Best marketing planning and calendar software compared, ranked on the seat model each vendor publishes
A marketing calendar is bought for a team, so the number that decides the purchase is not the headline price but how many people the cheapest plan lets in. Five vendors, read on their own pricing pages today, answer that very differently.
Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 22 October 2026
Eight phrasings reach this page and they divide into two words for one object. "Marketing planning software", "marketing planning platform" and "marketing plan tool" describe where the plan lives. "Marketing calendar software", "marketing calendar tool" and the best variants of both describe where the dates live. In every product in this comparison those are the same screen, because a plan without dates is a document and a calendar without a plan is a diary.
The thing that actually decides this purchase is almost never discussed, and it is not the monthly price. A marketing calendar is useful in proportion to how many people can see it. If the cheapest plan holds one person, the calendar is a personal to do list with a monthly fee. So the criterion on this page, applied to every vendor including the ones we would rather recommend, is the published seat model at the entry price.
What each vendor publishes about seats, read on 21 October 2026
| Vendor | Entry paid plan and published price | What it publishes about seats |
|---|---|---|
| Planable | Basic, $33 per workspace per month | Unlimited users, on Basic and on Pro. Priced per workspace rather than per person |
| Asana | Starter, $10.99 per user per month billed annually, $13.49 billed monthly | "No user seat limits". The free Personal plan is capped at 2 users, and the FAQ adds that between 2 and 5 total users, seats are added in increments of 1 |
| monday.com | Basic, $9 per seat per month billed annually | Free is listed as up to 2 seats, while the FAQ states "Plans start from 3 users". The two statements sit on the same page and disagree |
| Airtable | Team, $20 per user per month billed annually | No seat cap published. The page also publishes no numeric figure for records per base, automation runs, attachment space or sync integrations |
| CoSchedule | Starter, $29 per month billed annually, $39 billed monthly | 1 user included and a stated maximum of "Limit 1 Users". Professional at $49 annually includes 2 users, charges $29 a month per additional seat, and states a maximum of 3 users |
Planable ranks first on that criterion, and here is where it loses
On the published seat model, Planable is first. It is the only vendor of the five whose entry paid plan publishes unlimited users, because it charges for the workspace rather than for the person, at $33 per workspace per month for Basic and $49 for Pro. For a small marketing team that wants everybody, including a founder and a freelancer, looking at one calendar, that model removes the argument about who gets a login.
It loses on volume and on approvals, and its own page is where you find that out. Basic publishes 60 posts per workspace per month and 4 social pages per workspace. Pro publishes 150 posts and 10 pages. Multi level approval, which Planable describes as stacking approval steps in the order you need them with the example of a team lead, a client and a legal review, is on Enterprise only, and the comparison table shows no multi level approval on Basic or Pro. Basic offers approval options of None and Optional, Pro adds Required. Enterprise is custom priced, publishes unlimited posts and shows 50 pages per workspace, and the page invites you to get in touch for a volume discount above 5 workspaces.
Asana is second and is the better buy for a team whose calendar is a work calendar rather than a publishing calendar. Its Starter plan at $10.99 per user per month billed annually publishes no seat limit, and timeline and Gantt views and forms arrive at that tier. The things a marketing team usually discovers it needs sit one tier up: unlimited portfolios, resource management and "Approvals and proofing" are all first included on Advanced at $24.99 per user per month billed annually, and organisation wide workload is Enterprise, whose price is not published. At five people, Advanced is $124.95 a month against Planable Pro at $49, and Asana is the stronger product for everything that is not a social post.
monday.com is third, and the reason is a contradiction on its own page rather than its product. Basic is $9 per seat per month billed annually, which is the lowest per seat figure in this comparison, and timeline and Gantt views plus automations arrive at Standard, $12 per seat, which publishes 250 automation actions a month. The page lists Free as up to 2 seats and then states in its FAQ that plans start from 3 users, so the real floor on a paid plan reads as 3 seats and $27 a month rather than $9. Approvals are not mentioned anywhere in the work management plans, which matters if sign off is the reason you are buying.
