Draft:SocialBee

SocialBee is a social media management tool developed by Ovi Negrean and Vlad Hosu in 2016 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

The platform allows users to create, schedule, and publish content across various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Google Business Profile, and Bluesky. It also provides features for team collaboration, performance analysis, and community engagement through responses to social media comments, mentions, and messages.

In 2024, SocialBee was acquired by WebPros, a web hosting solution based in Luxembourg. Now, SocialBee is part of the WebPros group of companies alongside companies like cPanel, Plesk, and WHMCS.

History

Ovi Negrean and Vlad Hosu founded SocialBee in 2016 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, working initially out of Vlad Hosu’s apartment. The company began as a series of spreadsheets and an initial system involving Google Sheets and Zapier to a fully independent platform aimed at automating the process of sharing posts across social media platforms.

The idea for the app originated from a previous venture, Nugget, an app that provided bite-sized quotes from business and personal development books. While promoting Nugget, the team recognized the significant role social media played in marketing and the challenges of using multiple tools to manage social media accounts. They identified a gap in the market for a comprehensive, affordable solution for social media management. This realization led to the development of SocialBee.

Ovi Negrean took the role of CEO, while Vlad Hosu became the CTO of the company. Over time, the team expanded its offerings to include social media services. This addition addressed the needs of customers who wanted to grow their social media presence but lacked the time or expertise to do so. Their services turned into a standalone brand ConciergeBee in 2023, an agency of over 50 freelancers across Europe that provides online marketing services, such as copywriting, social media marketing, and advertising.

The company has been growing steadily over the years. In 2017, Philipp Kandal, an early customer, invested in the company. A year later, Vlad Ardelean joined as COO and partner.

The team shifted to fully remote work in 2020. By 2021, SocialBee had a core team of 25 people and more than 50 freelancers working on concierge social media services. In November of that year, they launched ACE Meetings, an online tool for booking appointments.

In 2024 SocialBee was acquired by WebPros. This move brought SocialBee’s tools into WebPros’ suite of web hosting software and automation solutions.

Features

SocialBee is a social media management platform designed to help users create, schedule, reshare, and manage content across multiple social media channels.

It provides artificial intelligence (AI) tools, which assist users in generating captions, images, and hashtags for social media posts. Additionally, SocialBee also includes an AI assistant (Copilot) designed to help users create their social media strategy.

The platform supports content creation by allowing users to craft social media posts, upload and edit media, and organize content into categories (folders) based on topics and other factors.

For teams, SocialBee offers collaboration features so users can create separate workspaces for different brands, invite team members, and share notes or feedback.

SocialBee's social inbox is where users can respond to comments, mentions, and messages across different platforms.

The analytics tools within SocialBee allow users to assess the performance of both individual posts and overall account activity. Users can also generate and download PDF reports with the collected data.

In addition to its desktop features, SocialBee offers a mobile app and browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. The SocialBee browser extension enables users to save content (e.g., articles, posts, or videos) from web pages directly to the app.

The mobile app enables users to manage social media posts from their phones, particularly for platforms without direct integration, like Facebook Groups or Reddit. In these cases, users receive notifications when it's time to post, allowing them to complete the process on their mobile devices.

Integrations

SocialBee integrates with several tools:

• Visual content creation: Canva, Unsplash, and GIPHY
• Content curation: Pocket and Quuu
• Link management: Switchy, Bitly, Replug, Rebrandly, BL.INK, JotURL, Rocketlink
• Automation: Zapier, Pabbly, and Make
• Content management: Buffer and Hootsuite

Business model

SocialBee operates on a subscription-based model (SaaS), offering several pricing tiers to accommodate the needs of solopreneurs, small businesses, agencies, and larger enterprises. Each pricing plan varies in the number of users, profiles, and advanced features.

Related products and services

In addition to its core social media management platform, SocialBee launched ACE Meetings in 2021, an online scheduling tool designed to facilitate appointment bookings, automate reminders, and schedule follow-up emails. The tool integrates with various calendar services, including Google Calendar, Office 365, and iCloud. It supports different meeting formats, such as one-on-one sessions, round-robin meetings, group sessions, and collective panels where invitees can choose a mutually convenient time.

Since the launch of its social media management tool, SocialBee has offered a variety of marketing services. In 2023, these services evolved into ConciergeBee, a separate agency. ConciergeBee collaborates with a network of over 50 freelancers across Europe to provide services such as copywriting, social media management, and advertising.

Acquisitions

In 2024, SocialBee was acquired by WebPros, a Luxembourg-based company known for its web hosting software and automation solutions. The acquisition integrated SocialBee into WebPros' portfolio, which includes other platforms such as cPanel, Plesk, and WHMCS.

Markets

SocialBee is accessible worldwide and its platform is available in English.

External links

Official website