Instagram Bots — Everything Else You Need To Know
The safest and most effective bot services and everything else you need to know about interaction automation on Instagram.
As we all know, Instagram interaction automation companies, i.e. “bots”, have been a contentious topic for many years within the social media community.
These are not the election-altering Russian bots we’re talking about (you can learn more about those here); these are “like” and “comment” automation services that millions of Instagram-based businesses and users employ in order increase the number of people who discover, follow, engage, and buy from their accounts.
Although they usually get a bad rap within the Instagram eco-system, the truth is that, for most Instagram small business owners (like me), automating interactions is the only cost-effective option we have to significantly increment the visibility of our accounts without having to pay Facebook a lot of money to “promote” our posts and get zero-to-no results from them (If you want to learn what organic activities you can use to monetize your account on Instagram you can check out my Instagram Small Business Class).
So, in the spirit of open information to all of those Instagram accounts who are curious about interaction automation, here’s an in-depth look at the state of Instagram bots.
What Are Instagram Bots and How Do They Work?
If you’re still not clear about what they are and how they work, check out this short video I made that will hopefully clear that up for you:
Do Instagram Bots Still Work?
Now that you know how they work, are they still effective? The short answer is: YES, but they are getting harder and harder to find!
There are still plenty of reliable software companies (more on which companies are the best below) that will enable your Instagram account to automate the activity of interacting (like, comment, DM, or Follow) with others users in order to get more eyes to discover your username, tap through it to see your account and possibly follow you or tap through your link in bio, if you’ve automated correctly and have great content. That being said, Instagram continues to get better at identifying automated interactions and the companies that provide it. What that means is that if you want to use automation, you need to be prepared to try a bunch of service to find the one that works for you and expect that one to stop working at some point so you can begin the work to find another. That’s the reality. Best to know it and adjust your expectations.
How Effective Are Instagram Bots?
Although there are still plenty of effective interaction automation companies, in an effort to reduce their proliferation (because they are against the platform’s terms and conditions and because they can cause a bad user experience when executed incorrectly — i.e. “spammy bots”), Instagram is making changes in the platform that are making it harder for the average account to not only use this software but also interact with other accounts at fast paces (even without automation software).
All of these efforts (detailed below) have caused bots to be, in general, less effective than they used to be in comparison to before Instagram implemented more of these changes in mid-2019.
So, on average, you should expect it to be harder to find safe and effective automation software companies as well as to generate fast growth quickly.
Realistic expectations about what bots can do = happier bot users.
What Is Instagram Doing to Combat Bots?
Here are the measures that Instagram is taking to combat bots so far:
- Shutting down the “biggest” automation companies: This one actually started in 2017 when Instagram sent a cease and desist to the largest automation company on the internet at the time, Mass Planner. Since then, Instagram has continually shut down (threatened to sue) whichever automation companies tend to be widely used by Instagram users.
- Customizing daily interaction limits according to each individual account’s time and history on the platform: Since how much engagement, follows and traffic you generate from interacting with others depends on the total number of accounts you can interact with in an hour/day, Instagram is limiting the effectiveness of the activity by enforcing smaller and less predictable interaction limits per day that vary according to that account’s time and history on the platform. In other words, Instagram now, on average, allows fewer interactions per hour and makes it harder for anyone to know what the limit of the total number of interactions per hour is, so people who automate are more vulnerable to violate it and be identified. In general, the younger your account is or the less consistently you’ve interacted with others in the past, the smaller and more variable your particular interaction thresholds are likely to be. If you try to interact past your limit, you’re not allowed to continue interacting on the platform for a few hours. If you continue to hit those limits, you run the risk of having your account blocked from doing anything for up to 15 days (more on this one below).
- Sending users push notifications regarding their automation software use: Another way Instagram is cutting down on bot use is by sending push notifications to users who have been identified as using automation services (usually because they are consistently going over their hourly thresholds, as detailed in the previous point). These push notifications usually come in two forms: 1) They inform the user that they’re removing the inauthentic likes/follows they’ve generated through automation or 2) they notify the user that their account was compromised. In both cases, they are asked to change their profile, which effectively automatically disconnects them from the software (Instagram can’t technically disconnect you themselves) and discourages further use. Also in both cases, there is no permanent negative impact on your account, and you can still use the software, although I’d recommend tweaking your interaction speeds to a slower rate. It has happened to me several times and I’ve still been able to automate interactions once I went back and slowed my interaction settings.
