10 Must-Have Instagram Marketing Tools for Growth in 2025

Instagram is now the best platform to grow your business and reach your target audience. Most businesses have an Instagram account these days. However, just having an account won’t help you with growing your business. It will take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to market your business on Instagram. 

There is so much you have to do to market yourself properly. You have got to start with creating engaging content in the form of videos, photos, stories, polls, etc. Instagram live streams in content strategy play an important role too. You can also host contests. Finally, to make sure all your efforts are going well, you have to monitor your campaign and analyze the outcomes to make changes to the strategy. 

Doing all this on your own can become very tedious. Don’t sweat it. There are many Instagram marketing tools available in the market that you can use to automate or simplify all your marketing tasks. 

But with so many tools available, choosing the right one becomes difficult. There are a few types of tools that you will require for your Instagram marketing strategy, and they are: 

1. Instagram Scheduling tool 
2. Monitoring tools 
3. Designing tools 
4. Hashtag Generator 
5. Instagram ad/ campaign manager
6. Analytical tools 
7. Contest Management tools 
8. All in ones 

As you read further, you will learn why you need these tools and the best options available today. We also discuss the pros and cons of each tool. 

10 Best Instagram Marketing Tools

Instagram Scheduling Tools

Instagram posts are something you should plan in advance. The date, time, design, and caption, everything should be ready at least a week before the post goes live. To effectively manage this, automating the process is the easiest solution. There are many scheduling tools in the market that you can use, here are our top recommendations. We have included one expensive software and one that is within budget. 

#1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management tools. It lets you schedule your posts, see social media analytics and manage your posts based on the analytical report. If your business has a presence on more than one social media platform, you can manage them all at the same time with Hootsuite. For example, you want to post about your new launch at 3 pm next week. You can use this app to set the time, date, image and its caption. At 3 pm your post will be posted on Instagram, Facebook, and any other social media platform that you use. The software is perfect for small and medium-sized businesses. 

Pros: 

• Saves your time as you get to manage all social media on one dashboard
• Team features 
• Third-party integration
• Monitor the performance of your posts
• Refreshes every 15 minutes to update any changes you made to the posts on the software.
• Free trial for 30 days 

Cons 

• It is very expensive. 
• Customer service is a bit lousy, query resolution is slow
• Free plan has very minimal features

Plans: 

• Free: $0 per month
• Professional: $49 per month
• Team: 129 per month
• Business: $739 per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

#2. Apphi 

For individuals and small businesses on a budget, you can use Apphi for Instagram scheduling. It also allows you to predesign and auto post on FB and LinkedIn along with Instagram. It has an easy user interface and can be used by absolute beginners as well. It doesn’t have other features like analytics and third-party integrations, but it does what it says, ie, scheduling and auto-posting your images with their caption. It also has a hashtag list and AI feature that makes sure you don’t use the same caption continuously. 

Pros: 

• It is cheap so anyone can afford it 
• Has a beginner-friendly interface (drag and drop)
• Team features
• Bulk scheduling

Cons: 

• No third party integration
• Customer support isn’t very impressive, you can expect delays in resolving queries. 

Plans: 

• Free: $0 per month 
• Plus: $13 per month
• Pro: $30 per month
• Team: $60 per month
• Business: $100 per month

Other alternatives for Instagram scheduling tools: Hopper HQ, Sprout Social 

Instagram Monitoring Tools

You will also need monitoring devices as your business on Instagram starts to grow. The most important part of branding is to achieve a favorable image of yourself in the minds of people. That is how brands are formed. Therefore you need to constantly keep checking what others are saying about you. Monitoring tools help you monitor what people are saying about you. For example, someone wears your accessories and posts a story on Instagram tagging you. You can add this story to your profile to make people aware that an influencer wore your piece. 

#3. Brand24

Brand24 is a fantastic tool that lets you monitor what people are saying about you on Instagram, FB, LinkedIn, Twitter, news, blogs, and other platforms on the internet. It is not an app made specifically for Instagram but you can easily monitor your public image on Instagram with this tool. 

It gives you alerts and notifications of any activity related to your brand so that you are available on time to rectify any misunderstanding anyone communicates on social platforms. It also has a “volume chart” that helps you track the size of your buzz in the media. If it suddenly escalates or drops you can take appropriate action to keep it steady. Other features include mention analytics, sentiment analysis, and scoring the influencers in your industry. The monitoring is based on the keywords that you select for your brand. Based on the plan you select you will be able to use anywhere between 3 to 25 keywords. 

Pros: 

• Excellent customer service. Fast query resolution and replies. 
• Monitor both positive and negative impressions of your brand 
• Real-time monitoring 
• Notifications and alerts 

Cons:

• It may not be affordable for businesses in the initial stage and individuals 
• Compatible with only a few third-party tools 

Plans: 

• Individual: $49 per month 
• Team: $99 per month 
• Pro: $149 per month 
• Enterprise: $249 per month 

Alternatives for monitoring tools: Meltwater, Awario, Influence, Brandwatch

Instagram Designing Tools

Instagram is a platform where you have to make your feed visually appealing. Therefore, designing plays a really important role in this. There are many tools in the market that are not as complex as adobe illustrator but can help you design aesthetic posts that will be loved by your audience. 

