10 Community Management Tools You Should Be Using in 2023

From powerful moderation tools to seamless member engagement features, discover the best community management platforms that are revolutionizing the way brands and organizations engage with their audience. These platforms offer a suite of functionalities designed to nurture thriving online communities.

In this article, find out why you need these game-changing platforms to build meaningful connections, foster brand loyalty, and unleash the true potential of your community.

Let's dive in and unlock the secrets to successful community management!

What is a Community Management Software Solution?

A community management software solution is a tool designed to build, manage, and administer online communities.

It provides a range of features and functionalities, including:

• Member onboarding
• Content moderation
• Analytics and reporting
• Communication tools
• User segmentation
• Unified social inbox management
• Integration with other platforms

What to Look for in a Community Management Software Solution

The primary goal of community management software is to streamline community operations, enhance member experiences, and enable community managers to efficiently oversee and grow their online communities.

Here’s what to look for in a community management software tool:

• A unified social inbox that lets you view and respond to messages across social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, and YouTube
• Content and user interactions moderation features including automated filters, user reporting, and moderation queues
• Automated replies setup for answering common queries and providing basic resolutions faster
• Member engagement features to encourage member participation and interaction such as discussion forums, polls, private messaging, and gamification elements
• Content scheduling and publishing features for Facebook, Instagram (posts, Reels, and Stories), LinkedIn, Twitter threads, Pinterest, and TikTok
• Social listening and sentiment analysis features to monitor online brand mentions and reviews, and resolve PR issues before they blow up
• Collaborative spaces for your community managers to work together and manage conversations and user interactions

Along with these factors, you should also ensure that the community management platform you choose is easy to use, offers data analytics, integrates with your existing systems, and provides ample support documentation and services.

With these factors in mind, you can choose a community management software solution that helps you effectively manage and nurture your online community.

The List of 10 Best Community Management Software Tools

I’ve handpicked 10 of the best community management tools that can help you grow and manage your online community with ease. Check them out!

1. NapoleanCat – The Best Community Management Tool for Customer Response Tracking

NapoleanCat is the best tool to engage and support your customers on social media. It helps you build a community of people who love your brand by addressing customers’ concerns and providing support.

You can track and reply to messages, reviews, and comments on all social platforms in one place – NapoleanCat’s Social Inbox. This includes conversations on:

• Facebook (organic posts and ads)
• Instagram (organic posts and ads)
• TikTok
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Google My Business

This tool automates some of the customer communication that frees up your team’s time in community management. You can use it to give automated replies to simple questions like delivery times and automatically redirect concerning issues to designated customer service officers.

If you manage 3 social accounts and respond to about 11-50 interactions per day, you can save about 43 hours/month by using NapoleanCat.

Let me give you an overview of its other features.

Key Features

• Social Inbox that helps manage all the comments, messages, and reviews in one place
• Automated replies to simple and repetitive questions
• Content moderation for your Facebook and Instagram ads, IG DMs, Google reviews, and customer service tickets
• Shared social media calendar to delegate and approve posts
• Ability to schedule and publish posts across social media accounts
• Ability to schedule and publish the first comment for your Instagram posts
• Location and people tagging on Instagram
• Ability to monitor your content’s performance and engagement levels
• Automated audience insights
• Analyzing your competitors’ social channels
• Regular automated reports about your social media performance

Pricing

• A 14-day free trial
• Standard plan: $31/month for 3 social profiles, 1 user
• Pro plan: $76/month for 3 social profiles, 1 user
• Custom plan: Starts from $465/month
• Cost varies when you increase the number of social profiles or users
• Upgrade or downgrade any time

2. Hootsuite – Social Media Community Management Platform

A list of the best community management tools, won't be complete without Hootsuite. It’s one of the most popular and comprehensive social media tools out there.

You can leverage Hootsuite to schedule and publish an unlimited number of posts on major social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok.

Additionally, it helps you bridge the gap between your social media and customer service teams. You can respond to users’ messages and mentions from a unified Hootsuite Inbox.

Hootsuite offers a variety of collaboration features, allowing community managers to work together with customer service team members, assign tasks, and maintain a cohesive approach to social community management.

It makes it easy to engage with your customers on social media and analyze the performance of your social strategy.

