ChatGPT answers, unedited

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable, Agorapulse, and SocialPilot. Based specifically on your workflow—team creates → internal approval → client review → approval → scheduled publishing—I’d lean toward Planable.

My recommendation

Planable is particularly built around the workflow you're describing: separate client workspaces, internal discussions, client feedback, approval stages, and publishing. Its agency offering explicitly supports keeping internal discussion separate before sending content to the client, followed by client approval and scheduling. Planable Planable

Why I'd choose Planable for 15 clients

The important thing isn't just "can it schedule Instagram posts?" Most platforms can.

The important workflow is:

Copywriter/designer → Account manager → Client → Approved → Automatically scheduled

Planable is strong here because you can have internal approval before client review, keep comments attached to the actual post, and use structured approval workflows rather than chasing approvals through email/Slack. Planable Planable

I'd structure your agency like this:

• 15 client workspaces
• Internal agency users assigned to the relevant clients
• Content creator → internal review
• Account manager → final internal approval
• Client → review/approve
• Approved content → scheduled publishing
• Monthly content calendar/reporting per client

That setup should be much cleaner than having 15 clients mixed together in one giant calendar.

When I'd pick Agorapulse instead

Choose Agorapulse if your agency also does a lot of community management—responding to comments, DMs, assigning conversations to team members, moderation, etc.

Its client shared-calendar workflow allows clients to review, comment on, and approve scheduled content without necessarily being full platform users. Agorapulse

So:

Heavy approvals/content production → Planable

Heavy approvals + social inbox/community management → Agorapulse

When I'd pick SocialPilot

If you're managing a large number of social profiles across those 15 clients and keeping software costs under control is important, I'd also evaluate SocialPilot. Current agency comparisons highlight its client approvals, manager approvals, bulk scheduling, and white-label reporting. Planable

What I wouldn't do

I wouldn't start with Sprout Social unless you specifically need its deeper analytics, social listening, or enterprise capabilities. It has robust multi-step approval workflows and agency/client permissions, but its pricing model can make it considerably more expensive as the team grows. Sprout Social Support Sprout Social

For your stated requirements, my starting point would be: Planable.

If you tell me (1) how many people are on your team, (2) which social networks you manage, and (3) roughly how many posts/month per client, I can compare Planable vs Agorapulse vs SocialPilot for your exact 15-client setup, including likely monthly cost and the approval workflow I'd implement.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d narrow it to Planable, Agorapulse, and Sprout Social. The right choice depends mostly on whether your biggest pain is content approval or all-in-one social management.

My shortlist

1. Planable — I'd start here

For your specific workflow — team creates → internal approval → client reviews → revisions → client approves → scheduled publishing — Planable is particularly well suited.

It supports multi-level approval workflows, internal/external stakeholders, comments and feedback directly on content, and scheduling/publishing. Current 2026 comparisons also specifically identify it as an agency-oriented platform for multi-client approval workflows. Planable Social Media Dashboard

The big advantage is that clients don't need to live inside your agency's workflow. They can review content in the platform rather than having your account manager chase approvals through email, Slack, PDFs, etc.

I'd choose Planable if:

• Your main bottleneck is getting clients to approve content.
• You have multiple people internally touching each post.
• You want a very visual content calendar.
• You want each client separated into its own workspace.
• You don't need the most sophisticated social inbox/listening/analytics.

2. Agorapulse — better if community management matters

Agorapulse becomes more compelling if your agency also handles comments, DMs, mentions, community management and reporting for clients.

It combines scheduling with a unified inbox, internal approvals and client reporting. Social Media Dashboard

I'd lean this direction if your team is doing more than simply creating and publishing posts.

3. Sprout Social — powerful, but probably more than you need

Sprout has sophisticated multi-step/multi-user approval workflows, permissions and client-specific environments. Sprout Social Support Sprout Social

It's a strong option when you need:

• sophisticated permissions/governance
• advanced analytics
• social listening
• large-team workflows
• extensive reporting
• a broader enterprise social-management platform

The tradeoff is cost: its pricing is much more seat-oriented, so a 15-client agency can accumulate substantial costs as the team grows. iTechGuides

What I'd do with 15 clients

I'd trial Planable first.

I'd set up the workflow like:

Content creator → Account manager → Internal approval → Client approval → Scheduled → Published

And create one workspace per client:

• Client 01
• Client 02
• Client 03
• …
• Client 15

Within each workspace, your team can manage the content calendar while the client only participates in the review/approval portion.

If you also manage lots of comments/DMs and need robust client reporting, I'd trial Agorapulse alongside Planable.

If you're becoming a 20–50+ client agency with a substantial social team, then I'd seriously evaluate Sprout Social as well.

My practical shortlist:
Planable → Agorapulse → Sprout Social, in that order for the workflow you described. This isn't a ranking of the products overall; it's based specifically on the combination of 15 clients + team approvals + client review + scheduled publishing. Planable Social Media Dashboard Sprout Social

If you tell me how many team members you have, which social networks you publish to, and whether clients need to approve every post, I can compare the likely monthly cost and workflow for the three.

For a marketing agency with ~15 clients, I’d choose a platform that is built around multi-client workflows, not just a scheduler. Your key requirements are:

• Internal team approvals (designer → copywriter → account manager)
• Client review/approval without email chains
• Content calendars per client
• Scheduled publishing
• Clear audit trail of who approved what
• Reporting (ideally white-labelled)

My shortlist:

HeyOrca Sequence## My recommendation for a 15-client agency

Best overall: Planable

I’d lean toward this if your workflow is:

Content created → internal review → client approval → scheduled publishing

Why:

• Clients can review content in a way that feels like reviewing a document/calendar rather than learning a complicated marketing platform.
• Good for reducing approval bottlenecks.
• Works well when multiple people touch each account.

Best agency-specific alternative: HeyOrca

A strong fit if you manage mostly social media retainers. It is designed around agencies managing multiple brands, with client approvals and publishing in one place. HeyOrca

Best if reporting is a major selling point: Sprout Social

Choose this if clients expect sophisticated analytics, social listening, and enterprise-style reporting. For 15 clients, though, cost can become a deciding factor.

Suggested workflow setup

For a 15-client agency, I’d structure it like:

1. Each client gets their own workspace

• Brand assets
• Tone guidelines
• Connected social accounts
• Calendar
• Internal approval stage

• Creator drafts
• Account manager reviews
• Strategist signs off
• Client approval stage

• Client receives review link
• Comments/changes happen inside the platform
• Approval is recorded
• Publishing

• Approved posts automatically move into the publishing queue
• Monthly reporting

• Pull analytics into client reports

Budget-conscious setup

If you are a small-to-mid agency, I’d shortlist:

1. Planable — best balance of client experience + workflow
2. HeyOrca — best if social media is your core service
3. Sendible — best if you want scheduling + reports at a reasonable cost

I would avoid managing 15 clients through spreadsheets, Trello, Asana, or Slack approvals — they work for planning, but they usually break down at the “who approved this post?” stage.

If you tell me:

• your main channels (Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, etc.)
• whether clients need to approve every post
• approximate monthly budget

I can narrow this to the best 1–2 options.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d make Planable the default choice.

The key reason: your workflow is really team → internal approval → client review → scheduled publishing, rather than simply “social media scheduling.” Planable is built around that agency workflow. Planable Planable

My recommendation

Why I'd choose Planable

1. Separate workspace for each client.
You can give each client their own workspace and customize the approval workflow independently. This is particularly useful with 15 clients because Client A can have a simple one-person approval while Client B can require a more involved process. Planable Planable

2. Keep internal work hidden from clients.
Your team can draft, edit and discuss posts internally before exposing them to the client. Internal notes aren't visible to clients, which is exactly what you want when your team is still working through revisions. Planable Planable

3. Client approval is native.
Clients can be added as Approvers, review posts and leave feedback. You can require approval before a post can be scheduled/published. Planable Planable

4. Approval can trigger scheduling.
Once the client approves, Planable can automatically schedule the post, removing a manual step from your account managers. Planable

5. It handles the “content calendar” side very well.
You can create, review and schedule posts across major platforms, with calendar/list views designed around content collaboration rather than just publishing. Planable

The workflow I'd set up

For your agency, I'd structure it like:

Content creator → Account manager → Client → Auto-schedule → Publish

For example:

1. Copywriter/designer creates the post.
2. Internal team reviews it.
3. Account manager sends the approved batch to the client.
4. Client comments/requests changes or approves.
5. Once approved, it automatically enters the publishing queue.
6. Your team gets a clean record of what was approved and when.

That gives you a much better audit trail than managing approvals through email, Slack and Google Docs.

When I'd choose Agorapulse instead

I'd pick Agorapulse if your agency also needs a strong social inbox, community management, monitoring and reporting alongside approvals.

Agorapulse supports internal and external approvers, shared calendars for clients, scheduled publishing, comments and multi-step approval workflows. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Help Centre

Its client-facing Shared Calendar is particularly useful: clients can review scheduled/published content and approve posts without needing the same level of access as your internal team. Agorapulse Agorapulse

My verdict

If your #1 problem is content production + approvals: → Planable

If your agency needs approvals + social inbox + reporting + community management: → Agorapulse

If you're building toward a much larger enterprise operation: → Sprout Social

For 15 clients specifically, I'd start with Planable. It's likely to give your account managers and clients the cleanest experience without turning the system into an unnecessarily complex enterprise platform. Planable Planable

If you tell me how many people are on your agency team, which social networks you manage, and whether clients need to approve every post, I can also recommend the specific Planable/Agorapulse plan and estimate the monthly cost for 15 clients.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable, Agorapulse, and Sprout Social, but my default recommendation would be Planable if your biggest priority is the workflow:

Create → internal team approval → client review → approval → scheduled publishing.

My ranking

🥇 My pick: Planable

planable.io

For 15 clients, Planable maps particularly well to an agency structure because you can have a separate workspace for each client, with their content, approvals and schedule kept separate. Planable

The workflow is also very clean:

Your team creates content → internal review → client gets access → client comments/approves → post publishes.

Planable supports Required Approval, meaning content can't be scheduled/published until an approver gives the green light. It also supports automatic scheduling after approval. Planable Planable

Clients can be given a dedicated Client + Approver role, while your team retains control over editing, scheduling and internal discussions. Planable

One important consideration: multi-level approval—for example, content creator → account manager → client → legal—is an Enterprise feature in Planable. Planable

🥈 Agorapulse

agorapulse.com

I'd choose Agorapulse over Planable if your agency also needs a serious social media management platform, particularly social inbox/community management.

Its Shared Calendar is particularly good for clients: external clients can view scheduled content, approve/reject it, leave comments, and send posts back for changes without needing an Agorapulse account. Agorapulse Support

It also supports multi-step internal/external approval workflows. Agorapulse Support

So I'd think of it this way:

• Planable = content collaboration/approval platform that also publishes
• Agorapulse = full social media management platform with excellent approval workflows

🥉 Sprout Social

sproutsocial.com

I'd look at Sprout if your 15-client agency is relatively sophisticated and analytics, reporting, social listening, inbox management and enterprise-level workflows matter as much as content approvals.

But I wouldn't automatically pay the premium just for client approvals.

What I'd actually implement for 15 clients

I'd structure Planable like this:

15 client workspaces

→ Client A
→ Client B
→ Client C
→ ...
→ Client O

Within each workspace:

Content creator → Account manager → Client approval → Auto-schedule

And I'd give clients approval/comment access only, rather than letting them edit everything.

That gives you a very clear operating rule:

Nothing gets published unless it has passed the required approval stage.

Planable explicitly supports locking down this kind of workflow and can automatically schedule content once it's approved. Planable

Bottom line

If I were setting up your agency tomorrow:

1. Planable — best overall fit
2. Agorapulse — best if you need deeper social management
3. Sprout Social — best for a larger/more sophisticated operation

For 15 clients specifically, I'd lean Planable because client review and approval is unusually central to the product rather than being an add-on to a broader social media suite.

If you tell me how many people are on your agency team + which social platforms you manage (IG, FB, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.), I can also compare the actual 2026 pricing for 15 clients and tell you which one is likely to be cheapest.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d make Planable the default choice.

It’s particularly well suited to the workflow you described: team creates → internal review → client review/approval → scheduled publishing. Planable is built around content collaboration and approvals rather than treating approvals as an add-on. It supports separate client workspaces, internal discussions, client comments/edits, approval stages, and scheduling. Planable Planable

My shortlist

Recent agency comparisons similarly put Planable at the top for content review, while Agorapulse is stronger when community/inbox management is central. Kontentino Social Media Dashboard

Why I'd pick Planable

Your ideal workflow can look like:

Account Manager
→ creates content brief
→ Content team drafts
→ Internal approval
→ Client approval
→ Scheduled automatically
→ Published
→ Reporting

Planable supports multi-level approval workflows and lets clients review/comment/approve content in context, including through guest/shareable access. Planable Planable

The biggest advantage for an agency is that clients don't need to live inside your team's project-management system. They can essentially come in, see the content, leave feedback, approve it, and get out.

One important consideration: cost at 15 clients

This is where I'd compare Planable vs. Kontentino vs. SocialPilot carefully before buying. Pricing structures differ substantially as client count grows. A September 2026 comparison found Planable's model to be workspace-based, while other platforms use users, brands, channels, or bundled account limits. Kontentino Lemonpost

If your agency has, say, 4–8 internal users and 15 clients, I would not automatically choose Hootsuite or Sprout. You can end up paying enterprise-level prices for functionality you don't need.

