Buffer costs $6/channel/mo — and unlike a tool you buy once, that bill never stops. Over three years that's roughly $1,080 for software doing a job your own hardware could just as easily do.
Where the subscription actually goes
$6/channel/month, forever is the sticker price. It compounds: cancel and you typically lose access to your own history, and most plans ratchet the price up as you add usage, seats or storage — the bill rarely stays flat for long.
PostDock: the pay-once alternative
PostDock does the same core job for $49, once. Self-hosted social scheduling — composer, queue, content recycling & webhooks. Your API keys, your data.
| PostDock | Buffer | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $49 once | $6/channel/month, forever |
| 5 channels, 3 years | $49 | $1,080 |
| Channel limit | Unlimited | Pay per channel |
| Scheduled posts | Unlimited | Capped on cheap tiers |
| Your API keys & data | SQLite on your disk | Their cloud |
| Content recycling | Built in | That's ReQueue/SmarterQueue — another $25/mo |
| Webhook / Zapier escape hatch | Built in | Paid add-ons |
| Source code | MIT, yours forever | Closed |
Eight months of a single Buffer channel pays for PostDock outright — a five-channel setup pays it back in under two months.
Is the subscription ever still worth it?
If you need Buffer's specific ecosystem, integrations or managed infrastructure and that's genuinely load-bearing for you, the subscription earns its keep — that's a real trade-off, not a trick. PostDock is for everyone else: people paying every month for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
Try PostDock — $49, once
Self-hosted social scheduling — composer, queue, content recycling & webhooks. Your API keys, your data.