How it works
How to auto-reply to Instagram comments with a DM
Setting up comment-to-DM automation takes seven steps and a few minutes. After that, every matching comment on your posts gets a private reply with your link and a public reply underneath, without you opening Instagram.
Setting up an automation
- 1
Connect your Instagram account
Sign in with Instagram from your Sendrix workspace. It needs a professional account, Business or Creator, and asks for permission to read your posts and manage comments and messages. It never asks for permission to publish.
- 2
Choose the posts
Pick specific posts or reels from your recent ones, or leave the selection empty to watch everything you post, including posts you have not made yet.
- 3
Set the keywords
Add up to 20 words or phrases, and choose how they match: the word anywhere in the comment, a comment that is exactly the word, or every comment. Capital letters are ignored, and matching works in any language.
- 4
Write the DM
Write the message the commenter receives, up to 900 characters, and add your link, which appears on its own line. Use {username} to greet each person by their @handle.
- 5
Write the public reply
Add up to 5 short replies to post under the comment. They rotate, so a busy post doesn't fill with the same line.
- 6
Decide whether to ask for a follow
Optionally switch on follow to unlock, so the link goes only to people who follow you. The first DM asks them to follow and reply instead.
- 7
Test it on a real comment, then switch it on
Automations start switched off. Run the automation against a real comment on your post to see exactly what arrives, then switch it on for everyone.
What it produces
What happens when a comment arrives
The part that decides whether you can trust an automation with a post that has four hundred comments on it, in the order it happens.
- 01
Instagram tells us about the comment
The moment a comment is posted, Instagram notifies us. If it notifies us twice about the same comment, which happens, the second is recognised and ignored.
- 02
It's matched against your automations
Comments from your own account are skipped, so an automation never answers itself. If two automations match, the one watching that specific post wins over one watching everything.
- 03
The DM goes first
The private reply is sent from your account. Every comment answered is recorded before anything is sent, so the same comment is never answered twice, even if a send has to be retried.
- 04
Then the public reply
Only once the DM has gone does the reply post under the comment. A reply saying "check your DMs" under a message that failed would be a public statement that isn't true.
- 05
It's all in the activity log
Each comment answered, the DM and the reply that went out, and Instagram's own error for anything that failed. If Instagram is briefly unavailable, sends are retried rather than dropped.
Early access
Stop answering the same comment by hand
Instagram automation is opening to a small number of accounts at a time. Tell us your handle and we'll be in touch when there's room for yours.