How to Create a Post Scheduling App Like Buffer

From the outside, a post scheduling app looks like a simple calendar. But beneath that clean interface lies a complex distribution system handling multi-channel publishing, API throttling, and secure token management. Building this invisible layer is a core focus of our MarTech development services, and we want to share how to do it right.

We've built 11 MarTech platforms since 2014, including SMM and content scheduling tools and an auto-publish extension for Eventbrite. In this article, we break down what a post scheduling app consists of, how the build runs from discovery to launch, and what it costs — including which decisions move that number most.

What’s a post scheduling app like Buffer?

Buffer was founded in 2010 by Leo Widrich and Joel Gascoigne, who is currently Buffer’s CEO. The idea to create a post scheduling app came to Joel when he faced the inconvenience of regularly posting on Twitter with the tools that were available at the time. Those tools didn’t provide him with the functionality he expected, so being a software developer, he decided to build a post scheduling app himself.

The goal behind a scheduling app like Buffer is to provide tools for scheduling posts on social media channels. But while this is the main functionality of such apps, it isn’t the only one. For example, Buffer also offers analytical tools to show users how their marketing efforts pay off.

If you want to build a scheduling app for businesses that will solve your customers’ pain points and that people will love just like Buffer’s customers love Buffer, you should approach app development seriously. You’ll find out what we mean by a “serious approach” in the next section.

How to make a scheduling app: steps from idea to release

Building a post scheduling app like Buffer starts long before actual development. To build a successful application that will be in demand, you should go through preparatory steps. Before you even start planning the development of a scheduling app like Buffer, you should understand your app’s concept. To get a clear vision of your application, you should start with writing a business plan for a startup.

A business plan is a document that allows you to audit the market you want to enter, research your competitors, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and come up with a solution on how to get a competitive advantage. One more thing you should think through when preparing a business plan is your app’s monetization strategy. There are several ways you can make money with a scheduling app like Buffer:

• Freemium model 

The idea of this monetization strategy is to provide post scheduling app users with some free basic functionality while offering extended functionality with paid plans. By the way, this is the exact monetization strategy Buffer uses.

• Subscriptions

You can monetize your app by charging your users monthly or annually and thus predict your revenue. To incentivize users to subscribe to your post scheduling app, you can offer a free trial to let them try out functionality and see whether your app solves their needs.

• Paid advertisements

This model means you charge companies to place advertisements on your platform. While this monetization model can be a bit irritating for your post scheduling app users, it can allow them to use your app for free. If users don’t want to see ads, you can combine in-app advertisements with a freemium model to give your users a choice and make money at the same time.

Once you have a business plan and understand how you’re going to monetize your post scheduling app, it’s time to move to the next steps.

Discovery phase

I had spent the previous year and a half building another startup, and I hadn't had too much success. I made lots of different mistakes, such as assuming what people wanted and just adding features without getting any validation. — Joel Gascoigne, Buffer co-founder and CEO

Joel Gascoigne’s experience can be a great argument for entrepreneurs not to neglect the discovery phase. While many startup owners want to skip this step to reduce web app development cost and time, they put themselves at risk of:

• building a product that doesn’t solve the current needs of their target audience
• as a result, spending more time, money, and effort to build a successful product

We usually start with discovery, and it's the stage that makes the rest of the project predictable.

The discovery starts from mapping how the product should behave: which platforms it publishes to, what happens when an API fails mid-queue, which user roles exist, how billing works. We check the technical constraints of each integration early — rate limits, token rules, media specs — because those shape the architecture and the estimate. Anything that isn't needed for the first release gets flagged and moved out of scope.

At the end of discovery, our clients get:

• A software requirements specification that documents how the product should work, feature by feature
• Product vision and lean canvas
• A feature breakdown, split into first release and later
• Risk assessment with a mitigation plan for each item
• Wireframes and a clickable prototype
• A cost and timeline estimate built on the scope above

By the end of discovery, you know what's being built, in what order, how long it takes, and what it costs. That's also what keeps our CPI and SPI variance under 10% once development starts.

UI/UX design

Your app’s design is what your customers see first, so you definitely want it to be attractive for users. However, your post scheduling app should be not only visually appealing but also intuitive and easy to use. Make sure you combine a pleasant UI with a great UX to provide the best experience for your customers.

MVP development

Here’s the point where actual development starts. At the MVP development stage, frontend developers, backend developers, and quality assurance engineers work on a minimum viable product (MVP) of your scheduling app like Buffer. The development team is supervised by a project manager who regularly keeps in touch with you to inform you about the progress.

At this stage, software engineers work only on the essential features of your social media management tool that will meet your customers’ basic needs. The MVP approach helped Joel Gascoigne create a product that thousands of people around the world love. According to the Buffer CEO’s experience, releasing small batches of functionality is a great way to learn how to scale a product.