My recommendation:

1. 🥇 Planable — best fit if approvals/client collaboration are the bottleneck.
2. 🥈 Kontentino — investigate this if keeping costs predictable as you add clients is especially important.
3. 🥉 Agorapulse — choose this instead if your agency also does substantial comment/DM/community management.
4. Metricool — choose this if sophisticated client reporting/analytics matters more than the approval experience.

If you tell me how many people are on your team, which social networks you manage, and roughly how many posts per client per month, I can narrow this down to the best 2 platforms and estimate what 15 clients would cost.

Recent agency comparisons similarly put Planable at the top for content review, while Agorapulse is stronger when community/inbox management is central. Kontentino Social Media Dashboard

Why I'd pick Planable

Your ideal workflow can look like:

Account Manager
→ creates content brief
→ Content team drafts
→ Internal approval
→ Client approval
→ Scheduled automatically
→ Published
→ Reporting

Planable supports multi-level approval workflows and lets clients review/comment/approve content in context, including through guest/shareable access. Planable Planable

The biggest advantage for an agency is that clients don't need to live inside your team's project-management system. They can essentially come in, see the content, leave feedback, approve it, and get out.

One important consideration: cost at 15 clients

This is where I'd compare Planable vs. Kontentino vs. SocialPilot carefully before buying. Pricing structures differ substantially as client count grows. A September 2026 comparison found Planable's model to be workspace-based, while other platforms use users, brands, channels, or bundled account limits.

If your agency has, say, 4–8 internal users and 15 clients, I would not automatically choose Hootsuite or Sprout. You can end up paying enterprise-level prices for functionality you don't need.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable, Agorapulse, and Sendible—but Planable would be my default choice if your biggest requirement is a clean workflow from team draft → internal approval → client review → scheduled publishing.

My recommendation

🥇 I'd pick Planable

Planable for agencies

Planable is particularly well suited to your workflow because it's built around content collaboration and approvals, rather than treating approvals as an add-on to a scheduler. It supports internal review, client feedback, multi-level approvals, calendar planning, and publishing. planable.io

A practical workflow could be:

Account Manager → Content Creator → Internal Approval → Client Approval → Scheduled → Published

For 15 clients, I'd structure it as one workspace per client/brand, with your agency team working across the workspaces. Clients only see their own content. Planable's workspace-based approach can also make scaling the team easier than platforms that primarily price around individual users. planable.io

🥈 Consider Agorapulse if engagement matters

Agorapulse for agencies

I'd choose Agorapulse instead if your agency doesn't just publish content but also manages comments, DMs, community management, reporting, and client accounts.

It combines publishing calendars, multi-step approval workflows, client shared calendars, and a social inbox. Clients can review, comment, and approve content through the shared calendar. www.agorapulse.com

So:

• Content production/approval is your bottleneck → Planable
• Publishing + social engagement/inbox is your bottleneck → Agorapulse

🥉 Sendible if client-facing/white-label is important

Sendible is worth looking at if you want the platform to feel more like your agency's own client portal, particularly around client dashboards and reporting. Current comparisons identify it as a strong option for white-label agency workflows. tareno.co

What I would NOT do

I wouldn't pick a platform simply because it's a great scheduler. With 15 clients, the dangerous part isn't scheduling—it's managing the approval chain.

You want to eliminate:

"Did the client approve this?"
"Which version did they approve?"
"Did Sarah make the edits?"
"Can someone schedule this before approval?"
"Was that feedback in Slack or email?"

That's why I'd prioritize approval workflow + client UX over AI features or fancy calendars.

My ranking for your specific use case:

1. Planable — best overall
2. Agorapulse — best all-in-one
3. Sendible — best agency/client portal
4. Hootsuite — best enterprise option
5. Sprout Social — best if analytics/social listening are critical

If you tell me how many people are on your agency team and roughly how many social accounts each of the 15 clients has, I can narrow this down to the best platform + expected monthly cost + exact setup I'd use for your agency.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Agorapulse, Buffer, and Sprout Social, but my default recommendation would be Agorapulse.

My recommendation: Agorapulse

agorapulse.com is particularly well suited to an agency workflow where you need:

• Internal team approval before content reaches the client.
• Client review/approval without giving clients full access to your agency workspace.
• Scheduled publishing across major social networks.
• A separate shared calendar for each client.
• Comments, rejection, approval, and revision workflows in the same place.
• Multi-step approval workflows if you have something like Content Creator → Account Manager → Client. Agorapulse Agorapulse Agorapulse

The client experience is especially useful: you can give each client a Shared Calendar where they can review scheduled content, comment, reject, or approve posts. Agorapulse

How I'd structure it for 15 clients

I'd set it up roughly like this:

Agency
→ Content team creates posts
→ Account manager reviews
→ Client receives content for approval
→ Approved posts automatically publish at scheduled times

15 separate client calendars/workspaces

• Client A
• Client B
• Client C
• …
• Client O

This keeps your agency team working from one system while preventing clients from seeing each other's content.

How the alternatives compare

Buffer is worth considering if you want something simpler. It supports agency client management, approvals, and scheduling, and its agency offering uses channel-based pricing rather than charging separately for every team seat. Buffer Help Center

Agorapulse gets my vote if the approval process is the most important requirement. Its publishing calendar explicitly handles scheduled, pending, approved/rejected and draft content, and its approval system can prevent a post from publishing if required approvals haven't been completed. Agorapulse Agorapulse

One important consideration: Agorapulse's full multi-step approval workflows are on its Custom plan, so I would price the plan against your 15-client setup rather than assuming the entry-level plan will be sufficient. Agorapulse

If you tell me roughly how many social accounts you manage per client (e.g. 3, 5, 8+) and how many people are on your agency team, I can give you a much more specific recommendation—including which plan I'd buy and estimated monthly cost for 15 clients.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d narrow it to Planable vs. Agorapulse. If your primary requirement is content → internal team approval → client approval → scheduled publishing, my pick is Planable.

My recommendation: Planable

planable.io is particularly well suited to an agency because it treats each client as a separate workspace, with its own calendar, social accounts, campaigns and approval flow. It also supports internal collaboration, comments, client review and multi-level approvals. Planable

For example, your workflow could be:

Content creator → Account manager → Client → Scheduled publishing

The big advantage is that you can keep each client's work isolated while still having unlimited users on the workspace plans. Planable's Pro plan supports multi-level approval sequences, so you can require the agency team to approve before the client sees/approves the final content. Planable

Planable vs. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is the better choice if you also want your platform to be the agency's social inbox + publishing + reporting + community management system. It supports external client reviewers through Shared Calendars, and approved posts automatically move to scheduled status and publish at the designated time. Agorapulse Agorapulse

agorapulse.com

What I'd do with 15 clients

Choose Planable if:

• Your biggest headache is getting content approved.
• Clients need an easy, polished review experience.
• You have multiple people creating/editing content.
• You want a clean workspace for each client.
• You don't need sophisticated social listening/inbox functionality.

Choose Agorapulse if:

• You manage comments and DMs for clients.
• Reporting is a major part of your service.
• You want one platform for publishing + engagement + reporting.
• You need more comprehensive social-media-management functionality.

One important pricing consideration

Planable's pricing is per workspace, rather than per user. Its current published pricing lists Basic at $39/workspace/month and Pro at $59/workspace/month, with Enterprise custom pricing. Planable

With 15 clients, that distinction matters enormously. I'd specifically ask Planable for an agency quote rather than simply multiplying the advertised workspace price by 15.

Bottom line: I'd trial Planable first. For a 15-client agency where approvals are the core problem, its client/workspace/approval model is probably the cleanest fit. If your agency also handles DMs, comments, community management and detailed social reporting, I'd trial Agorapulse alongside it.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable, Agorapulse, and Sprout Social. My default recommendation would be Planable if your biggest pain is content review/approval; Agorapulse if you want a more complete social-management platform.

My recommendation: Planable

planable.io is particularly well suited to an agency workflow:

Content creator → internal team review → client approval → scheduled publishing

It supports:

• Separate workspaces for clients.
• Internal drafts that clients don't see until you're ready.
• Client users with Approver permissions.
• Required approval, so content can't be published without sign-off.
• Comments and feedback directly on posts.
• Approval history showing who approved what and when.
• Scheduling and publishing after approval. Planable Planable Planable

Planable also specifically documents an agency workflow where content goes from draft → internal approval → client approval → publish, which is very close to what you're describing. Planable

The three I'd consider

Agorapulse is probably my #2. Its Shared Calendar lets clients review, comment, reject/request changes, and approve content without needing a full Agorapulse account. Approved posts automatically move into scheduled status and publish at the designated time. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Help Centre It also supports multi-step approval workflows on appropriate plans. Agorapulse Help Centre

Sprout Social is the premium/enterprise option. It has internal and external approval workflows, external stakeholders can review posts without logging into Sprout, and it has strong scheduling, permissions, reporting, and agency functionality. Sprout Social Sprout Social

What I'd choose for 15 clients

I'd go:

1. Planable — best overall fit
If your agency primarily needs to make the process of creating → reviewing → getting client sign-off → publishing painless.

2. Agorapulse — best all-in-one
If social media management, inbox/community management, reporting, publishing and approvals all need to live in one system.

3. Sprout Social — best if budget isn't a major concern
If you're building a larger operation and want sophisticated permissions, reporting and workflow capabilities.

One important distinction: don't choose based just on scheduling. At 15 clients, the real productivity gain comes from eliminating Slack/email approval chains. You want every post to have a clear status like Draft → Internal Review → Client Review → Approved → Scheduled → Published, with an audit trail.

If you tell me which social networks you manage (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.) and roughly what you'd like to spend per month, I can compare Planable vs Agorapulse vs Sprout specifically for a 15-client agency, including the likely plan/tier you'd need.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable, Agorapulse, and Sprout Social—but my default recommendation would be Planable if your main requirement is a clean agency workflow of create → internal review → client approval → scheduled publishing.

My ranking

1. 🥇 Planable — my pick for your agency

planable.io

Planable is particularly well suited to the workflow you're describing. You can create a separate workspace for each client, have your team collaborate internally, then send content to the client for approval. Required approval can prevent content from being scheduled/published until somebody signs off. Planable Planable

A particularly useful feature is automatic scheduling after approval: you can have the post already assigned a date/time and have Planable schedule it once the client approves. Planable

I'd structure your agency like:

Client workspace → Content creator → Internal approval → Client approval → Auto-schedule → Publish

That's very close to an ideal agency workflow.

2. 🥈 Agorapulse — best if reporting matters heavily

agorapulse.com

Agorapulse is a strong alternative if you want publishing + approvals + social monitoring + reporting in one system.

Its Shared Calendar lets clients review scheduled content without having an Agorapulse account, including approving, rejecting and commenting on posts. Agorapulse Help Centre It also supports multi-step approval workflows involving both internal team members and external clients. Agorapulse Help Centre

For a 15-client agency, this could be the better choice if clients frequently ask, "How did our social media perform this month?"

3. 🥉 Sprout Social — powerful, but potentially overkill

sproutsocial.com

Sprout has sophisticated permissions, internal/external approval workflows, scheduling, calendars and client-oriented agency features. External stakeholders can review content before publication without needing to log into Sprout. Sprout Social Sprout Social

I'd lean toward it if you're becoming a larger agency with sophisticated reporting, social listening and analytics requirements. For simply managing 15 clients' content approvals and publishing, though, it may be more platform than you need.

What I'd choose

If your agency is primarily social/content marketing: → Planable

If you want social management + client reporting: → Agorapulse

If you're building a larger, enterprise-style social operation: → Sprout Social

For 15 clients specifically, I'd probably start with Planable. Its workspace model maps nicely to client accounts, and its approval system is purpose-built around exactly the friction agencies encounter with client sign-off. Planable Planable

If you tell me how many people are on your team and which platforms you publish to (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.), I can also compare the actual costs for 15 clients and recommend the most economical setup.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable, Agorapulse, and Metricool. My pick depends on how much you want the platform to be a client collaboration hub versus a broader social-management system.

My recommendation: Planable

I’d choose Planable for your use case.

It is particularly strong when your workflow is:

Agency creates → internal team reviews → client reviews → client approves → scheduled publishing

Planable is built around that workflow. It gives you separate workspaces for clients, visual content calendars, comments/annotations, internal vs. client-facing feedback, approval gates, and scheduling. Its required-approval workflow prevents content from being scheduled/published until approval is received. Planable Planable

planable.io

How I'd rank the options

Why I'd pick Planable

For 15 clients, the approval experience matters more than having the most powerful scheduler.

You want each client to feel like they have a dedicated workspace rather than being dropped into your agency's operational system.

Planable supports:

• Separate client workspaces
• Team comments and @mentions
• Client comments and approvals
• Internal comments that clients don't see
• Required approvals before publishing
• Multi-level approvals on Enterprise
• Visual calendar/feed
• Scheduling and publishing to major social networks
• Version history
• Client access without exposing your entire agency operation Planable Planable

That's a very natural fit for 15 clients × multiple posts per week.

When I'd choose Agorapulse instead

I'd choose Agorapulse if you're also responsible for community management, social inboxes, reporting, monitoring, and deeper day-to-day account management.

Agorapulse has particularly strong agency functionality: clients can review content through Shared Calendars without needing an Agorapulse account, while your team can use multi-step approval workflows. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Help Centre

agorapulse.com

So I'd think of it this way:

Planable = best content/approval workflow

Agorapulse = best all-around social management system

Metricool is worth considering

Metricool is another strong option if analytics and price/value are important.

