Later (formerly Latergramme) in Vancouver offers an Instagram focused social media marketing platform, which supports the planning and scheduling of content to Instagram, as well as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
$25
per month
.NET
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's .Net is an open source, freeware application infrastructure.
N/A
Tailwind
Score 5.6 out of 10
N/A
Tailwind is a social media marketing solution built specifically for Pinterest marketing. It provides features such as scheduled pins, analytics, and scalable Pinterest activity.
I've also used Planoly, which is what I switched from. Later by far is easier to use and manage and view. I like all the upgrade options and I like the blog posts to help navigate using the interface and also using Instagram. If I saw more results on Instagram I'd be all in, …
I think Tailwind is still the best option for scheduling Pins when compared to the alternatives. That said, for some businesses with more limited content available, utilizing the native Pinterest scheduler or another scheduling platform (such as Later, Hootsuite, or even Canva's…
The free version is more than enough for personal use. But if you have a small business or if you're trying to grow your brand, it's better to use one of the premium plans. It's worth it. Later is especially useful if you manage multiple accounts for multiple brands/companies because you'll be managing everything with just one tool
.NET is well suited for any general purpose solution to a business problem, though if we are talking strictly the framework version - you have to be more or less tied to Microsoft Windows to run it. If this isn't a problem, then it will be able to address and solve any programming project you have.
Tailwind can schedule your Pinteret pins, but it's an expensive platform to do this, and given it seems to miss many, it does not even do this well. Further, they continue to get you to reconnect, so it is cumbersome and poorly designed. We used it only because our vendors wanted it, but it's been a total waste of money given how poorly designed it is, how buggy it is and how useless the other so-called services they provide are. Go somewhere else as there are way better solutions as we have now found.
The extension for Chrome and Safari has been EXTREMELY helpful. Through research and continuing education, we frequently see information we'd like to share with our audience and the extension has made this so easy.
The SmartLoop feature is great for times when we get busy and may not have the time to add new things to our queue. I know even if I had zero time to devote to social media that day, I was still active and getting information to our candidates.
Interface is extremely user friendly. A lot of time these programs that are supposed to help us and bring ease to our workload are so complicated and intense that they cause more stress than they relieve. This is not true with Tailwind. Tailwind is easy to use and truly does take a load of stress off us as an organization.
I wish I could edit the look and feel of my pictures within Later a little easier. There are standard filters, but for brand sake, I need everything to be consistent.
I wish there was a direct integration with things like Canva and Lightroom to make uploading and editing my images seamless.
The biggest thing I wish Later did was allowing a better threshold for the free accounts. All of the helpful and useful features are for paid only (video posts, multi-image posts, analytics, etc). I can't justify the cost for just a few posts a month. I end up doing all of the video and multi-image posts manually, which lately has me questioning the benefit of Later's free version as a small business.
.NET is heavily Microsoft Windows oriented, and while .NET core tried to resolve that with MacOS and Linux support, .NET Core is still waiting for wider adoption.
While free for small projects, additional features for big projects can be a little expensive.
Can be resource-heavy upon deployment. We continuously have our more senior staff optimize the code of our junior developers for performance. Other languages are a little bit more forgiving in comparison.
When you add a link to your post and add the caption, it goes to the first line and not where I had the cursor. I do not want the link to be the first thing people read.
The Tailwind Create is fun and helpful but still hard to use.
The desktop site is almost perfect, I love it. I love that I can drag and drop, I love that I can easily and quickly switch to analytics and switching profiles... love the ease of link in bio. so great!
The full .NET Framework is an amazing thing and is very robust. We have used it to create console apps, Windows apps, and online apps. When coupled with Visual Studio, development, testing, building, and deploying our applications has become 100 times easier as compared to doing those things manually before. The automation of this process has helped us push out changes to our applications faster to adapt to the ever-changing business requirements.
Tailwind is great when it focuses on it's core functionality. However, in my opinion, Tailwind isn't great at listening to their customers and instead likes to add features that are not beneficial and tend to "break" the other features that ultimately sell it's product. In my opinion, it has lost ROI over time and was much better 3-4 years ago.
