7 best YouTube automation tools to grow your channel in 2023

By Kelsey Johnson November 1, 2022

Get more views on your videos with less work. These YouTube automation tools make it easy.

Creating and growing a YouTube channel is no small thing. Between recording, production, editing, and promotion, it can take seven hours to create just 1-5 minutes of video. So any part of the YouTube process you can automate will help.

In this post we’ll cover seven of the best YouTube automation tools to save you time and help increase your views. All of them are either free or cheap.

YouTube automation is the process of using tools to automate actions on YouTube you’d otherwise do manually (or not at all). YouTube automation can help you get more views and subscribers, make more money, and save tons of time.

Some of the YouTube actions include automatically sending emails with your new videos, creating transcriptions, generating SEO-friendly titles and descriptions, promoting videos on social media, and more. 

Often, when people talk about “YouTube automation,” they’re referring to websites where you can buy views, subscribers, comments, and other engagement. Using these tools, you can pay a certain amount for, say, 1,000 views or 100 subscribers on YouTube. 

However, these automation tools are not approved by YouTube. Using them is against YouTube’s terms of service. So we won’t cover any of them in this post.

So if you want to grow your YouTube channel, but you don’t want to have to put in seven hours of work for every minute of video you publish, keep reading. 

1. TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy is probably the best-known tool for YouTubers. It includes a plugin and browser extension with tons of tools that can help you upload, manage, and grow views on your YouTube videos.

What does TubeBuddy automate?

TubeBuddy has tons of useful features, but try these three first. They’re the easiest to implement, and will save you the most time by replacing tasks you’re already doing.

• Automations: Get AI tag suggestions, translate titles and descriptions into other languages, and automatically run YouTube approval checks.

• Bulk actions: Change cards, end screens, descriptions/titles, delete comments, and create thumbnail overlays — in bulk. For example, if you have a new video to promote, you can add a link to it in every video description or card; no need to manually edit each and every video.

• Defaults: Create multiple default profiles, descriptions, and tags for your different topics and choose the one most relevant to the video you’re uploading. (YouTube only allows you one.)

How does this help you?

Most of the tools in TubeBuddy help you save time by offering automatic or bulk actions you’d have to do manually. You can also use TubeBuddy to grow views by promoting one video across your channel, or you can easily add tag suggestions to make your videos more likely to show in search results and suggested videos.

Reviews

TubeBuddy has a 4.6-star rating on Capterra.

Cost

TubeBuddy has a free plan that offers keyword tools, but it doesn’t include bulk actions, defaults, or limited automations.

TubeBuddy’s paid plans start at $3.99/month.

2. VidIQ

VidIQ helps YouTubers create better content, and get more views and subscribers.

What does VidIQ automate?

Based on your YouTube channel and answers to questions VidIQ asks you, it will automatically generate for you:

• Topic ideas, trends, and success stats
• Keyword opportunities
• AI-optimized titles, descriptions, and tags
• Competitor stats
• Monetization reports and tracking

You can also use VidIQ to promote a specific link or topic across all your YouTube descriptions at once.

How does it help you?

VidIQ is valuable because it helps you reduce the time it takes to research good content and keyword ideas for your target audience. We use it for the AWeber YouTube channel, and the information it gives us is well worth its monthly fee.

I especially like the bulk description tool (available on paid plans only). It can help you get a ton of views on new videos without a lot of work.

Reviews

VidIQ has a 4.3-star rating on Capterra.

Cost

VidIQ’s free plan offers limited automation features.

Get more features with their paid plans starting at $7.50/month.

3. AWeber YouTube automation

AWeber is an email marketing tool that you can use to easily and automatically promote your new YouTube videos via email.

What does AWeber automate?

AWeber can send emails to your subscribers any time you publish a new video to your YouTube channel. All you have to do is ask your YouTube subscribers to sign up. Once they’re subscribed to your emails, they’ll be notified of your new videos in their inboxes, instead of having to check YouTube all the time. 

You can also set up daily, weekly, and monthly emails with new videos, in case your upload schedule is sporadic.

Note: AWeber offers other email tools and automations for small businesses like automatically adding new customers to your email list, sending abandoned cart emails, and more. 

How does it help you?

Most YouTube videos reach less than 15% of the people who are subscribed to the channels those videos were published to. This limited “organic reach” means that even if you have a lot of subscribers, your videos aren’t reaching most of those people.

Sending an automated notification email to your subscribers gets around all that.

There’s another benefit to these notifications, too. Because of the way YouTube’s algorithm works, if it sees you have an engaged audience, it will show your videos to more people. Sending an email notification is a way to get your audience engaged. It’s enough of a signal to influence YouTube’s algorithm in your favor. 

