15 Expert-Approved Instagram Tools For 2026

With half of all adults in the United States using Instagram, there’s a good chance your current (or future) customers are on the social media platform. Reaching them requires a thorough Instagram marketing strategy that can include paid ads, affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, and user-generated content (UGC)—not to mention a steady stream of engaging organic posts. 

Here, social media experts weigh in on the tools they use to improve their workflows and create top-notch content. From video-editing software to affiliate marketing platforms, here are the 15 best Instagram tools.

Instagram tools for design

Instagram is a highly visual platform, and the perfect place to solidify your visual brand identity by posting images that consistently feature your brand colors, typography, and signature photography style. Over the long run, doing this can boost brand recognition.

But capturing photos with your camera (or smartphone) and uploading them straight to Instagram might not cut it. A handful of editing tools can help you fine-tune your images. Many also offer creative tools for adding graphics and text to your photos.

Canva

“Canva is really helpful for static posts,” says Jaclyn VanSloten, growth strategy expert and founder of marketing firm Femra Consulting. Canva is a design tool with a drag-and-drop editor, perhaps best known for its vast library of templates for materials like flyers and invitations, many of which are free. 

Canva is also helpful for adding text and graphic assets to static images and videos. For example, Canva makes it easy to add your logo to an Instagram Story or add a text overlay to a photo. “A creative asset tool is usually really helpful,” says Jaclyn.

The platform also has an AI image generator that lets you add AI-designed graphics to your content. 

Pricing: Free with pay-per-use premium templates and graphics; $15 per month for access to premium templates and AI tools; $20 per month minimum for collaboration tools designed for teams; Enterprise pricing upon request.

G2 ⭐️ rating: 4.7

Adobe Lightroom

Ethan Barber, a content creator and photographer who captures scenes of New York City, uses Adobe Lightroom to edit the photos he posts to his popular Instagram account. Like other popular photo editing tools, Lightroom offers filter presets that stylize photos. Ethan also sells custom Lightroom presets on his ecommerce website.

Lightroom is an in-depth photo editor. It lets you polish portraits and remove dust specks from your camera’s sensor, among other features that enhance the smallest details of your images. Lightroom also offers AI tools, such as assisted culling, which help you select the best photos from your camera roll. 

Pricing: Seven-day free trial; $11.99 per month for access to Lightroom alone; $19.99 per month for Lightroom and Photoshop; $69.99 per month for access to the Adobe Creative Cloud suite.

G2 ⭐️ rating: 4.6

Instagram tools for video editing

A good video-editing software helps you turn casual videos into professional-quality Instagram posts. You can share these videos on your Instagram Stories or include them on your regular feed as Reels, which are increasingly popular on Instagram. According to parent company Meta, Instagram users spend 50% of their time on the app watching Reels. 

Reels can also help your Instagram content get picked up by the Instagram algorithm. Ethan Barber remembers when his first few Reels blew up in the summer of 2022, quickly bumping his following from 25,000 to 100,000.

“I knew I had to post Reels, or else my Instagram just wasn’t showing my photos or anything to people,” says Ethan. “So it spawned out of a way for me to get my photography more viewers, to recreate my photos in a video way, and share them.” Ethan’s cinematic videos are now a cornerstone of his account.

Edits

Ethan Barber uses Edits to fine-tune his Instagram videos. It’s an iPhone-only app that lets you edit videos in your camera roll without transferring them to your computer. You can make frame-by-frame changes and export your videos in 4K resolution. 

Edits offers a host of special features, too, enabling you to add text and sound effects, remove background noise, and add AI animations.

Pricing: Free.

G2 ⭐️ rating: None

CapCut

CapCut is a video editing software that’s a favorite of Jaclyn’s. In addition to basic editing tools, CapCut offers features for removing objects from video backgrounds and stabilizing shaky footage. 

CapCut offers a few AI features, too. You can generate AI videos and speech, for example, and you can use AI to condense long videos into short ones. 

CapCut can also add subtitles to videos, which is essential for accessibility. “If somebody’s talking in it, get an app that puts captioning over it,” says social media consultant Rachel Karten, who runs the newsletter Link in Bio. She finds that third-party apps like CapCut tend to work better than Instagram’s built-in captioning tool.

Pricing: Free for access to templates, effects, and basic AI features; $19.99 for access to premium templates and effects and advanced AI features like background removal and AI lip-syncing; $24.99 for collaboration features for teams.

