crook Business Coach at The Health Leader Co Chose Buffer Buffer's interface when logged in is more beautiful and easier to use than the others I've tried. Especially HighLevel which does a lot of other stuff as well - the difference with Buffer is that it is ONLY for social scheduling so it does that really well and the entire screen … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Buffer Buffer is way more user-friendly and gets straight to what I need to do. There is no frilly extra stuff—it's straight to the point. Buffer incorporates all the parts of the apps as well. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Buffer Hootsuite is good if you have the budget for social media baked into your communications budget/a communications budget in and of itself. Buffer is better for small teams, teams that may have a more limited budget or organizations that don't have a large social media … Incentivized Helpful? JB Joe Brown CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Chose Buffer They all solve the same problem. Buffer initially started as a way to post content without worrying about the "when". Just add to the queue, and Buffer would post at a specified cadence. Buffer's price point is very reasonable for the services that it offers. They've grown … Incentivized Helpful? Jesse Sumrak Senior Content Marketing Manager Chose Buffer I think Sprout Social and Hootsuite provide more comprehensive tools and analytics, but they have more expensive plans that don't cater to businesses of all sizes. Plus, all of that complexity can make it hard to find what you're looking for. That's where Buffer excels. It's … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Buffer Buffer has a clear, easy to use interface and a reliable scheduling calendar. Incentivized Helpful? Luke Paulin Marketing Director Chose Buffer Buffer had the best free version, but Zoho social had the most social media channels available in the price range. Hootsuite was the tool we first wanted, but the price was considerably more, for tools we are not sure if we need at this time. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Buffer In my opinion, Hootsuite has it all, except TikTok, which hopefully will open up some sort of interface soon. It is a much smoother and more customizable experience. I have not had any posts missing after scheduling, like I have had with Buffer in my past experience. Just an … Incentivized Helpful? Trigun Prakash Computer software Chose Buffer Both software are good, but personally I like Buffer just because it is easy to use and it has good costumer support. Buffer lets me put my updates on a schedule so I can set it up for weeks at a time and then not have to worry. Incentivized Helpful? Mishka Panwar Researcher Chose Buffer 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Joseph Kahn President and Director of Marketing Chose Buffer We tried CloudCampaign and Social Bee (that wasn't on the list above) - and they all are good. Buffer is in a class of its own and super useful to individuals and companies alike. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Buffer We selected this tool to maintain the activity of publication in social networks at a low cost and good productivity, we consider that it adds to our objectives of brand awareness or discovery, since it allows us to keep our channels active with information and content that we … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Buffer Buffer and Hootsuite are considered as best tools for managing your social media accounts . The only difference which I feel between the two is Buffer is [more] focused on pre-scheduling and Hootsuite is a advanced version of Buffer you can say it allows you full -fledged … Incentivized Helpful? AK Ann Korb Chose Buffer I also used Combin which is easy and free to use. However, Combin only posts when the computer is active and connected to the internet. So, posting while you are not actively using your computer at that moment is not possible, therefore Buffer is much more efficient as you can … Incentivized Helpful? Alex Chaidaroglou Director & Co-Founder Chose Buffer I haven't really tried a Buffer alternative since it works for us and our needs are very simple. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Buffer Buffer is the first one I have used, and then I tried other platforms like Hootsuite, and HubSpot, but still, the other two haven't matched up to that level of ease and comfort, and the features I like of Buffer. So I switched back to Buffer. Incentivized Helpful? LE Luz Ellis Senior SEO Project Manager Chose Buffer Buffer has all the analytics tools and features that allow us to determine whether the result of our marketing is positive or negative. There are more complete alternatives, but Buffer is all I need at the moment. Incentivized Helpful? Ameer Hamza Corporate Communications Manager Chose Buffer Both Hootsuite and Buffer are excellent tools but they both target different users. If you're an individual user, small firm, or non-profit and you want to simplify your social media challenges, then Buffer is likely your best option. Hootsuite on the other hand is more likely … Incentivized Helpful? Harsh Hingorani ⚡️ Product Marketing Manager Chose Buffer The reason for selecting Buffer was mainly due to good UI and easy to use functionality. Hootsuite was not that user friendly and a bit complicated. Buffer is more straight forward and easy to use when you compare it with Hootsuite. Also, I like Buffer's mobile friendliness … Incentivized Helpful? David Fox President \| Sales & Marketing Advisor Chose Buffer We have not used any other similar products to manage, organize, schedule, and analyze our social media posting. We have used other posting platforms within the channels themselves, however. Facebook is slightly more advanced than Buffer for posting on Facebook — but that is … Incentivized Helpful? Ronnie Rask Director of Marketing Chose Buffer The price point is very affordable compared to other products that offer more features but charge a lot more. For my entire team, the price point has made it easy to get a good ROI. More than anything, it allows us to do what's necessary. Hootsuite definitely provides more … Incentivized Helpful?	Smash Balloon No answer on this topic

Features

Buffer

Smash Balloon

Publishing

Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
	Buffer 8.6 Ratings 7% above category average	Smash Balloon - Ratings
Content planning and scheduling	9.00 Ratings	00 Ratings
Content optimization	8.00 Ratings	00 Ratings
Workflow management	8.80 Ratings	00 Ratings

Reporting/analytics

Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
	Buffer 8.3 Ratings 5% above category average	Smash Balloon - Ratings
Campaign success analytics	8.30 Ratings	00 Ratings

Account management

Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
	Buffer 9.0 Ratings 12% above category average	Smash Balloon - Ratings
Role-based user permissions & privileges	9.00 Ratings	00 Ratings
Mobile access	9.00 Ratings	00 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Buffer	Smash Balloon
Small Businesses	CoSchedule Marketing Suite Score 10.0 out of 10	Growave Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	CoSchedule Marketing Suite Score 10.0 out of 10	Echobox Social Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises	Social Suite by Reputation.com Score 9.4 out of 10	Sprout Social Score 8.6 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Buffer	Smash Balloon
Likelihood to Recommend	8.8 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	8.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Usability	9.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Availability	8.2 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Performance	8.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	6.1 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	8.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Configurability	10.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	8.6 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Buffer	Smash Balloon
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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	No answers on this topic
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. Incentivized LE Luz Ellis Senior SEO Project Manager Read full review	No answers on this topic
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. Incentivized Michelle Green Arnson Marketing and Communications Manager Read full review	No answers on this topic
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 Deanna Ayres SEO/Growth Hacker & Community Outreach Supervisor Read full review	No answers on this topic
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. Incentivized AK Ann Korb Read full review	No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability	Buffer is always on hand and very reliable, their software suite rarely has outages Incentivized Len Gordon Art Relations Read full review	No answers on this topic
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 Incentivized FH Frankie Heath Director of Social Marketing Read full review	No answers on this topic
Support Rating	It really helped to my business to grow online. I was able to take actions mindfully as the analytics are damn good. Also used for managing clients social media accounts and it proved to be a best resource. Clients were really happy as they got high demand and growth on internet and the secret is Buffer. The user interface is really easy to understand and manage. Support is 24/7 available to help. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	No answers on this topic
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 Incentivized FH Frankie Heath Director of Social Marketing Read full review	No answers on this topic
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. Mishka Panwar Researcher Read full review	No answers on this topic
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 Incentivized Len Gordon Art Relations Read full review	No answers on this topic
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 Incentivized Joseph Kahn President and Director of Marketing Read full review	No answers on this topic
ScreenShots	Buffer Screenshots