Metricool for Education: Plans, Approvals and Reports for Campuses

What a campus communications office needs from Metricool

A university or school communications office rarely runs one account. It runs the institution's main profiles, then gets pulled into admissions, athletics, alumni relations, departments and, sooner or later, student groups. The job is less about posting and more about control: one calendar everyone can see, a way to stop off-message posts, and numbers leadership will accept. That is our lens. We read Metricool's education page, pricing page and help center in October 2026 and checked what each plan allows for a central team.

Metricool pitches itself directly at this audience. Its education page says universities, academies and learning platforms already use it, and it lists the features it thinks matter to them: best-time scheduling, AI help with ideas and tone, design templates from Canva, Adobe Express and Google Drive, multiple link-in-bio pages through SmartLinks, multi-department management with roles, and integrations with Zapier and Make (the automation tool) ^[1]. Most of that is real. Several items depend on the plan, though, and the page does not always say which. The sections below sort out what a campus actually gets at each level.

Mapping the institution's accounts to brands

Metricool sizes every plan by brands, and a brand holds one profile per network. That rule shapes the whole setup. The university's main identity can be one brand with its Instagram, Facebook Page, TikTok, LinkedIn page, YouTube channel and more, all in a single slot. Admissions with its own Instagram needs a second brand, because one brand cannot hold two Instagram accounts. Athletics, the business school and the alumni office each become a brand the same way. If the institution has several campuses listed on Google, each Google Business Profile location needs a brand of its own.

So start with an inventory, not a plan. List every account the office touches, group them by identity, and count the identities. A small school might land on three or four brands. A mid-sized college with active departments often reaches a dozen. A large university that brings colleges, institutes and student media under one roof can pass 50 quickly. One more detail matters for LinkedIn: a single brand cannot hold both a personal LinkedIn profile and a company page. If the president's profile and the institution's page both need managing, plan two brands. Count carefully. The brand total decides the price.

Which plan fits a school, a college or a university

The plans line up neatly with institution size, but the line that matters is about people, not brands. Each paid tier comes in brand sizes, and each size can be billed monthly or annually; the annual figure is shown per month but paid for the year up front. Moving between sizes inside a tier changes only the brand count. Moving from Starter to Advanced changes who can log in. Here are the published prices, before VAT and add-ons ^[2]:

Free covers one brand and 20 posts a month, without LinkedIn or X and with only 30 days of analytics. That is fine for a single student club, not for an institution. Starter is $25 a month billed monthly or $20 a month billed annually for up to 5 brands, and $45 or $36 for up to 10. It adds LinkedIn, PDF and PowerPoint reports, unlimited analytics history and 100 competitors per network (10 on YouTube). Starter has one user. A one-person office can live with that. A team cannot.

Advanced is $67 a month billed monthly or $53 a month billed annually for up to 15 brands, rising to $107 or $85 for 25 and $210 or $159 for 50. It brings unlimited users, roles, post approval, custom report templates, the Looker Studio connector and the API. Above 50 brands, Custom is a quote from sales. The education page says brand counts run from one on Free to more than 50 for larger institutions, and that only Advanced and Custom allow several people on one account. For almost every communications office with more than one staff member, Advanced is the real starting point.

A central office and many departments: roles and approvals

Roles for staff, faculty and student contributors

On Advanced, the office can share each brand with the people who work on it. Metricool ships default roles named Analyst, Editor, Manager, Content Creator and Client, and the brand owner can create custom roles that brand managers then assign. A department coordinator can be an Editor on the department's brand and nothing else. A dean's office can have an Analyst role that only reads numbers, and a summarized-analytics permission can restrict someone to a general summary. Invited users cannot see billing or the owner's other brands. Invitations expire after 24 hours, so send them when people are ready to accept.

There is also a connection link for setup. A department that owns its Facebook Page or YouTube channel can connect it through a link, without a Metricool account, before the link expires after 71 hours. No passwords change hands. Note the YouTube detail: a channel under a Brand Account can be connected only by its Primary owner or an Owner, because Managers can no longer connect through the YouTube API.

