I’ve been a YouTuber since 2013 and tried many different ways to grow my channel. Today I’m laying down everything I love and don’t love about TubeBuddy.
TubeBuddy has been a factor to the success of my channel at one point. But how about now? Let’s go over it.
What is TubeBuddy?
To quote TubeBuddy from it’s own website:
It is a browser extension (aka browser plugin) that adds a layer of tools directly on top of YouTube’s website.
After installing TubeBuddy, simply go to YouTube.com and you’ll see their features right inside their site designated by the TubeBuddy logo.
They also offer a bunch of other tools which can be found on Your Account Page after linking a channel.
When you combine all of these tools with the hard work required in building a channel, you can dramatically increase your views and subscribers (and earnings!). I did it, and so can you. With TubeBuddy, the hard work becomes a little bit less, and that makes a huge difference.
What is the cost?
The TubeBuddy extension is free and includes the basic tools, then costs anywhere from 6$ to 25$ per month for different plans.
Their free extension offers a ton of functionality that is great for when you’re first starting your channel, and their paid plans offer even more tools to help you grow faster.
These are the PROS and CONS of using Tubebuddy:
- Helps you master YouTube SEO
- Allows you to “draft” views from other channels
- Free for the basic features
- YouTube Certified
- Easy to use
- Only one license per channel
What Features does tubebuddy have?
COMMENT MODERATION
As your channel grows, this will become an essential time-saver tool when you get more and more comments. It helps you sort through comments, fast-reply using canned responses, and highlight comments from supporters or recent subscribers!
PUBLISH TO FACEBOOK
I can upload directly to Facebook through TubeBuddy, saving me a lot of time. This lets me take advantage of Facebook’s autoplay feature and get quite a lot of views on Facebook as well.
OPPORTUNITY FINDER
This tool helps you get more views from Google instead of YouTube. It suggests tags to add that will increase your web-search traffic. After you add the tags, your videos have potential to increase in rankings on Google.
AUTO TRANSLATOR
This helps you translate your video titles and descriptions into other languages. You can greatly increase your global viewership!
BEST TIME TO PUBLISH
TubeBuddy’s deep analytics to know the optimal upload time based on my audience. This helps a lot getting your videos into the YouTube algorithm and can give you a big boost!
COMPETITOR SCORECARD
This allows you to compare your channel against your competitors in terms of monthly views, monthly uploads, subscribers, and engagement. You can export this data to a CSV and dive deep into the data as well!
HEALTH REPORT
This gives you an overall look at how your channel is performing. It tells you what’s working and what isn’t for your channel. It gives you a quick look at analytics, search traffic, related videos, and watch time.
SOCIAL MONITOR
Social monitor allows you to check out where your videos are being shared and talked about. It scans Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest. This has been a big help to me to see what people are saying about my videos on Reddit. You won’t have to manually search each of these social networks for your videos, but can quickly do it through TubeBuddy.
UPLOAD CHECKLIST
This is one of the most useful features of TubeBuddy. You’ll no longer forget any steps in the upload process! There are 9 best practices to tick off every time you upload a video!
BRAND ALERTS
Another incredible TubeBuddy feature! I use it to get alerts about my brand, with TubeBuddy scanning videos that are using my brand name in the title, description, or tags.
THUMBNAIL GENERATOR
Thumbnails are an incredibly important part of YouTube SEO, so you will want to be spending as much time as possible creating the perfect thumbnail. Photoshop is the best, but very complicated, so I recommend starting on the thumbnail creator!
CHANNEL VALUATION
This tool helps you know how much to charge for brand deals! You connect it to SocialBlueBook, which then looks at your average traffic per video, monthly views, and total subscribers to know how much to charge for a dedicated video or a shoutout.
DEMONETISATION AUDIT
It scans your title, keywords, and tags, and warns you whether any of them are “sensitive” enough to trigger a demonetisation.
CHANNELYTICS
Dive deep into competitor channels! You can compare your tags, monthly views, and more with TubeBuddy channelytics! You just need to visit any other channel and click the Channelytics tab!