Key Features

• Scheduling and publishing content on major social media platforms
• Inbox that helps community managers respond to comments and messages across social networks (including comments on Facebook ads)
• Auto-responses and saved replies to cut response times
• AI-powered caption maker
• Social media content calendar
• Hashtag generator
• Real-time audience insights
• Insights into the best times to post
• Social media monitoring
• Detailed social media marketing analytics

Pricing

• A 30-day free trial
• Professional plan: $99/month for 1 user, 10 social accounts
• Team plan: $249/month for 3 users, 20 social accounts
• Business plan: $739/month for 5 users, 35 social accounts
• Enterprise plan: Custom pricing that starts at 5 users, 50 social accounts

Pro tip: Route messages to appropriate team members by connecting this social media management tool with a CRM and delivering better engagement and service.

3. Buffer – Social Media Community Management Software Solution

Buffer is considered as one of the best social media management tools out there. It helps with a wide range of tasks such as scheduling posts and engaging with your audience.

This tool also gives you detailed analytics about the performance of all your posts and helps you understand the impact of your content on social media.

I use Buffer to manage my content schedule for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, all in one place.

Along with social media profiles, you can also manage a Start Page — a custom landing where you can showcase things that matter to your audience and brand — using Buffer.

This platform makes it easy for your team to identify important comments related to sales or customer unhappiness with its machine-learning-powered alerts. This helps you cut down your response time.

You can also get a grid view of posts with unanswered comments.

Key Features

• Ability to schedule and publish posts for multiple social media platforms in one go, including Instagram Reels and carousels
• Posting schedule setup to release your content on specific days of the week
• Detailed analytics reports
• Ability to create performance reports
• Team members can engage with comments on your posts
• Instagram Stories scheduling option (NEW)
• Twitter threads scheduling (NEW)
• Integrates seamlessly with content tools like Canva, OneDrive, and Google Drive to help you manage your media assets quickly

Pricing

• Free version – only allows up to 3 channels, 30 posts scheduling
• A 14-day free trial for all paid plans
• Essentials plan: $6/month/channel, 1 user, unlimited posts
• Team plan: $12/month/channel, unlimited users and posts

Pro Tip: You can include a first comment while scheduling your Instagram posts to increase engagement.

4. Combin – The Best Community Management System for Instagram Growth

Combin is a powerful community management tool that’s specifically designed for those looking to grow their presence on Instagram. This tool has two main sub-products — Growth and Scheduler.

While Combin Growth deals with Instagram audience management and growth, Combin Scheduler lets you schedule Instagram posts and Stories.

You can even leave multiple Instagram comments with different text in batches to automate repetitive actions and faster your response times. For this, you’ll need to upgrade to their Business plan.

In addition, Combin has also introduced InstaCheck, which helps audit your Instagram profile and identify areas for improvement.

You can get personalized tips for growth related to your aesthetics, tone, content ideas, captions, hashtags, overall profile management, and account engagement. These insights will help improve the quality of your Instagram content calendar as well.

Key Features

• Instagram posts and Stories scheduling
• Bulk Stories uploading and automated publishing
• Instagram Reposts
• User tagging and location tagging
• In-depth IG growth and performance statistics
• Advanced search for profiles and publications using hashtags, locations, and users
• Instagram influencers discovery using advanced filters
• Detailed demographic targeting by gender, language, and audience size
• Ability to identify low-quality accounts through machine learning user analysis
• Audience management – see who doesn’t follow you back, protect important accounts from accidental unfollowing, and more
• Repetitive actions automation like bulk follow, like, comment, and unfollow through comment templates for different purposes
• Automatic Instagram Stories mass viewing to attract people to your account

Pricing

• Combin Scheduler is free to use for up to 15 Instagram accounts.
• Combin Growth plans:
  • Starter plan: Free for 1 Instagram account
  • Personal plan: $15/month for 1 Instagram account, unlimited usage
  • Business plan: $30/month, 5 IG accounts (+10 add-ons on purchase), unlimited usage
• Combin InstaCheck plans:
  • Personal plan: $199 for an actionable PDF report
  • Business plan: $299 for an actionable PDF report and a 30-minute Skype consultation

Pro Tip: Look for popular posts by following hashtags and discover influencers in your niche with Combin.

5. Qoob Stories & Qoob Clips – Instagram & TikTok Content Tool for Community Managers

For Instagram Stories, nothing beats the social media management functions of Qoob Stories. This community management tool is specifically designed for Stories and it lets you mass view and save Stories from public accounts on Instagram.