One of our best shifts in mindset was when we started to take the approach of ‘many launches’ rather than a single ‘big bang launch.’ We would aim to get some kind of press every 3-4 weeks, with a new feature we launched or a milestone we hit. This gave us compounding growth. — Joel Gascoigne, Buffer co-founder and CEO

Maintenance and support

MVP development is only the beginning of work on your product, and once your MVP is out, you will likely continue working on it. When you launch an MVP, you’ll be able to gather feedback from early adopters and know what you need to improve. But to do that you have to get the first version of the app into your users' hands. So what features should you include in the first version of your scheduling app like Buffer? Find out in the next section.

How to create a scheduling app: MVP features to include

Services like Buffer app can contain a great number of features that aim to make running social media accounts effortless. However, there’s no need to implement all the features at once. You can start with the essential ones to validate your idea.

Security

When using a post scheduling app, business owners and marketing managers don’t want to put their company data at risk. Thus, security is a top priority when building a service like Buffer. A common way to provide security is by encrypting data to make it inaccessible for unauthorized users.

Authentication

The first thing users of a scheduling app like Buffer should do to access their social media channels is authenticate themselves. To allow users to sign up and log in to their accounts, software engineers write custom code or turn to third-party services such as Auth0 or AWS Cognito.

Integration with social networks

To build a post scheduling app like Buffer, the first thing you should take care of is connecting your platform with social networks that are in demand among your target users. For an MVP version, you can start with the most popular social media channels: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, even one social media integration may be enough for an MVP version.

A common way to access data from and exchange data with social networks is by integrating their APIs. Each platform has its own terms of use and allows you to build different functionality with its APIs, so it’s important to know all the intricacies before you get started. Clockwise Software engineers have worked with projects that required API integration, and we’ve collected our knowledge of social media APIs in a white paper. You can download it to find out the basics of social media APIs and their possibilities.

Post planning and scheduling

A scheduling app like Buffer must possess planning and scheduling features. The following will suffice to meet the basic needs of social media tool users.

• Customized customization should allow your users to create unique posts for each social media channel connected to your platform.
• Post scheduling should enable platform users to prepare publications in advance and schedule posts on different social media platforms.
• A calendar view should let your users see the number of scheduled posts, the date and time when they are scheduled, and information about posts by day, week, and month.

Analytics and reporting

While the main goal of post scheduling apps is to provide users with the ability to effectively create and schedule posts, users of apps similar to Buffer will likely expect features that allow them to analyze their posts’ efficiency.

• Performance overview features should allow post scheduling app users to track main metrics such as engagement, likes, and reposts for every post.
• Campaign analysis is what your users need to understand how their multi-channel campaigns perform. This feature should allow users to see information about all channels in one place, without the need to switch tabs.
• Historical data access should give your app users a chance to see what posts they’ve published on each social media channel, when they published them, and how these posts have performed.
• Custom reports will help post scheduling app users share analytics results with their teams or clients.

How much does it cost to build a post scheduling app?

With the build process clear, the next question is cost. Most scheduling app MVPs land between $50,000 and $150,000 — enough for core publishing, a few platform integrations, and a working subscription flow. Where a specific project sits in that range depends on a handful of factors. Here's what moves the number.

• Number of features you want to implement

The more features you want your app to have, the more time your software engineers will spend on their development. And time is what you pay for. To build the initial version of a scheduling app like Buffer, you should choose only basic features that your users need most.

• Technologies used

The choice of technologies to build a scheduling app like Buffer also affects the development cost. It’s always possible to implement one functionality in different ways. Depending on your expectations for app performance and your allocated budget, a development team can offer you different solutions.

• Services you request

If you build your post scheduling app like Buffer from scratch, you might want to go for software product development services including a discovery phase, UI/UX design, MVP development, further development, maintenance, and support.

If you have an in-house team, you might lack expertise in some technologies or be short on time, so outsourcing separate services can be a sensible decision for you. Depending on your needs, you can look to a development company for app design, redesign, code audit, implementation of new features, or migration to new technologies.

Whatever services you need, they will be estimated in terms of the number of hours required, which will then be multiplied by the hourly rate of your chosen company.

• Development team location

When you have only an idea for creating a post scheduling app but don’t have an internal team, you’ll likely rely on web or MarTech development company to build it.

The biggest thing you’ll have to decide on is the outsourcing location, as it directly affects the cost to develop a scheduling app. On the map below, you can see how hourly development rates vary in different parts of the world.

Final thoughts

A scheduling app like Buffer is an irreplaceable tool for businesses that want to promote their brands on social media, build a strong community, and always keep in touch with their customers. Buffer is a great example to follow, as its founders managed to discover and occupy a niche by creating a product they needed themselves. This made Buffer a lovable product for over a million users.