Does TubeBuddy come with any member perks?
Yes! There are many, but my favourite is the 25% discounted access to the Epidemic Sound music library (no more worrying about copyright strikes!). Epidemic Sound is an awesome music library that you’ll need when you’re starting your channel. And there’s more perks too, check them out below!
Most of these tools are either free or highly discounted! My favourite perks are the different music libraries included.
Some other TubeBuddy perks include discounted access to AudioHero, JukeDeck, and discounted editing software and YouTube captioning services too!
What’s the best plan for small channels?
I would go for the Pro Plan below if I were just starting out again. It’s very cheap at $9/month and only $4.50/month if you have less than 1000 subscribers! It gets you all of the main features, with some limitations. If you want to fast track your growth, go for the Pro Plan, and then upgrade to the Legend Plan when your channel is making enough profit to support it!
THE PRO PLAN ($6/month)
The pro plan is a major upgrade from the free plan and only costs $9 per month. It gets you access to most of the YouTube SEO tools and video access tools, as well as many productivity tools. The keyword explorer and suggested tags are no longer limited, which is the biggest advantage. You can now research in depth keywords to understand what topics drive views and double down on that content creation. This plan is best for
THE LEGEND PLAN ($26.39/month)
The Legend Plan is TubeBuddy’s premiere plan. It’s worth it to me mainly for the A/B testing. It’s an incredible tool that has helped me gain millions of views. Essentially, it allows you to compare different thumbnails and titles on the same video and see which one performs better. Over time, across your whole channel, this can add up to millions of views! The legend plan also comes with an auto-translator which can translate your titles and descriptions to other languages to reach new markets. Another very awesome tool!
Let’s get into the TubeBuddy FAQs!
FAQS
How to use TubeBuddy?
It’s offered for both Chrome and Firefox, so once you’ve chosen which browser to install the extension on, use that browser to install TubeBuddy. Then, you’ll need to create an account, log in, and that’s it! Once you’ve installed it and are logged in, head over to your YouTube dashboard and you will notice a completely new layout! It’s that easy!
Is TubeBuddy Safe?
If you’re worried about whether TubeBuddy is safe to use, there is absolutely nothing to worry about! TubeBuddy is a 100% YouTube certified extension that has been helping thousands of YouTubers grow their channel since 2014! I’ve used it for over 4 years without a single problem or complaint. And all of my YouTuber friends use it too and we all can vouch for it helping us grow.
Is TubeBuddy worth it?
Yes! Tubebuddy is absolutely worth it! I worked hard and used TubeBuddy to understand what content works on YouTube and what doesn’t. Without TubeBuddy I feel like I would have been just shooting in the dark and hoping my videos would hit. With TubeBuddy, I developed a YouTube SEO understanding and became a better content creator. To me, it’s the ultimate YouTube growth hack.
Is TubeBuddy YouTube certified?
Yes! TubeBuddy is 100% YouTube Certified! As soon as you install it, it embeds into your YouTube dashboard and starts helping you grow with its many tools!
How many channels can you have per license?
To me, the only negative of TubeBuddy is that you can only have one channel per license. However, I still believe that TubeBuddy provides excellent value for it’s price, especially as your channel starts to grow! You can access the TubeBuddy discounts when you have under 1000 subscribers too, so it’s really not that bad! And if you order for more than one channel at the same time, there are more discounts too!
Is TubeBuddy or VidIQ better?
I use both, but I prefer TubeBuddy over VidIQ. This is the only other real alternative to TubeBuddy. They are both really good products and have their strengths and weaknesses, but if I were to choose only one, it would be TubeBuddy.
My Conclusion…
TubeBuddy is hands down the best YouTube SEO and growth tool on the market. My channel has grown with it and I’ve written this review because I love it so much. It’s very easy to use and can be installed on your browser in just a few clicks. If you’re hesitant about the discounted plans, you can always install the free extension first to see if you like it! I can highly recommend TubeBuddy! Make sure to follow my how to grow your YouTube channel guide once you have TubeBuddy to grow your channel!
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