Its approval system lets you designate clients or teammates as reviewers, choose whether one or all reviewers must approve, and automatically publish approved posts at their scheduled time. External reviewers can even be added by email without a Metricool account. Metricool Help Center Metricool Help Center

metricool.com

What about Sprout?

Sprout Social is excellent for larger agencies. It has external approval workflows, custom permissions, separate client environments, reporting, and sophisticated publishing. Sprout Social Sprout Social

But for 15 clients, I'd only go there if you need its more advanced enterprise-level social listening, analytics, permissions, and reporting. Otherwise, you're likely paying for considerably more platform than you need.

sproutsocial.com

My final choice

If I were setting up your agency today:

🥇 Planable — content + team/client approvals + publishing
🥈 Agorapulse — content + approvals + publishing + social inbox/reporting
🥉 Metricool — excellent value + publishing + analytics
4. Sprout Social — best enterprise option, but probably unnecessary at 15 clients

One important distinction: if you're managing more than just social posts—for example blogs, email campaigns, paid ads, landing pages, creative assets, etc.—I'd consider a different stack where the social scheduler is only one part of the approval system.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite—but my default recommendation would be Planable if your biggest requirement is a smooth agency → client approval workflow.

My recommendation: Planable

planable.io is particularly well suited to agencies because it puts content creation, internal review, client feedback, approval, and scheduling into one workflow. It supports separate workspaces for clients, client-facing approval, internal comments, visual calendars, and publishing across major social networks. Planable Planable

A good workflow for your agency would be:

Content creator → internal team review → client approval → automatic scheduling → publish

Planable's required-approval workflow can prevent content from being scheduled/published until approval is received, and its Enterprise tier supports multi-stage approvals if you eventually need something like Account Manager → Creative Director → Client. Planable

The client experience is also quite clean: clients can be invited to a dedicated workspace, see their content calendar, comment/annotate posts, and approve them. Planable Planable

How I'd compare the three

Sprout Social is especially strong if your agency also needs sophisticated reporting, social listening, engagement, and client/account management. It offers separate environments for clients, custom permissions, approval workflows, and calendar sharing. Sprout Social

Hootsuite is another strong option, particularly for complex approval chains. Its approval system supports designated approvers, sequential approvals, permissions, notifications, and auditability. Hootsuite Social Media Dashboard

What I'd choose for 15 clients

I'd go:

🥇 Planable — if the core job is "create → get client approval → schedule → publish."

🥈 Sprout Social — if you're also building a serious social-media reporting/engagement operation and want deeper analytics.

🥉 Hootsuite — if you have more complex governance/approval requirements or expect to grow into larger enterprise accounts.

One important distinction: don't choose purely based on how many social accounts you can connect. For an agency with 15 clients, the client approval experience becomes enormously important. You want clients to be able to approve content without needing to understand your internal project-management system.

If you tell me how many people are on your agency team + which channels you manage (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.), I can recommend the exact Planable/Sprout/Hootsuite plan and estimate the monthly cost for 15 clients.

For a marketing agency with 15 clients, I’d choose a platform built for agency workflows, not just a social scheduler. Your biggest problems will usually be:

• keeping client content separated
• internal review before sending to clients
• client approvals without chasing email threads
• preventing unapproved posts from publishing
• managing multiple brands/calendars
• reporting back to clients

The strongest options:

My recommendation for a 15-client agency

Pick: Planable + your existing project management tool

This is probably the sweet spot if your agency is mostly:

• social media management
• content calendars
• creative approvals
• scheduled publishing

Workflow:

1. Copywriter/designer creates post
2. Account manager reviews internally
3. Client receives approval request
4. Client comments or approves
5. Approved posts automatically publish

It keeps the client experience simple: “Here are next month’s posts — approve or request changes.”

Choose Kontentino instead if:

• you have multiple approval layers
• clients have marketing directors/legal teams
• you want a more formal agency operating system
• you expect to grow beyond 15 clients

Avoid starting with enterprise tools unless needed

Hootsuite and Sprout Social are powerful, but many agencies at your size end up paying for enterprise features they do not use. Eclincher

A good stack for a 15-client agency would be:

• Content approvals + publishing: Planable or Kontentino
• Project management: ClickUp / Asana / Monday
• Design collaboration: Canva Teams
• Client reporting: built-in reports or Looker Studio

If you tell me:

1. how many team members you have,
2. which channels you manage (Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.), and
3. whether clients need to approve every post,

I can narrow this to the best 1–2 choices.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable, Agorapulse, and Sprout Social—but my default recommendation would be Planable if your biggest pain is getting content reviewed and approved efficiently.

My ranking

🥇 I'd choose Planable

planable.io

Planable is particularly well suited to your workflow because it is built around content → internal review → client approval → scheduling, rather than treating approvals as an add-on.

You can give each client a dedicated workspace, have your team collaborate on posts, collect comments/feedback directly against the content, and use multi-level approvals before scheduling. Clients can also approve from email, which is a big deal when you're managing 15 clients. Planable Planable

I'd structure your agency like:

Content creator → Account manager → Client → Scheduled → Published

For example:

1. Copywriter/designer creates the week's content.
2. Account manager reviews internally.
3. Approved content goes to the client.
4. Client comments or approves.
5. Once approved, it gets scheduled.
6. Your publishing team doesn't have to chase Slack/email approvals.

That gives you a very clean "nothing gets published without approval" process.

🥈 Agorapulse if you also manage engagement

agorapulse.com

I'd pick Agorapulse over Planable if your agency does a lot of community management, social inbox, comments, DMs, and reporting in addition to content production.

Its Shared Calendar lets external clients review scheduled posts, approve/reject them, and leave comments without needing an Agorapulse account. It also supports multi-step approval workflows with both internal and external stakeholders. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Help Centre

It also handles publishing across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, X and other networks. Agorapulse

So I'd choose:

Planable → if content approval is the center of your agency

Agorapulse → if social management/engagement is the center

🥉 Sprout Social if you're building a more enterprise operation

sproutsocial.com

Sprout is excellent for multi-client agencies. It has client-specific groups, permissions, shared calendars, approval workflows, reporting, and external approval workflows where clients can review posts without logging into Sprout. Sprout Social Sprout Social

The downside is that I'd consider it overkill for many 15-client agencies unless you need its deeper analytics, engagement tools, permissions, and reporting.

What I'd do in your situation

If you have 15 clients + 3–10 agency employees, I'd start with:

Planable

and set up:

• 1 workspace per client
• Internal team approval before anything reaches the client
• Client approval as the final gate
• Monthly/weekly content calendars
• Scheduled publishing after approval
• Comments/feedback attached to individual posts
• Clear owner for every piece of content
• No approvals happening in email/Slack

The important thing is that the client should never have to wonder "where do I approve this?" Planable is particularly strong at making that workflow obvious. Planable Planable

If you tell me how many people are on your agency team, which social platforms you manage (Instagram/FB/LinkedIn/TikTok/etc.), and whether you need client reporting, I can narrow this down to one platform and the specific plan/tier I'd buy for 15 clients.

It also handles publishing across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, X and other networks. agorapulse.com

So I'd choose:

Planable → if content approval is the center of your agency

Agorapulse → if social management/engagement is the center

🥉 Sprout Social if you're building a more enterprise operation

sproutsocial.com

Sprout is excellent for multi-client agencies. It has client-specific groups, permissions, shared calendars, approval workflows, reporting, and external approval workflows where clients can review posts without logging into Sprout.

The downside is that I'd consider it overkill for many 15-client agencies unless you need its deeper analytics, engagement tools, permissions, and reporting.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable, Agorapulse, and Sprout Social. My default recommendation would be Planable if your biggest problem is getting content reviewed and approved efficiently.

My ranking

🥇 I’d choose Planable

planable.io

Planable is particularly strong when your workflow is:

Strategist → copy/creative → internal review → client approval → schedule → publish

It is built around seeing the actual content, commenting on it, and getting approval rather than treating approvals as an afterthought. Its required-approval workflow prevents content from being scheduled/published until approval is received. It also supports multi-level approvals on its Enterprise tier. Planable Planable

For 15 clients, I'd structure it roughly as:

• 1 workspace per client
• Your agency team has access to the relevant workspaces
• Client gets access only to their workspace
• Content creator → internal approval → client approval
• Once approved → scheduled publishing
• Comments/edits stay attached to the actual post

That makes it much easier than having approvals scattered across email, Slack, Google Docs, etc.

🥈 Agorapulse if you want more than approvals

agorapulse.com

I'd pick Agorapulse over Planable if you also want a more comprehensive social-media-management system—publishing, scheduling, engagement/inbox, reporting, etc.

Its Shared Calendar lets external clients review, comment on, approve, or reject scheduled content, and its approval system supports internal and external reviewers. It also supports multi-step approval workflows on its Custom plan. Agorapulse Agorapulse Agorapulse

This is probably the best all-around agency platform of the three.

🥉 Sprout Social if you're building a bigger operation

sproutsocial.com

Sprout is excellent for larger agencies that need sophisticated permissions, reporting, client separation, approval workflows, and social management. It specifically supports separate environments for client accounts, custom roles/permissions, calendar sharing, and review/approval workflows. Sprout Social

The downside is that I'd consider it overkill for many 15-client agencies unless you're also heavily dependent on its analytics, reporting, and engagement capabilities.

What I'd do in your position

If content approval is the #1 priority: → Planable

If you want one system for content + approvals + publishing + engagement + reporting: → Agorapulse

If you're a larger/high-end agency with sophisticated reporting and permissions: → Sprout Social

For 15 clients specifically, I'd lean Agorapulse if you're trying to consolidate your agency's entire social operation, and Planable if you already have other tools for reporting/engagement and primarily need a killer approval workflow.

If you tell me how many people are on your team, which social networks you manage, and whether clients need to log in or should approve via a simple link, I can narrow this down to the best setup and likely cost for 15 clients.

For a marketing agency managing 15 clients, I would prioritize a platform that handles:

• Separate client workspaces/brands
• Internal team review before client review
• Client approvals without email chains
• Approval history and version control
• Scheduling after approval (not before)
• Analytics/reporting
• Reasonable scaling costs

For that size agency, these are the strongest options:

AgencyPro Planable## My recommendation for a 15-client agency

Option 1: Use Sendible as your main operating system

This is probably where I would start.

Workflow:

1. Content creator drafts posts
2. Account manager reviews internally
3. Client receives approval request
4. Client approves/comments
5. Approved posts automatically enter publishing queue
6. Monthly reports generated from the same system

This avoids having:

• Google Sheets for approvals
• Slack/email approvals
• Separate schedulers
• Manual reporting

Sendible is particularly suited to agencies managing multiple brands because it focuses on client workspaces and agency workflows. Best Social Media Scheduler Eclincher

Option 2: Planable + scheduler (if clients are very involved)

Choose this if your clients frequently say things like:

• “Can you show me exactly what the Instagram grid will look like?”
• “I need to leave comments on specific posts.”
• “My team needs to approve before I do.”

Planable’s strength is the review experience: clients see content in context and approvals stay attached to the post instead of scattered across email. Planable Kontentino

Option 3: Sprout Social if you serve larger brands

Worth considering if your clients expect:

• executive dashboards
• advanced analytics
• social listening
• enterprise reporting

For most 15-client agencies, though, it may be more platform than you need. Eclincher

The workflow I would implement

Monday

• Writers/designers prepare next month's content
• Internal approval queue

Wednesday

• Client approval window opens
• Clients receive one approval link/dashboard

Friday

• Approved content is scheduled automatically

Rules:

• No approval = no publishing
• All feedback stays attached to the post
• Every client has their own workspace
• One person owns final client communication

My shortlist if I were choosing today

1. 🥇 Sendible — best balance for a 15-client agency
2. 🥈 Planable — best if approvals are your biggest pain point
3. 🥉 Agorapulse — best if you manage lots of comments/messages
4. Sprout Social — only if clients justify enterprise pricing

A useful next step would be comparing them by your exact setup: number of team members, platforms you publish to (Instagram/LinkedIn/TikTok/etc.), whether clients need login access, and whether you need white-label reports.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Agorapulse, Sprout Social, and Buffer. Based specifically on your requirements—team approvals + client review + scheduled publishing—my pick would be Agorapulse.

My recommendation: Agorapulse

Agorapulse is particularly well suited to an agency workflow because it handles the entire chain:

Content creation → internal review → client approval → scheduled publishing

It supports:

• Separate client accounts/profiles so your 15 clients can be managed independently.
• Internal approval workflows for your writers, designers, account managers, and managers.
• External client approval through Shared Calendars. Clients can review, approve/reject, comment, and request changes without needing an Agorapulse account. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Help Centre
• Multi-step approvals, so you can have something like Content Creator → Account Manager → Client. Agorapulse Help Centre
• Scheduled and auto-published content across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, X and other networks. Agorapulse
• Role-based permissions, which is important when you have a growing agency team. Agorapulse Help Centre
• A shared content calendar where your team and clients can see what is scheduled and what is awaiting approval. Agorapulse

agorapulse.com

How I'd rank the options

sproutsocial.com offers sophisticated approval workflows, external stakeholders, custom roles, and separate client environments. Sprout Social Sprout Social I'd lean toward it if you're building a larger agency operation and want more advanced reporting/listening capabilities.

buffer.com is attractive if you want something simpler. It has channel-level permissions and approval workflows, but its client approval model is less elegant than Agorapulse's Shared Calendar approach. Buffer Buffer

The workflow I'd implement

For 15 clients, I'd structure the agency like this:

Client A

→ Content creator drafts
→ Account manager reviews
→ Client receives approval request
→ Client approves/comments
→ Approved post automatically publishes at scheduled time

And repeat that inside the same platform for all 15 clients.