G2 ⭐️ rating: None

Instagram tools for content management

The best Instagram management tools help you stay organized and on a consistent schedule (posting three to five times a week is a good rule of thumb). These all-in-one tools include calendar and scheduling features that let you plan and autopublish posts.

“A scheduling or a calendar tool is really, really helpful, because there are really important times to post when your audience is most receptive to a message,” Jaclyn says. “You don’t want to just be sitting there waiting for 5 o’clock or whenever to be like, ‘I have to post now.’” 

Jaclyn recommends starting with the free tool Meta Business Suite. “Then, if you’re feeling like it’s just getting to be too much—you’re managing a lot of different variants or campaigns or products or multiple accounts—then I would maybe leverage one of the third-party tools,” Jaclyn says. Many of these third-party tools offer similar features, so Jaclyn recommends starting with a free trial to see which you like best.

Here are some options:

Meta Business Suite

Meta Business Suite is a free Instagram management tool available to anyone with a Professional account. It lets you save drafts and autopublish posts. If you’re a creator, Meta Business Suite allows you to monetize Instagram through programs like Instagram’s Creator Marketplace for brand partnerships.

In addition to its organic content planning features, Meta Business Suite is where you’ll find the Meta Ads Manager. If you run Instagram ads, using Meta Business Suite for content planning can help you keep your Instagram management on a single platform.

Pricing: Free.

G2 ⭐️ rating: None

Later 

Jaclyn personally uses Later to manage multiple Instagram accounts. Like other content management platforms, Later lets you upload and edit content, then schedule your Instagram posts. 

Later also includes premium features that are unavailable with Meta Business Suite, including a preview of your Instagram feed, unified inboxes that let you respond to DMs from multiple channels from a single hub, social listening tools for tracking what consumers are saying about your brand online, and Instagram bio link tools that allow you to make money on Instagram by directing viewers to browse your affiliate links from a single hub. (You’ll also find these features in Hootsuite.)

Similar to both Hootsuite and Buffer, Later also has an AI copywriting tool to help you draft captions (if you use Meta Business Suite, you’d use Meta AI for this).

Pricing: 14-day free trial; $18.75 for up to 30 scheduled posts; $37.50 month for up to 180 posts planned plus suggested scheduling; $82.50 for enterprise-level features, with unlimited posts and custom analytics. 

G2 ⭐️ rating: 4.5

Hootsuite

Hootsuite makes it easy to manage accounts across multiple social media platforms from a single dashboard so that you can monitor your social media marketing efforts from one hub. Like other tools, Hootsuite lets you schedule Instagram posts and see a calendar view of your upcoming content. 

Hootsuite also includes a host of premium features. Like Later, it offers social listening tools and recommends optimal posting times. Note that Hootsuite is considerably more expensive than other third-party tools, but it does offer a few more premium features. For example, Hootsuite lets you create customized analytics reports, and it can calculate your social return on investment (ROI).

Pricing: Free 30-day trial; $99 per month for up to 10 social media accounts and unlimited scheduling; $249 per month for unlimited social media accounts, approval workflows for teams, and bulk uploads of up to 350 posts; custom enterprise pricing.

G2 ⭐️ rating: 4.3

Buffer

Buffer is less expensive than similar social media management tools and even offers a free plan. The tool provides the baseline features you need to plan your Instagram content in advance, like a library to store post ideas and the ability to autopublish at certain times. Unlike Meta Business Suite, Buffer offers templates with Instagram post ideas to help you figure out what to post on Instagram.

You might choose Buffer over Meta Business Suite if you want to centralize content planning across Meta and non-Meta platforms. Buffer lets you schedule content for platforms like X, LinkedIn, and TikTok; Meta Business Suite only enables you to prepare content for Meta-owned properties: Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.

Pricing: Free for one user, 10 scheduled posts, and 100 stored content ideas; $5 per month for unlimited post ideas and scheduled posts; $10 per month for unlimited users and content approval workflows.

G2 ⭐️ rating: 4.3

Instagram tools for analytics

Instagram analytics tools are essential for monitoring the success of both paid ads and organic content. You can also use them to glean insights about your audience.

There are several social media analytics tools on the market, but the free Instagram Insights likely has everything you need. 

“In terms of native tools, my go-to is Instagram Insights,” says Jaclyn. “It’s really good for basics if you’re trying to become more aware of who your follower demographics are, the best times to post, and general reach and engagement.”

Instagram Insights 

Instagram Insights, built into any Instagram Business account or Instagram Creator account, provides engagement metrics including number of views, accounts reached, accounts engaged, and interactions. You can filter your posts by criteria such as number of views and time frame. This can help you identify your best-performing content so you can replicate it in the future.