You can also save Highlights, photos, and videos using this tool. It lets you add some Instagram accounts to your favorites and the platform automatically downloads their latest posts and Stories for you.

Qoob Stories also lets you save Stories based on hashtags and locations, other than users.

You can also download your Saved posts and collections for ideas and references.

Qoob Clips helps you view and download content from TikTok, including videos (with captions), hashtags, and accounts. You can download videos by a specific user (even from private accounts) or videos with specific music.

You can also back up your TikTok account.

Key Features

• Ability to view and save Instagram Stories
• Instagram photos and videos downloading (with captions)
• TikTok videos (with captions) downloading
• Automatic content downloads from specific accounts, hashtags, and locations on IG
• Automatic TikTok videos downloading from specific users and the ones using specific music
• Anonymous IG Stories viewing (even private Stories of friends)
• Private TikTok accounts content viewing

Pricing

• Qoob Stories plans:
  • Starter plan: Free for 200 daily photos and videos downloads
  • Personal plan: $7/month for unlimited photos & videos downloading
  • Professional plan: $25/month for unlimited photos & videos downloading
• Qoob Clips plans:
  • Starter plan: Free for 50 daily media downloads
  • Personal plan: $10/month for 500 daily media downloads
  • Professional plan: $30/month for an unlimited number of daily media downloads

Pro Tip: Add your favorite accounts to download their posts and Stories automatically.

6. LALAL.AI – AI-Powered Audio Tool for Social Community Managers

LALAL.AI is a powerful AI-powered audio tool that helps you extract music and vocals from any audio clip. This comes handy when adding music to your social media posts, videos, and Stories.

All you have to do is upload your files, separate the music from the vocals, and you’ll get an instrumental track to add to your content.

Key Features

• AI-powered vocals and instrumentals splitting
• Ability to select processing levels
• Quick processing of audio files
• Standard and high volume selections

Pricing

• Standard volume plans:
  • Lite pack: $15 one-time fee for 90 minutes
  • Plus pack: $50 one-time fee for 300 minutes
  • Pro pack: $70 one-time fee for 550 minutes
• High volume plans:
  • Master plan: $100 one-time fee for 1000 minutes
  • Premium plan: $200 one-time fee for 3000 minutes
  • Enterprise plan: $300 one-time fee for 5000 minutes

Pro Tip: Select high-quality processing for the best results from LALAL.AI. High-quality audio files help increase your social posts and Stories engagement.

7. Agorapulse – The Ultimate Community Management Software for Teams & Agencies

Social media community management can be a challenging task. But with Agorapulse, you can do everything from one place – publishing, reporting, monitoring, managing inboxes, and team collaboration.

Its unified social inbox helps community managers view and respond to messages, comments, and reviews across social media accounts.

You can also create and use saved replies to cut down response times and also assign specific messages to team members (based on their department/knowledge).

The best part about this online community management platform is its team collaboration features. You can assign tasks and actions to specific team members, seek approvals, and organize your data all through a single dashboard.

Agorapulse also lets you see the response times for individual team members to evaluate their efficiency.

You can merge data from Agorapulse and Google Analytics (GA4) to get detailed performance insights.

Key Features

• Unified social inbox to manage messages, comments, and reviews across social media accounts
• Convenient scheduling and publishing of social media posts, Reels, and Stories
• Unique keyword-based social listening
• Efficient competitor tracking
• Instant addition of UTM tracking codes when posting links in your replies and messages
• Efficient inbox filters
• Automatic saved replies for faster communication
• Easy to reply to comments on Instagram and Facebook Ads
• Detailed analytics and ability to make reports
• Powerful audience insights
• Convenient to create and share social content calendars with clients
• Easy team collaboration and task assignment
• Convenient Asset Library to organize your content into folders and labels

Pricing

• A 30-day free trial
• Standard plan: $69/user/month, 10 social profiles
• Professional plan: $99/user/month, 10 social profiles
• Advanced plan:$149/user/month, 10 social profiles
• $15/month per additional social profile with all three plans
• Custom plan: Request a custom quote from their team based on your specific needs.

8. Brand24 – Community Management Tool for Building a Solid Reputation

For community managers, it always helps to have an ear to the ground. You may be publishing stellar content and engaging with your audience regularly, but you must understand if your community members truly like your content and brand or not.