Approval before anything goes out

The approval system is the feature most campuses will care about, and it is Advanced and Custom only ^[3]. A department drafts a post and sends it for review. Reviewers can be colleagues inside Metricool or outside people added by email, such as a dean or a legal officer, who need no Metricool account and use a reviewer portal. The brand chooses the rule: one approval is enough, everyone must approve, or the post goes out unless someone rejects it. A single rejection always blocks publication.

Three details are easy to miss. Editing a post after sending it resets the review. A post still pending at its scheduled time gets a three-hour grace period and is then dropped unpublished. And external reviewers get a separate email for every post in a bulk send, which can flood a busy dean's inbox. A user can also be given a permission that lets them schedule only into review, a good fit for student contributors. That is the control most offices want.

Sharing the calendar with deans, faculty and student groups

Not everyone who wants to see the calendar needs a login. Metricool offers three routes. On Starter and above, a read-only calendar view built in Metricool Studio can be shared by a public link that needs no account and can be revoked. Studio is also the only option that combines several brands into one calendar, which is useful for a campus-wide view of admissions, athletics and the main accounts together. The calendar can also be exported as a CSV file, a static snapshot for a planning meeting; Metricool says this works on all plans (one table on its help page says Starter or higher).

The third route is inviting people as team members, which needs Advanced and gives them a standard Metricool account. Studio has limits, though. Without the Advanced Analytics add-on, a user holds two Studio views with ten versions each, and Studio is free on paid plans only for a limited time before becoming a paid add-on. A campus calendar shared through Studio works today. Do not assume it stays free.

Reports leadership will actually read

Presidents, provosts and boards usually want a monthly or term summary, not a dashboard login. Starter and above produce PDF and PowerPoint reports, and reports can be scheduled to go out automatically. On Advanced, the office can build custom report templates, one set per brand, so admissions and athletics each get a report shaped for their audience. Every plan, Free included, can also send an automatic monthly summary email, though only to one recipient and with organic data only.

For a single picture across all brands, the Looker Studio connector (Metricool still calls it Data Studio) pulls every connected brand, website and ad platform into Google's reporting tool. It is Advanced and Custom only and cannot be bought as an add-on for Starter. Expect some setup work. Follower counts need a MAX or AVG aggregation, because summing daily values inflates them.

Metricool Studio builds reports from a written prompt, and Campaign Dashboards track a specific campaign, such as an enrollment drive or an open-day push, across organic and paid posts. Both are free on Starter and Advanced for a limited time and are announced as a future paid add-on. Without the Advanced Analytics add-on, Studio stops at two views and Campaign Dashboards at three per brand. Separately, Studio views cap the analysis window at three months, a hard maximum in Step by step mode. Our Metricool analytics guide covers the metrics in detail.

Benchmarking against peer institutions

Leadership often asks how the institution compares with its rivals for applicants. Paid plans can track up to 100 competitor profiles per network, and up to 10 on YouTube. Competitor networks are Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bluesky, YouTube and Twitch; YouTube needs a paid plan, and X also needs the X add-on. Competitors cannot be added on LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest or Google Business Profile. So do not promise leadership a LinkedIn benchmark of peer schools, even though that is where many graduate programs compete hardest.

The data has limits worth explaining to leadership. Competitor figures are organic only and come from public information. Engagement is calculated from followers rather than reach, because reach is not public, so Metricool suggests adding your own account as a competitor to compare like with like. Followers and likes are tracked only from the moment you connect a competitor, so add peers early. Instagram competitors also require the institution's Instagram to be connected through Facebook.

Network by network: LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and X

LinkedIn matters to universities for alumni, faculty and graduate recruiting, and it is not on the Free plan. Connecting a company page needs Super Admin permission; the Content Admin role is not enough. Metricool can publish polls and document carousels to LinkedIn, but it cannot publish LinkedIn articles, event posts or co-authored posts. The LinkedIn inbox covers comments and mentions, not private messages.

