14 Best Free and Paid IG Tools You Must Try in 2022

This is Instagram's world, and we are living in it! We all are guilty of scrolling our Insta feeds endlessly, and hoping to unravel a new business opportunity.

Indeed Instagram's popularity is booming every minute. But how do you guarantee to stay on top of your audience’s feed? Enter IG tools!

Leverage Instagram for your business like never before with IG tools. Don't know where to start? Here’s the complete breakdown of popular Instagram tools that will help you steer your way.

Instagram Scheduling Tools

Tailwind

The first rule of Instagram is you need to be consistent. Do you think you can manage that without a scheduling tool? Probably not. With a tool like Tailwind, create content, schedule posts at one go, and get them published whenever you want. Get reports on the latest trends, learn more about the insights on your Instagram profile and evaluate your post engagement. You will even get a list of Instagram hashtag recommendations and a Chrome browser extension for re-gramming. Take up the free trial for your next marketing campaign and see it for yourself.

Cons

• Only works for Pinterest and Instagram.

Pricing

The paid plan starts from $9.99/month for about 100 posts a month on one Pinterest and one Instagram account when billed annually.

Iconosquare

Do you feel like your Instagram marketing effort is wasted? Do you want to track performance just to be sure it’s working? Iconosquare is one of the best Instagram analytics tools. You can monitor all your Instagram insights like engagement rate, rise in the number of Instagram followers, the best time to post content according to the algorithm, number of people who unfollowed you, etc., from one platform. You can even get aid for Influencer marketing, the buzzword today for social media platforms. This tool suggests the best influencers for your niche for collaboration to grow your brand. You can even schedule Instagram posts to boost engagement. You will love using this multipurpose tool for strategizing your content for sure.

Cons

• The tool does not separate paid and organic metrics.
• You cannot filter the data ranges easily.

Pricing

The subscription fee starts at $59/month for 3 social media profiles and 2 users. You need to pay an additional $19 per profile for more.

SproutSocial

Do you want to identify your top-performing content pieces at a specific time? Do you want to find Instagram influencers that are showing interest in your Instagram account? Now you can know it all with SproutSocial. The premium analytics feature of this tool will give you access to a fully customized, detailed presentation on all your crucial Instagram metrics. You can track everything from clicks, saves, and replies on your Instagram stories to follower growth, engagement rates, and best hashtags across different posts.

Cons

• Though the dashboard is presentable enough, it can be time-consuming to navigate.
• You might find some bugs in the post-scheduling interface and functionality.

Pricing

The price for the standard account is $99 per user for 5 social profiles.

Instagram Automation Tools

Later

Are you constantly anxious about remembering to post content on different social networks? Use a separate Instagram automation tool like Later for planning and scheduling your Instagram posts to avoid this FOMO. This tool keeps your content strategy more organized by offering you a handy social media calendar. You can upload any media directly from your Google Drive or Dropbox account to this tool. Starting from Instagram carousel and image posts to videos and stories, you can schedule anything literally. Want to monitor the engagement rates of multiple profiles with the same tool? All you need to do is buy their subscription plan.

Cons

• You can sometimes face glitches while uploading media.
• You cannot schedule for more than a few weeks on your content calendar in the free plan.

Pricing

The subscription fee starts at $15 a month for 60 posts per social profile. You can add more users at $5 each.

Buffer

Are you searching for that one tool to schedule your content and manage the engagement on your posts? Your search is over. Buffer is an all-rounder tool with the help of which you can do it all. Using Buffer’s Publish, you can easily create and schedule your posts. And you can respond to all the comments and social media conversations regarding your content with Buffer Reply. This social media management tool is quite user-friendly and perfect for iOS users. You can even repost the content of other Instagram accounts using Buffer.

Cons

• You can only tag and mention limited users with this tool.
• The tool does not handle video files well.

Pricing

The pro plan starts at $15 per month for 8 social media accounts with 100 posts each.

Instagram Analytics Tools

Keyhole

How about analyzing real-time marketing campaign data to improve your content strategy continuously? Whether you are hosting a social media contest or creating a brand campaign, Keyhole gives you the perfect idea of what works with your audience and what does not. Small businesses and agencies use this tool to re-evaluate their Instagram hashtag strategy as it provides every insight related to all sorts of hashtags. This tool is ideal for marketers that want to take their hashtag strategy to the next level.

Cons

• You have to place the trackers at suitable places in the get-go, or it can be difficult for you to set them later.
• The tool can be expensive if you use it for your influencer marketing strategy.

Pricing

You need to pay the standard sum of  $99 per month for the following:

• 2 social listening trackers
• 5 keywords per trackers
• 5000 posts per month
• 5 profile scheduling, publishing, and analytics

Hootsuite

Today, Instagram is flooded with content. Now it’s more important than ever to be consistent on this platform. Hootsuite makes publishing Insta posts so easy that you never even need to think twice about it. With this tool, you can always stay on track with your content strategy. You can also track your target audience's conversations about your brand and pre-draft replies to frequent queries. The analytics reports generated by Hootsuite are easy-to-read, presentable, and professional. The best part is that you can also easily collaborate with your team, allot work to the members, and edit your posts with ease.

Cons

• You can’t preview how your social media post will appear once you post it.
• You can’t track hashtags on your post with this tool.

Pricing

The professional subscription plan starts at $49 per month for 10 social media profiles.

