14 Best Instagram Apps For Taking Your Content To The Next Level

Although it hasn't been around as long as some social media platforms, Instagram has nonetheless become a crowded place to try and get your brand (or your band) notice. Fortunately, there are a variety of Instagram apps which allow you to diversify your content offerings and stand out from the crowd.

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Guest post by Dara Fontein of Hootsuite

Over 5 million businesses around the world use Instagram to tell their story. With this much competition, it’s clear your brand needs to find new ways to stand out. Thankfully, there are Instagram apps that can help.

To save you time, we’ve rounded up 14 of the best apps out there. Check out the video below for five of our favorites and read on for the full list.

The 14 best Instagram apps you need to download now

1. Layout

Layout lets you create collages by remixing your own photos. The app gives users creative control so you instantly see your photos laid out in various combinations—and edit them to make them unique.

You can combine up to nine photos at a time to make one image, which you can preview before posting to Instagram.

This is a great app for those looking to:

• Show before and after content (such as for interior design firms, cleaning products, hairdressers, big hotel renovations, etc.)
• Showcase their best user generated content
• Highlight behind-the-scenes shots of employees and offices
• Show off a sequence of new product releases

Free for iOS

Free for Android

2. Hootsuite Enhance

Editing your Instagram photos can increase the number of views by 21 percent and raise engagement by more than 45 percent. Hootsuite Enhance offers an all-in-one photo editing solution to help you find better content, get more comments and likes, and build brand awareness.

Hootsuite Enhance makes it easy to:

• Crop and size photos for each social network
• Edit with filters, borders, stickers, and overlays
• Source images from the stock photo database
• Share straight to the social network of your choice (or schedule through Hootsuite to share later)

Free for iOS

3. Have2Have.It

Soldsie’s Have2Have.it  bridges the gap between buyers and sellers on Instagram.

The mobile app allows businesses on Instagram to create, schedule, and post photos and video with links to the products or services online. Have2Have.it:

• Drives followers directly to your e-commerce website
• Guides customers to complete their purchase
• Lets audience members discover more products

You can try Have2Have.It free for 30 days through their site.

Their mobile app is free on iOS

4. Boomerang

Boomerang lets you create engaging content with just one button. The tool shoots a burst of 10 photos and turns them into a short mini-video that loops back and forth, GIF-style.

You can share your Boomerang right from the app, or save it to your camera roll to share another time. Boomerang gives marketers the opportunity to delight their audiences with a fun visual that deviates from a regular Instagram photo.

You can either use the standalone Boomerang app, or take a Boomerang from within the Instagram app.

Free for iOS

Free for Android

5. Hootsuite Campaigns App

Seventy percent of Instagram users have already taken part in a contest on Instagram—or would be willing to do so if given the opportunity. The Hootsuite Campaigns app helps enterprise clients manage contests and sweepstakes from within the Hootsuite dashboard.

Users can curate content in Instagram and Twitter galleries, ban and approve photos and videos for contests, moderate comments from each campaign, and track participant data and analytics.

With an Instagram Gallery contest run through Hootsuite Campaigns, you can collect user-generated content that showcases your business through the eyes of customers. Hootsuite Campaigns also allows you to:

• Accept entries via hashtag or @mention
• Enable voting and commenting on submissions to boost engagement
• Track and analyze participant and campaign data

For more information, check out our post How to Run a Successful Instagram Contest.

Free to use through the Hootsuite App Directory.

6. Hyperlapse

Hyperlapse from Instagram lets you shoot time-lapsed video to share with your followers.

Thanks to the in-app stabilization technology, you can capture non-shaky video that was previously impossible without a tripod. And you can playback your videos up to 40 times faster than their original speed.

Use Hyperlapse to:

• Go behind the scenes: Show the human side of your business with impromptu videos of what the gang is up to.
• Show your product in action: Share the use case for the products or services you’re selling in relatable, everyday ways.
• Share another perspective: Surprise your customers with unexpected ways they can use your products or services.