The key thing I'd avoid is having Google Docs + Slack + email + a scheduler all involved in approval. That's where agencies start losing track of "approved," "needs changes," and "ready to publish."

Bottom line: choose Agorapulse. It hits the sweet spot between being agency-oriented and not becoming an unnecessarily complicated enterprise system. Its external client approval and shared-calendar functionality is the deciding factor for your use case. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Help Centre

If you tell me roughly how many people are on your agency team and which social platforms you manage, I can also give you a 15-client setup recommendation, including which Agorapulse plan/structure I'd use and an estimated monthly cost.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable and Agorapulse, with Planable as my first choice if your main problem is getting content approved efficiently.

My recommendation: Planable

planable.io is particularly well suited to an agency workflow:

Your workflow could be:

Content creator → Internal team approval → Client approval → Scheduled → Published

Planable supports required approvals, client-specific workspaces, comments/feedback, internal-only comments, version history, and automatic scheduling after approval. Planable Planable Planable

The big advantage for an agency is that you can give each client their own workspace and approval process. Clients can be invited as clients/approvers rather than being given full control of your agency's operation. Planable Planable

How I'd compare the main options

Planable vs. Agorapulse

This is probably the decision I'd make for a 15-client agency.

Choose Planable if:

• Content creation and approvals are the heart of your operation.
• You want clients to have a clean, simple review experience.
• You want strong separation between internal agency comments and client feedback.
• You want a very visual calendar/feed for reviewing posts.
• You have different approval processes for different clients.

Planable's required approval workflow prevents posts from being scheduled/published until an approver signs off, and it can automatically schedule content once approved. Planable Planable

Choose Agorapulse if:

• You also want a more comprehensive social-management platform.
• Community management, inboxes, reporting, listening, etc. are important.
• You want clients to review content through Shared Calendars.
• Your agency needs more sophisticated publishing/approval workflows.

Agorapulse supports internal and external approvers, including clients through Shared Calendars, and can use multi-step approval workflows. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Agorapulse Help Centre

What I'd do with 15 clients

I'd structure Planable like this:

• 15 client workspaces — one per client.
• Agency team members shared across the appropriate workspaces.
• Client gets Approver access.
• Content starts as internal, so clients don't see unfinished work.
• Internal review happens first.
• Once your team is happy, content is submitted to the client.
• Client can approve, comment, or request changes.
• Approval triggers scheduling.
• Scheduled content publishes automatically.

That maps very closely to how Planable describes its agency/client workflow. Planable Planable

One caveat: if you need multiple sequential approval levels—for example Content Writer → Account Manager → Legal → Client → CMO—Planable puts multi-level approvals on Enterprise, whereas Agorapulse has multi-step approval workflows on its higher-tier offering. Planable Agorapulse Help Centre

Bottom line

For 15 clients: I'd start with Planable.

If your agency is primarily "we create social content → clients approve it → we publish it," Planable is probably the cleanest fit.

If you're looking for "one platform to run the entire social-media operation, including publishing + engagement + reporting + approvals," I'd lean Agorapulse.

If you tell me how many people are on your agency team, which social networks you manage, and whether clients need to approve every post, I can narrow this down to the best platform and specific plan/tier for 15 clients.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Agorapulse, Metricool, and Sprout Social. My pick would be Agorapulse.

🥇 Best overall: Agorapulse

agorapulse.com is particularly well suited to an agency workflow because it handles the whole chain:

Agency creates → internal team approves → client reviews → client approves → scheduled auto-publishing

Key strengths:

• Client approval without requiring clients to have an Agorapulse account. Shared Calendars let clients view scheduled content, comment, approve, or reject it. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Help Centre
• Internal approval workflows with different roles/permissions. Agorapulse Help Centre
• Multi-step approvals, which is useful if you want something like Content Creator → Account Manager → Client. Agorapulse Help Centre
• Centralized content calendar showing drafts, pending approvals, scheduled and published content. Agorapulse Help Centre
• Cross-platform scheduling for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, X, etc. Agorapulse
• Built specifically with agencies and multiple clients in mind. Agorapulse

For 15 clients, I particularly like the fact that your clients don't have to learn another complicated platform just to approve a post.

🥈 Metricool — best value

metricool.com would be my second choice.

It has a very clean approval process: you can send posts to internal users or external clients by email, choose whether one or all reviewers need to approve, and the approved post can then publish at its scheduled time. Metricool Help Center Metricool Help Center

I'd choose Metricool if price/value and a simple interface matter more than having the deepest agency workflow.

The main limitation is that its more sophisticated approval functionality is on Advanced and Custom plans. Metricool Help Center

🥉 Sprout Social — best for a larger/more sophisticated agency

sproutsocial.com is extremely capable. It has external approval workflows, granular permissions, separate client environments, content calendars, and robust reporting. Sprout Social Sprout Social

I'd consider it if your 15 clients are high-value accounts and you're also looking for serious social listening, analytics, reporting, and enterprise-level workflow.

For a typical 15-client agency, though, I think you may be paying for more platform than you actually need.

My ranking for your use case

What I'd actually implement

For 15 clients, I'd set up the workflow as:

1. Content creator
↓
2. Account manager/internal approval
↓
3. Client approval
↓
4. Automatically publish at scheduled time

And I'd give each client their own isolated calendar/profiles so Client A never sees Client B's content.

My recommendation: start with Agorapulse. It strikes the best balance between agency workflow, client friendliness, approvals, scheduling, and scalability for 15 accounts. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse

If you tell me roughly how many people are on your agency team and which social networks you manage, I can also compare Agorapulse vs Metricool vs Sprout on actual plan/pricing for 15 clients and tell you which I'd buy.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Agorapulse, Planable, and HighLevel—but my default recommendation would be Agorapulse if social media management is the core workflow.

My recommendation: Agorapulse

agorapulse.com

It fits your workflow particularly well because it combines:

• Internal team approvals — assign posts to specific team members and use multi-step approval workflows. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Help Centre
• Client review — clients can use a Shared Calendar to view posts, approve/reject them, comment, and request changes without needing an Agorapulse account. Agorapulse Help Centre
• Scheduled publishing — publish automatically to major networks including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn and X. Agorapulse
• One calendar per client/account — useful when you're managing 15 different brands.
• Bulk scheduling — useful once you're producing hundreds of posts per month. Agorapulse
• Permissions — you can separate who can create, approve, publish, etc. Agorapulse Help Centre

A good agency workflow would be:

Content creator → Internal strategist/manager → Client → Scheduled auto-publish

That keeps the client out of your internal workflow while still giving them a very easy approval experience.

How I'd compare the alternatives

HighLevel is particularly interesting if your agency already uses it for CRM, lead management, websites, funnels, etc. Its Social Planner now supports scheduling, approval workflows, and external client approval links where clients can approve/reject/reschedule without logging in. HighLevel Support Portal HighLevel Support Portal

gohighlevel.com

Sprout Social is the more enterprise-oriented option, with separate client environments, custom permissions, approval workflows and reporting. Sprout Social

sproutsocial.com

What I'd choose for 15 clients

If you're primarily a social media agency: → Agorapulse

If your biggest pain is getting clients to review/approve content: → Planable

If you're already deeply invested in HighLevel: → HighLevel

If you have larger clients and need sophisticated reporting/listening/enterprise workflows: → Sprout Social

For 15 clients specifically, I would not choose based on the cheapest monthly price. I'd optimize for how little friction your clients experience during approval and how easily your team can manage 15 separate calendars.

If you tell me roughly how many social posts per client/month, which networks (IG/FB/LinkedIn/TikTok), and how many people are on your agency team, I can narrow this down to the best platform + exact plan/tier for your setup.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Agorapulse, Buffer, and Sprout Social. Of those, Agorapulse is probably the best fit if your priority is a clean agency workflow where your team creates content, clients review/approve it, and approved posts publish automatically.

My recommendation: Agorapulse

agorapulse.com

It maps particularly well to your workflow:

Agency → Internal approval → Client approval → Scheduled publishing

• Separate client accounts/profiles: You can organize social profiles by client and manage multiple clients from one agency environment. Agorapulse
• Internal team approvals: Assign posts to specific team members and create multi-step approval workflows. Agorapulse Support Agorapulse Support
• Client review: Clients can use Shared Calendars to review scheduled content, leave feedback, and approve/reject posts without needing to be full internal users. Agorapulse Support Agorapulse
• Scheduled publishing: Once approved, content can automatically publish at its scheduled time across major networks including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, etc. Agorapulse
• Calendar: Your team gets a centralized calendar showing drafts, pending approvals, scheduled, published, rejected, etc. Agorapulse Support
• Agency-friendly: Agorapulse specifically positions the product around managing multiple clients, shared calendars, approval workflows, reporting, and cross-platform publishing. Agorapulse

The big advantage for you is that the client doesn't need to become deeply involved in your internal workflow. They can essentially get a calendar, review the posts you've prepared, comment/approve, and get out of the way.

How I'd structure your agency

I'd set up each client roughly like this:

CLIENT A
├── Content calendar
├── Instagram
├── Facebook
├── LinkedIn
├── TikTok
└── Approval workflow
      ↓
   Strategist
      ↓
   Client approval
      ↓
   Auto-publish

CLIENT B
├── Content calendar
├── Social profiles
└── Same workflow

And internally:

Content creator → Account manager → Client → Scheduled

That gives you a repeatable process across all 15 clients rather than having approvals scattered through email, Slack, Google Docs, etc.

How the alternatives compare

Buffer is attractive if you want something simpler. Its agency offering has unlimited users, client management, permissions, approval workflows, and per-channel pricing. Buffer Buffer

buffer.com

Sprout Social is more sophisticated and has strong approval workflows, client-specific environments, custom permissions, calendar sharing, and reporting. Sprout Social But for 15 clients, I'd only choose it if you also need its more advanced reporting, listening, engagement, and enterprise capabilities.

sproutsocial.com

One important caveat with Agorapulse

The multi-step approval workflow capability is currently tied to its Custom plan, while other approval functionality is available on lower tiers depending on the feature. Agorapulse Support Agorapulse Support

So if your desired workflow is specifically:

Content creator → account manager → client → publish

I'd price out Agorapulse Custom rather than assuming the cheapest plan will handle it.

Bottom line: For a 15-client agency, I'd start with Agorapulse. It strikes the best balance between agency/client separation, approvals, client usability, calendar management, and automated publishing. If cost/simplicity is the priority, look at Buffer; if you're building a much larger, data-heavy agency operation, look at Sprout.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d make planable.io the default choice.

It is particularly strong when your core workflow is:

Agency creates → team reviews → client reviews/edits → client approves → content schedules → publishes

Planable is purpose-built around that workflow, rather than simply being a social scheduler with approvals bolted on. It supports separate workspaces for clients, team/client permissions, internal comments, client-facing feedback, approvals, scheduling, and publishing. Planable Planable

My recommendation

Why I'd choose Planable

1. Client approval is genuinely built into the workflow.

You can give clients an Approver role, keep drafts hidden from them, then expose content when it's ready for review. Clients can comment and approve directly on the content. Planable Planable

2. You can separate internal and client feedback.

Your team can discuss things internally before showing the client the polished version. That is extremely useful when you're managing 15 different brands. Planable

3. Approval can actually be a publishing gate.

With Required Approval, content can't be scheduled/published until an authorized approver signs off. You can also enable automatic scheduling after approval. Planable Planable

So your workflow can be:

Draft → Internal Review → Client Review → Approved → Automatically Scheduled → Published

That's much safer than having a client say "looks good" in email/Slack and someone manually remembering to schedule it.

4. 15 clients maps nicely to the workspace model.

Planable's model is essentially one workspace per client, allowing each client's content, social accounts, users, permissions and approval process to remain separated. Planable

Where I'd choose Sprout instead

I'd seriously consider sproutsocial.com if your agency cares heavily about analytics, reporting, social listening, engagement management, and more sophisticated enterprise workflows.

Sprout specifically offers agency-oriented client environments, custom permissions, approval workflows and shareable calendars, plus reporting. Sprout Social

The tradeoff is that Planable feels more like a collaborative content-production/approval system, while Sprout feels more like a full social-media management suite.

What I'd do with 15 clients

I'd set up Planable approximately like this:

• 15 client workspaces — one per client
• Agency team members — assigned across relevant workspaces
• Client users — Approver permissions
• Internal review — copy/design/account manager
• Client approval — required before publishing
• Lock after approval — prevents someone from accidentally changing approved content
• Auto-schedule after approval — removes the final manual scheduling step
• Calendar view — agency + client visibility
• Monthly content batches — send a week's/month's content for approval rather than individual posts

Planable also supports multi-level approvals on Enterprise, which could be useful if you eventually need something like Content Creator → Account Manager → Client → Legal/Executive. Planable

Bottom line: I'd start with Planable. For 15 clients, its biggest advantage isn't scheduling—it's that client feedback, approval, versioning and publishing happen around the actual piece of content rather than being scattered between email, Slack, Google Drive and your scheduler.

If you tell me how many people are on your agency team, which social networks you manage (IG/FB/LinkedIn/TikTok/etc.), and whether clients need to approve every post, I can narrow this down to Planable vs. Sprout vs. Hootsuite and tell you exactly which plan I'd buy.

