TL;DR
ContentCal shut down on March 31, 2023, about fifteen months after Adobe bought it. If you are still looking for a replacement, SchedPilot is my pick for the same plan, approve, publish loop at a small-team price. Planable is the closest match for ContentCal’s approval experience, and Loomly is the closest for its post states. Adobe Express Content Scheduler is the official successor, and it is the one I would recommend least to a former ContentCal team.
The 7 ContentCal alternatives covered
- SchedPilot – calendar, approvals and publishing, with MCP and API for AI assistants
- Planable – the best client approval flow
- Loomly – post states that feel like ContentCal
- SocialPilot – budget pick for agencies
- Buffer – for the solo ContentCal user
- CoSchedule – if your calendar also held blog posts and emails
- Adobe Express Content Scheduler – the official replacement
What happened to ContentCal
ContentCal was a London company that built a content calendar with approvals in it from day one. Adobe announced the acquisition in December 2021. For a year not much changed. Then the standalone product was closed on March 31, 2023 and users were pointed to Content Scheduler inside Adobe Express.
That move made sense for Adobe. It made less sense for the agencies and in-house teams who had bought ContentCal for its workflow. Content Scheduler is a scheduler attached to a design tool, which is good if your posts start life as Express templates and thin if what you valued was a client approving Thursday’s post from a link.
There is also nothing left to migrate. ContentCal accounts and their exports are long gone, so whatever you move to, you are starting from your current spreadsheet or from whichever stopgap you landed on in 2023.
What a ContentCal replacement has to do
People who miss ContentCal tend to miss the same four things. A calendar that published the post itself. An approval step where a post could not go out until someone signed it off. Colour-coded category tags, so a glance at the month showed too many promos and not enough of everything else. And the Content Hub, a holding area for ideas and half-finished posts that had no date yet.
Analytics and the inbox were fine, but nobody chose ContentCal for those. So I have ranked the tools below on the first four and mostly ignored the rest.
| Tool | Approvals | Closest to ContentCal for | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|
| SchedPilot | Yes | The whole plan, approve, publish loop | $21/mo |
| Planable | Yes, multi-level on Enterprise | Client approval and comments | $33 per workspace |
| Loomly | Yes | Post states and mockups | $65/mo |
| SocialPilot | Yes | Many clients on a small budget | About $25 to $30/mo |
| Buffer | Basic | One person, a few channels | Free for 3 channels |
| CoSchedule | Suite plan | Blog and email on the same calendar | Free for 1 user, then about $29 per user |
| Adobe Express Content Scheduler | Limited | Teams already designing in Express | Included with Adobe Express |
The 7 best ContentCal alternatives
1 SchedPilot
SchedPilot is the calendar I use myself, so weigh the ranking accordingly. It sits first because it covers the full loop ContentCal users are trying to get back. The calendar is the publishing queue: drag a post onto Thursday at 9:00 and it goes live on Thursday at 9:00. Drafts and approvals sit on the post, so the sign-off happens where the content is. A shared content library does the job the Content Hub used to do, and you can filter the month by channel or campaign.
The part ContentCal never had is the AI side. SchedPilot has an MCP server and a public API, so you can ask Claude or ChatGPT to draft next week’s posts and they land in the calendar as drafts waiting for approval. I wrote more about that in my post on social media tools with MCP servers.
Plans start at $21 a month. The downside is that it is a younger product and the analytics are light.
2 Planable
If approvals were the reason you paid for ContentCal, go straight to Planable. Comments sit on each post, clients approve from the calendar, and a guest link lets them review without creating an account. I think it does this better than ContentCal did.
The pricing is where it hurts. Planable charges per workspace, Basic was $33 a month with a 60-post cap when I checked, and an agency normally needs one workspace per client. Six clients is $198 a month. Multi-level approvals are on Enterprise.
3 Loomly
Loomly is the one that feels most familiar. Every post moves through draft, pending approval, approved and scheduled, which is close to how ContentCal’s workflow read on screen. You also get a mockup of the post on each network, and idea prompts for the empty weeks.
But Loomly got expensive. Starter is $65 a month, or $49 if you pay annually. For a three-person team that used to pay ContentCal prices, that is a real jump.
4 SocialPilot
SocialPilot is the practical choice for an agency with a dozen clients and no appetite for per-workspace pricing. Client approval works without handing over your login, bulk upload takes a CSV of up to 500 posts, and white-label reports are included on plans from around $25 to $30 a month. The calendar is plainer than ContentCal’s was. You stop noticing after a day. If you want to see what else sits in this price range, I have a list of SocialPilot alternatives.
5 Buffer
Plenty of ContentCal accounts were one person with three channels. For that, Buffer’s free plan is enough: set time slots, drop posts in, done. Collaboration is thin and the approval flow is basic, so I wouldn’t put a client in it. If you outgrow it, start with these Buffer alternatives.
6 CoSchedule
Some teams used ContentCal’s planning channels for blog posts and newsletters as well as social. CoSchedule is the only tool here that handles those natively. An article and its promo posts sit on one marketing calendar and move together, and it connects to WordPress. There is a free calendar for one user and a Social Calendar plan at about $29 per user. Approval workflows are in the more expensive Suite, which is annoying.
7 Adobe Express Content Scheduler
This is where Adobe sent everyone, so it belongs on the list. If your team already designs every post in Adobe Express, scheduling from the same screen is convenient and costs nothing extra.
As a ContentCal replacement it falls short. It was built as a feature of a design app, and the approval flow, category planning and multi-client setup that made ContentCal worth paying for did not come across with the same depth. I would treat it as a scheduler you happen to have, and buy a calendar separately.
How I would pick
Go by what you used ContentCal for. Client sign-off: Planable, or SchedPilot if Planable’s per-workspace bill gets silly. The tidy post states: Loomly, if $65 a month is fine. Lots of clients on a budget: SocialPilot. Blog and email on the calendar: CoSchedule. Just you: Buffer.
Then test the one thing that matters. During the trial, send a real post to your fussiest client and ask them to approve it. If they manage it without emailing you for help, that tool is your ContentCal replacement.
For a wider comparison that includes planning boards like Notion and Airtable, see my full list of content calendar tools.