“That’s my first place to go in terms of post-performance test creative,” says Jaclyn. “Especially if I’m just starting out as a small business and trying to understand what content resonates so I know what to post more of.”

Instagram Insights also provides data on your Instagram followers and trends across your following, such as growth in your follower count, age range, and top follower locations. 

This demographic data can be helpful to new and established businesses. Jaclyn explains that established companies can use it to gauge the success of their targeting efforts. Newer enterprises can use it to learn who their audience is and tailor messages to those groups.

Pricing: Free.

G2 ⭐️ rating: None

Facebook & Instagram app for Shopify

The Facebook & Instagram app for Shopify is a free tool that links your Shopify site to your brand’s Instagram account. It lets you sync inventory and product details between your store and your Instagram Shop, making it easy to start selling on Instagram. 

Once you start tagging products on the platform, the Facebook & Instagram app shows you insights such as your top-selling and top-tagged products on Instagram.

The app also helps you track conversions, add-to-carts, and product page views attributed to specific posts and ads. It does this through the Facebook Conversions API, which you can set up by turning on Enhanced data sharing with Meta from your Shopify store.

You can further integrate your online store with Instagram by installing the Meta pixel on your Shopify site. The Meta pixel tracks your site visitors, helping you retarget Instagram users who’ve visited your online store. Doing this can help you reach the right consumers, even without a massive Instagram following.

Pricing: Free with a Shopify subscription.

G2 ⭐️ rating: None

Instagram tools for building community

User-generated content (UGC) and influencer partnerships can benefit your business in a few ways. They can help you build brand trust by showing potential buyers that other people already love your brand, and they can help place your products in front of a wider audience. 

Plus, many people on Instagram look to creators for product recommendations: Meta reports that 40% of Instagram users take creator recommendations when they’re shopping, making influencer marketing a worthwhile investment.

“UGC or influencer management platforms like Aspire or UpFluence are really helpful if you’re collaborating with creators,” says Jaclyn. “Especially for Instagram campaigns, or if you’re trying to manage all these different creators. And especially if you’re sending product out and you’re trying to see analytics for how their various posts performed.”

Aspire

Aspire offers a host of features to both encourage UGC and partner with creators. It helps you build and track paid ads with UGC content, and the tool’s Creator Marketplace lets influencers apply to work with you. Influencer campaign management tools automate communication with influencers when sending collaboration invitations, products, and content briefs.

Additionally, Aspire’s Shopify integration helps you cultivate relationships with creators who are already buying your products, which can help ensure your influencer content feels authentic.

Pricing: Aspire pricing is available upon request; Expect to pay around $2,000 per month.

G2 ⭐️ rating: 4.6

Upfluence

Upfluence is a platform that offers both affiliate marketing and influencer marketing tools. It lets you manage existing relationships and find new creator partners in your niche. It can also help you streamline your workflow and view your influencer relationships at a glance, since Upfluence marks partners with notes like “Follow-up” or “Engaged.” 

The platform’s Shopify integration helps you identify creators who are already paying customers. 

Pricing: Upfluence pricing is available upon request; Expect to pay at least $450 per month.

G2 ⭐️ rating: 4.6

Statusphere

Finding the right influencers for your brand can be time-consuming. “AI-powered tools are transforming how brands source and manage creators,” says Leslie Ann Hall, founder and CEO of beauty and skin care paid social agency ICED Media. “Platforms like Statusphere can match and brief hundreds or even thousands of creators within hours, making scale attainable for any ambitious brand.”

With Statusphere, you enter information about your brand, and the company’s AI matchmaking algorithm pairs you with influencers. It can help you connect with micro-influencers, creators with smaller followings who might not be verified on Instagram.

The company also offers other tools, like a fulfillment service for shipping products and campaign reporting tools to help you monitor the success of your partnerships.

Pricing: Statusphere pricing starts at $3,500 per month.

G2 ⭐️ rating: 4.7

Duel

Duel helps you build a robust affiliate marketing program for your brand by engaging new partners and managing relationships with existing ones. “Turn your most loyal customers into creators,” says Leslie. “Platforms like Duel help brands introduce perks and incentives for shoppers who produce authentic, relatable content that drives conversion.”

Use Duel to create affiliate links and pay your partners for their work. It can also help you generate UGC by rewarding customers for completing tasks, such as posting an Instagram Reel showcasing your product. Duel’s Shopify app lets you manage the platform from your Shopify admin.

Pricing: Price upon request.

G2 ⭐️ rating: 4.4