Airtable is fourth on this criterion, at $20 per user per month on Team and $45 on Business billed annually. It is the most flexible thing in the list and the hardest to shortlist on cost, because its pricing page publishes no numeric limits at all for records, automation runs, attachment space or sync integrations. It says only that when you reach or exceed the record or attachment limits you cannot add more until you upgrade. That is a real gap for a buyer comparing on paper.
CoSchedule is fifth on the seat model and it is not a weak product. It is the only vendor here built around the marketing calendar as the main object, and Professional publishes unlimited custom calendars for agency clients while Suite, described as custom plans starting at $69 a month, publishes unlimited sub calendars and workspaces. But Starter at $29 a month states a maximum of one user, and Professional at $49 states a maximum of three, with additional seats at $29 a month. Two more figures belong next to the headline: social profiles are 3 on Starter and 5 on Professional with additional profiles at $5 per month each, and X profiles are excluded from every base plan at $16 per profile per month on Professional and Suite, billed separately. The free plan schedules up to 15 posts at a time on 1 profile.
Three questions that settle which column you are in
- Is the calendar a publishing queue or a plan of record? A publishing queue connects to channels and sends. A plan of record holds campaigns, owners, dependencies and budget and sends nothing. Planable and CoSchedule are built for the first. Asana, monday.com and Airtable are built for the second.
- Does anybody outside the marketing team have to approve things? If a client or a legal reviewer signs off, the approval step is the product, and that is the feature this comparison shows sitting on the higher tier at nearly every vendor.
- How many people need to see it, and are any of them outside your company? This is the one that moves the cost by a factor of five, and it is why the seat model is the criterion rather than the headline.
The row nobody puts in the plan
Every one of these tools will hold a channel row for search, for social, for email and for paid. There is one channel most marketing plans have no row for, which is the answer an assistant gives when a buyer asks it who to buy from. It is not a send, so it does not fit a publishing calendar, and it is not a campaign, so it does not fit a budget line. It is a recommendation made about you by software.
That is our category rather than a competitor to anything above, and it belongs in the plan as a measurement row. AI Knows Us watches real buyer questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews and reports which businesses get named. On our published US ladder at aiknowsus.com/llms.txt, read 21 October 2026, Growth at $299 a month is the cheapest plan that reads all five of those surfaces, with 100 buyer questions watched and 1,200 scheduled answers a month. The $149 tier, SEO Start, publishes 0 buyer questions, 0 credits and 0 engines, so $299 is the figure to use.
Where the suite version of this decision lives
Planning and the calendar are one of five jobs that marketing operations software covers, alongside budget and spend, work management, digital asset management, and review and approval. If you are buying more than one of them at once, the suite question changes the shortlist. Our page on marketing resource management software, the five jobs it does and how to buy only the ones you need sets out the five and the suite against stack choice. We send you there deliberately, because no other page on this site links to that one: measured on 21 October 2026, 968 of the 2,343 pages live here carry no durable inbound link from any other page, which is 41.3 per cent and an upper bound, and that page is one of them.
Questions about marketing planning and calendar software
Can a spreadsheet do this? For one person, yes, and for a long time. It stops working at the point where two people edit it in the same week, or where somebody outside the team needs to approve something, because a spreadsheet has no approval state and no notification.
Why is the approval feature always on the higher tier? Because it is the feature that brings in people outside the core team, which is where vendors see a larger account. Asana puts approvals and proofing first on Advanced, Planable puts multi level approval on Enterprise, and monday.com's work management plans do not mention approvals at all.
Is per workspace pricing cheaper than per seat? It depends entirely on headcount. Planable Pro at $49 per workspace with unlimited users beats Asana Advanced at $24.99 per user from two users upward, and loses to Asana Starter at $10.99 per user for a team of three if posts are not what you are managing.
What should I check before I sign? The seat maximum, the volume limit on whatever you produce most of, and which tier the approval step sits on. Those three are where every unexpected invoice in this category comes from.
Do these prices include everything? Read the per unit add ons. CoSchedule charges $5 per month per additional social profile and $16 per month per X profile on Professional and Suite, billed separately, and extra Asana seats are added in increments of one between two and five users.