- Blocking Instagram accounts from doing anything on the platform for up to one week: For repeat and flagrant offenders, Instagram sends you a push notification telling you that you’re using a service that helps you get likes and followers and that your account has been blocked from interacting and posting on the platform for a specific time period (as of now, the longest known period is one week). In this case, it’s usually because you’re using an automation service that isn’t safe or because you’re automating your likes in a spammy way (read about how you can automate a bot safely below). If this happens to you, don’t panic, stop trying to interact, and either change your automation provider or program your interactions at a much slower rate. The block will go away in the time specified in the notification (usually one week) and you’ll be able to continue interacting.
Is Your Account in Danger of Being Shut Down for Using Bots?
If you use an automation service and you’re constantly going over your hourly interaction thresholds because you don’t know what they are or you don’t know how to automate a bot, you are in danger of getting one or all of the types of notifications mentioned above, but your Instagram account WON’T get shut down permanently for using a bot. Usually, they lead to not being able to interact for the rest of the day, or in the worst-case scenario, not being able to interact or post for up to a week.
So, in order to reduce the likelihood of putting your account at risk, it’s very important that you use automation services that have automated interaction speeds (so you don’t have to worry about figuring out what the current thresholds are), provide a VPN, and have reliable customer service. These are the characteristics of the automation companies that are most likely to keep your account safe.
What Are the Most Effective and Safest Instagram Bots?
These are my recommendations for the best Instagram bots, based on their automation effectiveness and overall safety for the user (by the way, I constantly update this list whenever I find new services or old ones stop being effective or safe so make sure to check back if your current automation provider stops working. The latest update was in Spring 2022:
- The most effective option: Right now, the most effective automation service on the market is Flamista. They start at $25 per month and it’s effective because they are new, they come from a reliable team that has built great tools in the space in the past and they provide AI-focused automation with great customer service. If what you’re most interested in is results, they are a great place to start.
- The most reliable, best value and safest: Although they took a break in 2019 to re-work their system and adapt to the new Instagram changes, Inflact (made by the same people behind Ingrammer) is still the way to go when it comes to reliability and value. On top of their effective interaction automation feature, they have a bunch of new functions like a stories viewer (which can also generate a lot of growth, as liking automation can), post automation, DM manager, hashtag generator, profile analyzer, and content downloader, all included in their $57 per month price tag. Given their still very responsive customer service, ease of use, a great grouping of features, and established track record of keeping accounts safe, they are the best value & safest automation service in the market out there right now if you’re looking for more than just automation.
- The future: Hyper has a new service that is called Story Voter Pro, and in my opinion, it’s the future of automation and worth trying if you haven’t been able to successfully automate regular interactions like likes and comments. They enable you to automate and scale the process of viewing stories and voting in people’s polls. Like and comment automation will inevitably continue to get more regulated and harder to achieve results through. Starting at €9.00 per month, it’s worth trying new channels of automation that are less monitored by Instagram (like Story viewing automation.)
- If all you want is followers: Social Sensei is your safest option if all you want is new followers regardless of who they are or where they come from. Their services start at $200 for 5k followers and going up to $999 for 20k followers, which isn’t cheap, but this is actually a much safer option vs just buying fake bot followers because they are (mostly) followers who are real people. How do they do it? They pay international accounts with big audience to include your account in a promotion that requires them to follow you in exchange to enter. Since these are international “influencer” accounts tagging you, most followers you’ll get will be international, and they likely won’t convert into any real value, but if a larger count of followers is all you want, this the best option that’ll keep your account safe. If Social Sensei doesn’t work for you to buy followers, you another option is Viral Race. They are cheaper, because the followers they sell aren’t “real”, so I won’t really recommend doing that for your account, but if you’re looking for a safe option to do that, they are reliable in that sense.
- PSA: Please don’t buy followers if you charge for paid partnerships based on your followers number. Honestly, you’re just scamming people and that’s not cool.
How Can You Automate a Bot Safely?