Why I'd choose Planable

1. Client approval is genuinely built into the workflow.

You can give clients an Approver role, keep drafts hidden from them, then expose content when it's ready for review. Clients can comment and approve directly on the content. Planable Planable

2. You can separate internal and client feedback.

Your team can discuss things internally before showing the client the polished version. That is extremely useful when you're managing 15 different brands. Planable

3. Approval can actually be a publishing gate.

With Required Approval, content can't be scheduled/published until an authorized approver signs off. You can also enable automatic scheduling after approval. Planable Planable

So your workflow can be:

Draft → Internal Review → Client Review → Approved → Automatically Scheduled → Published

That's much safer than having a client say "looks good" in email/Slack and someone manually remembering to schedule it.

4. 15 clients maps nicely to the workspace model.

Planable's model is essentially one workspace per client, allowing each client's content, social accounts, users, permissions and approval process to remain separated. Planable

Where I'd choose Sprout instead

I'd seriously consider sproutsocial.com if your agency cares heavily about analytics, reporting, social listening, engagement management, and more sophisticated enterprise workflows.

Sprout specifically offers agency-oriented client environments, custom permissions, approval workflows and shareable calendars, plus reporting.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d narrow it to Planable, Agorapulse, and Sprout Social. The right choice depends on whether your priority is client approvals, publishing/analytics, or enterprise-level workflow.

My recommendation: Planable

If your core workflow is:

Agency creates → internal team reviews → client reviews → client approves → schedule/publish

I would choose Planable.

It is specifically designed around collaborative content creation and approval, rather than treating approvals as an add-on to a social scheduler. Current agency comparisons also consistently highlight Planable for its client-facing approval experience. Best Social Media Scheduler Planable

For 15 clients, I'd want each client to have a clearly separated workspace/calendar, with your internal team able to work across clients.

How I'd rank them

Why I wouldn't automatically pick Agorapulse

Agorapulse is actually very compelling for 15 clients. It supports external client reviewers, internal approvals, shared calendars, scheduling, bulk actions and publishing. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse

The catch is its current pricing structure: the standard/professional/advanced plans include 10 social profiles, and additional profiles/users are add-ons. Its multi-step approval workflows are currently a Custom-plan feature. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Agorapulse Help Centre

So if your approval process is simply:

Team member → client → approve

Agorapulse could be excellent.

If you need:

Copywriter → account manager → client → legal/compliance → final approval

I'd look at Planable or Sprout instead.

When I'd choose Sprout

Sprout makes more sense if your agency is becoming fairly sophisticated and you also need serious reporting, permissions, client environments, and approval workflows. Sprout specifically offers separate client environments, custom roles/permissions, calendar sharing and approval workflows for agencies. Sprout Social

The downside is that I'd expect it to be considerably harder to justify financially for a 15-client agency unless you're also getting substantial value from its analytics, listening, reporting and enterprise features.

What I'd actually do

For a 15-client agency, I'd shortlist:

1. Planable — best choice if approvals are the pain point
2. Agorapulse — best all-around operating platform
3. Sprout Social — best if you're building a larger agency operation

One important distinction: don't choose based primarily on the number of social accounts you have. Choose based on how many people touch each piece of content and how many approval stages it passes through. That's where the platforms become dramatically different.

If you tell me how many team members you have, roughly how many social accounts per client, and whether clients need to log in or just click an approval link, I can give you a much more specific recommendation—including estimated monthly cost for all 15 clients.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Agorapulse, Planable, and Sprout Social. If your main requirement is:

Agency team creates → internal team approves → client reviews/approves → content automatically publishes

my pick would be Agorapulse.

My recommendation

🥇 I'd choose Agorapulse

agorapulse.com

It maps unusually well to the workflow you're describing. You can create internal approval workflows, have clients review content through Shared Calendars, and then schedule/publish the approved posts. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Agorapulse

For example, your workflow could be:

Content creator → Account manager → Client → Scheduled → Published

And you can make the approval rules more sophisticated:

• Writer creates post
• Internal strategist reviews
• Account manager approves
• Client gets notified
• Client approves / comments / rejects
• Once approved, it remains scheduled for the predetermined publishing time
• If approval hasn't happened, the post doesn't publish at the scheduled time. Agorapulse Help Centre

The client doesn't necessarily need to become a full internal user; Agorapulse's Shared Calendar lets external clients review scheduled/published content and provide feedback. Agorapulse

It also supports bulk approval, which becomes important with 15 clients. Agorapulse Help Centre

🥈 Planable if client collaboration is your #1 priority

planable.io

I'd seriously consider Planable if your agency spends a lot of time going back and forth with clients on captions, graphics, and revisions. Its core strength is making the review/feedback/approval experience feel like a content workspace rather than a scheduling tool. Current agency-focused comparisons also put Planable among the strongest options for dedicated client review. Planable Best Social Media Scheduler

The tradeoff is that I'd lean toward Agorapulse if you want the platform to be more of an all-around social management system, including publishing, inbox/community management, reporting, and client collaboration.

🥉 Sprout Social if you're building a larger operation

sproutsocial.com

Sprout has sophisticated approval workflows, client calendar sharing, user roles/permissions, and separate environments for client accounts. Sprout Social

I'd choose it if you're expecting the agency to grow substantially beyond 15 clients or you need particularly strong reporting and enterprise-grade workflows.

What I'd do with 15 clients

I'd not optimize primarily for the cheapest scheduler. At 15 clients, the expensive problem is usually approval chaos, not scheduling.

I'd prioritize:

1. Separate workspace/calendar per client
2. Internal approval before client approval
3. Client approval without giving clients unnecessary access
4. Comments attached directly to the post
5. Clear approved/rejected/pending status
6. Automatic publishing after approval
7. Bulk scheduling and approvals
8. Client reporting
9. Permissions so clients can't accidentally change other clients' content
10. Good integrations with Canva and your existing workflow

On that basis, Agorapulse would be my first trial, with Planable as the alternative if client review is the biggest pain point.

One important caveat: Agorapulse's multi-step approval workflows are on its Custom plan, while simpler approval functionality is available on other paid tiers. Agorapulse Help Centre

If you tell me how many people are on your agency team, which social networks you manage (IG/FB/LinkedIn/TikTok/etc.), and whether clients need to approve every post, I can narrow this down to the best platform + exact plan for 15 clients and compare the likely monthly cost.

🥉 Sprout Social if you're building a larger operation

sproutsocial.com

Sprout has sophisticated approval workflows, client calendar sharing, user roles/permissions, and separate environments for client accounts.

I'd choose it if you're expecting the agency to grow substantially beyond 15 clients or you need particularly strong reporting and enterprise-grade workflows.

What I'd do with 15 clients

For a marketing agency managing 15 clients, I would prioritize a platform that handles separate client workspaces, internal approvals, client approvals, scheduling, publishing, and reporting. At that size, you’ve outgrown simple schedulers and spreadsheets.

My shortlist:

My recommendation for a 15-client agency

Pick HeyOrca if:

• Your main workflow is: 1. Strategist creates content
• Designer/copywriter reviews internally
• Client approves
• Posts publish automatically
• You want clients to have a simple approval experience
• You manage many recurring monthly calendars

Pick Planable if:

• Client feedback is your biggest pain point
• Clients frequently request revisions
• You want approvals to feel like reviewing a social feed rather than a spreadsheet

Pick Sendible if:

• You also sell reporting, dashboards, and social management retainers
• You want a more traditional agency operating system

A workflow I’d set up

For 15 clients:

Content creation → Internal approval → Client approval → Scheduled publishing → Monthly reporting

Use:

• One workspace per client
• Two internal permission levels - Creator: drafts posts
• Manager: final internal approval
• Client reviewers - Approve/reject/comment only
• Publishing locked until approval

I would avoid using Trello, Asana, Notion, or Google Sheets as the approval layer at this size. They can track tasks, but they don’t give clients a true “this exact post is approved and will publish” workflow.

If I were choosing for a typical 15-client social media agency, my ranking would be:

1. HeyOrca — best agency workflow fit
2. Planable — best client approval experience
3. Sendible — best broader agency platform
4. Agorapulse — best if community management is important
5. Sprout Social — best if budget is not a concern

Best Social Media Scheduler HeyOrcaI’d also compare pricing based on 15 clients + number of social profiles, because some tools become much more expensive when each client requires its own workspace. Best Social Media Scheduler

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Agorapulse, Planable, and Sprout Social. My pick would be Agorapulse if you want one platform to run the whole social-content workflow.

My recommendation: Agorapulse

agorapulse.com is particularly well suited to an agency model because it handles:

• Separate client workspaces/calendars so clients only see their own content.
• Internal team review before anything goes to the client.
• Client approval/rejection directly on scheduled posts.
• Comments and revision requests attached to the actual post.
• Scheduled publishing across major networks.
• Bulk scheduling and approval, useful when you're managing 15 content calendars.
• Reporting and social inbox in the same system.

Agorapulse specifically supports external collaborators through Shared Calendars, allowing clients to review, comment, approve, or reject content. Agorapulse Agorapulse

The important caveat is plan selection. Its Professional plan currently includes basic approval workflows, while Advanced adds bulk approval and five shared calendars. Multi-step approval workflows are on Custom, which is relevant if your process is:

Content creator → Account manager → Client → Publish

rather than simply:

Agency → Client → Publish. Agorapulse Agorapulse

How I'd compare them

For 15 clients specifically, I would lean toward Agorapulse or Planable, rather than immediately paying for something as heavy as Sprout.

The workflow I'd set up

I'd structure your agency like this:

Client A
→ Content creator drafts
→ Internal account manager approves
→ Client receives review notification
→ Client approves/rejects/comments
→ Approved content automatically publishes at scheduled time

And repeat that independently for each client.

The biggest thing I'd avoid is having Google Docs + Slack/email + Canva + a scheduler all involved in approvals. The advantage of a platform like Agorapulse is that the content, feedback, approval status, schedule, and publishing are tied together. Agorapulse

One important question

If you tell me (1) how many people are on your agency team, (2) which social networks you manage, and (3) whether each client needs to approve every post, I can recommend the exact platform + plan and estimate the monthly cost for your 15-client setup.

For a 15-client marketing/social media agency, I’d shortlist Agorapulse, Planable, and Sendible—but my default recommendation would be Agorapulse if you want one system to handle team workflow, client approvals, and publishing.

My recommendation

1. Agorapulse — my pick

agorapulse.com

Agorapulse is particularly well suited to your workflow because you can have:

Content creator → internal approval → client approval → scheduled publishing

Its approval system supports both internal team members and external clients, and clients can review/comment/approve through a Shared Calendar rather than needing full access to your agency account. Agorapulse Help Centre Agorapulse Help Centre

It also has unlimited scheduled posts on paid plans and a unified publishing calendar. Agorapulse Help Centre

The important part for a 15-client agency is that you can create separate client calendars and control which social profiles each client sees. Agorapulse

I'd choose the Advanced tier if you need a serious agency workflow. It adds things like shared calendars, bulk approval, bulk publishing, content queues and more advanced reporting. Current published pricing is $149/user/month annually ($199 monthly), although the exact number of profiles you need can affect the cost. Agorapulse Agorapulse Help Centre

One caveat: 15 clients can make per-user pricing add up, so I'd calculate your actual team-seat and social-profile requirements before committing.

2. Planable — if client approvals are your biggest headache

planable.io

If your agency's biggest problem is:

"We create the content, then spend our lives chasing clients for feedback."

I'd seriously consider Planable.

Its strength is the review experience—clients see the content in a highly visual environment, comment on individual posts, request changes and approve content. That's arguably a better experience for clients than giving them a full social-management platform.

I'd pick Planable over Agorapulse if the majority of your team's time is spent on the creative → feedback → revision → approval loop.

3. Sendible — worth considering for a traditional agency setup

sendible.com

Sendible is another strong agency-oriented option, particularly if you care about client workspaces, reporting, scheduling and managing lots of accounts.

For 15 clients, it's worth putting alongside Agorapulse in your trial because the economics can look quite different depending on how many people need access and how many social profiles each client has.

What I'd actually do

For your size, I'd run a 2-week trial of Agorapulse and Planable with one difficult client and one easy client.

Set up this exact workflow:

1. Strategist creates brief
↓
2. Designer/copywriter creates post
↓
3. Internal team approval
↓
4. Client receives review
↓
5. Client approves / requests changes
↓
6. Post automatically moves to scheduled
↓
7. Platform publishes
↓
8. Reporting

The key thing I'd test isn't the scheduling. Every platform can schedule posts. The make-or-break feature for a 15-client agency is whether clients actually find the approval process easy enough that they will use it instead of replying to your account manager's email with "looks good."

My ranking for your situation:

1. 🥇 Agorapulse — best complete operating system
2. 🥈 Planable — best approval/client-review experience
3. 🥉 Sendible — strong agency-oriented alternative
4. Sprout Social — excellent, but I'd only pay the premium if you need its more sophisticated enterprise capabilities

If you tell me (a) how many team members need access, (b) roughly how many social accounts per client, and (c) whether clients need to approve every post, I can work out which one is likely to be the best value for your exact 15-client setup.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d make Planable the first platform I’d trial.

It is particularly well suited to the workflow you described:

Create → internal team review → client review/approval → schedule → publish

My recommendation

🥇 I'd choose Planable

The big advantage is that each client can have their own workspace and approval process. Your team can work privately on content, then expose it to the client when it's ready. Clients can comment/approve, and you can configure posts to automatically schedule after approval. help.planable.ioplanable.io

For example:

Client A

Copywriter → Account Manager → Client → Scheduled → Published

Client B

Designer → Account Manager → Client → Scheduled → Published

You can also make Required Approval a hard gate, so content can't be scheduled/published until someone approves it. help.planable.io

Planable supports publishing to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, Pinterest, Google Business Profile and X, so it covers most agency social workflows. help.planable.ioplanable.io

Planable

🥈 Agorapulse if social management is equally important

I'd choose Agorapulse instead if your agency needs a more complete social-management platform—particularly for managing comments/messages, monitoring, reporting, and publishing alongside approvals.

