Instagram automation tools are abundant. But how do you know if the Instagram automation tools you’re using are legit? The point of these tools is to help you improve the efficiency of your Instagram marketing efforts but if you’re not careful, you’ll run afoul of Instagram’s increasingly stringent anti-automation rules.
Fortunately, there are Instagram automation tools out there that can help you streamline your Instagram marketing without angering the Instagram gods. In this article, we’re going to introduce you to 19 of our favorite Instagram automation tools. Before we get to the tools, though, let’s take a moment to talk about what Instagram automation actually is.
What Is Instagram Automation?
Instagram automation is the process of using third-party software and apps to manage your Instagram account. This could mean scheduling posts, liking, commenting, reporting, and more. Instagram automation is typically done via the use of bots.
If reading the word “bot” makes you immediately think of “spam,” you’re not far off.
Instagram has been fighting against inauthentic activity from bots for a few years. This has involved shutting down several Instagram automation tools and bots that go against Instagram’s best practices. However, it’s important to understand that not all Instagram automation tools are spammy. In fact, the automation tools used for scheduling posts, finding the right hashtags, and such are excellent ways to automate your Instagram marketing efforts.
Best Instagram Automation Tools
There are several options for Instagram automation tools. It’s true that many of them have the same or similar features, but a closer look at each tool will reveal nuances that let you know which tools are right for you.
1. Brandwatch Social Media Management
Brandwatch’s platform stands out as an industry-leading social media management solution, offering a comprehensive suite of Instagram automation services that cater to the needs of both global brands and local teams. With Brandwatch, you can monitor activity across all social platforms, including Instagram, foster team collaboration, schedule postings, engage with your audiences, and more.
Key Features:
- A fully integrated content calendar
- User roles
- Digital asset library for content storage
- Intuitive user experience, rated as one of the best in the industry
- Smart social inbox for a holistic view of customer interactions
- Automated and actionable insights
- Social listening to monitor your brand across millions of online sources
- Reports and analytics to measure Instagram performance
- Excellent customer support
Pricing
To find out their pricing, please schedule a demo.
2. Loomly
Loomly asserts its dominance in the realm of Instagram Automation Tools with a platform that’s both dynamic and user-centric, specifically engineered to meet the multifaceted demands of contemporary brands and marketing agencies. This tool empowers you to leverage the full spectrum of automation, transforming your Instagram marketing into a streamlined, efficient operation. Offering more than just scheduling posts, Loomly integrates a comprehensive system to craft and optimize your content, ensuring every post is an opportunity to engage and grow your audience effectively.
Key Features:
- User roles to define team responsibilities and workflow
- Digital asset library for centralized content storage and management
- Post mockups to preview Instagram stories and reels with precision
- Automated publishing to ensure your content is posted even when you’re away
- Advanced analytics to measure and refine your Instagram performance
- Community management system to engage with your audience effectively
- Custom post ideas to keep your content strategy ahead of the curve
Pricing
- Base Plan: $32/month
- Standard Plan: $64/month
- Advanced Plan: $131/month
- Premium Plan: $277/month
- Enterprise: Upon request
3. Sendible
Sendible offers a dynamic and robust Instagram automation platform, tailored for agencies, marketers, and brand managers who seek to enhance their automation. This tool empowers you to seamlessly manage and schedule diverse Instagram content, including posts, Reels, Stories, and Carousels. With Sendible, you can strategically auto-publish content, utilizing the right hashtags to maximize engagement. Its integration with Canva and access to high-quality images from Pexels and Flickr enhances your visual storytelling, making your Instagram feed more captivating.
Key Features:
- Optimal posting time suggestions
- Built-in image editor
- Comprehensive analytics and custom reporting
- 365+ holiday post calendar
Pricing
- Creator: $25/month
- Traction: $76/month
- White Label: $120/month
- White Label: $638/month
4. Iconosquare
Iconosquare emerges as a social media marketing game-changer for social media marketers, offering a comprehensive suite of Instagram Automation services. This platform streamlines your social media management effortlessly, allowing you to connect and monitor engagement rates across all your accounts seamlessly, analyze performance, schedule posts, conduct hashtag research, and more.
Key Features:
- Automated custom reports for Instagram and other social media channels
- Export key data for analysis in XLS format
- Collaborate effortlessly with team members
- Identify unread comments and mentions
- Social listening capabilities
- Monitor competitors
Pricing
- Pro Plan: $49/month
- Advanced Plan: $79/month
- Enterprise Plan: $139/month
5. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is a full-service social media management software. You can use it to pre-load Instagram posts, scheduling them to publish when you want them to. Agorapulse also supports scheduling posts for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and provides detailed reports for your social media activity.
Key Features:
- Centralized communication hub so you can reply to the comments on your organic and paid posts
- Community management options let you hide and delete comments manually or automatically
- Optimized reply features with saved replies and “assign to” features
- Bulk upload posts from your desktop or RSS feeds
- Publish content immediately or schedule it for later
- Schedule carousel and Story posts
- Username tagging and hashtag management
Pricing (billed annually)
- Standard: $49/month
- Professional: $79/month
- Advanced: $119/month
- Custom: Available upon request
6. PromoRepublic
Promo Republic, the quintessential platform for Instagram automation, presents a comprehensive solution that redefines social media management for brands, marketing agencies, and local businesses. The platform emerges as a central hub for orchestrating your Instagram presence with unparalleled efficiency due to its ability to scale operations across hundreds of pages and locations seamlessly. With Promo Republic, you can schedule your Instagram posts, monitor user activity and engagement, get insights on location performance, and more.