Later are not just a software tool, they also provide marketing advice, tips, and tutorials via their blog. I’ve only had to reach out to them for help a few times and have found them to respond much faster than other tools in their category. I receive weekly emails with updates, marketing tips and invites to online events. I look forward to their emails as I’ve learned a lot of things that I’ve been able to actually implement.
You don't often need to reach out to Microsoft for .NET support. If you do, there are forums and websites that have active Microsoft support folks where you can provide feedback or get help. Microsoft support in general is quite good as well, but not cheap. The best support is from the community like StackOverflow.
I have received wonderful support from Tailwind. Recently when I was on their new Tailwind Create and was looking at their site photos, I had a question and I received an answer in less than 24 hours. They have also been receptive to comments and ideas to make the product better and they used some of the ideas as well giving us a discount for the help.
I went with Later for the lower cost subscription. The Hootsuite copy features is missed, but Later has hashtag suggestions which is nice. I really need something to post across multiple platforms. I also needed the ability to schedule more than the 5 free scheduled posts offered by Hootsuite. Later has been working great for what I need it to do to support my small event promotion business.
The .NET platform has a much longer and broader history than Laravel, so we chose to go with it as the support will be far superior. Additionally, Laravel is tied to PHP, while you can use multiple different languages in .NET. The additional flexibility that .NET provides in the range of types of applications you can build with it sealed the deal.
When I was looking for a solution for Instagram, neither Buffer nor Hootsuite were offering the ability to post directly to Instagram. That may have changed recently, but in my opinion, Tailwind is a much more user-friendly, less (unnecessarily) complex solution for Instagram management. I don't need a ton of in-depth analytics; I just need to be able to be efficient, consistent and engaging in my posts. Tailwind allows me to do that without getting bogged down in all the bells and whistles on Hootsuite or Buffer.
Increased social media involvement - Since utilizing Later and another social media scheduling tool, we have seen our growth rise as much as 12% in just a few months. This includes followers, likes, and engagement. This is huge for us since social media is a great way to generate new customers and increase brand awareness.
Easier reporting - Analytics tools on most of the big three (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) are pretty limited. Later is a great way to take a look at our Analytics, and it makes it easy to understand the numbers.
There are few factors we needed for our custom development. Below are each of them. We were able to get a satisfactory outcome for each of these factors which made .NET platform a very good choice in developing enterprise applications.
Reusability of codes- Microsoft has given many re-usable codes and components in the framework to help developers do their job effortlessly. With the help of default features, developers can create end-to-end solutions and make the business operations more efficient. As codes and components are reusable, .NET reduces development time and if applications take less time to develop, they cost cheaper and you get faster return on investment.
Easy to maintain- Development cost is one time, but maintenance cost is incurring. .NET apps are easily maintainable, thanks to the configuration settings that can be modified without any need to rewrite the code.
Deployment is hassle free- Deploying software is always challenging and the most common problem developers face in this process is the existence of multiple DLLs. It’s hard to make sure that all DLLs will co-exist in the same machine. .NET framework solves this problem by allowing different versions of the same DLL to exist side-by-side on the same machine.
Security- .NET is one of the most secure web and application development frameworks available in the market. As it’s made by Microsoft, you can be absolutely sure about the security measurements. Hackers can never steal valuable data from your website or apps.
Cross platform friendly- What if you had developed an app for desktop and laptop computers and now after seeing the growth of mobile apps in the market, you want it in mobile version as well? You can easily develop an app that runs on the desktop and PDA without any issue. As you can re-use the codes and utilize the same development environment, your job becomes a lot simpler.
Definitely an ROI - We have increased our clicks on our website due to traffic from Pinterest, primarily from our Smart Loop.
We have increased Pinterest following due to our intensive use of Smart Loop, which has led to #1 (increased website traffic).
Organization and time management has been a massive advantage of utilizing Tailwind. Because I can set Smart Loop and not worry about it, I can dedicate my time to other areas of the business.
