Buffer wanted $100/mo, so I self-host Postiz for $15

I replaced Buffer with self-hosted Postiz, and here is the bill that pushed me.

The line item that broke me was Buffer charging $6 per channel, per month. We run 10 channels across two brands. That is $60/mo on the Essentials tier. The moment we wanted three people posting with an approval step, Buffer pushed us toward its Team tier at $10 per channel billed annually - about $100/mo at that annual rate to schedule posts. Hootsuite is worse at the entry point: its cheapest paid plan, Standard, is $99/mo billed annually for a single user. Add a second or third person and you are bumped to a pricier tier.

So I moved us to Postiz. It has run on a $15/mo server for a few months. It does not care how many channels or teammates I add. The accounts and post history live on a machine I control, not someone else's dashboard.

Here is the honest write-up: what it replaces, what it costs, where it is cheaper, and where a paid tool still wins.

TL;DR

• Postiz is a free, open-source (AGPL-3.0, 30k+ GitHub stars) social-media scheduler - the open-source Buffer alternative. It replaces Buffer, Hootsuite, Publer, Later, and SocialBee, posts to 14 networks, and has built-in AI post generation.
• The self-hosted core has no per-channel and no per-seat limits - the exact two things paid schedulers charge for.
• Paid tools bill per channel (Buffer from $6/channel/mo) or per user (Hootsuite $99/mo per seat, billed annually).
• Cheapest way to run it: a $4-5 VPS if you enjoy wiring PostgreSQL, Redis, and Temporal together yourself, or a ~$5-10 one-click PaaS template (Railway, Hostinger, ClawCloud) that you still manage.
• Easiest way: a managed Postiz pod. I use InstaPods at $15/mo flat, unlimited channels, unlimited posts, unlimited team members, with Postgres, Redis, and Temporal pre-wired.
• That $15 flat is the cheapest managed Postiz option - it undercuts the only dedicated managed-Postiz product (Elestio at $16/mo) and Postiz's own cloud ($29/mo for 5 channels), as of mid-2026.

Postiz vs Buffer, Hootsuite, and Publer: the pricing

Every mainstream scheduler taxes the two axes that grow: how many accounts you connect, and how many people touch them.

Tool	Cheapest paid tier	How it bills
Buffer	Essentials $6/channel/mo ($5 annual)	Per channel. Team adds collaboration at $10/channel annual
Hootsuite	Standard $99/mo per user (billed annually), 10 accounts	Per seat
Publer	Professional from $5/mo (1 account)	+$4 per extra account, +$2 per member
Later	Starter $25/mo ($18.75 annual), 8 profiles, 1 user	Per tier + seats
SocialBee	Bootstrap $29/mo, 5 profiles, 1 user	Per tier
Self-hosted Postiz	~$4-5 VPS, or $15/mo managed	Flat. No per-channel or per-seat charge

Now the worked example. Say you are a small team: three people, 10 connected channels across two brands.

• Buffer Team: 10 channels x $10 = $100/mo at the annual rate for the collaboration features.
• Hootsuite Standard: $99/mo billed annually covers one user. A three-person team does not fit on Standard, so you climb to a pricier tier - the per-seat model only goes up from here.
• Publer Professional: $5 base + roughly $36 for 9 extra accounts + $4 for two extra members = ~$45/mo, climbing with every account.
• Self-hosted Postiz: $15/mo flat, and the eleventh channel or the fourth teammate costs nothing.

The SaaS number is a moving target that goes up every time the team does. The self-hosted number sits still.

What is Postiz?

Postiz calls itself an agentic social-media scheduling tool. In practice it is a calendar, a composer, and a team workspace. What it gives you:

• Schedule and queue posts, with a shared calendar and an approval flow
• Posts to Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, Threads, X (Twitter), Mastodon, Bluesky, Dribbble, Slack, and Discord - 14 networks
• Built-in AI post generation (optional - it uses your own OpenAI key)
• Team members, workspaces, and per-channel scheduling

License and stack: AGPL-3.0, 30k+ GitHub stars. The app is NestJS plus NextJS, and self-hosting it requires PostgreSQL, Redis, and Temporal running alongside it. That last part is the catch, and it drives the whole cost conversation below.

How much does it cost to self-host Postiz?

Three honest paths.

