Social media decision
Publer
A small technical team can build a useful scheduler and basic analytics, but reproducing Publer’s broad integrations, mobile apps, and polished analytics/support is a larger effort — keeping the paid product may make sense for full feature parity and scale.
Visit website↗$12/mo
$144/yr
Not verified against a pricing page.
$50one-off30 h to build
$50/mo8 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 5 seats.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Publer alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Offer a web UI to create/schedule posts, persist posts and media, and publish to social networks on schedule.
What it still won’t have
- Wide, maintained integrations catalog (many platforms)
- Polished mobile apps and browser extension
- High-quality cross-platform post previews and edge-case formatting
- Rich analytics and competitor insights
- Customer support, SLA, and uptime guarantees
What remains hard
- Brand trust
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 5 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal self-hosted social-post scheduler: use Next.js + React for frontend, Node.js + Express for API, PostgreSQL for data, Redis + Bull for background jobs, and S3-compatible storage for media. Implement: (1) account OAuth linking for at least Facebook/Instagram and X; (2) create/edit post composer with media upload, per-network preview, and CSV bulk import; (3) scheduling engine: enqueue jobs, worker to call network APIs with retries and webhooks for status; (4) calendar UI with drag-and-drop and post history; (5) basic analytics collection (publish success, likes/comments) and CSV export. Out of scope: mobile apps, full multi-platform parity, advanced competitor analytics, enterprise billing. Include input validation, rate-limit/backoff handling, unit and integration tests, and error reporting/alerts.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score64
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productPubler — official product
- official pricingPubler — Plans
- official docsPubler — Workspaces
- open sourcebrightbeanxyz/brightbean-studio
- open sourcegitroomhq/postiz-app
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
