What is Meta Business Suite, and how is it different from Business Manager and Ads Manager?
Meta Business Suite is Meta's free tool for running a business's Facebook and Instagram presence in one place: scheduling posts, answering messages and comments from one inbox, seeing insights and creating simple ads. Business Manager is the old name for a business portfolio, which holds the Page, the Instagram account, the ad account and the people with access. Ads Manager is Meta's tool for more detailed ad campaigns.
What Meta says it does
Meta's help page "How Meta Business Suite works" says it helps small businesses and creators manage their business and online presence across Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, and that it is free on desktop and in a mobile app. The uses it lists include:
- Planning and scheduling Facebook and Instagram posts, stories and reels, with a calendar view.
- One inbox for messages and comments from the Facebook Page, Messenger, Instagram and a WhatsApp Business account.
- Insights on performance, activity on your content and your audience.
- Simple ads and boosted content, tracked from an Ads tab.
Business Manager is now a business portfolio
Meta's developer documentation notes that business portfolios "were formerly known as Business Managers". The same help page says that to use Business Suite, a business needs a business portfolio: a container for its assets, such as a Facebook Page, an Instagram account and an ad account, along with the people who have access to them.
Meta's help page on creating a business portfolio says the portfolio name should match the public name of your business, because it is visible across Meta, that each asset can belong to only one business portfolio, and that partners such as people at an agency can be added. The related answer on who should own your ad accounts explains why the business, not one person, should hold it.
Business Suite or Ads Manager
Meta's page "When to use Meta Business Suite and when to use Meta Ads Manager" says you can use both at the same time for different tasks. Its examples:
| Tool | Meta's examples of what it is for |
|---|---|
| Meta Business Suite | Scheduling posts, stories and reels; comments and messages in one inbox; insights on organic and paid content; ads with a simple setup; scheduling a boosted post |
| Meta Ads Manager | Campaigns with several ad sets and ads, custom audience targeting, detailed analytics and ad scheduling; A/B tests; retargeting campaigns |
Which one an owner opens
As general advice, an owner who posts and answers messages usually only needs Business Suite, often in its phone app. Ads Manager tends to matter once someone runs paid campaigns; the related answer on boosting a post covers the choice between a boost and a full ad.
Messages in the inbox are often leads. Record each one with social as its source channel, or paid if it came from an ad or a boosted post, and follow it to won, lost or still open; the related answer on tracking leads from social media messages covers how.
Sources
- Meta Business Help Center, "How Meta Business Suite works"
- Meta Business Help Center, "How to create a business portfolio in Meta Business Suite"
- Meta Business Help Center, "When to use Meta Business Suite and when to use Meta Ads Manager"
- Meta for Developers, "Business-scoped user IDs"
Related answers
- Who should own your Google Ads and Facebook ad accounts?
- How do you keep track of leads that come in through Facebook, Instagram and other messages?
- Should you boost a Facebook post or run an ad?
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