7. Microsoft Selfie

Microsoft Selfie is a photo-editing app available through iOS, web, and WeChat. What sets the app apart from other similar offerings is that Microsoft Selfie uses AI to enhance your photos. The app’s key features include:

• Intelligent photo enhancement, where the app “intelligently considers age, gender, skin tone, lighting, and many other variables—all with one click”
• Noise reduction, where the app “automatically enables “Denoise” mode, and effectively reduces noise by using burst shots”
• Auto Exposure, where Microsoft Selfie “applies automatic exposure correction and photo clarifying, especially for backlit photos”

Instead of having to manually edit each aspect of a photo—such as brightness, contrast, structure, or clarity—you can save time with Microsoft Selfie’s intelligent photo boosting features.

Free for iOS

Free for Android

8. Pic Stitch

Pic Stitch is the number one photo and video collage app available, and called one of the top seven photography apps of all time by Mashable.

With Pic Stitch, users can:

• Choose from over 245 collage layouts and 15 different aspect ratios (1×1, 4×6, etc.)
• Add music to a collage
• Order images directly through Shutterfly
• Customize photo borders
• Rotate, flip, mirror, and zoom

Once you’ve created your masterpiece, you can upload it straight to Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, Twitter, or Evernote.

Free for iOS

$2.29 for Windows

9. Hootsuite (dashboard or mobile app)

User-generated content makes it easy for a brand to highlight their own product or service without a lot of work. And praise for your business is often more trustworthy when it comes from a third-party.

Hootsuite makes it super easy to “regram”—that is, repost—content from other users on Instagram.

Users can view their Instagram feed from within Hootsuite and simply tap the image they’d like to regram, and then click on the reshare icon.

The original photo owner’s Instagram username will automatically appear in the caption.

Free for iOS

Free for Android

10. WhenToPost

It’s important to post Instagram content at a time when your audience is likely to be online. The WhenToPost app is an Instagram specific app that helps take some of the guesswork out of this process.

WhenToPost:

• Generates a heat map which tells you the best times to post your Instagram content
• Provides a countdown to your next top time to share content
• Shows a graph with the best times of the week to post to Instagram

For more on when to share content, check out our guide to The Best Time to Post on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Free for iOS

Free for Android

11. Clips

Available for free in April 2017, Apple’s Clips app lets users make and share short-form videos complete with special effects, text, graphics, and more.

One of the more interesting features of Clips is Live Titles, which let you create animated captions simply by talking as you record using Siri. Clips also uses a specialized facial recognition technology thanks to Apple’s Machine Learning technology. It compares faces of those in your video to those in your device’s picture library. Not only that, but Clips will find these individuals in your address book and let you share the video with them in one click.

Coming soon

12. Swipeable

Panoramic shots can be a fun change from your regular photos, but getting them right can be a challenge. Swipeable is designed specifically with Instagram users in mind. It lets you easily take and share panoramic and 360-degree photos on the platform.

Swipeable uses the carousel function to automatically divide your panoramas into square pieces so they can be viewed in sequence. This can come in handy when:

• You’re trying to fit lots of people in a photo
• Capturing a bigger product image
• Showing a tour of your company’s new offices

Free for iOS

13. Captiona

Your audience is 70 percent more likely to convert if they experience an emotional reaction to your content—and the right Instagram caption can make this happen. The Captiona app helps Instagram users come up with clever and funny captions that engage their audience.

To use Captiona, simply enter a keyword related to your content (such as “shoes” or “computer”) and the app will give you a list of results including sayings, quotations, catchphrases, and “on-trend” lines.

You can then tap to copy the caption of your choice, and paste it into your Instagram content description.

If you’d like to learn more about creating Instagram captions, take a look at our post How to Write Great Instagram Captions That Drive Engagement.

$0.99 on iOS

14. Prime for Instagram

Timing is everything—especially when it comes to your Instagram posts. Prime, like WhenToPost mentioned above, suggests optimal times for users to post to Instagram.

Prime uses a “powerful algorithm to process hundreds of thousands of data points to determine when your followers are online, their activity, their relation to you, and, ultimately, when you should be posting to Instagram.”

Prime helps make sure the most audience members possible see your post, which is important when:

• You have a high-quality post you want to make sure gets seen
• You have a new product announcement
• You have a post announcing a store closure or new hours
• There is any time-sensitive or high-level announcement you want to share with an Instagram post

Consider testing out both WhenToPost and Prime to see which app’s recommendations work best for your brand and business goals.

Free for iOS

The right tool can make all the difference for busy social media marketers. These apps can help boost the quality of your Instagram content—while saving you time.

Easily schedule Instagram content and manage all of your social media accounts with Hootsuite.