Everyone in this category writes about how great their approval workflow is. Nobody writes about what users actually complain about, on the record, in public reviews. So we did that instead.
We read through G2’s public review data for seven tools: Kontentino, Planable, Loomly, Agorapulse, SocialPilot, Buffer, and Hootsuite. Not the star ratings, the actual complaint themes G2 shows to anyone who visits the reviews page, plus the individual written reviews underneath. This isn’t a survey we ran. It’s what’s already sitting in public, that most people never bother reading past the star rating.
We included ourselves. If we’re going to point at what’s wrong with other tools, we should be honest about what’s wrong with ours too.
How we did this
We pulled data from each tool’s G2 reviews page on August 26, 2026, specifically the pros-and-cons summary view G2 shows publicly (no login needed), plus a sample of the individual reviews listed underneath it. G2 doesn’t show category-level scores like “Ease of Use” or “Quality of Support” without a login, so we didn’t use those. Everything here came from what’s actually visible to anyone.
This isn’t a controlled study. G2’s review pool skews toward people who left a review, which usually means people with strong feelings one way or the other. Treat the patterns as directional, not a scientific survey. But directional is still useful, especially when the same complaint keeps showing up across seven different tools.
The two complaints that show up almost everywhere
Pricing. Every single tool we checked had pricing show up as a top complaint theme, including us. Hootsuite had it worst by volume (281 to 316 mentions depending on the exact phrasing G2 groups it under), which makes sense given per-seat pricing that starts around $99/user/month. But even Buffer, which markets itself as the cheap option, had reviewers flagging cost for advanced features. Nobody in this category has cracked “pricing complaint-free,” us included.
Analytics depth. The second most common thread. Reviewers across Loomly, SocialPilot, and Kontentino specifically mentioned wanting more advanced reporting, more breakdowns by content type, deeper comparisons to what enterprise tools offer. This tracks with something we already knew: analytics is usually an add-on or a higher-tier feature across this whole category, and it shows.
What each tool’s users actually complain about
Kontentino. Price came up most, including one reviewer mentioning a recent increase felt steep. A few people wanted deeper analytics breakdowns. TikTok scheduling isn’t fully supported yet and reviewers noticed. A couple mentioned the app getting slow with a lot of visuals loaded, and the mobile app occasionally lagging behind desktop in showing newly scheduled posts. No pattern of learning-curve complaints, which surprised us a little. The “easy to use” praise seems to actually hold up against criticism, not just marketing copy.
Planable. Pricing is the single biggest complaint by far, and it’s not close (58 mentions in G2’s own count). Makes sense given their per-workspace model: every client brand is its own paid workspace, so costs stack up fast. Plan limitations and Instagram-specific scheduling issues came up next.
Loomly. Instagram scheduling limits (can’t pre-schedule tags or music), thin analytics, and scheduling glitches described as undermining trust “during important announcements,” which is a pretty specific and pretty bad thing to have said about your scheduling tool.
Agorapulse. Expensive was the recurring word, alongside features locked behind higher tiers. One reviewer described a critical Instagram Stories reporting bug that persisted for months, with billing continuing despite a written request to pause it during the bug. That’s a serious complaint, not a minor gripe, and it’s sitting in public on G2 right now.
SocialPilot. The lightest complaint volume of the group relative to review count, mostly around missing platform-specific features and needing to pay extra for things that feel like they should be included.
Buffer. Limited analytics and high pricing for advanced features were the two recurring themes. A few reviewers mentioned posts failing to send and needing a manual retry, which is a rough thing to read about a scheduling tool’s core job.
Hootsuite. By far the highest complaint volume, but also by far the most reviews (over 7,400), so some of that is just scale. Pricing dominates: “expensive,” “high pricing,” locked features at lower tiers. Multiple reviewers mentioned social accounts randomly disconnecting.
The approval-specific complaints, which were rarer than we expected
Here’s something that surprised us going in: outright “approval workflow is broken” complaints weren’t as common in the public G2 data as the industry conversation would suggest. What showed up instead were adjacent complaints: plan limitations that happened to include approval features, or general workflow friction that touched approvals without naming them directly.
Our read: approval pain is real, based on what we hear directly from agencies every week, but it doesn’t always get written up as a distinct G2 complaint category the way “pricing” does. People are more likely to leave a review about a bill going up than about the three days they spent chasing a client for a sign-off. That doesn’t mean the second problem is smaller. It probably means it’s just harder to put into one sentence for a review form.
What this means if you’re picking a tool
A few honest takeaways, not just for us:
Nobody has pricing figured out perfectly. If a sales page promises “simple, transparent pricing,” check the actual G2 reviews before you believe it. Every tool in this list has pricing complaints, including the ones marketed as budget-friendly.
Analytics is a weak spot across the whole category, not just one tool. If deep reporting is your top priority, expect to pay extra somewhere, on every tool we checked.
Reliability complaints (posts not sending, accounts disconnecting) matter more than feature-list comparisons. A tool with fewer features that actually works every time beats a feature-rich tool that occasionally drops your Wednesday post.
Read the real reviews, not just the star average. A 4.6 average can sit on top of very different complaint patterns depending on what people are actually unhappy about. Two tools with the same star rating can have completely different weak points.
Where we’re going from here
The recurring notes on analytics depth and TikTok scheduling are useful to us too, not just to you. We’re not going to pretend a blog post fixes a product gap, but naming it plainly is at least a start, and it’s the whole reason we did this the way we did: with our own weak points in the same list as everyone else’s.
Curious how Kontentino actually handles approvals, gaps and all? Try it free for 14 days, no credit card needed, or book a demo and ask us directly about anything in this article.
FAQ: what G2 reviews reveal about social media tools
What do people complain about most in social media management tools?
Pricing, by a wide margin, across every tool we checked. Analytics depth was the second most common theme. Reliability issues (posts failing to send, accounts disconnecting) came up less often but were more serious when they did.
Are approval workflow complaints common on G2?
Less common as a standalone category than you’d expect, though workflow friction shows up wrapped inside other complaints like plan limitations. It’s possible approval frustration is real but harder to summarize in a short review than a pricing complaint is.
Does Kontentino have negative reviews?
Yes, and we’ve listed the real ones here: pricing concerns from smaller teams, requests for deeper analytics, TikTok scheduling gaps, and occasional slowness with heavy visual content. We’d rather you see this list than not.
How reliable is G2 review data for comparing tools?
It’s a real, public data source, but it isn’t a controlled study. Reviewers tend to have strong opinions one way or another, and review volume varies hugely by tool size. Use it as one honest signal among several, not the whole picture.
Which social media tool has the fewest complaints on G2?
By raw complaint volume relative to review count, SocialPilot’s public pros-and-cons view showed the lightest pattern of the seven we checked. That’s not the same as “best tool,” just the lightest complaint footprint in this specific dataset.
Sources
All complaint data pulled from each tool’s public G2 reviews page (the pros-and-cons summary view, no login required) on August 26, 2026: Kontentino, Planable, Loomly, Agorapulse, SocialPilot, Buffer, Hootsuite.
