How this list was put in order
The stake first: we build SpeedRun Social, it is entry one of seven, and the other six belong to companies we do not own. A roundup written by a vendor earns a shop owner's time only when the vendor says so before the ranking rather than in a line under it, so it is said here.
Every figure on this page comes from a fetch of the vendor's own pricing page on 15 September 2026, read in a real browser with the address bar checked against the address requested. Nothing is restated from a review site, another roundup or an assistant's answer, and each priced claim carries the vendor's own link and the date it was read.
Billing modes are named everywhere a price appears. Predis.ai, Publer, Metricool and Vista Social publish a monthly rate and an annual one, and their entries quote both. Ocoya's page carries a Yearly (2 months free) control that leaves every figure unchanged when pressed, so no annual rate is printed there and its entry quotes the monthly figures only. Buffer's page opened on its Yearly toggle and would not show its Monthly figures to a direct fetch, so its entry quotes the Yearly numbers and says the Monthly ones could not be confirmed. Our own ladder is quoted in the only mode we offer (billed monthly) for the same reason.
The ranking runs on the two questions a shop owner asks at the counter, put to each tool before the shop pays anything: does it write like my trade, and does it post for me? An auto repair shop's marketing asset is already sitting in the bay, the pitted rotor, the scan readout, the car up on the lift, and a tech can snap that between jobs, but nobody at the counter has the hour after close to write it up and post it. So the list is ordered by how much of a week's posting a tool does before a shop pays anything: the caption written in the shop's voice, the image and a short video, and the publish step, on a free plan that does not expire, and then by the cheapest price at which a tool does all of it. SpeedRun Social does all of it for $0 and puts a watermark on free-plan media, so it is first. Ocoya writes the caption and posts it from $29 a month billed monthly, so it is second. Predis.ai makes the media and will not post below its second tier, Buffer posts what the tech photographed and writes the caption with its AI Assistant on every plan, free included, Metricool and Vista Social post what the tech photographed and leave the words to you, and Publer does the same on its free plan once its one-time sign-up credits for an AI writer and image maker are spent, because after that they need its Business plan at $10.00 a month per social account, billed monthly.
That measure puts Vista Social last, and it would place near the top of a list ranked on answering customers, because it is the only tool here whose plan cards carry review management and an inbox. A shop that loses more work to unanswered reviews than to an empty feed should read its entry first rather than last. Google Business Profile is worth the same attention: Ocoya, Publer, Buffer and Metricool all name it, Predis.ai lists Google Business Profiles among its channels, and Vista Social's page does not name it at all.
Where a rival beats us, plainly. Publer's Professional plan listed $5.00 a month billed monthly or $4.00 billed yearly, which is cheaper than any paid plan of ours at $49.99 a month billed monthly, and its plans page names Google Business among the things it publishes. Publer's Business plan at $10.00 a month per social account, billed monthly, and Ocoya's Starter tier at $29 a month billed monthly for up to five profiles are the cheapest paid ways to have the caption written, the image made and the post published, so a shop that is paying anyway should price both first. Metricool carries analytics and competitor tracking next to its scheduler, and a shop that wants to know whether posting moves anything should start there. Vista Social is the only entry with review management and an inbox on its plan cards.
No stars, no scores, no customer counts, ours least of all: we are the youngest company on this page. Every figure was true on one morning in September; open the vendor's link before you let any of them decide a purchase.