After I shared about Beatrix (an advanced social media assistant) last month, I was introduced to Swayy. A few of my readers named Swayy as an alternative to Beatrix, so I had to take a good look at this tool.

In short, I found that Swayy, while bearing some of the similar features as Beatrix, is not a replacement for it. I have used Swayy since the day I tried it, but not in the same way.

Note: I am not affiliated to either software company. Comparisons are made based on the free version of both tools.

(Accurate as of 17th April 2014) Kindly note that Beatrix has made a crucial update: Read here.

I decided to write this review only after giving Swayy a try for 2 weeks, to do it the same justice as I did to Beatrix. Let me get on to the advantages Beatrix offer OVER Swayy, then I’ll focus on the advantages and benefits of using Swayy.

1. Schedule Social Media Content for the entire week in just minutes

One strong advantage Beatrix had over Swayy was how easy you can prepare and schedule your content. With Beatrix, I hardly did any sort of curation aside from scanning through the headlines for clearly irrelevant articles. Daily, I would receive an email to tell me what would be posted. And they were simply posted to my social media channels. Easy and simple.

The onus of finding good content rests on the shoulders of Beatrix - which they did fairly well.

On the other hand, Swayy did not allow me to schedule content speedily. To publish a post, I had to manually click on the “Share” button found at the bottom of every article (left of the picture above). And with the free version, I was only able to schedule 24 hours in advance (right of the picture above).

2. Post

Beatrix offered basic post but not Swayy. Did this bother me? Not really. I regularly check Facebook Insights and the exported data insights so the lack of this feature on Swayy was not a deal breaker.

So why consider Swayy?

Honestly, I preferred using Swayy over Beatrix. Technically, I couldn’t use Beatrix anyway, since they only offered the free version for 14 days. But Swayy suited my working style more than Beatrix, and here’s why:

1. Daily Newsfeed

Forget Paper. In fact, forget newspapers too. With Swayy, I had a list of news that piqued my interests sent into my email everyday. I would click on the headlines that interest me most and consume them.

Currently, Swayy’s user flow works like this:

1. You receive an email
2. If you see a headline, you click on it
3. You are directed to Swayy’s website with a pop-up of the article
4. You click on an article link and you are redirected to the article

Sounds troublesome? This is a design problem that I wish they could solve. Reading an article just requires too many a click. But this is not a compelling reason to switch to another tool, because once you’re on Swayy’s website, you can easily access any of the articles with one click.

The visual design also compels me to scroll and look through all of them, while clicking on those which interest me.

I love reading online and I read articles everyday. Personally, I didn’t like the idea of sharing content which I have not even read (especially when I fiercely advocate against noise and fluff!) - that’s generally a habit that Beatrix users cultivate. Beatrix schedules the content for you before allowing you to vet them. This makes it an opt-out system - where it is easier for you to exclude and cut content. The opposite is true for Swayy - you need to choose what to schedule and post.

2. Picking the right content

Earlier, I mentioned that Beatrix does a fairly good job of picking relevant content from the web. Actually, Swayy is even better at picking the right content for you.

With Swayy, you can easily bring up content that interest you. A recommended list of topics is prepared for you when you setup your account and you can also specify topics that interest you. On Beatrix, this feature is accessible only to paying customers.

The Verdict?

Clearly, the free version of both tools offer very different benefits. If you’re looking for an assistant to fill your social media platforms everyday while spending about 5 minutes everyday reviewing what will be posted, go for Beatrix. If you prefer to choose what to post to your social media platforms and you are willing to spend 30 minutes of your time everyday to read and choose what to post, go for Swayy.