Instagram Stories are a great way to engage with your audience. However, you only have 24 hours to make an impression with your Stories content, so standing out is key!
Planning and creating stories can be time-consuming. You may find yourself with too much on your plate. Luckily there are plenty of tools outside of the Instagram app to help your Stories creative process become more efficient.
We’ve put together a list of the ten best apps for building unique Instagram Stories. These apps have a variety of editing tools and graphic design options. Everything you need to grab your followers’ attention.
The 10 Best Apps for Instagram Stories
Instagram does offer a lot of editing options to create stories. These far-reaching apps can further push you to create unique Instagram stories, giving you an advantage over your competitors.
1 – InShot: All-in-one Video and Photo Editor
Inshot is a photo and video editor that allows you to trim, cut, and merge videos. It also has video backgrounds, effects, filters, and lets you add music that fades in and out. It has stickers and design effects that can be added to your videos as well.
Inshot gives you professional quality while being accessible to Instagram beginners. This app is available for IOS and android devices and is highly rated on both.
Main Features:
- Video editing
- Filters, effects, and music
- Photo editor and collage maker
- Video converter
2 – Canva: Photo Editor
Canva is a photo editor that helps you create beautiful photos with one of the largest collections of templates that you can use to create eye-catching stories. Canva also has a great assembly of stock photos you can use for background images.
This app is popular for creating images and sharing them on many social media platforms which makes it a valuable tool to get familiar with. You can create professional images in minutes. You can get Canva on your desktop as well as IOS and Android.
Main Features:
- Design grids, photo enhancers, photo collages
- Animated stickers and effects
- 60,000 templates
- 1 million + photos for backgrounds
3 – Story Art: Preset Instagram Story Templates
StoryArt is one of the most user-friendly apps for Instagram. It has a large variety of preset Instagram story templates. You then have a spread of design effects to choose from including text overlays, filters, and various themes.
StoryArt is available for IOS and Android users.
Main Features:
- New templates added every week
- 20 + themes
- 200+ free templates
4 – Adobe Spark Post: Video and Photo Editing
Adobe Spark is perfect for combining video clips or photos from your camera roll. You can create beautiful video stories with various editing tools. With this app for Instagram, users get professional-looking graphic design without any prior design experience.
You can add sounds from Adobe Spark or from your own phone. You get all the unique themes, sounds, fonts, and animations. This app is supported by desktop platforms as well as IOS and android.
Main Features:
- Millions of stock photos
- Text layouts and effects
- Animation for your video clips
- A variety of beautiful fonts
5 – Unfold: Graphic Design for Videos and Photos
This app gives you simple and elegant templates. It has graphic design options for video clips as well as photos. Unfold is available for IOS and android. Some of the templates and features are free, while some require you to have a premium account.
Main Features:
- 25 free templates and more with premium
- Perfect for both video and photo formats
- Advanced text features
6 – CutStory: Cuts Videos into 15-second Clips for Instagram Stories
CutStory helps you make a series of 15-second video clips from a longer video. This helps with one of the biggest challenges with Instagram stories. An Instagram story can’t be more than 15 seconds long. This app creates a continuous stream of 15-second videos that can go right up on your Instagram stories. This app is available for IOS.
Main Features:
- Compatible with all video formats
- Cuts long videos down into 15-second clips fit for Instagram stories
7 – Over: Beautiful Overlays for Photos and Videos
Over lets you overlay text and graphics onto both photos and videos. It provides a variety of photos, fonts, graphics, and editing tools to create eye catching Instagram stories. Over has many animation options to get people’s attention when they are tapping through their Instagram stories.
Over is available on desktop, android, and IOS platforms.
Main Features:
- Text overlays for photo and video
- A full video library of animations
- Templates, photos, fonts, and graphics
8 – Photo Grid: Video Slideshows Made From Pictures
Photo Grid is used to create beautiful video slideshows from photos. This app has over 300 templates available for free. You can create memes, gifs, and add filters to photos. This app is available for IOS and Android.
Main Features:
- Supports 16 photo grids at the same time
- Easy to use editor with adjustable photo size and placement
- Horizontal and vertical filmstrips
- Turns photos into videos with slideshows
9 – Typorama: Typographic Design For Photos
Typorama lets you add unique text over your photos grabbing the viewer’s attention. You select a background then type your message in a huge variety of fonts and typographic layouts. With text tools and photo editing tools, this app takes your images to the next level. This app is only available for IOS users.
Main Features:
- Over 100 different fonts
- Text styling and enhancement tools
- Quotes and stock images to choose from
- Filters and overlays
10 – Placeit: Customizable Instagram Story Templates
Placeit has hundreds of Instagram story templates to choose from. You can customize your template with your own brand’s image and text. Like many of these apps, some features you need to upgrade to a premium account to use. However, there are tons of free templates and features as well! Placeit is available on IOS and Android.
Main Features:
- 20,000 + templates
- Customizable layouts
- Text animations
Professional Stories for Any Skill Level
The biggest advantage to using any of these apps is that you get a story that looks like you have graphic design experience, without needing to spend any extra time. Everybody is busy and as a business or influencer on Instagram, you need to create a lot of content.
Creating a steady flow of content becomes much easier when you are taking advantage of these templates and tools that speed up the process. If you are just getting started as an Influencer on Instagram check out this guide to become an Instagram influencer. These ten apps will help take some of the load off your shoulders when it comes to creating consistent content.
There is a lot of competition for Instagram users’ attention. Using apps like these will help keep your content high quality and professional. They also keep you out of the rut of posting the same content. Each of these apps gives you creative inspiration and the capabilities to keep your stories unique!