That’s where Brand24 comes to the rescue.

This reputation management tool offers social listening features that show you what your community members are saying about your brand.

You can track mentions not only from social media platforms but also from online forums, podcasts, Reddit, TripAdvisor, and more.

It lets you filter mentions by their sentiment analysis. This helps you respond to negative comments on priority and saves your brand from a PR crisis.

Key Features

• Efficient social media mentions tracking
• Advanced AI-powered sentiment analysis to categorize mentions with positive, negative, or neutral emotions
• Efficient hashtag tracking – reach and volume of posts
• Dynamic engagement tracking – likes, comments, and shares
• Instant alerts in email and apps about negative mentions and a sudden hike in the number of mentions

Pricing

• A 14-day free trial
• Individual plan: $79/month, 3 keywords tracking
• Team plan: $149/month, 7 keywords tracking
• Pro plan: $199/month, 12 keywords tracking
• Enterprise plan: $399/month, 25 keywords tracking

9. Sprout Social – The Best Social Monitoring & Community Management Software for Commerce

Sprout Social is a comprehensive community management software that helps you effectively manage and engage with your online communities.

It offers a range of features and tools designed to streamline social media management, enhance customer interactions, and drive meaningful engagement.

You can manage all your media assets, use them for your social posts, and add product tags and links right from the Sprout Social dashboard. It lets you plan and schedule your posts for auto-publishing at optimal send times.

Your team can work together to handle leads, reviews, and generic messages efficiently using the Sprout Social dashboard.

Key Features

• Unified inbox for all your messages
• Automated replies to speed up responses
• Able to schedule posts for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and more
• Efficient social media calendar view to plan your content for different platforms
• Optimal send times functionality
• Centralized system for seamless team collaboration
• Dynamic review management across app stores, Google, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Yelp, and more
• Prompt message spike alert
• Efficient message sorting and labeling

Pricing

• A 30-day free trial
• Standard plan: $249 per month, 5 social profiles
• Professional plan: $399 per month, unlimited social profiles
• Advanced plan: $499 per month
• Enterprise plan: Custom quote based on your business requirements

10. Khoros – Community Management Tool for Content Moderation

Khoros is a full-fledged digital customer engagement platform that helps you deliver seamless experiences to your customers. From social media publishing and social listening, to AI-powered self-service and online community management, it lets you do it all.

With Khoros, you can build communities to help customers find answers, connect with like-minded peers, and foster the exchange of fresh ideas.

This community management platform makes content moderation easy. You can set specific criteria, like first-time posts by a new user or posts with a specific context, and the platform will move it to your “moderation required” list automatically.

You can also track your brand mentions and conversations around specific keywords (related to your products or services). This helps you analyze the overall customer sentiment around your brand and resolve PR issues before they blow up.

Key Features

• Offering workflows for chat, messaging, SMS, social/reviews, community, email, and voice
• Hosting authentic conversations
• Building online communities for customer interaction and engagement
• Providing real-time analytics and advanced content moderation tools
• Publishing social posts across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more
• Building a self-service knowledge hub to help customers find answers to common questions using your platform or interacting with your business
• Integrating with Slack and Zoom for ease of communication
• Building chatbots without coding
• Providing unified analytics to learn about your customer journey

Pricing

• Pricing details for Khoros are not available on their website. Please get in touch with their sales team to get a quote.

Read my full review of Khoros to learn more about its features and use cases.

A Comparison of the 10 Best Community Management Software Platforms

I’ll now compare the pricing and top features of each community management platform on the list, empowering you to make an informed decision.

Whether you're looking for advanced moderation tools, robust member engagement features, or seamless integrations, this table will provide you with a clear overview of the top platforms in the market.

Get the Best Community Management Platform

Community management platforms have become essential tools for businesses looking to effectively engage and nurture their online communities.

These platforms provide a range of features and capabilities that can help you:

• Streamline community management.
• Respond to messages, comments, and reviews.
• Moderate user-generated content.
• Facilitate discussions and foster meaningful interactions.
• Enhance customer engagement.
• Provide self-service support.
• Align your social media and customer support systems.

In all, you can build and manage thriving online communities using these software solutions.

However, it's important to choose the right community management platform that aligns with your specific needs and goals. Consider factors such as moderation capabilities, social media integration, and analytics and reporting features before selecting the right tool for your business.