The 21 Best Instagram Tools for Business Growth (2023)
While most of us are used to hopping on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for a few minutes of distraction, social media is a lot more than just funny cat videos and get ready with me (GRWM) vlogs.
What else are people doing on social? Research shows that they’re looking for things to do and products to buy. This means that if you’re a business owner, social media platforms are a great place to connect with new audiences, build a tighter community with current customers, and grow your sales through social selling.
In this post, we’re going to focus on Instagram. We’ll first cover how to use Instagram as a means of business growth, and then we’ll talk about the different tools your business can use to get the most out of the platform.
How to use Instagram as a business tool
If you’re new to approaching Instagram from a business perspective, then you may be wondering what you can do with the platform beyond just displaying attractive product shots.
While brand identity and aesthetics are definitely important on a visual platform like Instagram, there’s a lot more that you can do to benefit your company. Most things fall into one of three buckets:
Marketing: Instagram is useful for visually displaying your product or services to current and potential customers, but it’s also a useful platform for building community and growing brand trust. In addition, Instagram’s ad program can help you amplify your reach, allowing you to find new customers and stay connected with current ones.
Sales: Social is quickly becoming a primary avenue for making sales. Instagram Shopping can be a great option for those looking to dip their toes into the channel, given that it has the highest ROI (33%) out of all of the major platforms when it comes to social selling within the app.
Customer service: Most social media marketers agree that social media is on its way to becoming consumers’ preferred customer service channel. If your brand is marketing and selling on Instagram, then it makes a lot of sense to support customers there as well.
The 21 best Instagram tools for business growth (2023)
Whether you’re looking to launch a stunning marketing campaign, promote an upcoming sale, or delight your customers with social media support, there is an Instagram tool on the market that can help you get the job done.
We’ve curated a list of 21 of our favorites to help your business make the most of your brand’s Instagram account.
Instagram scheduling tools
The first step to using Instagram for business is to start posting! These scheduling tools will help you plan out your posts and establish a regular posting cadence.
1. Buffer
Best free Instagram scheduling tool.
Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to plan, schedule, and post content across all major platforms.
Instagram support via Buffer is available for anyone with an Instagram creator or business profile. The platform lets you schedule and post grid content as well as reels and carousels. It’s also possible to draft and schedule stories and first comments (the spot where folks tend to drop hashtags and other important info).
Buffer’s free plan can be a good choice for small businesses who are just starting out with social. Teams who need more than one user seat or some of the more advanced features like analytics will need to invest in one of the platform’s paid plans.
Price: Free trial and plan available. Paid plans start at $5 per month (includes one channel).
2. Sendible
Best Instagram scheduling tool for agencies.
Sendible is another tool that will allow you to schedule Instagram posts and monitor and reply to comments.
What sets it apart from other options on the list are its features that are suited to agencies. With Sendible you can manage each of your client’s content in their own dashboard, keeping everything organized and free of mistakes. There are also approval flows to ensure that content is being previewed by the right people before going live and reporting dashboards so you can share insights directly with your clients.
Probably the most unique agency-focused feature is the option to private label the software for your agency. You can customize brand elements to match your business style and even create user accounts for your clients so they can manage their content through your account.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $25 per month (billed annually) and plans including private label options start at $270 per month (billed annually).
3. Planoly
Best Instagram scheduling tool for visual planning.
Planoly is a tool that helps marketers visually plan their social content across all major platforms.
Design the perfect Instagram grid with a planner that allows you to not only plan and schedule posts by date but to also view how each piece of content will show up in your feed. Use design tools like Canva and source stock photos for your content from sites like Pexels and Unsplash right from within the platform, making content creation a snap.
While it’s an awesome tool for planning across visual platforms like Instagram, Planoly isn’t the strongest option for audience engagement. You can only view and reply to the most recent 15-30 Instagram comments, depending on your plan, which may be limiting to those with a larger audience.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $11.25 per month (includes one social set and user).
Instagram customer service tools
If your customers are seeking support from your team through Instagram, then finding a support platform that offers IG as a supported channel can help your team provide better care.
4. Help Scout
Best Instagram customer service tool for direct messaging (DMs).
Help Scout is a customer communications platform that can help you manage conversations and deliver delight to customers across popular channels like email, live chat, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram.
All of your customer conversations are managed through Help Scout’s shared inbox, including your social media requests. Whenever someone sends your business a direct message (DM) via Instagram, a new conversation is created in Help Scout. This allows your support team to respond to the message just like any other customer request.
Responding to Instagram DMs via Help Scout is a much better experience than responding via the Instagram app. With its shared inbox you can assign customer conversations to specific people or teams, use saved replies to respond to questions more quickly, use rule-based workflows for the automation of routine tasks, and tap into AI features to help your team deliver even better support.