Identifying the right automation service is only half the battle. Making sure your automation is safe and effective ultimately depends on how well you know how to automate your bot. Here are the principles that I recommend you follow, in order, to give yourself the best chance at success, no matter the bot company that you use:
- Don’t automate comments, follows, or DMs: In an effort to grow as fast as possible, many people who use automation program their bot to comments, follow and unfollow, and DM other accounts. In theory, this creates more opportunities to be discovered, but in practice, it creates a really annoying and crappy experience for the people who receive these interactions and this greatly lowers the likelihood that any of your interactions will result in followers (e.i. you’re wasting all of your interactions if they are not generating results). These type of interactions are the reason people think bots are spammy, so please don’t automate comments, follows, or DMs. The way to automate an effective Instagram bot that isn’t spammy is by only sticking to “like” automation. Why? In comparison to comments or follows, likes are a subtle nudge that only shows up on people’s activity feed. Most of us don’t tend to have ill-will against a “like” from a person we don’t know, and in fact, we’re usually pretty happy or at least indifferent to an extra like in one of our posts (Instagram is also highly incentivized to be more lenient with like automation since it increases engagement rates on the app and all they want is for people to use the app more)! And unless you’re someone who has thousands of followers, most of us still check our activity feed to see who liked our posts and discover new Instagram account this way.
- Pick automation targets that are highly relevant to your content: Another essential element of automating effective interactions is knowing how to pick the right targets. All automation software asks you to give them “targets”. These are Instagram accounts, hashtags, or locations whose followers and/or taggers you would like your bot to interact with. The key to selecting targets that will generate a higher percentage of follows per interaction is identifying the accounts, hashtags, and locations that people who are the most likely to find your content valuable already follow or tag. The better you get at understanding who are the exact people who find your content valuable and who they already follow or tag, the more likely each of your interactions is to turn into a follow or a click in your link in bio.
- Make sure your content is providing more value than the content of your automation targets: Not only is it important to know which are the target accounts, hashtags, and locations that the people who are most likely to find your content very valuable already follow or tag, it’s also important to make sure that your content is actually perceived as more valuable than the targets you select. What exactly does that mean? Let’s say you are an account that sells ceramic bowls and the targets you select are the most prominent ceramic bowl accounts on Instagram. Unless your ceramic bowls and the way you create content for them is actually perceived as more valuable than the ceramic bowls and content that your targets create, the people you interact with aren’t likely to follow you. In a world where every follow has value, why would they follow an account that has lower quality content than the one they already follow? It’s important to be objective about the quality of your content and only select targets that have a lower quality of content than you have, or your interactions aren’t likely to convert.
- Select slow or automated interaction speeds: This one is simple but essential. The likelihood of your account being blocked due to automation interaction depends on the number of times you go over the hourly interaction threshold Instagram has designated for your account. Since you won’t ever know exactly what that threshold is, it’s super important that you always start your automation journey by selecting low or automated interaction speeds because this will reduce the likelihood of going over your thresholds. After the first month, you can start increasing the pace of interactions since Instagram is likely to see this as organic, but at the beginning, make sure to start slow.
- Know that a bot won't solve your growth problems: Automating likes or any other interactions is NOT going to make an account that doesn’t grow, grow. Unless you already have great content that people are organically finding and following you for, automating interactions won't have much of an impact. What automation does is increase the number of people who discover your account. If your account’s content isn’t something people find valuable enough to follow before automation, increasing the number of people that find your account won’t make you grow faster, either. All you’ll be doing is showing more people how much they don’t want to follow your account and this will likely ensure most of those people consider you a spammy bot account. Make sure your content is awesome and grows organically first, then add interactions to multiply your organic growth, not the other way around.
Conclusion
Yes! There are Instagram interaction automation companies that can still help you generate great growth results. Right now, Instagram is combating interaction automation by shutting down the biggest automation companies, customizing daily interaction limits according to each individual account’s time and history on the platform, sending users push notifications regarding their automation software use, and blocking repeat offenders from Instagram use for up to a week.
Because of these tactics, it’s harder for the average user to find safe bot companies as well as harder to get fast growth results, in comparison to the growth you could generate through automation before Instagram’s clampdown in 2019.
I hope this is helpful for you and I wish you the best of luck in your automation journey ahead!
Btw, if you want to learn about other strategies that will help you grow quickly on Instagram, read these articles on what Instagram really is and how works, how the Instagram algorithm works, Is Instagram dying?, Instagram niches and why they are the key to growth, how to pick the right Instagram username, Instagram bots 2021, how to automate in Instagram bot that isn’t spammy, why you’re losing followers and how to fix it, how to automate your Instagram posts, as well as how to find the most valuable influencers on Instagram, how to measure what an influencer is worth, how to reach out to influencers, everything you need to know about TikTok Bots, and how to measure your influencer marketing ROI.
