About Us

Welcome to Like Subscribe Club, where we review social media software so you don’t have to sit through another demo where someone uses the phrase “content pillars” with a straight face.

The social media tools industry is, let’s be honest, a fever dream. Hundreds of platforms promising to “revolutionize your workflow” and “unlock engagement” - language that presumably tested well in focus groups populated entirely by people who enjoy receiving LinkedIn connection requests from strangers. Somewhere between the AI-powered scheduling assistants and the analytics dashboards that look like a NASA control room designed by someone who failed statistics, actual humans are trying to figure out which software won’t make them want to hurl their laptop into the sea.

That’s where we come in. We test social media tools - the schedulers, the analytics platforms, the listening tools, the mysterious “all-in-one solutions” that are inevitably all-in-one-except-the-thing-you-actually-need. We do this so you can make decisions based on something other than whoever bought the biggest Google ad that day.

Who This Is For

This site exists for marketing teams, social media managers, agency owners, and the assorted professionals who’ve been handed responsibility for “the socials” despite having applied for an entirely different job.

If you’ve ever found yourself comparing fifteen browser tabs of pricing pages while questioning your career choices, you’re in the right place. If you’ve sat through a sales call where someone explained their “proprietary algorithm” using words that aren’t real, we understand. If you’ve implemented a tool your boss saw mentioned on a podcast only to discover it does approximately 40% of what was promised - well, we’re trying to prevent that particular Tuesday from happening again.

We write for people who need to choose software, justify that choice to someone with budget authority, and then actually use the thing without developing a stress-related eye twitch. Apparently this is quite a large demographic.

Our Testing Process

Here’s how we actually evaluate these tools, as opposed to how most “review” sites operate - which is, presumably, by copying the vendor’s own feature list and adding some stock photography of people pointing at screens.

We sign up for real accounts. We pay for plans with actual money. We use the software the way a normal human would use it, which means clicking buttons, uploading content, generating reports, and occasionally staring at error messages while questioning whether Mercury is in retrograde.

We test across multiple use cases because - and this may shock the vendors who design exclusively for agencies with 47 employees and unlimited budgets - not everyone has the same needs. A freelancer scheduling Instagram posts has different requirements than an enterprise team managing crisis communications across seventeen time zones. We try to account for this, revolutionary as that concept apparently is.

We also talk to actual users. Not the handpicked testimonials on vendor websites featuring people whose job title is “Chief Vibes Officer,” but real humans who’ve used these tools in the wild and have opinions about them. Sometimes those opinions contain words unsuitable for publication.

Our reviews take weeks, not hours. If that sounds slow, consider that we’re competing against sites that apparently form comprehensive opinions about complex software in the time it takes to microwave a burrito.

Why You Should Trust Us

Trust is a strong word in an industry where “Best Software of 2024” lists are routinely published in November 2023 and seem to correlate suspiciously with advertising spend. So let’s address this directly.

We’re independent. No vendor owns us, funds us, or has editorial sign-off on what we publish. When we say a tool is good, it’s because we think it’s good - not because someone’s taken us to a nice lunch. When we say a tool has problems, we say it plainly, using words the vendor’s PR team would presumably prefer we didn’t.

We update our reviews. Software changes, companies get acquired, features get quietly removed, and pricing pages undergo the kind of inflation that would make an economist weep. We go back and revise our recommendations because a review from eighteen months ago is essentially historical fiction at this point.

We show our reasoning. We don’t just declare winners and expect you to accept it like some kind of software monarchy. We explain what we tested, what we found, and why we think certain tools suit certain situations. You’re an adult with a job and presumably some critical thinking skills. We’re not going to pat you on the head and tell you to “just trust us.”

And if we get something wrong - which, being humans rather than the infallible AI assistants these tools keep promising, will occasionally happen - we correct it. Publicly. Without pretending the previous version never existed.

Affiliate Disclosure

Here’s the part where we talk about money, because apparently some people think review sites operate on enthusiasm and good intentions alone.

Yes, we use affiliate links. When you click through to a vendor from our site and sign up, we sometimes receive a commission. This is how we fund the operation - the subscriptions, the testing, the staff, the industrial quantities of coffee required to sit through enterprise software demos.

Here’s what that doesn’t mean: it doesn’t mean we recommend tools because they pay well. We’ve excluded tools with generous affiliate programs because the software was mediocre. We’ve enthusiastically recommended tools with no affiliate program at all because they were genuinely excellent. The commission structure does not determine our editorial position, full stop.

We also clearly mark affiliate links, because treating readers like marks in a confidence scheme seems like a poor long-term business strategy. If there’s a commercial relationship, you’ll know about it.

If this arrangement bothers you philosophically, we understand. You’re welcome to take our research, form your own opinions, and sign up directly with vendors. We won’t take it personally. Much.

Like Subscribe Club is an independent publication. We have opinions about social media software, and now - unfortunately for everyone involved - a platform to share them.