Its approval system supports internal and external reviewers, and its higher-end workflows can have multiple sequential approval steps. support.agorapulse.com

Agorapulse

What I'd do with 15 clients

I'd actually test Planable and Agorapulse with 2–3 clients before committing to all 15.

The deciding question is:

• Mostly content creation → client approval → publishing? → Planable
• Content + publishing + social inbox + monitoring + robust reporting? → Agorapulse
• Enterprise-level reporting/workflows and budget isn't a major concern? → Sprout Social

For your specific description—15 clients + team approvals + client review + scheduled publishing—Planable is probably the cleanest fit.

If you tell me how many people are on your team, which social platforms you manage, and roughly how much content each client gets per month, I can narrow it down to the best plan/tier and estimated monthly cost for 15 clients.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d narrow it to Agorapulse, Metricool, and Planable. If you want one platform to run the whole publishing workflow, my pick is Agorapulse.

🥇 My recommendation: Agorapulse

For 15 clients, I'd choose Agorapulse.

It has the workflow you're describing:

Agency creates → internal team reviews → client reviews → approval → scheduled publishing

Agorapulse supports internal and external approvers, Shared Calendars for clients, approval notes, multi-step approval workflows, and scheduled publishing. Importantly, you can require everyone in an approval chain to approve before the post publishes. support.agorapulse.com

It also lets you separate permissions so, for example:

• Account manager → manages client workflow
• Content creator → creates drafts
• Internal reviewer → approves agency work
• Client → reviews/approves
• Publisher → schedules/publishes

That permission structure is particularly useful once you're handling 15 clients. support.agorapulse.com

Agorapulse

🥈 Metricool — probably the best value

Metricool is worth serious consideration if you don't need as elaborate an agency workflow.

Its approval system lets you assign internal or external reviewers, require one or all reviewers, and automatically keep an approved post queued for its scheduled publishing time. External clients can approve from an email without needing a Metricool account. help.metricool.com

That's a big deal for clients: you don't want to train 15 clients on another complicated SaaS platform.

Metricool

🥉 Planable — best if approvals are your biggest pain

Planable is excellent if your agency spends a lot of time going back and forth with clients on captions, creative, revisions, and approvals. It's more collaboration/review-centric than some of the traditional social schedulers. planable.io

Planable

What I'd actually do with 15 clients

I'd set up the workflow like this:

1. Content creator
→ Creates post in platform

2. Internal approval
→ Account manager/creative director reviews

3. Client approval
→ Client receives review notification

4. Revision if necessary
→ Client comments directly on the post

5. Client approves
→ Status changes to approved

6. Auto-publish
→ Platform publishes at scheduled time

7. Reporting
→ Monthly/weekly performance reporting from the same system

The key is not to use Asana/ClickUp/Notion for approvals and then a separate scheduler. At 15 clients, you're better off having the approval state attached directly to the post that will ultimately publish.

My ranking for your situation

Agorapulse — 9/10
Best balance of agency workflow, client approvals, scheduling and permissions.

Metricool — 8.5/10
I'd choose this if price/value and simplicity are more important.

Planable — 8.5/10
I'd choose this if client feedback/revisions are the biggest operational headache.

Sprout Social — 8/10
Excellent, but I'd generally consider it more platform than a 15-client agency needs unless you need its deeper enterprise capabilities.

If you tell me how many people are on your agency team, roughly how many posts per client/month, and whether clients need to approve every post, I can recommend the specific plan/tier and estimate your monthly software cost for Agorapulse vs Metricool vs Planable.

For a 15-client marketing/social media agency, I’d narrow it to SocialPilot vs. Agorapulse, with Sprout Social as the premium option.

My pick: SocialPilot

It fits your workflow particularly well because it is built around the agency model:

Your ideal workflow:

Content creator → Internal team approval → Client approval → Scheduled publishing

SocialPilot supports that exact sequence. A content scheduler can submit posts to a manager, the manager can send them to the client, and the client can approve, reject/send back, or comment. Clients can even approve from an email link without logging into the platform. help.socialpilot.co

That makes it especially attractive when you have 15 separate clients, each with their own social accounts and approval process.

How I'd rank the options

Why I'd choose SocialPilot for 15 clients

The biggest thing I'd optimize for isn't the scheduler—it's the approval workflow.

You want every post to have an unmistakable status:

Draft → Internal Review → Client Review → Approved → Scheduled → Published

SocialPilot explicitly supports team/client approval states and comments, rather than forcing your agency to manage approvals through email, Slack, or Google Docs. help.socialpilot.co

It also lets you give clients selective access to their accounts and designate them as approvers. help.socialpilot.co

When I'd pick Agorapulse instead

Agorapulse would be my #2 and possibly #1 if your agency has more complicated approval structures.

Its current workflow system supports multiple approval steps, including internal and external reviewers, and its Shared Calendar lets clients review/comment/approve without needing a normal user seat. support.agorapulse.com

For example:

Social Media Manager → Account Director → Client Marketing Manager → Client CEO

Agorapulse handles that kind of multi-stage workflow particularly well.

When I'd pay for Sprout

Sprout Social is the strongest choice if you're building a more sophisticated agency operation around reporting, analytics, social listening, publishing, and client management, rather than primarily needing an approval/scheduling system.

Its Advanced plan includes external approval workflows where clients can review content without logging into Sprout, along with more advanced publishing and asset-management capabilities. sproutsocial.com

The downside is that you're likely paying for substantially more platform than you need if your primary requirement is 15 clients + approvals + publishing.

What I'd do in your situation

Start with SocialPilot.

I'd structure the agency like this:

• 1 client = 1 account/workspace
• Give your content creators Content Scheduler permissions
• Have an Account Manager/Editor perform internal QA
• Send approved posts to the client's designated approver
• Client comments/rejects → goes back to creator
• Client approves → post enters publishing queue
• Use automatic publishing wherever the social network supports it
• Keep Slack/email for communication, not approval records

That should give you a much cleaner operation than having 15 clients approving content through Google Docs, email threads, or Slack.

One caveat: if you have multiple people on the client side or require two or three levels of approval, I'd seriously consider Agorapulse instead because its multi-step approval workflows are stronger. help.socialpilot.cosupport.agorapulse.com

If you tell me how many team members you have, which social networks you manage (Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn/TikTok/etc.), and whether clients need to approve every post, I can recommend the exact platform + plan and estimate the monthly cost for 15 clients.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist SocialPilot, Planable, and Agorapulse—but my default recommendation would be SocialPilot.

My ranking

🥇 I'd choose SocialPilot

SocialPilot is probably the sweet spot for 15 clients.

The workflow maps very closely to what you're describing:

Your team drafts → internal team approval → client review → client approves → scheduled post publishes.

SocialPilot supports role-based collaboration, client approval workflows, a shared content calendar, bulk scheduling, analytics and client reporting. Clients can also review/approve through a shareable link without repeatedly logging into the platform. www.socialpilot.co

That's important at 15 clients because you don't want 15 clients becoming 15 additional software users and 15 separate approval processes.

🥈 Planable if approvals are your biggest pain

Planable is arguably the best UX for content review.

It's particularly good if your process is:

Copywriter → Account Manager → Creative Director → Client → Schedule

It gives each client a dedicated workspace, visual post previews, comments, version history and multi-level approval workflows. Approved content can then automatically move into scheduling. planable.io

I'd choose Planable over SocialPilot if your agency does a lot of creative/content collaboration and client feedback—not just social scheduling.

🥉 Agorapulse if you also need serious social management

Agorapulse is excellent if you want the platform to handle publishing + approvals + social inbox/community management + reporting.

Its Shared Calendar lets clients review, comment and approve content, while your team can manage approval workflows internally. www.agorapulse.com

It's a particularly good choice if your agency also manages clients' comments, DMs and social engagement, rather than only creating and publishing content.

What I would not do

I wouldn't start with Sprout Social unless you have a reason to need its more enterprise-oriented capabilities. It absolutely handles multi-stage approval workflows and separate client environments, but you're likely paying for considerably more platform than a 15-client agency needs. support.sproutsocial.com

My recommendation by agency type

• 15 clients, want one platform and good economics → SocialPilot
• 15 clients, content/creative approval is the core problem → Planable
• 15 clients + heavy community management/inbox → Agorapulse
• Large team, complex enterprise approvals/reporting → Sprout Social

If I were setting up your agency today, I'd start with SocialPilot and build this exact workflow:

Draft → Internal QA → Client Approval → Scheduled → Published → Reporting

The key is to make client approval a hard gate, rather than having someone manually check Slack/email before publishing. SocialPilot and the other leading agency platforms support that kind of structured workflow. www.socialpilot.co

If you tell me roughly how many people are on your team and which channels you manage (Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, etc.), I can narrow this down to the best 2 options and compare their actual 2026 pricing for 15 clients.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist these three, with Planable as my default recommendation.

Why I'd choose Planable

Your workflow sounds like:

Agency creates → internal team reviews → client reviews → client approves → scheduled publishing

That's exactly where Planable is strongest. It gives you separate workspaces for clients, internal comments/feedback, approval workflows, version history, calendars, and publishing in the same system. planable.ioplanable.io

For example:

Client A workspace

• Copywriter creates posts
• Designer attaches creative
• Account manager reviews
• Client receives approval request
• Client comments/requests changes
• Team revises
• Client approves
• Post gets scheduled
• Everyone can see the approval trail

Planable supports required approval and multi-level approval workflows, so you can make approval a genuine gate rather than relying on someone remembering whether a client said "looks good" in Slack. planable.io

One particularly useful feature for a 15-client agency is that Planable uses workspaces to separate clients, while allowing unlimited users rather than charging you for every person collaborating. planable.ioplanable.io

When I'd pick SocialPilot instead

If your biggest concern is managing a large number of social accounts and scheduling lots of content efficiently, I'd look hard at SocialPilot. It's positioned specifically around agency scheduling, client approvals, bulk scheduling, and agency reporting. www.socialpilot.co

So:

• Approval/review is your biggest pain → Planable
• Publishing volume and account management are your biggest pain → SocialPilot
• You also need a serious social inbox/community-management system → Agorapulse
• You're building a larger, enterprise-style agency operation → Sprout Social

What I would do with 15 clients

I'd start with Planable, and structure it like this:

15 client workspaces → 1 standardized approval workflow → internal approval → client approval → auto/scheduled publishing

I'd also establish a rule that nothing can be scheduled until the client approval status is complete. That eliminates a lot of the "did they actually approve this?" problem.

Planable specifically supports settings such as auto-scheduling after approval and locking content once approved, which fits that process nicely. planable.ioplanable.io

Bottom line: Planable would be my first trial for a 15-client agency. If you tell me roughly how many team members you have, how many social accounts per client, and whether you need analytics/reporting, I can narrow it down to the best platform and likely plan for your agency.

For a marketing agency managing 15 clients, I’d choose a platform built around agency workflows, not just a social scheduler. Your key requirements are:

1. Internal team approvals (copy → designer → account manager)
2. Client review/sign-off
3. Approval history/version control
4. Scheduled publishing
5. Multiple client workspaces
6. Reporting/client visibility

My shortlist:

My recommendation for a 15-client agency

Pick: Planable + your preferred reporting tool
Best if your biggest pain is:

• clients taking too long to approve
• feedback scattered across email/Slack
• designers and account managers stepping on each other
• needing a clean “client sees exactly what goes live” workflow

Planable’s approval model is especially suited to agencies because you can create workflows like:

Content creator → Account manager → Client approval → Auto-schedule planable.io

If you want one platform to run everything:

Choose Sendible or SocialPilot.

A practical setup:

• 15 clients
• 3–8 social accounts per client
• 2–5 internal users
• monthly content calendars
• client approvals required

I’d lean:

Small/medium agency (5–20 staff):
→ Planable

Agency wanting scheduling + reports + client management in one place:
→ Sendible

Cost-conscious agency scaling from 15 → 50 clients:
→ SocialPilot

A workflow I’d avoid:

• Google Sheets for calendars
• Canva approvals
• Slack approvals
• Buffer/Hootsuite as the only approval layer

They usually break once you have multiple clients and multiple reviewers.

If you tell me:

• how many team members need access,
• which channels you manage (Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.),
• whether clients need to approve every post,
• and your monthly software budget,

I can narrow it to the best 1–2 options.

For a 15-client marketing/social media agency, I’d make Planable the first platform you evaluate.

The key is that you don't just need a scheduler—you need a workflow of:

Create → internal team review → client review → approval → scheduled publishing → reporting

My shortlist

1. 🥇 Planable — my recommendation

Planable

Planable is particularly well suited to agencies because the product is built around content collaboration and approval, rather than simply scheduling posts. It supports approval stages such as internal review → client approval, visual previews, comments, and scheduling/publishing. www.socialpilot.co

For 15 clients, I'd structure it something like:

Client A workspace

• Content creator
• Account manager
• Internal approver
• Client reviewer
• Content calendar
• Approval workflow
• Scheduled posts

Then repeat for each client.

The big advantage is that client feedback lives against the actual post, rather than getting scattered across email, Slack, Google Docs, and PDFs.

I'd choose Planable if your biggest operational headache is getting content approved.