Those early views also encourage the YouTube algorithm to rank you higher for searches and suggestions.

And the best part? You’re starting to build an audience that’s not controlled by YouTube. No one can take your email subscribers away from you.

Reviews

AWeber has a 4.4-star rating on Capterra.

Cost

AWeber’s free plan includes one YouTube email automation and up to 500 email subscribers.

Paid plans start at $19.99 and include unlimited YouTube automations and anything over 500 subscribers.

4. YouTube Studio

It may seem weird to have the official YouTube Studio on this list of best YouTube automation tools, but it’s worth pointing out what you can automate without any extra software.

In general, YouTube studio is where you upload, manage, and get analytics on your YouTube videos. But there are a few built-in automations that can save you a ton of time.

What does YouTube Studio automate?

In YouTube Studio you can automatically generate subtitles and chapters for your videos. Subtitles increase accessibility since people can watch your videos without sound. Chapters allow people to jump directly to the section of your video that they need. That can be particularly useful for demos or longer videos.

YouTube also automatically gives you real-time stats on your videos. Monitor them to see what types of videos are ranking, getting new versus returning traffic, how long people are watching on average, and more.

How does it help you?

Since you must use YouTube Studio to manage your YouTube channel anyway, it’s worth your time to see which features they offer that save you time. YouTube wants your channel to grow — so pay attention to the information and accessibility they offer to grow views, subscribers, and engagement.

Reviews

YouTube has a 4.8-star rating on Capterra.

Cost

YouTube Studio is free.

5. Repurpose.io

Repurpose.io is a tool that allows you to turn YouTube content into videos for other platforms in order to better promote your channel and get more views.

What does Repurpose.io automate?

Repurpose.io will turn your horizontally-oriented YouTube videos into square and vertical videos optimized for TikTok, Instagram Reels and Stories, Shorts, etc. You can also convert your full videos into clips, add headlines and designs, choose videos based on hashtags and playlists, and much more.

You can also choose to manually publish your modified videos on other channels, or set them up to go out automatically.

How does it help you?

One of the best ways to grow your YouTube views and subscribers is to republish your content on other platforms. Repurpose.io can help you drive traffic from Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok back to YouTube (where you can make more money from them).

Plus, you can actually grow audiences and build awareness on those other platforms with literally no extra work. You already put the work in on your videos — send them to every other platform and connect with the people who prefer other platforms over YouTube.

Reviews

Repurpose.io doesn’t have any reviews on Capterra. It has a 5-star rating on Product Hunt.

Cost

Repurpose.io has a 14-day free trial that includes 10 published videos.

Their podcaster plan is $15/month and content creator plan (likely the best for YouTubers) is $25/month.

6. Zapier

Zapier is a tool that allows you to connect thousands of separate apps and create automations. It works using “triggers” and “actions.”

What does Zapier automate?

Everything you create in Zapier is an automation, which means you can set up hundreds of automations that directly relate to your business. For example, you could post a message in Slack every time you publish a new video.

Here are two types of Zapier automations that are useful for every YouTuber:

1. When you publish a YouTube video, create new posts on all your social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

2. When you publish a YouTube video, create a new post on your blog.

How does it help you?

Growing your YouTube channel doesn’t just come down to SEO and ranking for suggestions. It’s important to get your new videos in front of your audience — wherever they are. Without spending any extra time, you can automatically notify people on all your channels when you’ve published a new video.

Reviews

Zapier has a 4.7-star rating on Capterra.

Cost

Zapier offers a free plan with 5 zaps, 100 triggers, and a limit on certain apps you can connect.

Zapier’s paid plans start at $19.99/month, billed annually.

7. Headliner

Headliner is a tool specifically designed for podcasters who want to make their podcast content available on YouTube without a ton of extra work.

What does Headliner automate?

By simply plugging your podcast RSS feed into this tool, you can create an engaging video overlay to make your podcast more interesting to watch on YouTube. Headliner offers templates and pulls elements from your RSS feed to offer you a ready-made video automatically.

How does it help you?

With 2.1 billion monthly active users, YouTube is an important place to showcase your podcast. But many people don’t have the time, resources, or video experience to turn their podcast into a video. Capture the YouTube audience by creating a video from your podcast using Headliner in minutes.

Reviews

Headliner has a 4.5-star rating on Capterra.

Cost

Headliner offers a free plan with limited templates and video time.

Paid plans start at $7.99/month.

Want to grow your YouTube views, optimize your videos, and save time? We challenge you to get an automation set up today! Let us know how you improved your YouTube channel in the comments below 👇.