#4. Canva 

Canva is one of the most popular tools for designing graphics. There are a lot of free and paid templates that you can choose from. You just have to add your brand colors to it and you are done. Alternatively, if you want, you can make posts from scratch using different elements that the software provides. You can add filters, different graphics, and many other things to make your posts visually interesting. Its workplace is very easy to use, so beginners won’t have any issues. You can add your own photos and videos or use the stock photos available on the app itself. 

Pros:

• Paid version gives you access to around  75+ million photos & videos & 420,000+ templates 
• Simple drag and drop interface 
• Multiple export options 
• Cloud storage 
• Collaboration features

Cons: 

• Designing on mobile app becomes difficult. On the desktop, it works perfectly well. 
• After printing, the colors might look a bit different. It does not have a CMYK selection option. 

Plans 

• Free: $0 per month 
• Pro: $12.99 per month 
• Enterprise: 

*Canva Pro- free for registered non-profit organizations*

#5. Unfold

Unfold is a fantastic tool to develop and upload high-quality videos and images on Instagram stories. It has over 400+ templates to choose from. Other than the templates you can also add cool stickers and use fancy fonts to design your stories. While branding you need consistency in your designs and colors. The software lets you prepare a brand kit to store your assets. Apart from this, you can also design your “Bio Site URL” and use the feed planner to plan your posts ahead of time. It also has amazing photo editing tools. 

Pros:

• Upload stories in high-quality 
• You can prepare a brand kit 
• Easy user interface 

Cons: 

• If you compare it to Canva ( because their price is the same) it has far fewer options when it comes to templates and graphic elements. However, it comes with additional features like a feed planner. 
• Is more suitable for Instagram stories only. 

Plans:

• Free: $0 per month 
• Unfold Pro: $12.99 per month 

Other alternatives for designing tools: Buffer, Snapseed, Adobe Spark, PicsArt

Instagram Hashtag Generator

Hashtags are very important on social media. Using hashtags you can reach people of the same niche and also run contests. For example, if your brand sells monthly planners. You can use the most famous hashtags related to planners in the caption/ first comment of your post. What will it do? If I want to buy a monthly planner, I’ll search on Instagram #monthlyplanners. If your post has this hashtag, I’ll be able to find you. This is how hashtags help in increasing reach. But how will you find the most appropriate and trending hashtags? You can do it on your own if you have time, otherwise, you can use this tool. 

#6. HashTagsForLikes

This tool will make your hashtag research very simple. It will suggest sets of hashtags that are relevant to your post and are also very trending. It also has analytical features to analyze the performance of your hashtag. You can even track the results of your posts on this app. If one hashtag set is working well for you, you can save it to use it again. 

Free tip: As a rule of thumb in Instagram marketing don’t go overboard with hashtags and don’t repeat the same set of hashtags in every post. Also please choose relevant hashtags only. 

Pros: 

• You get all the trending hashtags in your niche (for premium users only)
• Analytical reports 
• Saves you a lot of time, as without a tool you will have to do a lot of trial and error to find hashtags that work
• Simple to use

Cons:

• It is very expensive considering, that it only provides you with hashtags and has no additional features like content curations and auto post 

Plans: 

• Regular: $19 per week 
• Pro: $25 per week 

Alternative for Hashtags generators: All Hashtag, Ritetag, Hashtagify

Instagram Ads Manager/ Campaign Manager

Instagram ads are one of the fastest ways to bring more traffic to your website and boost sales. You can run multiple ad campaigns to bring more people to your website. You can advertise about a sale, new launches, a giveaway, or simply an advertisement to make people follow you and know you. 

#7. Mailchimp 

Mailchimp is a well-known tool that is used for email marketing, however, it works amazingly well for Instagram ad campaigns. It is an all-in-one tool for Instagram ads. You can create ads using the templates, upload them, pay for them, analyze the results, and much more. It also helps you find your target audience and reach them at the right time. It can give you magnificent results, provided you define your target audience well. You can use this same software for your Facebook ads and email marketing as well. 

Pros: 

• All in one tool for Instagram ads
• Analytical reports 
• Reach your target audience
• Easy user interface

Cons: 

• The templates aren’t very impressive. You would rather design it on your own. 

Plans: 

• Free: $0 per month 
• Essentials: $0 per month 
• Standard: $14.99 per month 
• Premium: $299 per month 

Alternatives to ad/ campaign management tools: Instagram’s ad manager 

Instagram Analytical/ Research Tools 

Analytical tools are extremely important if you want to grow your business. They are great to conduct ongoing research, to see how well or bad your Instagram posts are performing, get data on the demographics of your audience, and more. Instagram has its own analytics reports but you can do much more with good software. 

