Planable Joins SE Ranking to Unite SEO and Social in the Age of AI

• Planable, the Moldova-born social media B2B SaaS, got acquired by global SEO platform SE Ranking
• The deal signifies a union between SEO and social media workflows to meet AI-driven marketing demands
• Both companies retain their products, teams, and launch R&D collaboration for unified content strategies
• The acquisition emphasizes integration as the future of marketing: discoverable, consistent, and AI-ready content

This August, Planable—the famous Moldova-born B2B SaaS for social media management—announced its acquisition by SE Ranking, the world-famous SEO platform. The two companies join forces for R&D efforts in the merged fields of SEO and SMO while retaining their separate products.

The Evolution of Planable in Brief

Founded in 2016, Planable is the Moldovan-Romanian-American company developing and operating a collaboration platform for marketing teams to plan, create, preview, and approve social media content before publishing. It provides a shared space where teams and clients can see posts exactly as they would appear live, making feedback and approvals faster and more visual. With features like multi-platform scheduling, real-time collaboration, and content calendars, Planable helps agencies, brands, and freelancers streamline their content workflows.

Planable can duly be called the flagship of the Moldovan startup scene, and ITKeyMedia covered their story several years back. Since then, Planable’s CMO Miruna Dragomir shares that the past three years have been a mix of growth and evolution. The platform significantly improved its existing features, built an Analytics suite for client teams to measure their actual social impact, and added Engagement features for community management.

‘It’s been exciting to see teams go from just using us for content approval to managing their entire social workflow in Planable. But the real challenge has been keeping pace with how fast everything changes. Social platforms update their algorithms and features constantly, and we had to stay on top of all of it. Then AI exploded onto the scene and suddenly everyone’s asking how ChatGPT affects their content strategy. Even seasonality patterns shifted completely in the past year,’ Ms Dragomir tells ITKeyMedia.

The Big Change: How AI Made Search Social

‘People’s search behavior has been in constant change. Some go directly on TikTok and Instagram to search for information and how-to’s. Some prefer to ask AI chatbots instead of the traditional googles and bings. And Instagram recently opened posts to be shown in search results. Everything is now a search engine and everyone is a source of information for search results,’ Planable’s CEO Xenia Muntean agrees.

Indeed, SE Ranking’s recent study of 2,000 AI responses revealed that YouTube was the #1 linked source across ChatGPT (11.3 %), Perplexity (11.11 %), and Google AI Overviews (6.31 %). Google’s Top 10 also included LinkedIn, and ChatGPT’s models often ChatGPT referred to TikTok.

The Planable team recognized the huge opportunity behind the trend of social media feeding data to AI, as well as the fact that most companies are still running SEO and social as separate silos.

‘The problem is, if your social content tells one story and your SEO strategy tells another, AI assistants will spread that fragmented message everywhere,’ Ms Dragomir notes.

A Natural Partnership

Interestingly, the Planable team also noticed that hundreds of users had already identified this problem and were already combining Planable and SE Ranking to solve it. They realized that when social and SEO teams work together, they create content that’s both more engaging and more discoverable by search engines and AI.

In turn, SE Ranking was looking for a social media partner with the same level of expertise they have in SEO: someone trusted by the community and ready to innovate. Planable had built that trust with over 7,000 brands and shared the same vision of where marketing is headed. The partnership between the two companies became a natural fit because they both realized that the future belongs to unified teams creating content that works for humans and AI alike.

‘This acquisition reinforces SE Ranking’s long-term vision of becoming a multi-product platform where intelligent tools work side-by-side with marketers to drive results across search, social, and beyond. We were looking for a partner with social media expertise that matched our own vast SEO knowledge. Someone who already earned the community’s trust; someone ready to innovate to be at the forefront of marketing. Planable ticked every box,’ SE Ranking’s CEO Vik Kuushynau states.

Investor Confidence in the Strategic Fit

According to Ms Dragomir, Planable’s existing investors, including Angular Ventures and GapMinder, were very pleased with the outcome. Having backed Planable through highs and lows and seen strong returns on their investment, they also recognized the strategic fit as the market was already moving toward deeper integration between social media and SEO. Planable was naturally positioned to benefit from it.

‘They appreciated that we found a buyer who not only valued what we’d built but also had the means to take it further. For them, it was a great conclusion to their chapter with Planable, and for us, it’s the beginning of an exciting new one,’ Ms Dragomir adds.

Seamless Transition to the Multi-Product Ecosystem

Joining SE Ranking, Planable retains both its team and its product. The team assures that customers should expect no disruption to their existing projects. Both SE Ranking dashboards and Planable workspaces keep running as usual. The teams already started building bridges between the products, so that when a client is ready to unify their marketing workflow, they will be able to do so.

Planable and SE Ranking intend to keep developing both products as planned, pooling their resources for research and development. As Planable will continue as a stand-alone product, the dedicated team will continue to develop the product as the place where social media teams plan, create, approve, and schedule content.

‘What will happen next is that we’re evolving into a multi-product ecosystem built for the era of AI-driven search. Instead of hoping your content gets discovered, you’ll have tools that help you control your narrative wherever it surfaces online,’ Ms Dragomir notes.

To mark the occasion, the two companies came up with a special bundling offer: Planable and SE Ranking’s existing users get a 15% discount for 12 months if they upgrade for both tools. The details are available within each platform, as the products have already been lightly connected.

Staying True to the Big Picture in Mind

‘What keeps us on top of everything is staying obsessed with our users’ actual problems rather than chasing every shiny new feature. Our north star has always been eliminating the chaos in social media teams’ workflows. That focus helped us navigate through all the noise and build features that actually matter. The acquisition by SE Ranking is really the next logical step in this journey, bringing together our strengths to keep up with this accelerating pace of change,’ Ms Dragomir concludes.

Planable’s acquisition by SE Ranking highlights a pivotal shift in digital marketing: the merging of SEO and social media into a unified strategy built for the AI-driven future. By combining SE Ranking’s deep expertise in search with Planable’s strength in social collaboration, client marketers gain tools to craft content that is both discoverable and engaging across platforms. Ultimately, the deal underscores how the future of marketing lies in integration, where consistency across search, social, and AI ensures brands control their narrative everywhere it appears.