Instagram Stories Tools

Canva

What do you think attracts your target audience to your Instagram posts apart from the content? The simple answer is visuals. You will fall in love with the plethora of Instagram story templates, post graphics, etc., that Canva has to offer. Designing has never been this easy. All you need to do is pick up your favorite template from Canva and customize the text, background, and images as per your preference. You can directly download the app on your android too.

Cons

• Your designs won't be unique since several other people can use the same template.
• Unless you have an online Canva account, you cannot edit, share, or export your design, unlike with Photoshop or Illustrator that let you download the software.

Pricing

The subscription plan starts from $12.95 per month with a scheduling option to 7 social media platforms.

Colorcinch

Revamping your photos and customizing them, you can turn to a refreshingly easy-to-use photo editing tool  -Colorcinch.

Colorcinch is free, you can start editing your photos right away!

Pros

• Comes with a library of stock photos, masks, and overlays as well as a text editor and freehand drawing tools that let you create personalized graphics to suit your every need.
• Hundreds of available AI-powered effects & filters to turn your photos into cartoons, paintings, sketches and make their colors pop!
• Includes stunning photos to make the audience fall in love with your profile and brand.

Cons

Features & effects maybe limited for non-premium users

Pricing
Colorcinch Plus costs $5.99 per month or a discounted price of $47.88 if billed annually. With Colorcinch Plus, you can access all premium effects and features, all graphics and icons, and much more!

Grammarly

Do you want to write better captions for your posts? A tool like Grammarly helps you craft such a well-written and catchy caption, which is quite crucial for your Instagram marketing strategy. Your post captions have a massive influence on the engagement rates on Instagram. It will keep a check on the tone, clarity, conciseness, spellings, etc., of your Instagram captions. Grammarly's AI-powered writing assistant works excellent as a browser-based extension. Creating highly engaging and attractive captions is now easy with Grammarly.

Cons

• The thesaurus doesn't always suggest the best recommendations.
• Since the tool is AI-based, it can often fail to understand the emotions behind a few words.

Pricing

The monthly subscription plan starts at $12.50 per user for professional and vivid checks.

Instagram Editing Tools

Instasize

Instasize helps you nail visual aesthetics and branding. You need to plan everything for your social media marketing strategy, from your content's color palette and graphics to text style and theme. Create a reusable, catchy post template, customize it to the desired theme, and pick the perfect filter for your Instagram feed with Instasize. You can even edit your video content with this tool. If the visual feed of @crumblcookies seems obsess-worthy to you, you can create an even better feed with this tool.

Cons

• The free account has a lot of advertisement pop-ups.
• There is a limited variety of filters in the non-premium account.

Price

The subscription fee starts at $4.99 per month for 100+ premium filters and more.

Smartly

If you want to succeed with your Instagram marketing strategy, you need access to a Smartly-like tool to unlock the next level of performance. Attracting people's attention in today's increasingly competitive content landscape demands insane creativity. Stand out with multiple creative automation features and templates in Smartly. Optimize creatives, budgets, targeting, and bidding. This tool will guide you to profitably scale your social media marketing strategy to achieve all business goals. It’s probably the best ad automation software out there.

Cons

• It’s very expensive.
• The API is not very user-friendly.

Pricing

The estimated fee is €5000 per month.

Animoto

If you still haven't unlocked the power of video content for your Insta marketing strategy, you are losing big time. Animoto gives you access to premade templates and design ideas for your video content. You can either build your storyboard template from scratch or personalize an already existing one with colors, music, text, and even your brand logo. You can even access a beautiful library of Getty Images stock from where you can select your photos and video clips. Be ready to rule the Instagram aesthetics with Animoto.

Cons

• You will not get multiple placement options of texts on videos.
• The templates and editing features are limited.

Pricing

The professional plan starts from $22 per month. You can pay this sum with your credit card.

Instagram Branding Tools

Rebrandly

Are your Instagram stories constantly flooded with swipe-up links? That’s because branded links can drive a 39% higher click-through rate. Rebrandly is an advanced link shortener with which you can create custom short URLs and branded links. This tool offers many useful features like UTM builder, editable destination URL, QR codes, link retargeting, and so much more. You can create so much personal or business account awareness with this tool.

Cons

• The reporting feature of this tool is not the best.
• You cannot edit more than one link at the same time or organize the links into groups.

Pricing

Rebrandly pricing starts at $29 per month for 25000 trackable clicks and 5000 brand links, and 5 custom domain names.

Shortstack

Do you know the best branding strategy on Instagram? It is to host giveaway contests. Shortstack is a  tool to organize user-generated content (UGC) contests. You can host a contest where participants have to post any particular picture with your brand hashtags. This tool will then help you run this contest by collecting and displaying user-generated content. Can you imagine the ways in which this can boost your brand outreach? It is one of the IG tools that you can’t ignore.

Cons

• Small businesses can find this tool a bit too costly.
• It requires a lot of time to get used to the interface.

Pricing

The business account starts at $99 per month for 10000 entries and 50,000 views.

Conclusion

Instagram marketing is not a piece of cake. You require a lot of skills and a set of handpicked tools to create and execute a perfect marketing strategy. Be it designing, scheduling, social listening capabilities, hashtags, or Instagram giveaways; numerous tools can help you.

This list covers multipurpose tools, so you cover 360 aspects of Instagram marketing. Now that you know about the best tools and their functions, buy the tools that suit your business needs.