Help Scout also has other features to help your business deliver delightful customer experiences. Our Messages tool can help you foster customer engagement across your website or app. Docs, our knowledge base builder, can help you set up a help center in a matter of minutes, and our reporting dashboards can help you keep track of your team’s progress.
Lastly, Help Scout has great resources for helping your business make the most out of our platform. From robust documentation to free guides and classes, Help Scout makes sure you have everything you need to create customer delight, no matter which channel your customers use to reach out.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $20/user per month.
Learn more about Help Scout:
5. Dixa
Best Instagram customer service tool for responding to stories.
Dixa is a customer service platform that allows businesses to communicate across multiple channels — including social media platforms like Instagram — from a centralized agent hub.
In addition to Instagram DMs, Dixa users can also respond to story mentions (when someone mentions your business in their story) and comments (when someone comments on your story).
Outside of Instagram, the software has a lot of great features like collaboration tools, intelligent contact routing, customer timelines, a knowledge base builder, reporting features, and more.
Price: Free trial available. Plans including Instagram support start at $89/agent per month (seven seat minimum required).
6. Gorgias
Best Instagram customer service tool for responding to comments.
Gorgias is a help desk that focuses on the ecommerce space. It supports popular channels like email, live chat, social media (Facebook and Instagram), and WhatsApp and integrates with popular ecommerce platforms.
Much like Help Scout and Dixa, Gorgias has collaborative features, a knowledge management solution, and reporting tools. Instagram-wise, Gorgias is able to handle all contact types — DMs, comments, and mentions from posts and stories. This can be very useful for businesses that prioritize Instagram in their marketing strategies.
While Gorgias has a lot to offer, its ticket-based pricing structure may not work for companies managing larger volumes.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $10 per month (includes 50 billable tickets).
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Instagram management tools
If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool that can handle both content scheduling and customer engagement, an Instagram management tool might be right for you.
7. Pallyy
Best Instagram management tool for smaller teams.
Pallyy is a platform that can help businesses plan, schedule, and auto-post content across all of their social media platforms from a single place. It has team functionality to help plan collaboratively as well as a social inbox where you can assign conversations to teammates and automate tasks like labeling messages or marking them read.
Pallyy supports image, reel, story, carousel, and first comment scheduling and auto-posting on Instagram. You can preview posts within the tool as they will appear on Instagram to ensure that everything is perfect before a post goes live, and you can keep up to date on your content’s performance through custom reporting dashboards.
The platform offers a free plan with limited features as well as a paid plan that starts at $16.20 per month that includes full access. Each additional user license is $29 per month, making it one of the most affordable social media management tools on the list.
Price: Free trial and plan available. Paid plans start at $16.20 per month (billed annually).
8. Hootsuite
Best Instagram management tool for larger companies focused on social care.
Hootsuite is a well-known social media management platform that is sort of like a mix between a social media scheduling tool and a social media customer service tool. It has all of the content creation, planning, and analytics functionality of scheduling software and also has tools like a shared inbox for team management of customer engagement (comments, DMs, and mentions).
Instagram users can use Hootsuite for scheduling and/or posting feed, reels, and stories posts. The platform can also do things like recommend the best time to post based on when your users are most active.
Price-wise, Hootsuite is right in the middle of the two options on our list. The lowest tier plans are $99 per month (includes one user) or $249 per month (includes three users). This can be good for mid-sized companies; however, those interested in social care will likely want to upgrade to the higher-tiered plans (with social care add-on) to take advantage of additional customer service features.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $99 per month (includes one user).
9. Sprout Social
Best Instagram tool for enterprise companies.
Sprout Social is another popular social media management tool and for good reason — it can do everything that the social media management tools above can do and more. From post management to customer care via a social inbox to social listening tools that help you keep on top of what people have to say about your business and industry, Sprout Social has it.
The platform lets Instagram users manage multiple profiles from a single account, can suggest trending hashtags, and can help you boost engagement by letting you know the best time to post. Using the social inbox you can reply to DMs, comments, story replies, and media comments and reshare relevant user-generated content with your audience.
The one problem with Sprout Social is that it’s expensive. The least expensive plan costs $249 per month, with each additional user running another $199 monthly. Many of the best features are restricted to higher-tiered plans which can cost hundreds of dollars more, making the platform out of reach for many smaller businesses.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $249 per month.
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Instagram analytics tools
Once you have your business’s Instagram strategy in motion, it’ll be time to start looking at performance metrics. These Instagram analytics tools can help you learn what is (and isn’t) working.
10. Keyhole
Best Instagram analytics tool for social listening.
Keyhole is a social media analytics tool that can help give you the information you need to grow your social media following, increase engagement, and improve your marketing strategy.
