Buffer is one of the most pleasant tools in this category. It is simple, affordable, reliable, and never tries to be more than it is. For an individual or a small brand scheduling their own posts, that restraint is a feature.
For an agency managing many clients, the same restraint becomes a ceiling.
What Buffer does well
Simplicity. There is almost no learning curve. You connect accounts, queue posts, done.
Price at small scale. For a handful of channels, Buffer is inexpensive and honest about it.
Reliability. Posts go out. The core job is solid.
None of this is in dispute, and if you run three clients and nothing hurts, Buffer may be all you need.
Where it stops working for agencies
Client approval is not a first-class feature. Agencies live and die on getting client sign-off efficiently. Buffer's model assumes the scheduler decides. You end up routing approvals through email, which is where agency time disappears.
Client switching is clunky. Managing many distinct brands in a tool built around simplicity means the simplicity starts costing you — there is no rich per-client workspace holding brand voice, pillars, and history.
No AI drafting in the brand's voice. Buffer added AI assistance, but it does not carry a per-client brand context the way an agency tool needs. You get generic help, then rewrite.
Reporting is thin for client-facing work. Agencies need reports that justify the retainer. Buffer's analytics are serviceable for a brand watching its own numbers, lighter for an agency presenting to a client.
The real question
Count your clients and count how approvals happen today. If approvals run through email and you are above eight or ten clients, you have outgrown the simple-tool stage — not because Buffer is bad, but because agency work has requirements a brand-first tool was never built to carry.
Where Orbit is different
Orbit assumes the agency model from the ground up: a workspace per client, approvals on a no-signup link, AI drafting that pulls each client's brand voice, and per-client reporting. The tradeoff is that Orbit is not as dead-simple as Buffer for a single brand — it carries multi-client machinery a solo user would not use.
So the honest split: Buffer for simplicity and small scale; Orbit when the agency-specific needs (approvals, per-client context, roster scale) become the thing that actually slows you down.
A fair way to decide
If you are weighing the two, the deciding factor is almost never features on a page — it is whether approvals and client-switching are costing you hours every week. If they are, that cost is the thing a purpose-built agency tool removes, and it is worth more than the price difference. If they are not, Buffer's simplicity is a genuine virtue and you should keep it.