Content workflow software comes hand-in-hand with smart content production scaling. On the other hand, creating more content puts your content processes to the test: can you deliver on time without compromising on quality?
Whether you’re an in-house content-focused marketing team or a marketing agency, tidying up your content workflow is crucial for a smooth ride toward your goals.
In this article, I’ve gathered eight favorite content workflow software solutions to help you polish your processes, from content creation to project management and automated approval workflows.
What is content workflow software?
Content workflow software refers to tools designed to optimize content planning, creation, and distribution. They provide a structured content strategy framework that supports collaboration among team members, streamlines approval processes, and helps ensure consistent content quality and delivery.
Content workflow software helps manage complex content operations, allowing teams to maintain a steady content flow and align their approach with strategic goals.
Key features to look for in content workflow tools
Content workflow software aims to help you streamline your content creation processes and keep your marketing team on track. When selecting a content workflow tool, focus on these key features:
Look for a tool that supports various content types with easy-to-use editing, templates, and media integration. This speeds up content development to create professional content at scale.
- Content approval workflow
Smooth collaboration is everything. Your content workflow software should allow team members to comment, review, and approve content easily. An effective content approval workflow ensures content meets quality standards but doesn’t stall the pipeline.
Choose tools that automate repetitive tasks, such as scheduling posts and sending requests for approval. Automation reduces manual efforts and errors, leaving more time for creative work. The same principle applies in software development industry, fintech industry, etc. where automating routine tasks helps improve efficiency and focus on complex work. In this context, nearshore software developers can play a key role by providing dedicated teams who implement automation solutions, streamline workflows, and adapt quickly to evolving project needs, making processes more efficient and aligned with business goals.
A clear, editable content calendar helps plan, track, and adjust your content schedule to keep your content strategy consistent.
Ensure your content workflow software plays well with other platforms your team uses, like CRM systems and analytics tools. The less you jump across different apps, the smoother your content management pipeline is.
1. Planable – best content management tool for planning, collaboration, and approval
The key to an efficient content creation workflow is swift and clear communication. Planable stands out from other content workflow software solutions with its efficient content planning features mixed with powerful content collaboration tools.
Planable makes it easy for in-house teams and marketing agencies to exchange feedback and collaborate on any piece of content, from social media posts and TikTok videos to articles, briefs, and emails.
Feed view in Planable
For instance, if you are a marketing agency team, you need to exchange feedback on a piece of content and get the client’s green light before going live. Planable offers communication tools like internal notes to keep the conversation within your team.
Internal notes in Planable
After the piece is polished internally, share it with external collaborators using one of the customizable approval workflows — all within one platform. You don’t need additional approval software or lengthy email chains to get a solid “yes” on your content.
Multi-level approval workflow in Planable
Key features
Exchange real-time feedback through comments, annotations, text suggestions, and internal notes. Create content together with your team and spend minimum time on fixes.
Give your content strategy a comprehensive overview with a visual content calendar. Choose from one of four views: calendar, feed, grid, or list, and easily filter your content using custom labels. This helps you avoid content overlaps and gaps.
- Multi-platform publishing
Automate your social media content workflow: draft and approve posts in Planable and schedule them right away to go live on nine major social media platforms. Plus, use valuable analytics to track the performance of content across different platforms.
- Custom approval workflows
Enrich your agency workflow with one of four approval options in Planable: none, optional, required, multi-level. With multi-level, you can run content by all stakeholders (marketing team, clients, and legal) before scheduling it to be published automatically.
When inviting collaborators to the workspace, set custom roles and permissions. See how you can ease the review and approval process by dividing approvers and creators? Very demure, very mindful.
Drawbacks: Planable doesn’t offer any social listening features yet and its analytics feature is an add-on.
Pricing: Planable offers 50 free posts for unlimited time to give you a taste of the platform. After that, you can upgrade for $33/month per workspace.
2. ClickUp – best for managing content workflow tasks
ClickUp is a project management tool perfect for marketing agencies and in-house teams looking to make their content production process more manageable. ClickUp helps you break down the content creation process into tasks and stay on track with your marketing efforts.
Besides quality task management, ClickUp also works as a storage solution for your content. You can create documents in ClickUp and attach them to relevant tasks.
Key features
Sort, assign, organize, and keep track of tasks, helping your content marketing projects stay on course. Use customizable templates to add or remove specific fields.
Directly add time tracking to tasks to better manage workloads and check team productivity.
Set up automatic processes for repetitive tasks in your content creation process, saving time and reducing mistakes.
Drawbacks: ClickUp sticks to project management. It lacks specific features for managing content workflows, like visual asset creation or automatic content distribution.
Pricing: ClickUp has a free version and three paid plans starting at $7/month.
3. Content Workflow by Bynder – best for organizing the content pipeline
Previously known as GatherContent, Content Workflow by Bynder streamlines content creation processes, focusing on organization and efficiency. It allows you to create, approve, and store content, turning creative chaos into a system.
With customizable templates and an easy workflow management system, Content Workflow is a solid choice for managing content at scale.
Key features:
AI Assist speeds up the creation process for any type of content. You can generate content briefs, social posts, or blog articles and polish them together with your colleagues.
- Custom content creation workflows
Set up content templates and processes to manage content smoothly in one place. No juggling between docs or asking for a review in a lengthy email chain.