The platform focuses on profile analytics, influencer tracking, and social listening. Influencer tracking can help you find the right content creators to work with while helping you gauge your ROI, and the profile analytics tools help you track account performance, monitor competitor success, and gain insights about your audience to help you optimize your approach.
Keyhole’s social listening tools are helpful for staying up to date with trends within your industry. The platform can aggregate data from multiple sources to help with competitor analysis, and there is AI functionality to help you better understand audience sentiment around your brand.
Keyhole integrates with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Instagram is available as part of the entry-level plan; however, some of the other channels are only available as part of higher-tiered plans.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $63 per month (includes one user).
11. RivalIQ
Best Instagram analytics tool for competitive benchmarking.
RivalIQ is a social media analytics tool that can help with competitive and social post analysis, social reporting, and social account audits. It supports reporting across six social channels: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
The platform has everything you need to analyze the performance of your Instagram content. There are dashboards for post activity and engagement, tools to help you monitor and choose the right hashtags, and breakdowns of your audience demographics to help you optimize ads and social campaigns.
RivalIQ can also alert you when competitors change posts, let you in on which posts are likely boosted, and give you benchmarks to help you better understand where your brand stacks up within your industry.
The only drawback for RivalIQ is the price. The lowest tier plan starts at $199 per month, but it only allows you to bring in six months of data history. Teams that need year-over-year analysis will need to opt for a more expensive plan.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $199 per month (includes one user).
12. Social Status
Best Instagram analytics tool for teams on a budget.
Social Status is an analytics platform focused on four different areas of social reporting: profile analytics, ads analytics, competitor analytics, and influencer analytics. Users are able to track all of the above across popular social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
Profile analytics keeps track of things like post impressions and engagement, video views, and audience demographics. It also can connect with your Facebook Messenger inbox to provide handling metrics like average response time and give you metrics to measure Instagram story performance.
Ads analytics lets you keep tabs on your Facebook and Instagram campaigns and competitor analytics lets you benchmark the performance of your social profiles against others in your industry. Finally, influencer analytics lets you monitor the performance of any partnerships you have running with content creators.
When it comes to pricing, Social Status is very affordable. It offers all of the features that the other analytics tools on our list provide but at a price that just about any team can afford.
Price: Free plan and trial available. Paid plans start at $6.75 per month.
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Link in bio tools
A link in bio tool is essentially a cloud-hosted, mobile-optimized web page where creators and brands can post links that they would like to share with their social following via a single link.
Given that most sites will only let you add one URL, link in bio tools like the ones below can help ensure that your followers always have access to the information they need.
13. Linktree
Best Instagram tool for link sharing.
Created in 2016, Linktree was one of the first link in bio tools to be developed and is still one of the most popular options today. It’s widely used to share links on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and more.
Linktrees are highly customizable, and the platform offers templates to fit just about any industry or use case. In addition to links, users can also feature curated content to ensure their fans always see their best work, and the platform also integrates with tons of software platforms to help users monetize their content and grow their following.
The platform operates under a freemium pricing model where folks can get a free Linktree with unlimited links. Paid pricing tiers offer additional benefits like increased customization options, scheduled link posting, analytics tools, and features to help build email and phone lists.
Price: Free plan and trial (for the Pro plan) available. Paid plans start at $5.99 per month.
14. Milkshake
Best free Instagram link in bio tool.
Milkshake is another tool that can help you make the most of your bio link. The platform’s Android and iOS apps enable users to create mobile websites in a matter of seconds that can be easily shared across all of your social profiles.
Instead of focusing on a single page, Milkshake lets you create multiple cards (website pages) that visitors can easily swipe through to gain access to different content. Milkshake has several types of card templates including the About, Links, Top Picks, Splash, and YouTube cards, all of which are specifically designed to cater to the needs of each.
Unlike other tools, Milkshake is completely free, which can be great for smaller brands and creators. For those who try and like the service, you can become a subscriber which will allow you to remove the “Made with Milkshake” card from your site.
Price: Free. Subscriptions to remove Milkshake branding can be purchased in-app for $2.99 per month.
15. Campsite
Best Instagram link in bio tool for managing multiple profiles.
Campsite is quite similar to Linktree — it enables users to create a single page for users to share unlimited links with their followers on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. The platform offers premade themes and allows you to customize your page with dividers and link carousels.
One benefit of Campsite is that it allows users to manage multiple profiles from a single account. This is helpful if you need to manage several social profiles for a single brand or beneficial for agencies who may manage social for several clients.
Campsite has a freemium option that will let anyone get started sharing unlimited links, and paid plans are also available for those who require more advanced features like analytics, collaborator accounts, or premium integrations with other platforms.
Price: Free plan and trial available. Paid plans start at $70 per year.
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Instagram design and content creation tools
Creating visually appealing content is important for platforms that rely on photography and videography, like Instagram. These tools make it easy to always deliver the aesthetic posts your customers prefer.