#8. Iconosquare

Reading analytical reports can be really confusing for beginners. Iconosquare makes reading analytical reports easy for you. It uses fun illustrations and easy-to-understand graphs that will make your job easier. It can help you track the performance of your current and past posts. You can club similar posts in a folder to see how such types of posts work for you. You even get separate reports on the organic reach and the paid promotion reach. It can also help you compare your performance to other companies in the same industry so know how far you are in the race. It also has monitoring and publishing features. 

Pros:

• Easy to read analytical reports 
• Compare your results with other companies in your industry
• 30-day free trial 

Cons:

• People sometimes experience glitches while trying to use the platform
• The mobile app is not as good as desktop 

Plans 

• Pro: $49 per month 
• Advance: $79 per month 
• Enterprise: Custom pricing 

Alternatives for analytical tools: Instagram Insights, Brandwatch, Sprout social 

Contest Management Tools 

As a business or an individual trying to grow followers on Instagram, hosting multiple contests is the most preferred marketing strategy. Giveaways are so popular on Instagram and we all love participating in one to get something for free. However, hosting giveaways is not easy. You get thousands of entries, sometimes multiple entries and there are a lot of other things that you have to manage. A contest management tool can help you out. 

#9. SweepWidget

This tool will make running contests, giveaways, and sweepstakes on Instagram 100 times easier. For example, you want to run a giveaway and the method of registering is reposting your post. Now you can set your registration method on the software and the software will enter the number of people who reposted your post. If you have multiple steps for registration like following, reposting, and tagging a friend, you can simply select these options are you are done. It also lets you design contest posts. You can change the settings if you allow multiple entries. Basically, collecting information about the participants becomes easier. You can run contests using this software on your email, website, Twitter, and other media platforms as well. The software will also declare random winners to keep the contest fair. 

Pros 

• You are ready to run a campaign within a few minutes.
• User-friendly interface 
• Supports more than 90 registration methods 
• Widgets that work well on mobile devices as well
• Analytical and tracking features 
• The contest can be scheduled as well

Cons

• Customer support is rather slow. 

Plans: 

• Free: $0 per month 
• Pro: $29 per month
• Business: $49 per month 
• Premium : $99 per month
• Enterprise: $249 per month

Alternatives for contest management tools: Rafflepress, Woorise

All in ones 

Finally, we are recommending an “all in one” tool. These tools come in really handy as you don’t have to switch between multiple software to carry out different tasks. You may not find features of every tool that we discussed here, but certainly the important ones. 

#10. Brandwatch

This is a one-stop-shop for all your major Instagram marketing needs. It has features that can help you develop fantastic content, allow you to conduct customer research to plan your strategy, monitor the performance of your campaigns and posts, and engage with your audience. It also has amazing artificial intelligence that helps you track new trends related to your industry. If you have a whole team that works with you, you can easily collaborate on this software. It also has threat management features that gives you alerts way before a threat to your brand might occur. 

Pros: 

• Easy to use 
• Has team features 
• Does most of the things you need for Instagram marketing 

Cons: 

• Does not suggest hashtags 
• Has no tools to run contests 

Plans: 

• Custom pricing: You will have to discuss how you are going to use it with their team and then decide on the price
• Essential plan: $108 per month ( for small businesses)

Alternatives for all in one tool: Sprout Social, Plann, Hootsuite

Which Tool Should I Select For My Business? 

Which tool you should choose for your business completely depends on your needs and budget. You don’t have to purchase every type of tool mentioned in this article. Analyze what you need. We suggest that you have a good analytics tool in any case. Analytics are extremely important for marketing. If your business is finally getting noticed on Instagram and you are ready to do some contests to grow your reach, you can then choose to buy an Ad management tool and content management tool. There are also many free alternatives to these tools. If you are a small-scale business or an individual you might consider trying our free tools first if you are on a tight budget. 

Recap 

• Instagram marketing has become very crucial to all businesses. 
• There are many tasks involved in Instagram marketing and all of them take up a lot of time. 
• Technology has blessed us with some excellent tools that will simplify all the tasks for you. However, in this ocean of digital marketing tools, it is difficult to choose the right tools. 
• Following are the 10 best Instagram marketing tools that you might need for your business.

Instagram Scheduling tool

• 1. Hootsuite 
• 2. Apphi 

Monitoring tools 

• 3. Brand24

Designing tools 

• 4. Canva 
• 5. Unfold 

Hashtag Generator 

• 6. HashTagsForLikes 

Instagram ad/ campaign manager

• 7. Mailchimp 

Analytical tools 

• 8. Iconosquare

Contest Management tools 

• 9. SweepWidget

All in ones 

• 10. Brandwatch

How to decide which tool you need?

You can decide that based on your need and your marketing budget. 

Conclusion

Take your Instagram marketing game from zero to a hundred with the help of a robust marketing strategy and these fantastic tools to support your plan. Instagram marketing sounds easy, but it is not. Kudos to you for continuously trying different strategies, successful marketing campaigns are all about trial and error. We think if you take the help of these tools you might be able to speed up a few things and properly manage and analyze your efforts.