What is the most affordable social suite for SMBs?

For small businesses, one of the biggest challenges in social media management is finding a platform that has the right features without enterprise-level pricing. Scheduling posts, tracking engagement, pulling reports, it all adds up fast, and affordability becomes just as important as functionality. I checked the latest G2 Small-Business Social Media Suites Grid, and here are some of the platforms that stand out for SMBs:

• Hootsuite: widely adopted, with high marks for satisfaction and scalability.
• Birdeye: frequently mentioned for combining social management with customer engagement and reviews.
• Semrush: best known for SEO, but also provides a social suite that SMBs use to unify content and analytics.
• Sprout Social: praised for polished reporting and collaboration features, though often flagged as pricier.
• SOCi: comes up for multi-location businesses looking for centralized management.
• Zoho Social: popular with smaller teams for being cost-effective while still offering solid multi-account functionality.

Other affordable options I keep seeing include Buffer, SocialPilot, Sendible, Later, Loomly, Planable, SocialBu, etc.

My question to the community:

• Which of these tools has been the best value for your small business?
• Do you prioritize scheduling, reporting, or integrations when looking for affordability? How do you choose the one for you?
• Any lesser-known platforms you’ve found that balance price and performance better than the big names?

Curious to hear what’s worked (and what hasn’t) for SMB teams trying to keep costs under control.