16. Canva
Best Instagram tool for graphic design.
Canva is a user-friendly graphic design platform that allows anyone to create stunning, professional-grade visual assets in minutes. Programs like Photoshop can be complex and confusing to design novices, which is why Canva is such a great option for businesses that may not have professional designers on the team.
The app has tons of templates and tools for use cases including visual marketing, photo and video editing, print marketing, and social media marketing. The social media section includes endless options of templates that are designed specifically for Instagram, ensuring that whether you’re making a reel or posting to your grid, the content will look good.
Canva’s free plan has a lot of value, offering access to the platform’s click-and-drag editor, templates, clip art, AI tools, and 5GB of cloud storage. For those who have greater needs, the paid plans offer additional features like additional visual assets, social media post scheduling, more AI tools, 1TB of cloud storage, and more.
Price: Free trial and plan available. Paid plans start at $119.99 per year (includes one user).
17. VSCO
Best Instagram tool for photo editing.
VSCO is a photography app for iOS and Android devices, as well as for desktop computers. It enables users to take or import photos into the app and edit them with presets and other photo and video tools. The platform was originally an Instagram competitor, but these days it is pretty common for folks to edit photos in VSCO and cross-post them to Instagram and other platforms.
VSCO’s main features include photo filters, a video editor, a collage tool, an in-tool camera, and shared galleries called Spaces. For those interested in using VSCO-created or edited images on Instagram, the platform allows you to connect your IG account and easily share content to your feed or stories without leaving the app.
The platform has a free plan that includes 15 presets and standard photo editing tools. For those who want to work with video or have greater editing needs, two paid plans are also available.
Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $29.99 per year.
18. CapCut
Best Instagram content creation tool for those also on TikTok.
CapCut is a video editor that is really popular amongst social media users on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. It simplifies the process of creating professional, captivating videos, letting you create quality content without a ton of specialized tools or expensive software.
Some of the functionality you’ll find in CapCut includes features for editing and resizing photos, speech-to-text and text-to-speech tools, video transitions, and the ability to add text, stickers, effects, music, and more to your content. The platform also has templates that can help businesses quickly create commercials for use in paid ad campaigns.
CapCut is free and available on iOS, Android, and desktop devices. Additional effects are available as part of CapCut Pro, which can be accessed as an in-app subscription purchase.
Price: Free.
Instagram marketing tools
Instagram is a great platform for building brand awareness and loyalty. These tools can help your business with things like ad campaigns, contests, and choosing hashtags for your posts.
19. Meta Business Suite
Best Instagram tool for ad management.
While it’s possible to manage all of your Instagram posts within the Instagram app, it can get a little challenging as your audience and engagement begin to grow. If you don’t feel like you’re ready to subscribe to a dedicated social media management tool, using Meta Business Suite can be a good option.
Meta Business Suite is a free tool that lets you manage all of your business’s Facebook and Instagram activity in one place. The platform lets you schedule posts, manage comments and DMs as a team using a shared inbox, create ads, and monitor performance with analytics features.
It isn’t quite as robust as tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social, nor is it as customer-centric as a platform like Help Scout, but if you’re ready to move beyond the standard Instagram app, it’ll get the job done.
Price: Free.
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20. Shortstack
Best Instagram tool for social media contests.
A great way to create engagement with your customers on social is through contests and giveaways, but handling the process manually is a lot of work. Shortstack is a tool designed to help creators and businesses host contests on Instagram and other popular social channels.
Shortstack can collect comments on your posts to use as entries, help you view, filter, and moderate submissions, and select winners. The platform has tons of templates for contests, giveaways, and even virtual games to help gamify your data collection process. It can also be used for coupon codes and prize distribution following your campaigns.
The software has three different pricing tiers, each with increasing levels of storage and contest types included. While this might not be a tool that is necessary for every business, if contests are going to be part of your engagement strategy, Shortstack is worth checking out.
Price: Free trial available. Plans start at $79 per month.
21. Hashtag Expert
Best Instagram tool for hashtag optimization.
Hashtag Expert is a hashtag optimization app that can help you generate the right grouping of hashtags to use on your social media posts across all major social platforms including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and X (Twitter).
Aside from generating hashtags, the app can show you what hashtags are trending across each platform and it also lets you save your favorite hashtag groups for later use.
The app is available for iOS devices and via a web app.
Price: Free trial available. Prices for weekly, monthly, and yearly plans can be found in-app.
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Help Scout + Instagram
If you’re looking for a customer communications platform that can help you be everywhere your customers are, Help Scout offers a 15-day free trial and provides all of the resources needed to help you deliver quality customer support.
Alexa Ahrens
Alexa is a Growth Marketing Specialist at Help Scout, where we make excellent customer service achievable for companies of all sizes. Connect with her on LinkedIn.