Smash Balloon Review: Is It The Top Social Media Feed Plugin for WP?

Nearly a third of marketers acknowledge that social media marketing is effective for business. This is a validation of social media’s potent role when it comes to the growth of brands and businesses. It is a huge market for products and services that must be tapped and leveraged to your advantage. However, to do that you must be aware of the latest social media developments and likewise be able to showcase your social media posts.

This is where social aggregators come in. These are usually in the form of social media feed plugins that can easily curate content from various social channels and display them on your website. It can be a great help to boost engagement for your posts and to grow your followers. One such plugin gaining headway, especially for WordPress sites is Smash Balloon. Is this the top social media aggregator? Let’s see about that.

Check if you can get any special discount with our Smash Balloon coupon code article.

What is Smash Balloon?

Smash Balloon is a social media management platform, specifically a social media aggregator for WordPress websites. It provides several social plugins that make it easy to create, customize, and display feeds from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube right on your WP site. You can also set up feeds for your FB group or one that combines all your channels into one impressive social media wall.

Smash Balloon boasts more than 1.75 million users worldwide and the number is growing. Its popularity can be attributed to many factors foremost of which is its ease of use. You can set it up and get it running in under 5 minutes. By that time you’ll have your own clean, uncluttered social media feed on your website. It does not require any third-party apps or complex code; you simply check the boxes of items you want.

Another thing going for Smash Balloon is its quick and easy customization. It offers several layout options and built-in styling if you want to be creative in your feed design. On the other hand, you can leave it all to the plugin which can automatically adapt your WP theme styles and fonts for a worry-free design that jibes with your existing site feel and look.

The plugins can be purchased separately for each of the major social media channels – FB, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. You can opt for an all-access bundle for all these channels. And there are plan options such as Personal, Business, and Smash (the highest-priced, all-inclusive plan). In other words, you get lots of pricing choices to fit your budget and requirement.

Key Features

• Feed backups
• Feed creator
• Feed customizer
• Integrations
• Live visual preview
• Optimized images
• Prebuilt layouts
• Regularly updated content
• Search engine readable content
• SEO booster
• Smart data loading
• Visual editor

Pricing

Below are rates for the Personal Plan. Prices go up when you opt for a Business Plan or a Smash Plan.

• Facebook Feed Pro – Starting at $49/year
• Instagram Feed Pro – Starting at $49/year
• Twitter Feed Pro – Starting at $49/year
• YouTube Feed Pro – Starting at $49/year
• All Access Bundle – $299/year

Check Smash Balloon Pricing

Highlights

* All images used in this article are from smashballoon.com

Several feed types

You won’t be limited to one or two types of feeds. You can choose from different types of feeds like timelines, photos, videos, events, reviews, single album, single featured post, and social wall. These feed types can be tweaked and customized when it comes to color schemes and layouts. You can choose and moderate content to be included and easily connect your social account to the type of feed you display.

Easy setup

Anyone can set up and use Smash Balloon’s plugins. You don’t need to hire WP specialists, agencies, or web developers to put up powerful feed functionalities on the WP site. This is because these plugins do not require coding background to install. It can go live in a matter of minutes and do what it’s supposed to do – display social feeds on your site.

Reliable and fast feed

With Smash Balloon, you get the assurance that your social feeds will be always up and running even if the social media is down. Its reliability is due to intelligent feed caching with a robust backup system as well as email alerts and smart issue reporting. Furthermore, smart data loading ensures that your social media plugins won’t slow down your website.

SEO friendly

Social media feed content through the plugins is completely SEO friendly. Instead of iframes used in other plugins, those of Smash Balloon are dynamically embedded directly on your website page to boost SEO rankings. Also, you can display multiple social feeds across your site from various social media channels.

Low Points

Works only on WP

Smash Balloons’ plugins work only for WordPress websites. This means that if your website was built on another platform like Squarespace, Wix, or Joomla, the plugins won’t be compatible there. This is just the one regret we have for Smash Balloon which could have been immensely better if it was a multi-platform compatible plugin.

No free plan

Don’t look for a free plan or free version; there is none. But there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee that serves as your free trial. A change of mind in that one-month trial run, no problem – you get a full refund.

Top Alternatives

If by any chance Smash Balloon isn’t your cup of tea, there are other social media feed plugins you can turn to such as the following:

• Social Media Feeds by Tagembed – Free and paid social media aggregator with prices starting at $9/month.
• Feed Them Social – Freemium social media feeds plugin for WP sites offering individual plans and all-access pass.
• Flow-Flow – An open-source WP social feed stream that can embed user-generated content from multiple sources.
• Embed Social – A user-generated content platform that collects social media feeds and embeds them on any site; offers a free plan and 3 paid plans starting at $29/month.
• Juicer – Aggregates your social media posts and brand’s hashtag into a social media feed on your site; comes with a free version and 3 plans starting at $19/month.

Now how did Smash Balloon fare in our checkup? Is it the top social media feed plugin for WordPress?

The Verdict

Smash Balloon has enough bragging rights to claim the title based on some impressive features and capabilities. It is simple to set up and easy to use. It has loads of customizable options – from the look and design to the content and type of display. It is SEO friendly and has enough safeguards against site slowdowns and other issues. Moreover, it offers pricing options that are easy on the pocket.

In other words, Smash Balloon delivers on its claim as a fast and reliable social media feeds plugin for WordPress. It has an army of users to prove that and numerous positive reviews to back it up. Being widely used and highly rated earns it its coveted pedigree. We recommend you take that 30-day trial with a 100% refund if you don’t like the plugin. But the chances are you’ll be staying with it.

Check Smash Balloon Pricing