While I believe real-time posting on Instagram is best, I couldn’t make it through the week without the help of a scheduling tool. Scheduling posts ensures that I never “miss” an important deadline or post due to internet access and activity. It keeps me active and it forces me to be more deliberate about what I post. I currently schedule about 40% of my Instagram posts.

I get a lot of questions about how to schedule Instagram posts and I thought I would share my experience with scheduling over the past year.

Scheduling Instagram Posts with Posts

The primary tool I use for scheduling Instagram posts is a service called Postso.com. I have used it with success for more than a year and in that time period the service has only missed one scheduled post.

One of the reasons that I LOVE Posts is that it’s a true scheduling service. Where most Instagram “scheduling tools” are more like a glorified push notification reminder, Posts actually uploads the post to your account. It’s like magic!

Here’s where I provide a brief “use at your own risk.” I’ve read some concerns regarding Posts compliance with Instagram’s terms of use. The terms say, “Use the Instagram APIs to post automated content to Instagram, including likes and comments that were not initiated and entered by an Instagram user” is against policy. Since I am initiating and entering the content and as I haven’t encountered issues, I feel comfortable enough to continue use. 

Using the service is easy. Upon logging in you have the option to add or view posts. Let’s look at how simple it is to add a post.

The interface is easy to use – upload photo, text, date and time. Click Post Now (or if it’s meant for the future Schedule).

Once the post is scheduled, navigate to the “view posts” page to check on scheduled uploads. Here you can see two posts that I’ve uploaded for posting.

The cost to use this service is $14.95 for the first channel, $24.95 for up to 10 handles. You can also use Posts for scheduling Pinterest and Twitter, though I don’t use it for either of those services.

* It’s not a good idea to purchase the more expensive service and “share” with others. Not only is the safety of your Instagram at risk, but the service isn’t stable when being logged into from multiple locations. The result could be missed posts, or even worse, loosing your Instagram account due to suspicious activity.

Other Instagram scheduling services

There are other Instagram scheduling services on the market. I have tested several.

ScheduGram has some additional functionality (bulk uploads) and is reliable, but it also comes at a greater price. The service runs $20 a month for users who have under 10K followers and increases incrementally.

I didn’t feel like the additional functionality was worth the increase in price I would have had to pay. In addition, I am always looking to grow my following and don’t want to face additional fees or a change in service in the future.

Latergramme allows you to schedule from your desktop or an iOS app. I love that it has a highly functional app and you can’t beat the price – free up to 30 posts a month – but, the service isn’t completely automated. You still have to push the image to your feed live.

Latergramme ends up functioning more as an editorial calendar for your Instagram feed more than anything else.

Hootsuite also allows you to schedule from your desktop. However, this service is not completely automated. You still have to push a few buttons to push your post live.

I love Hootsuite’s scheduling features for Facebook and Twitter. If this was a truly automated process it would be an absolute no brainer to utilize this program. You’d be able to track all aspects of a social media campaign from one place.

Followers on Instagram don’t expect you to be on the app all of the time, but they do expect you to post consistently. Utilizing scheduling tools are great for content promotion and fixed features, leaving you time to develop posts “in the moment.”