YouTube connects for scheduling, analytics, comment replies on videos and Shorts, and competitors, but it cannot publish community posts or custom Shorts thumbnails. YouTube history covers 30 days, and gathering all metrics takes about a week after connecting, so connect channels well before a term report is due. TikTok comments sync only for Business accounts, and demographic data is likewise limited to business accounts. Some TikTok posts go out by notification for manual publishing in the app.

On plans bought on the web, X is not included: it needs a paid plan plus the X add-on at $10 a month or $120 a year per connected X account (the app-store Starter Mobile 5 plan includes X in its price), and Starter gets only reduced X analytics. A campus with several X accounts should price each one separately. One correction to the education page: it says users can run ads on Google, Facebook and TikTok, but Metricool creates campaigns only for Meta and Google. TikTok ads are monitored, not managed.

Data, privacy and security questions procurement will ask

Institutional buyers will face a procurement or IT review, so here is what we found. Metricool Software SL is based in Madrid, Spain, and part of the team.blue group. Its privacy policy says all data sits on servers in the European Union with no international transfers. The same policy names joint controllership with team.blue N.V. for some customer data (contact, user, billing and purchase information) and authorizes sub-processors, with Metricool remaining responsible for them. It acts as a data processor under the GDPR and provides a Data Processing Agreement on request, as a PDF or a signed copy from its legal team. It commits to notify customers of a personal data breach within 72 hours. Liability is capped at the fees paid, under Spanish law.

Two gaps need attention. We found no published security certification, neither SOC 2 nor ISO 27001, which some university security questionnaires require. And two-factor authentication is off by default ^[4]. It uses an authenticator app, not SMS, and there are no backup codes; a lost device means support must verify ownership. We found no admin setting that forces it, so make turning it on part of every staff member's onboarding.

What it costs: three campus budgets

Every figure below excludes VAT, which may be added depending on the country, and the totals are by our arithmetic. A small school with four brands and one person fits Starter for five brands at $240 a year billed annually. One X account adds $120 a year, for $360 a year in all. The catch is the single user: the day a second person joins the office, the school needs Advanced.

A college with 12 brands and a team of four needs Advanced for 15 brands: $636 a year billed annually, against $804 a year at the monthly rate of $67. Two X accounts add $240 a year, for $876 a year on annual billing. That covers unlimited users, roles and approvals for every department, plus the Looker Studio connector and custom report templates.

A university with 40 brands needs Advanced for 50 brands at $159 a month billed annually, or $1,908 a year, about $3.98 for each of its 40 brands a month by our arithmetic ($3.18 per brand slot if all 50 were used). Billed monthly at $210, the same account costs $2,520 a year. Add the Advanced Analytics add-on, from $36 a month on Advanced, if leadership wants full Studio and Campaign Dashboards. Past 50 brands, Custom is quoted.

Billing rules a finance office should know

Annual billing saves up to 24% but is paid up front, and renewals are automatic. There is no standard free trial of paid plans; the Free plan is the way to test, and trial codes exist only through promotions or affiliates. Refunds apply only within 15 days of the first purchase, never to renewals. Upgrades are immediate and prorated, with unused balance applied to the new plan. Downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of the cycle, and the account then keeps the oldest brands by creation date. To keep different brands, delete the unwanted ones from the Connections panel before the downgrade or cancellation completes; after that the selection is locked. Payment is by card or PayPal; prepaid and virtual cards are refused, which matters for some purchasing cards. Our Metricool pricing guide covers the rest.

Metricool's education page makes no mention of an education or nonprofit discount, and we found none in its pricing or help pages. Budget at list price. It does promote its Metricool Expert certification to students as a career skill for marketing jobs. The course material is free; the exam costs 49 euros per person and includes three months of the Advanced plan, which a marketing department could fold into coursework.

The bottom line

Metricool suits a school or university communications office that wants many accounts under one roof at a modest price, because it charges by brand and gives a team unlimited users on Advanced at $53 a month billed annually for up to 15 brands. Approvals, roles, the Looker Studio connector and custom report templates all sit on Advanced, so a one-person Starter account is only right for the smallest schools. Before signing, map every account to a brand, price each X account at $10 a month, ask for the DPA, require two-factor authentication by policy, and accept that we found no published security certification and no education discount.