Raw VPS - cheapest. Rent a $4-5 Hetzner or BuyVM box and run Postiz yourself. This is the floor on price, and it is a real option. The cost is your time: Postiz does not run as one process. You need Postgres, Redis, and Temporal wired together and kept alive, plus a reverse proxy, HTTPS, and updates. If you already run a stack like this in your sleep, do it and skip the rest.

One-click PaaS - cheaper and less work. Railway, Hostinger, and ClawCloud all ship one-click Postiz templates in the ~$5-10/mo range. They stand the stack up for you, but you still own the updates, the scaling, and the config. Cheaper than a managed product, more hands-on than one.

Managed pod - easiest. This is what I landed on. Postiz runs on the Grow plan at $15/mo flat, and it needs Grow because Postgres, Redis, and Temporal all come included and pre-wired. The $3 tier cannot run all three. Deploy is one click, about 60 seconds, HTTPS auto-configured, on a real Linux server with SSH access.

The cheapest managed Postiz hosting

Here is the part that made the decision easy. Elestio sells the one purpose-built "Managed Postiz as a Service" I could find, from $16/mo. Postiz's own hosted cloud starts at $29/mo for 5 channels (its Team plan is $39 for 10). A managed Postiz pod on InstaPods is $15/mo flat with no per-channel or per-seat cap, so it lands below Elestio's $16 and Postiz cloud's $29 (prices as of mid-2026).

Flat price, databases included, no bandwidth or usage metering. New accounts get a $10 credit when they add a card, so the first month is covered.

To be clear about the trade: this is not the absolute cheapest way to run Postiz. A $4-5 VPS wins on raw dollars if you want to own the Postgres, Redis, and Temporal maintenance, and a ~$5-10 PaaS template splits the difference. The $15 buys away the setup and keeps the flat, uncapped pricing.

What about Mixpost?

Postiz is not the only self-hostable scheduler. The name that comes up most often is Mixpost. I have not run it in production, so I will not put numbers or specifics on it here - check its own docs and repo before you commit.

I picked Postiz for two reasons: the network coverage (14 platforms, including newer ones like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon) and the momentum behind it (30k+ stars). Both are honest OSS projects. The right one is whichever stack you would rather babysit.

Where self-hosting Postiz is NOT the answer

Three caveats, and the first one is the big one.

1. You register your own developer app per platform. This is the real friction. To connect X, LinkedIn, Meta, and the rest, you create your OWN OAuth/developer application on each platform and paste the client ID and secret into Postiz. The SaaS tools have already done this for every user; you have not. Worse, platform API approval can be slow - X and Meta reviews in particular can take days and sometimes get bounced. If you need to be posting to six networks by this afternoon, a hosted tool wins on day one.

2. Lock the door after you move in. After you create your admin account, set DISABLE_REGISTRATION=true so a stranger who finds your URL cannot sign up on your instance. Easy to forget, and it matters.

3. You are now on call. Backups, updates, and the occasional Temporal or Postgres hiccup are yours. A managed pod absorbs most of this, but even then you own the app-level config. If nobody on the team wants that, pay the SaaS bill and move on.

Postiz FAQ

Is Postiz free? Yes. Postiz is open-source under AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host. You pay only for the server it runs on. There is also a paid hosted cloud at postiz.com if you would rather not self-host.

What does Postiz replace? It covers the same job as Buffer, Hootsuite, Publer, Later, and SocialBee: scheduling and posting to social networks from one calendar. It posts to 14 networks and has built-in AI post generation.

Is Postiz a good Buffer alternative? If you connect more than a handful of channels or add teammates, yes. Buffer bills $6 per channel and Hootsuite starts at $99/mo per user; self-hosted Postiz has no per-channel or per-seat charge.

What is the cheapest managed Postiz option? Among purpose-built managed products, a $15/mo managed pod on InstaPods undercuts Elestio ($16/mo) and Postiz's own cloud ($29/mo for 5 channels). A raw $4-5 VPS or a ~$5-10 PaaS template is cheaper still if you manage the stack yourself.

What I would tell past-me

The per-channel and per-seat math is the whole story. As long as you have one or two channels and one person, Buffer's free tier or its $6/channel plan is fine. The moment you cross into multiple brands, many channels, or a real team, the SaaS bill compounds. Self-hosting Postiz stops being a hobby and starts being a budget decision. Do the OAuth-app legwork once, and after that adding channel number eleven or teammate number four costs nothing.

If you are running social for more than one brand: add up your channels times your per-channel or per-seat rate, then tell me your monthly number in the comments - I want to see how ugly it gets.