The Buffer Story

Buffer started its development in October 2010 in Birmingham, United Kingdom by Joel Gascoigne, who is the current CEO, and Leo Widrich, who set up the possibility of the web-based application while he was in the United Kingdom. Once he fostered the thought he made a greeting page to check whether enough individuals were keen on the item to make it a beneficial endeavor. In the wake of arriving at a minimum amount of enrollments, Gascoigne constructed and planned the main rendition of the application programming over a range of 7 weeks.

On November 30, 2010, the underlying variant of Buffer was dispatched. It contained restricted features which just permitted access to Twitter. Four days after the product's dispatch Buffer acquired its initially paying user and half a month later, the number of clients touched 100, and afterward, that number increased to 100,000 clients inside the following 9 months.

In July 2011, the founders chose to move the startup adventure from the United Kingdom to San Francisco in the United States, and Buffer was incorporated. While in San Francisco, the co-founders met with startup supporters AngelPad due to the increment in cost subsequent to moving from Birmingham.

All through December 2011, Joel and Leo had the option to tie down 18 investors to their organization, subsequent to being rejected by 88% of individuals they met with to offer speculation to their company. The financial backers include Maneesh Arora, the originator of MightyText, Thomas Korte, the founder of AngelPad, and Andy McLoughlin, the co-founder of Huddle. 

Because of visa issues with the prime supporters, the organization's base moved to Hong Kong in January 2012. Then, at that point, in August 2012, following more visa issues, it moved again to Tel Aviv, Israel. In October 2012, Joel Gascoigne announced that "1.5-2% of clients are on the paid plan, so we’re presently on an $800,000 yearly run rate".

In May 2013, the organization's base moved back to the United States, after the prime supporter’s visa dilemmas were resolved. Around this time Buffer purposefully made its compensation estimation calculation public (alongside the determined pay rates of its 13 representatives; this number has since developed to surpass 80.

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Founded in 2010, total revenue for Buffers increased to $ 1 million per year in January 2013 and exceeded $ 2 million in September of that year due to customer growth with the app. By September 2013, Buffer had gained 1 million users with nearly 16,000 paying users. 

The number of messages shared through the Buffer app was over 87,790,000 and the number of accounts used through the app was 1,266,722 with an average of 70 messages per account. In February 2014, Buffer had 1.3 million users. The company's annual revenue was $ 3.9 million, 38.3 percent more than December 2013.

In December 2015, Buffer acquired Respondly, a customer service and brand monitoring tool on social media that has since been renamed Reply. According to the contract, the purchase price was not disclosed.

Buffer works with many other companies and software programs. In particular, Buffer is an official Facebook marketing partner that operates under the community. In addition, Buffer has partnered with WordPress, Twitter, Zapier, IFTTT, Feedly, Pocket, Shopify, Reeder, and Quuu.

Cracks in the wall

In October 2013, the Buffers system was hacked, which allowed hackers to access multiple accounts. As a result, hackers spread unwanted messages through many social media accounts.

On October 26, 2013, Buffer was temporarily suspended due to a hack. Joel Gascoigne emailed all users apologizing for the problem and advising the buffer users on what to do. The buffer suspension was lifted the same week.

Pricing

Buffer offers six plans from free to enterprise.

• Free: 3 social accounts, 10 scheduled posts, 1 user
• Pro: $15/mo. 8 social accounts, 1 user, 100 scheduled posts.
• Small Business: $99/mo. 25 social accounts, 6 users, 2000 scheduled posts
• Medium Business: $199/mo. 50 social accounts, 11 users, 2000 scheduled posts
• Large Business: $399/mo. 150 social accounts, 26 users, 2000 scheduled posts
• Enterprise: custom price, varies by business size. 150+ social accounts, 26+ users, 2000 scheduled posts

What users like about Buffer

Many users have praised Buffer for how easy it is to manage and schedule multiple social media posts. They also favor the integrations with many popular social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Shopify.

The inbuilt calendar view also makes it convenient to view the upcoming overview and its fairly inexpensive plans and free trial help make a compelling argument in Buffer’s favor.

What users have to complain about

Users usually complain that the free plans are too limited and have support for only three social media accounts. And though Instagram allows users to post up to 10 images in a carousel, Buffer only allows 4 images to be uploaded.

Many customers also complain that the plans get fairly more expensive for each social medial account over 3 accounts, at $5 per account. The Google Chrome Buffer extension has also been known to be slow and laggy.

Closing words

Overall, Buffer is a great platform that has great features - but because of the high price tag for simple features like team management and multiple users, this isn't suitable for many. Buffer makes posting and communicating with real users more automated and still human-like. Helps you reach more people with less effort.

Buffer does what it promises. It is an easy and seamless way to schedule and publish all of your social media accounts and has enough bells and whistles to make money bang on your time. If social planning is your ultimate goal, Buffer is a tool for you.