Planable is the lightest option if approving is your only problem. Gain is built so the client can say yes from an email without creating an account. Later handles review inside the scheduler you already use. GoFeed turns approval into a state of the post, in the same place the invoice is later issued.
What an approval is, and what is only a comment
Almost every tool in this category says it has approvals, and almost none of them mean the same thing by it. In practice the difference comes down to two properties worth checking before signing anything: whether it leaves a record and whether it blocks.
Leaving a record means there is proof of who said yes and when, tied to the specific version of the piece that was approved. Blocking means that without that yes the post does not enter the queue: it is not scheduled, it does not go out, and it does not depend on somebody remembering. A tool can have the first without the second, and that is where the awkward conversations happen three weeks later.
| Planable | Gain | Later | GoFeed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it solves | Review, and little else | Client approval by email | Scheduling, with review included | The whole chain, approval included |
| Does the client need an account | An external guest | No, they enter from their email | Depends on the plan | Yes, a portal account |
| Approval steps | Two or three by plan | Several, configurable | Internal review | One: team or client |
| Pricing unit | Workspace | Workspaces and plan members | Social set and users | Workspace |
| Sits next to the client invoice | No | No | No | Yes, in agency workspaces |
One more distinction is worth drawing before the prices, because it changes which tool is even a candidate. Some teams need approval as a stage in a production line, where the piece moves from draft to reviewed to scheduled and the tool enforces the order. Others need it as a conversation with somebody outside the company who will look once and say yes. The first is a workflow problem, the second is an access problem, and the tools on this list are optimised for one or the other rather than for both.
The last row splits this list in half. Three of these four are content tools that do one part of the job very well. The fourth is also where the quote, the contract and the invoice for that same brand live, which is an advantage if your problem is the whole operation and overkill if your problem is only approving.
What each one costs today
The figures come from each vendor's own page, in dollars and before tax.
| Tool | Plan | Published price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planable | Free | 0 $ | 50 posts in total, no card and no expiry |
| Planable | Basic | 33 $ a month per workspace | 60 posts a month, 4 pages, 2 approval types |
| Planable | Pro | 49 $ a month per workspace | 150 posts a month, 10 pages, 3 approval types |
| Planable | Analytics | 12 $ a month per workspace | A separate add-on |
| Planable | Social inbox | 7.50 $ a month per workspace | A separate add-on |
| Gain | Starter | 99 $ a month | Up to 6 workspaces and 3 members, billed yearly |
| Gain | Agency | 199 $ a month | Up to 12 workspaces and 6 members |
| Gain | Agency Premium | 399 $ a month | Up to 30 workspaces and 20 members |
| Later | Starter | 25 $ a month | One social set and one user |
| Later | Growth | 50 $ a month | Two sets and two users |
| Later | Scale | 110 $ a month | Six sets and four users |
Prices checked on 6 September 2026: Planable, Gain, Later.
Two things in that table deserve a second read. The first is that Planable counts posts per month per workspace, and in an agency with active clients that ceiling arrives sooner than it looks: 60 pieces a month is five brands at three posts a week and very little slack. The second is that in Planable analytics and the inbox are add-ons with their own prices, so an honest comparison against a suite adds all three numbers, not just the first.
Gain plays at a different scale because it counts workspaces and members at the same time. With six clients and three people you fit on Starter; with the seventh client or the fourth person you move up. It is an easy model to forecast and an expensive one to stretch.
It is also worth comparing the unit itself, because the three of them count different things. Planable charges per workspace with unlimited users, which is good for big teams and awkward for agencies with many small clients, since each client usually wants its own workspace. Gain counts workspaces and people at once, so either dimension can push you up a tier on its own. Later counts profiles and users. Here the unit is the whole workspace and the limits belong to it, not to each person who signs in.
Account or link: the trade nobody explains
There is a real product decision here and all four tools resolve it differently. Gain bets on maximum convenience: the client gets an email notification and enters with one click, no password. That takes friction to almost zero and is probably the single biggest reason agencies pick Gain.
The price of that convenience is how solid the record is. A link anybody with the email can open is easier to use and harder to defend on the day you have to prove who approved what. At the other end, here the client signs in with a portal account, sees only the brands that belong to them, and their approval is signed with their name. That is one more step of friction in exchange for a record nobody can argue with.
There is a third factor that decides more than people admit: what happens when the client does not reply. With an emailed link, the reminder is another email, and by the third one it stops being read. With an account, the state of the piece is visible to both sides and the conversation changes from "I sent it to you" to "it has been waiting for your yes since Tuesday", which is a much harder sentence to ignore.
There is no universal answer. If your clients are busy people approving from a phone between meetings, friction costs you calendar days. If your clients are marketing departments with several people involved, knowing which of them said yes is worth more than saving a sign in. How the client's portal is built is on the client portal page.
How many gates a team actually sustains
Planable sells two or three approval types depending on the plan, and Gain allows chains of several steps. It sounds like an advantage and sometimes it is, but it is worth saying what happens in practice when three signatures are chained: the piece stalls at the second one, the publication date stops meaning anything and the calendar stops describing reality.
How many steps a team sustains depends less on the tool than on the calendar. Every gate adds waiting time you do not control, and that time has to be subtracted from the publication date rather than added at the end. Three posts a week with two signatures needs production running at least a week ahead; with three signatures it needs two, and almost no agency has that second week.
That is why one yes is enough here, and it is not configurable to infinity. Approval is switched on client by client. With it on, the post waits for a single approval: your team's from the app or the client's from their portal, whichever comes first, in no set order. When the client answers, they see exactly what is going to be published and either approve it or send it back with the reason. A rejected post returns to the calendar carrying that reason, not to an email nobody can find afterwards. With it off, the post is scheduled straight away.
Approval is not available to everybody, and that is worth saying before anyone gets excited. In an in house workspace there are no clients, so every post waits for one teammate's approval. The client's yes needs the portal, which is an agency feature. A creator workspace has no approvals at all, because approving your own work is a form, not a control. The full detail is on the approvals page.
Everything in this article happens in one place in GoFeed.
Try it freeWhich one to choose, by what actually hurts
If your problem is purely getting a yes on a piece and your team has the rest solved, Planable is the lightest answer and the one you will have to explain to nobody. Its free plan of 50 posts with no expiry is enough to run it with a real client before deciding.
If you carry a lot of clients and what slows you down is people not coming in to review, Gain is designed around that exact problem and solves it better than anything else here.
If you already schedule in Later and the review you need is internal, adding another tool just to approve is a subscription that probably does not pay for itself. The comparison from this angle is in GoFeed versus Planable.
If between the finished piece and the invoice there is a client, a portal, a report and a number series, the conversation stops being about approvals and becomes one about where the operation lives. How the whole chain works is in the content approval guide, and the current figures are on the pricing page.
What Planable and Gain do better
Three concrete things, and they are enough that in many cases the recommendation is to stay with them.
The first is Planable's review experience. The per network preview is faithful, threads run per version, and an outside guest can weigh in within seconds without learning anything. If approving is your only problem, it is lighter than any suite and you feel it on day one.
The second is Gain's passwordless entry. For an agency whose bottleneck is the client not signing in, that is worth more than any additional feature, and it does not exist here: the client comes in with an account or does not come in.
The third is Planable's free plan, with 50 posts and no expiry date. There is no free plan to sign up for here: there is a fourteen day trial, card required and nothing charged until day 15, and a floor a lapsed workspace drops to, which is a different thing and worth not confusing.