Collaborate on content with your team and clients. Control who can edit and approve content to ensure all your content complies.
Drawback: Content Workflow has no content planning tools like a content calendar or automatic publishing to social channels.
Pricing: Bynder offers custom-priced plans that include the Content Workflow tool, among other solutions.
4. Later – best for Instagram-oriented content workflows
Later is a content workflow management tool that helps create and plan social media posts for all major channels but mostly focuses on Instagram. It’s a favorite for content teams focused on visual storytelling.
Later allows teams to realize their Instagram content strategy at its fullest with hashtag recommendations, basic social listening, and a built-in content editor.
Key features
Give your Instagram content marketing strategy a comprehensive look with a visual content calendar. Plan and visualize posts, Stories, and Reels in a neat feed view.
Access detailed insights to track performance, optimize posts, and grow your audience. Later will help you post at optimal times to max out your engagement.
Schedule your content and have it automatically published on major platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube.
Drawbacks: Most features, like the best time to publish, caption writing, and analytics, are only available for Instagram.
Pricing: Later has five paid plans starting at $25/month. It also has a very basic free version.
Yoomru is a Shopify social media automation app that turns store products into ready-to-publish social content. Once a merchant connects the relevant channels and defines the publishing rules, new products can be shared automatically with network-specific captions, correctly formatted media, and links back to the store.
The app also supports manual content creation through a multi-channel composer and calendar. This gives Shopify teams one workflow for automatic product announcements, planned campaigns, and direct social posts instead of repeatedly moving product details and media between Shopify and separate publishing tools.
Key features
- Automatic product publishing
Share newly added Shopify products according to predefined rules and schedules.
Create one post, then customize its text, media, and settings for each selected channel.
Generate captions and supporting creative assets from synced product information.
Drawbacks: Yoomru is built specifically for Shopify stores, so it is not intended for teams using another ecommerce platform or CMS. It also focuses on content creation, scheduling, and distribution rather than complex internal approvals or full project management.
Pricing: Yoomru has a free plan with one connected channel and 30 posts a month. Paid plans are billed through Shopify and start at $9.99/month (or $89/year) for five channels and 200 posts a month.
6. Planoly – best creator-oriented workflow management software
Planoly is a content workflow software that smooths the content creation process for individual creators and small businesses. The platform auto-posts to all major social media, like Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
Planoly allows users to build a micro storefront based on Snipfeed — a neat solution to boost sales and capitalize on social media posts.
Key features
Planoly has curated content templates to offer you more trending content ideas. Templates include a caption, a set of recommended hashtags, and a customizable visual.
- Canva integration and editing tools
Edit photos and videos directly within Planoly using its Canva integration and in-app editing tools, speeding up content creation.
- Basic collaboration features
Co-create and review content within the platform. And don’t forget to leverage the media library to store all your vetted visual assets.
Drawbacks: Planoly only has a social media management solution, leaving blogs, emails, or other long-form content off the table.
Pricing: Planoly offers three paid plans starting at $16/month.
7. Sendible – best for digital marketing agencies
Sendible is a content workflow software designed specifically for digital marketing agencies. Its content workflow tools help agencies plan, execute, and measure the impact of their social media campaigns. It also offers basic project management tools like task assignments.
Sendible is tailored to create content at a large scale. Content teams can set up the RSS feed and Google Alerts and leverage the holiday calendar to find more ideas for their clients’ content.
Key features
- Multi-platform scheduling
Manage and schedule posts from a single dashboard. It works for all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, as well as WordPress.
Visualize your entire content schedule with an easy-to-use calendar that helps plan out posts. Leverage bulk scheduling to prep months of content ahead.
Create separate customizable dashboards for each client. Create personalized white-label reports and schedule them to go to your clients automatically.
Drawbacks: Some users mention that Sendible’s analytics are quite limited compared to other platforms.
Pricing: Sendible offers five paid plans starting at $29/month.
8. StoryChief – best for centralized content creation
StoryChief is a solid content management system that helps marketing teams create and organize their work all in one place. It’s especially good for automating different parts of the content marketing process, from SEO-friendly content creation to approvals and reporting.
StoryChief is suitable for teams that need to manage not only social media but also long-form content creation workflows.
Key features
Use StoryChief’s calendar to schedule your content automatically. It helps you see your whole content plan, making sure you always have something ready to share.
These built-in tools help you find the best keywords as you create your long-form content. This makes your blog posts and press releases easier to find and more engaging.
- Multi-channel distribution
Automate your content workflow by reducing copy-pasting across your channels. Send your content to several places at once, like social media platforms, Medium, HubSpot, MailChimp, and more.
Drawbacks: Some users mention they’d like more ways to customize their blog’s front page, like pinning posts and improving menus.
Pricing: StoryChief has three paid plans for managing full-cycle content workflows starting at $49/month. It also has a free plan but it’s very limited (e.g., no content calendar).
Make your content workflow easier with user-friendly software
Content workflow software helps content teams stay on track and scale their content production without compromising on quality. Streamlining your content workflow ensures you stay on track regardless of how much content you have to create.
Looking for your perfect content workflow system? Try Planable for social media and long-form content — 50 free posts await you!
Content marketer with a background in journalism; digital nomad, and tech geek. In love with blogs, storytelling, strategies, and old-school Instagram. If it can be written, I probably wrote it.