2. Agorapulse — choose this if you also manage engagement

Agorapulse

Agorapulse is stronger than Planable if your agency also handles comments, DMs, social inboxes, moderation and reporting.

It supports team approval as well as client approval through shared calendars; clients can review, comment and approve content without necessarily being full platform users. www.agorapulse.com

So if your service is:

Content creation + approval + publishing + community management + reporting

I'd seriously consider Agorapulse.

3. Sprout Social — best if you're building a larger agency

Sprout Social

Sprout has very strong client-specific groups/permissions, approval workflows, shared calendars and reporting. sproutsocial.com

It's the option I'd consider if you expect the agency to grow substantially and want a more sophisticated system around permissions, analytics and reporting.

The downside is that it's typically harder to justify economically for a 15-client agency unless you're selling a relatively high-value service.

4. SocialPilot — worth looking at for value

SocialPilot

SocialPilot is worth considering if you have lots of social profiles across those 15 clients and want strong scheduling/approval functionality without moving into the more expensive enterprise-oriented platforms. Its agency offering specifically emphasizes client approvals, manager approvals, bulk scheduling and agency workflows. www.socialpilot.co

What I'd do in your position

I'd narrow it to three demos/trials:

Planable → Agorapulse → SocialPilot

And test the exact same workflow in each:

1. Strategist creates a post
2. Designer attaches creative
3. Account manager reviews it
4. Client receives notification
5. Client requests a change
6. Team edits the post
7. Client approves
8. Post automatically moves into scheduled/publishing status
9. Client can see the upcoming calendar
10. Team can see exactly which posts are waiting on whom

The winner shouldn't be whichever has the most features. Pick the one that makes that workflow require the fewest clicks and the least client training.

My ranking for a 15-client agency

Planable — 9.5/10
Best if approvals/client collaboration are the core problem.

Agorapulse — 9/10
Best all-around choice if you're also doing community management.

Sprout Social — 8.5/10
Excellent, but I'd want a larger/high-revenue agency before paying for its full capabilities.

SocialPilot — 8.5/10
Very compelling if keeping the software cost under control is important.

Hootsuite — 8/10
Capable, but I'd choose the others first for an agency whose primary challenge is client approvals.

If you tell me roughly how many people are on your team, which social channels you manage (IG/FB/LinkedIn/TikTok/etc.), and whether you need client reporting too, I can narrow this down to the best 1–2 platforms and compare their current pricing for 15 clients.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d make Planable the default choice.

The key reason: your workflow is not just “schedule social posts.” You need internal team review → client review/approval → scheduled publishing, repeatedly across 15 separate client accounts. Planable is specifically built around that workflow, with multi-level approvals, client reviewers, comments, visual previews, and publishing. planable.io

My shortlist

Current agency-focused comparisons similarly put Planable at the top for collaboration/client approvals, while Agorapulse is stronger when social inbox, monitoring and reporting are priorities. planable.iosproutsocial.com

Why I'd pick Planable

I'd structure each client as its own workspace:

Client → Content calendar → Internal approval → Client approval → Schedule → Publish

For example:

1. Content creator drafts post.
2. Account manager reviews internally.
3. Client receives approval request.
4. Client comments or requests changes directly on the post.
5. Creator revises it.
6. Client approves.
7. Approved post automatically moves toward publishing.
8. Team can manage/schedule content from the same calendar.

Planable supports optional, required, and multi-level approval workflows, including distinct internal and external/client roles. It also supports approval requests via email, which is particularly useful because clients don't need to live inside your agency's workflow all day. planable.io

When I'd choose something else

Choose Agorapulse if your agency also manages a lot of comments, DMs, social listening and community management. Its unified inbox and reporting are major advantages. planable.iosproutsocial.com

Choose SocialPilot if price/scalability is the biggest concern. It's positioned specifically for agencies managing multiple client accounts, with scheduling, approvals and client management. www.socialpilot.co

Choose Sprout Social if you're becoming a more sophisticated agency and need deep analytics, social CRM, listening and enterprise-level reporting. I'd probably consider it unnecessarily expensive for a straightforward 15-client content/approval workflow. www.techradar.com

My recommendation for your agency

Start with Planable.

At 15 clients, I'd prioritize ease of client approval and operational simplicity over having the biggest possible feature set. The biggest productivity gain will come from eliminating the endless:

“Here's the Google Drive link → here's the spreadsheet → can you approve this? → which version? → did you see my email?”

Planable is designed specifically to eliminate that kind of agency friction. planable.io

If you tell me how many people are on your team, which social networks you manage (Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn/TikTok/etc.), and roughly how many posts per client per month, I can narrow this down to Planable vs Agorapulse vs SocialPilot and tell you which one I'd actually buy for a 15-client agency.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d put Planable at the top of the list.

The key distinction is that you don't just need a social scheduler—you need a client approval workflow where your team can create/revise content, the client can review/comment/approve, and approved posts can then be scheduled/published.

My shortlist

🥇 I'd choose Planable

Planable is particularly well suited to the workflow you're describing. It uses separate workspaces per client, with content calendars, comments, annotations, approvals and publishing all in the same environment. You can also keep internal team comments separate from what the client sees. planable.io

A typical workflow could be:

Your strategist → Writer/designer → Internal team approval → Client review → Client approval → Auto-schedule → Publish

That's much cleaner than having clients approve posts through email, Google Docs, Slack, etc.

The pricing structure is also attractive for an agency because Planable charges per workspace rather than per user. Its current Pro plan is listed at $49/workspace/month and allows unlimited users, 10 social pages and required approvals; Enterprise adds multi-level approvals. planable.io

For 15 clients, however, you should ask Planable for agency/volume pricing rather than simply multiplying the retail workspace price by 15.

🥈 Agorapulse

I'd choose Agorapulse instead if your agency needs more than content approvals—particularly if you want a strong social inbox, community management, reporting and publishing platform.

Its higher-tier plans add team assignments, shared calendars, advanced reporting and, at the custom level, multi-step approval workflows. www.agorapulse.com

So:

Planable = better content-production/approval workflow

Agorapulse = better overall social-media management operation

🥉 Sprout Social

Sprout is excellent if you're building toward a larger agency operation with sophisticated reporting, social listening and enterprise workflows. Its Professional/Advanced plans support multi-step approval workflows, including external/client approvals. support.sproutsocial.com

But I wouldn't make it my first choice for a 15-client agency unless you specifically need its analytics/listening capabilities. The per-user pricing can become expensive quickly. Current listed pricing starts around $199/user/month for Standard and $299/user/month for Professional. www.capterra.com

What I'd do in your situation

I'd narrow it to:

1. Planable — best overall for your stated workflow
2. Agorapulse — best if publishing/inbox/reporting are equally important
3. Sendible — worth testing if agency/white-label features are important
4. Metricool — best if keeping costs down is a major priority
5. Sprout — best if you're willing to pay for enterprise-level capabilities

One important thing: don't evaluate these based primarily on scheduling features. Almost all of them can schedule posts. For a 15-client agency, I'd test the approval experience with 2–3 real clients.

Specifically test:

• Can your team approve internally before the client sees it?
• Can clients approve without getting a full user seat/license?
• Can clients comment directly on the post?
• Can they request changes?
• Can you see exactly who approved what?
• Can approved content automatically move to scheduled?
• Can each client have a completely separate workspace/calendar?
• Can you prevent one client's team from seeing another client's content?
• Can you handle Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.?
• Can you generate client-ready reports?
• How much does it actually cost when you have 15 clients + 5–10 internal users?

If you tell me roughly how many people are on your agency team and which social networks you manage (Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn/TikTok/etc.), I can compare Planable vs Agorapulse vs Sendible vs Metricool specifically for your 15-client setup—including the likely monthly cost and the exact workflow I'd recommend.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Metricool, Agorapulse, and Sprout Social—but my default recommendation would be Metricool if you want the best balance of workflow, client approvals, scheduling, and cost.

🥇 My pick: Metricool

For 15 clients, I'd lean toward Metricool.

Its approval system lets you send individual posts to internal collaborators or external reviewers by email, specify whether one or all reviewers must approve, and track approval status from the calendar/task system. Clients can approve or reject without necessarily needing a full Metricool account. help.metricool.com

A good agency workflow would be:

Content creator → Internal team review → Client approval → Scheduled → Auto-published

That keeps the client from accidentally changing your content calendar while still giving them a very simple approval step.

🥈 Agorapulse if approvals are complicated

Agorapulse is particularly attractive if you have workflows such as:

Copywriter → Account Manager → Client → Legal → Publish

It supports multi-step approval workflows, including internal and external stakeholders. support.agorapulse.com

For a 15-client agency with multiple people touching each account, I'd seriously consider it.

🥉 Sprout Social if you're building a larger agency

Sprout Social has sophisticated multi-user/multi-step approval workflows and is strong for larger teams and organizations. support.sproutsocial.com

The downside is that you're potentially paying for considerably more platform than a 15-client agency actually needs.

One more I'd test: Planable

Planable is worth putting into your trial. It's particularly focused on the content → review → comments → approval → publishing experience rather than trying to be an enormous social-media suite.

What I'd choose

If I were setting up your agency today:

15 clients + 3–10 internal staff → Metricool

15 clients + complex approval chains → Agorapulse

15 clients + enterprise reporting/listening/workflows → Sprout Social

15 clients + content production/review is the biggest pain → Planable

One important distinction: don't choose based primarily on scheduling. At 15 clients, the thing that will make or break your operation is the approval workflow and client separation. You want each client to see only their content, approve/reject/comment easily, and have approved posts automatically move toward publishing.

If you tell me how many people are on your team, which social networks you manage (Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn/TikTok/etc.), and whether clients need to comment on individual posts, I can narrow this down to one platform and the exact setup I'd use for 15 clients.

For a marketing agency managing ~15 clients, you’ll want a platform that handles three workflows well:

1. Internal team approvals (writers, designers, account managers)
2. Client review/approval (without giving clients too much access)
3. Scheduled publishing (social, content, campaigns)

The best fit depends on whether you’re mainly managing social media, content marketing, or full-service campaigns. Here are the strongest options:

My recommendation for a 15-client agency

Option 1 — Best overall: Agorapulse

Use this if most of your work is:

• Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn/TikTok/X management
• Community management
• Monthly content calendars
• Client sign-off before posts go live

Why it works:

• Separate workspaces/inboxes per client
• Client approval workflows
• Content calendar
• Scheduling
• Reporting
• Team permissions

A 15-client agency is right in its target range.

Option 2 — Best client approval experience: Planable

Choose this if your biggest pain point is:

“We need clients to quickly review posts and approve/reject without confusion.”

Strengths:

• Very clean client-facing interface
• Comments directly on posts
• Approval history
• Easy for non-marketing clients

Many agencies pair it with another tool for analytics/reporting.

Option 3 — Best budget-friendly stack

For a lean agency:

• Planable → approvals
• Metricool → scheduling/reporting
• Google Drive → assets

What I would avoid

• Using spreadsheets for approvals — they break down around 10+ clients.
• Giving clients access to your project management tool unless they’re very involved.
• Using enterprise tools like Sprout Social unless your margins justify the cost.

A practical agency setup

Client workspace
→ Content calendar
→ Draft posts
→ Client approval
→ Scheduled publishing

Internal workflow
→ Copywriter drafts
→ Designer attaches assets
→ Account manager reviews
→ Client approves
→ Scheduler publishes

For 15 clients, I’d shortlist:

1. 🥇 Agorapulse — if social media is your core service
2. 🥈 Planable — if client approvals are the bottleneck
3. 🥉 Loomly — if you want simple and affordable

If you tell me your main services (social only vs SEO/content/email/ads) and approximate monthly budget, I can narrow it to the best stack.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d recommend Planable as the best overall fit—especially if your core workflow is:

Agency creates → internal team reviews → client reviews/approves → scheduled publishing.

My ranking

🥇 Why I'd choose Planable

Planable is specifically structured around client workspaces. You can create a separate workspace for each client, keep internal discussions hidden from the client, then expose content when it's ready for client review. Clients can comment, suggest changes and approve posts. planable.io

The approval workflow is particularly well suited to an agency:

Draft → Internal approval → Client approval → Scheduled → Published

Its Pro plan supports required approvals, meaning content can't be scheduled/published until an approver signs off. It also supports unlimited users, so you're not paying per team member. planable.io

For 15 clients, I'd structure it as:

PLANABLE
│
├── Client 01
│   ├── Internal Agency Team
│   └── Client
│
├── Client 02
│   ├── Internal Agency Team
│   └── Client
│
├── ...
│
└── Client 15
    ├── Internal Agency Team
    └── Client

That keeps each client's content, approvals, calendar and conversations separated.

💰 What about cost?

Planable's current Pro plan is listed at $49/workspace/month, with 10 social pages per workspace, unlimited users and required approvals. However, because Planable recommends one workspace per client, 15 clients can become expensive at list pricing. Planable specifically says agencies managing 5+ workspaces can discuss Enterprise/volume pricing. planable.io

So I would not simply buy 15 Pro workspaces at list price. I'd contact Planable and negotiate an agency/volume plan.

🥈 Buffer — if keeping costs down is important

Buffer is worth considering if your workflow is relatively straightforward.

Its Team plan has unlimited users and content approval workflows, and Buffer charges by connected social channels rather than seats. That's attractive for a 15-client agency. buffer.com

I'd choose Buffer if your priority is:

"We need to efficiently schedule lots of social content without spending a fortune."

I'd choose Planable if your priority is:

"We need a really clean client approval process."

