Why I Hate Post Planner

It’s official, there is currently no software I hate more than Post Planner.

Here’s why…

I’m always keeping an eye out for software that may be able to speed up, or improve, our processes. So, when I came across Post Planner,. I was curious.

We’d just stopped using HootSuite, not because it isn’t a good tool, it is, but because we were only using a fraction of the functionality and tbh it wasn’t much faster than going to each social media account and posting manually.

I like to post content specifically on a platform per platform basis, and since we don’t run social media campaigns for other companies, we don’t need to control hundreds of accounts.

One of the features that appealed to me most about Post Planner, was it’s ability to help you find content to share.

And I admit, it’s pretty damn good at it. In fact, that’s probably it’s only redeeming feature.

Once you login to Post Planner, the setup is pretty easy. You spend a bit of time playing around, and everything looks great.

But then…

…you start to use it, seriously.

Which is when the whole thing completely crumbles.

For me it began with the RSS feeds from our sites not working inside it.

I spent many hours contacting their support to ask why, and the bottom line was…

They didn’t have a clue.

All I got were responses saying that there must be something wrong with my feeds, which strangely worked in every other RSS reader I could find.

To be fair to them, at least they were still responding at that time (more on this later).

After about two weeks, with nothing resolved, and having discovered that Post Planner can’t actually automatically share posts from your websites RSS feed onto social media (I mean WTF?!), I decided just to use it to schedule posts.

This lastest less than a week.

The software is so slow I could write a letter with my social content, post them to the companies, and probably still have them up before Post Planner.

Alrighty, maybe a slight exageration, but I have no words to explain how slow this software is.

To do one day’s posts (for one site) would take me nearly an hour, and that’s almost all due to the software taking best part of five seconds any time you want to do anything.

It’s infuriating.

So… I cancelled.

Which is when I got the automated message offering me three months for free if I continued.

I’d also been assured, via the support chat, that there was going to be an update to the platform which would speed it up, and it was going to be released very soon.

i.e. within the timeframe of my extension (although that wasn’t explicitly said)

So I decided to continue using it. After all, the social content search was good, if painfully slow.

I tried, once again, to use it for our daily post scheduling, but eventually gave up as it was faster for me to schedule inside each social media account.

But, I thought to myself, they have this feature which they keep saying is awesome called… Recycling.

On some social media platforms, it’s sensible to post the same post a few times. For example, on Twitter you want to repeat some posts over a period of time to maximise exposure.

So I turned it on, and added a few posts to it.

First problem…

There’s no granular control over the scheduling of recycled posts. It’s fine to keep re-posting, but I don’t want the same post posted every day if I don’t add more to the recycle list.

Second problem…

You need a doctorate to find out how to stop the f***ing thing.

I consier myself pretty good with computers and software, and I still don’t have a clue how to remove posts from their recycle function.

After becoming increasingly frustrated, I decided to go back to the chat support to get them to process my cancellation.

And what a surprise… the chat support has dissppeared.

Although to be fair, nice as they were, they weren’t much help to begin with.

With Post Planner going rogue on my social media accounts, and me unable to stop it posting, I disconnected all my social media accounts from it, and…

It’s still posting to my social media accounts!

I went back to the site, navigated my way through their help, found a link to a special form that you have to use if you want to cancel your account, filled it in, got the automated email asking me to continue for three months free (which I said no to this time) and… I’ve heard nothing.

All I know is… it’s still posting content I don’t want it to, to my social media accounts.

So I thought to myself…

“This is a social media company, surely they’ll be monitoring social sites for mentions of them”

How naive of me.

I posted this tweet just over twenty four hours ago:

And #postplanner is still posting stuff. If you monitor Twitter, as a social media tool I hope you do, can you process my cancellation

— Michael Wilding (@mikeywilding) April 23, 2017

So far… stony cold silence.

Now, I’ve gone into Post Planner (yes I’ve still got access because they’re apparently so desperate for people to use this crock of shite that they won’t cancel it for you) and removed all the times for posting.

Then…

I’ve gone into every social media account we’d connected with them and revoked their access.

This was done this morning, and I wish I’d thought of revoking access earlier. I only have myself to blame for that.

So, in summary, I wouldn’t touch Post Planner if you paid me, and I would strongly suggest that you don’t either.

If you do, then be aware that you may have to revoke access to stop it from posting to your social media accounts.

Michael