Today is a big day for our small team.
After months of building, testing, scrapping ideas, rebuilding, and a lot of late nights, Rooli is officially in beta. Real users. Real accounts. Real posts going out into the world.
I have been thinking about what to write for this moment for a while. I could write a product announcement full of feature lists and bullet points. But that is not what this is. This is a story about a problem that has bothered me and Africa for a long time, and why I decided to do something about it.
The Problem Nobody Was Talking About
If you run a business, marketing agency or create content in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, or anywhere across Africa, you already know the frustration.
You look at the tools the rest of the world is using. Buffer. Hootsuite. Sprout Social. Later. Powerful platforms that help brands schedule content, grow audiences, and manage social media like professionals. And then you look at the pricing.
$99 a month. $199 a month. Sometimes more.
Sproutsocial’s Pricing.
For someone earning in dollars or pounds, that is a rounding error. For a small business owner in Lagos or a creator in Accra, that same amount can be a significant chunk of a monthly budget. The tools were not built for you. The pricing was not built for you. And the payment methods definitely were not built for you.
This is what economists call purchasing power parity. The same dollar does not mean the same thing everywhere. But most global software companies do not think about that when they set their prices. They build for one kind of customer, in one kind of economy, and the rest of the world either stretches to afford it or goes without.
We think that is wrong.
Why We Built Rooli
Rooli is a social media scheduling and management platform built specifically for the emerging market.
That phrase, "built for the emerging market," gets thrown around a lot. I want to be specific about what it actually means for us.
It means pricing that reflects your reality, not Silicon Valley's. It means you can pay in Naira, GHC, ZAR, etc. It means we think about the economic realities of where we are from.
But it also means we are not cutting corners on the product. You get AI-powered caption writing, multi-platform scheduling, analytics that show you what is actually working, and team collaboration tools. The same quality that global brands pay a premium for, at a price that makes sense for where you are.
Because here is what I believe: ambition is not a Western thing. The desire to grow a brand, reach an audience, and build something that lasts is universal. The only thing that should not be universal is being priced out of the tools that make it possible.
What Beta Means for Us
We are not launching because we think Rooli is perfect. We are launching because we think it is ready for real feedback from real people.
Our beta users are creators, freelancers, marketing agencies and business owners who are already using Rooli to schedule their content and manage their social presence. Some of them are recording testimonials. Some of them are hunting down bugs. All of them are helping us make this better.
If you find something broken, tell us. If something confuses you, tell us. If there is a feature you desperately need that we do not have yet, please tell us that too. This early feedback is the most valuable thing we can receive right now, and we take every single message seriously.
What Comes Next
The beta is the beginning, not the finish line.
Over the coming weeks, we will be rolling out new features, improving the platform based on everything we hear from users, and opening up access to more people across the continent.
If you are not on Rooli yet and want to be, you can sign up at rooli.co. We are bringing people in gradually so we can give every user the attention they deserve.
And if you know someone who manages social media for their brand or business, send this to them. They have probably been overpaying for tools that were not built with them in mind. That changes now!
Thank you for being part of this. We are just getting started.
J.P.N
Founder, Rooli.