🥉 Sprout Social — powerful, but probably overkill

Sprout Social is the better choice if you're also doing social listening, community management, sophisticated reporting, competitor analysis and multiple approval levels.

Its Professional plan has custom approval workflows and unlimited social profiles, but it currently starts around $299/seat/month billed annually, so costs can climb very quickly for an agency. sproutsocial.com

My recommendation for your agency

If I were setting up a 15-client agency today:

1. Planable → best overall
2. Buffer → best value
3. Sprout Social → best if you're a sophisticated/high-end social agency

I'd lean Planable + your existing CRM/project-management system rather than trying to make one platform handle absolutely everything.

If you tell me roughly how many social channels you manage per client (e.g. IG + FB + LinkedIn) and how many people are on your agency team, I can work out the likely monthly cost and recommend the exact plan/setup for 15 clients.

For a 15-client marketing agency, I’d shortlist Planable, Agorapulse, and Metricool. The best choice depends mostly on how sophisticated your approval process needs to be.

🥇 My pick: Planable

If your workflow is roughly:

Agency creates → internal team reviews → client reviews → client requests changes/approves → scheduled publishing

I'd choose Planable. Its strength is the approval/collaboration layer, rather than simply being a social scheduler. Recent agency users particularly highlight its client spaces, visual previews, comments, and multi-level approval workflows. www.reddit.com

It's a particularly good fit if each of your 15 clients needs their own content calendar/workspace and you want clients to interact with content without getting access to your entire agency operation.

Planable

🥈 Agorapulse if you want more of an all-in-one

I'd pick Agorapulse if, beyond approvals and publishing, you want the platform to become your team's broader social-media operating system.

It supports scheduled publishing across major networks and lets you send posts to internal or external reviewers. Its higher-tier workflow system can handle multi-step approvals, e.g. agency editor → account manager → client. support.agorapulse.com

Agorapulse

🥉 Metricool if cost/value is important

Metricool is compelling for a 15-client agency because its approval process is quite practical: you can assign internal collaborators or external clients, specify whether one or all reviewers must approve, and clients can approve/reject directly from email without having a Metricool account. help.metricool.com

The approval functionality is on its Advanced and Custom plans, so I'd make sure the agency plan you price out supports your 15-brand setup. help.metricool.com

Metricool

What I'd do with 15 clients

I'd structure the workflow like this:

Client workspace
→ Content calendar
→ Copy/design created
→ Internal agency approval
→ Client approval
→ Scheduled
→ Auto-published
→ Reporting

The important thing is not to choose based primarily on scheduling. Almost all of these platforms can schedule posts. Your bottleneck at 15 clients is likely to become "What's waiting for approval, who has it, and why hasn't it been approved?"

So my ranking would be:

1. Planable — if approvals/client collaboration are the core problem
2. Agorapulse — if you want a broader social-management platform
3. Metricool — if you want the best price/functionality balance

If you tell me how many people are on your agency team and which networks you manage (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.), I can narrow this down to the best platform + plan for 15 clients, including an estimated monthly cost.

For a marketing agency managing around 15 clients, you generally want more than just a scheduling tool. The key features to prioritize are:

• Multi-client workspaces
• Internal team approval workflows
• Client review and approvals (without requiring a paid seat if possible)
• Content calendar
• Scheduled publishing across multiple social networks
• Reporting
• Role-based permissions

Here's how the leading platforms compare:

My top recommendations

1. Agorapulse (Best overall)

Ideal if you're running a full-service agency.

Pros:

• Multiple client workspaces
• Client approval links
• Internal approval workflows
• Unified inbox
• Social listening
• Strong reporting
• Easy permissions management

This is often the sweet spot for agencies with 10–50 clients.

2. Planable (Best for approval-heavy agencies)

If your biggest pain point is getting content approved by clients:

• Clients review posts in a visual feed
• Leave comments directly on posts
• Approve or request changes
• Multiple approval stages
• Great for creative collaboration

Many agencies pair Planable with another reporting tool if they need more advanced analytics.

3. ContentStudio (Best value)

ContentStudio includes:

• AI assistance
• Approval workflows
• Client workspaces
• Scheduling
• Analytics
• Automation
• RSS/content discovery

It's typically more affordable than enterprise-focused competitors while offering a broad feature set.

4. Sprout Social (Premium option)

If budget is less of a concern, Sprout Social offers:

• Excellent collaboration
• Advanced analytics
• CRM-style customer engagement
• Robust approvals
• Enterprise-grade permissions

The downside is that pricing can increase significantly as your team grows.

For your size (15 clients)

If you have:

• 3–8 team members
• Around 15 clients
• Roughly 200–600 posts per month

I'd rank them like this:

1. Agorapulse ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
2. ContentStudio ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
3. Planable ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (especially if approvals are the main challenge)
4. Loomly ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆
5. Sprout Social ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (excellent but often pricier)

If your agency also creates graphics and videos, consider combining one of these platforms with a design collaboration tool like Canva or Adobe Express so clients can review creative assets before they move into the publishing workflow.

If you can share:

• your approximate monthly budget,
• how many team members need access,
• and which social networks you manage (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Pinterest, etc.),

I can narrow it down to the one that offers the best balance of features and cost for your agency.

For a marketing agency managing around 15 clients, you want something that supports four core workflows well:

• Internal team collaboration and approvals
• Client review and approvals
• Scheduled publishing across multiple social platforms
• Client separation (workspaces, permissions, reporting)

Here are the strongest options, depending on your priorities.

My top recommendations

1. Agorapulse (Best overall)

This is one of the strongest choices for an agency with 15 clients.

Pros:

• Multiple client workspaces
• Internal approval workflows
• Client approval links (clients don't always need a login)
• Social inbox
• Scheduling and publishing
• Reporting
• User permissions
• Easy onboarding

Ideal if you manage:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• X
• TikTok
• Google Business Profile
• YouTube

2. Planable (Best for client approvals)

If your biggest bottleneck is getting content approved, this is difficult to beat.

Features:

• Beautiful content previews
• Comment directly on posts
• Multiple approval stages
• Internal → client approval workflow
• Version history
• Scheduled publishing

Many agencies actually use:

• Planable for approvals
• Another tool for analytics/reporting

3. Sprout Social (Premium option)

If budget isn't a major concern, Sprout Social offers a polished experience.

Strengths:

• Enterprise-level workflows
• Smart approval routing
• Excellent analytics
• Team assignments
• CRM-style social inbox
• Strong reporting

Downside:

• One of the more expensive options.

4. Loomly (Great value)

A good middle ground.

Includes:

• Approval workflow
• Content calendar
• Publishing
• Client collaboration
• Asset library
• Notifications

Often easier to learn than larger enterprise platforms.

Recommended workflow

For an agency with 15 clients:

Strategist
      ↓
Content Creator
      ↓
Internal Review
      ↓
Client Approval
      ↓
Scheduled Publishing
      ↓
Reporting

The best platforms support this process without requiring lengthy email chains.

Pricing considerations

With 15 clients, pricing often depends on:

• Number of social profiles
• Number of users
• Approval features
• Reporting requirements

Agencies managing 15 clients commonly spend anywhere from a few hundred to well over a thousand dollars per month, depending on the number of connected accounts and team members. It's worth requesting an agency quote rather than relying only on list prices.

My recommendation

If I were choosing today:

• Best overall: Agorapulse
• Best for approval-heavy agencies: Planable
• Best premium solution: Sprout Social
• Best budget option: Loomly

If your agency also creates content in Canva, Adobe Express, or Google Drive, it's worth considering how well the platform integrates with those tools, since that can significantly streamline the review and publishing process.

If you share:

• how many team members you have,
• which social platforms you publish to,
• and your monthly software budget,

I can narrow it down to the best fit for your agency.

For a marketing agency managing about 15 clients, I'd prioritize a platform that combines internal approvals, client approvals, and reliable scheduling without becoming overly complex or expensive.

Here's how the leading options compare:

My recommendation

For 15 clients, I'd narrow it to these three:

1. Agorapulse (overall best value)

• Multi-level approval workflows
• Clients can review and approve content without editing it
• Shared content calendars
• Publishing to all major social platforms
• Inbox and reporting included
• Typically offers one of the strongest feature-to-cost ratios for agencies.

Best if your agency handles both content creation and community management.

2. Planable (best approval experience)
If approvals are your biggest bottleneck, Planable is difficult to beat.

It offers:

• Live content previews
• Internal comments
• Client comments and approvals
• Version history
• Multiple approval stages
• Scheduled publishing

Many agencies use it specifically because clients find it intuitive.

3. Sprout Social (best premium option)
If budget is less of a concern:

• Enterprise-grade workflows
• Excellent permissions
• Approval chains
• Strong analytics
• CRM-style inbox

This is often chosen by agencies managing larger brands or more complex teams.

If I were setting up a 15-client agency today

I'd use:

• Planable for content creation and approvals if client collaboration is the top priority.
• Agorapulse if you also need inbox management, reporting, and publishing in one platform.
• Sprout Social if you expect to grow to 30–50 clients and want a more enterprise-focused solution.

For most agencies your size, Agorapulse tends to provide the best overall balance of approval workflows, client collaboration, scheduling, reporting, and cost. If the approval process itself is the biggest pain point, Planable is often the smoother experience for both your team and your clients.

For a marketing agency managing around 15 clients, I'd prioritize a platform that combines four capabilities well:

• Internal team approval workflows
• Client review and approvals
• Scheduled publishing across multiple social networks
• Easy client/account separation

Here's how the leading options compare:

My top recommendations

1. Agorapulse (Best balance)

This is often the strongest fit for agencies with 10–50 clients.

Pros:

• Multi-step approval workflows
• Client approval links (clients don't always need full platform access)
• Content calendar
• Unified inbox
• Team permissions
• Asset library
• Reporting included

Good if you have account managers, content creators, and clients all reviewing content before it goes live.

2. Sendible (Most agency-focused)

Designed with agencies in mind.

Features:

• Separate client workspaces
• White-label reporting
• Client approval workflows
• Canva integration
• Google Drive/Dropbox integrations
• Good pricing as you scale

Many boutique agencies choose this because the pricing scales well.

3. Sprout Social (Premium option)

If budget isn't a major concern.

Excellent for:

• Complex approval chains
• Large teams
• Enterprise clients
• Advanced analytics
• CRM-style collaboration

It's one of the most polished platforms, but also one of the more expensive.

4. Loomly (Best approval experience)

If your biggest challenge is getting clients to approve posts.

Highlights:

• Very intuitive approval flow
• Clients receive email notifications
• Comment directly on posts
• Easy content calendar
• Great for agencies producing lots of creative content

Typical agency workflow

A common workflow looks like:

1. Content writer drafts post.
2. Designer attaches graphics/video.
3. Internal marketing manager approves.
4. Client receives approval request.
5. Client comments or approves.
6. Final approval.
7. Post publishes automatically.
8. Performance report generated monthly.

The platforms above all support variations of this workflow.

Pricing for ~15 clients

Approximate monthly costs vary based on users, social profiles, and features:

• Agorapulse: Mid-range
• Sendible: Lower to mid-range
• Loomly: Mid-range
• Sprout Social: Premium

The right plan depends more on the number of connected social profiles and team members than simply the number of clients.

If I were choosing today

• Best overall: Agorapulse
• Best value: Sendible
• Best client approvals: Loomly
• Best enterprise solution: Sprout Social

If your agency also manages paid ads, creative requests, and project management, another effective approach is to pair a social publishing platform (such as Agorapulse or Sendible) with a project management tool like Asana or ClickUp. This separates content production from publishing while still giving clients visibility into the approval process.

For a marketing agency managing around 15 clients, the best choice depends on whether your priority is client collaboration, workflow approvals, or broad platform support. At that size, I'd prioritize a platform that has:

• Internal approval workflows
• Client review and approval (without requiring clients to log in, if possible)
• Scheduled publishing
• Shared content calendars
• Asset management
• Good reporting

Here's how the leading options compare:

My top recommendations

1. ContentStudio (Best overall value)

For an agency with 15 clients, this is often the strongest balance of features and cost.

Pros:

• Multi-client workspaces
• Content approval workflows
• Client collaboration
• AI-assisted content creation
• Unified content calendar
• Publish to all major networks
• White-label reporting
• Significantly lower cost than Sprout Social

Best if:

• You have 3–10 team members.
• You want agency-focused features without enterprise pricing.

2. Planable (Best for approvals)

If clients frequently request revisions, Planable is especially strong.

Highlights:

• Clients can review content in a visual feed.
• Comment directly on posts.
• Multiple approval stages.
• Version history.
• Mock feeds that resemble the live platforms.

Many agencies pair Planable with another analytics tool if reporting needs are extensive.

3. Sprout Social (Best premium option)

If budget is less of a concern, Sprout Social offers a polished, all-in-one experience with:

• Advanced approval chains
• Detailed permissions
• Excellent analytics
• Robust reporting
• CRM-style engagement tools

The main drawback is cost, which can add up quickly as users and client profiles increase.

If your agency creates lots of content

A common stack is:

• Planable for drafting and approvals
• Canva for creative assets
• Google Drive for file storage
• Looker Studio for custom reporting (or the reporting built into your social platform)

My recommendation for 15 clients

• Best value: ContentStudio
• Best client approval experience: Planable
• Best premium all-in-one platform: Sprout Social

If you expect to grow to 30–50 clients over the next couple of years, I'd lean toward ContentStudio or Agorapulse because they tend to scale well for agency workflows without the pricing increasing as steeply as some enterprise-focused platforms.