Key Features:
- Streamlines Instagram content publishing through an intuitive calendar
- Library of editable content
- User-friendly Graphics Editor
- Precise Instagram audience targeting through deep AI-driven insights
- Customizable approvals and permissions for collaboration and social inbox for communication
- Smart time slots for optimal Instagram posting
- Social boosting for more engagement
Pricing
- Small Business: $49/month
- Agency: $79/month
- Multi-location: Available upon request
7. HeyOrca
HeyOrca stands as a user-friendly and collaborative Instagram automation tool. This tool revolutionizes your Instagram strategy with its AI Caption Writer, enabling you to generate engaging captions effortlessly. HeyOrca’s client-specific calendars allow for personalized content management, ensuring each post resonates with your unique audience. The platform’s easy client approval process streamlines content collaboration, making it a breeze for clients to review and approve posts. With insights into the best posting times, HeyOrca ensures that your content reaches its maximum audience.
Key Features:
- Optimal posting suggestions
- Social media management
- Direct publishing
- Detailed reporting and analytics
Pricing:
- Free plan available
- Basic: $50.15/month
- Standard: $84.15/month
- Pro: $126.65/month
8. Kicksta
Kicksta is an Instagram automation tool focused on growth. It uses AI technology to create authentic engagement. Kicksta doesn’t guarantee a specific follower count because it doesn’t work with bots. Instead, Kicksta’s targeting options help you engage with real accounts to build followers organically. Using your dashboard, you can create a list of accounts including brands, influencers, and competitors with audiences you want to target. Then, you create high-quality Instagram content to bring those people in.
Key Features:
- Targets niche hashtags and accounts
- Live chat support
- Target users based on several factors
- Supports multiple accounts
- Doesn’t post or comment on your behalf
- Great analytics
Pricing
- Starter: $69/month
- Advanced: $129/month
- Ultimate: $219/month
9. Inflact
Infact is an Instagram automation tool that makes it easy to send bulk direct messages, automatically follow or unfollow people, like posts, find just the right Instagram hashtags, schedule posts, and comment on your target audience’s posts. It offers targeting filters so you can find and engage with the right users, building a loyal fanbase.
Key Features:
- User-friendly dashboard that can be customized to suit your niche and industry
- Smart unfollow to keep your account clean
- Schedule your content for the best time to post on Instagram
- Perform 1250+ auto likes and auto follows per day
- A single direct chat for all accounts
Since this tool deals with auto-following, it’s important to be vigilant with your engagement. Remember, Instagram automation tools should help you, not get you banned.
Pricing
Infact’s pricing is a bit confusing. There are four modules to choose from (Promo, Direct, Scheduled Posting, and Hashtag Generator), and the price increases with each module you add. If you opt for all modules, here’s the pricing breakdown:
- Basic: $38
- Advanced: $45
- Pro: $59
10. Upleap
Upleap is another Instagram automation tool that will help you grow your followers organically. It uses several algorithms to narrow the target audience using filters like hashtag, theme, location, and more. When you sign up with Upleap, you will be assigned a personal account manager that oversees your account and helps you customize Upleap to your unique needs.
Key Features:
- Dedicated account manager
- Easy setup
- Only engages with real accounts based on your target audience
- Automatically views Instagram Stories of people you don’t already follow
- Account manager engages with posts that bring in results
Pricing (billed annually)
- Standard: $49/400 followers
- Pro: $82/1,000 followers
- Premium: $166/2,500 followers
11. Hashtagsforlikes
Hashtagsforlikes helps Instagram influencers, businesses, and entrepreneurs grow their Instagram following using hashtags to target the right audience organically. You start by searching Instagram competitors, influencers, and hashtags you want to target using the built-in analytics features from Hashtagsforlikes. From there you can track and measure results based on the hashtags you’re using to see what’s working and even curate content to create test groups and save hashtag sets.
Key Features:
- Built-in analytics to identify statistically compatible tags for the best exposure
- Predetermined hashtag sets to start building your own customized hashtag sets
- Techniques are compliant with Instagram’s best practices
- Dedicated customer success manager
- Smart algorithm detects the best Instagram hashtags
Pricing (billed monthly)
- Regular: $59/month
- Pro: $89/month
12. InstaHero
InstaHero is an Instagram automation tool that focuses on increasing your Instagram followers, likes, and views without the use of fake accounts or bots. The InstaHero community includes more than 120,000 Instagram users with interests across several niches and industries.
Key Features:
- Community of Instagram users to provide genuine engagement on your Instagram account
- Live chat support
- Active engagements on content
- Permanent followers
Pricing
- Analyzing for free
13. Tailwind
Tailwind is essentially an Instagram assistant you can use to plan your Instagram feed, optimize your posts, schedule your content, and use the right hashtags. Tailwind will pick the right time to post on Instagram using its SmartSchedule feature so you can get better engagement from your content. You can also save high-performing hashtag lists, tag relevant users and locations, and even format your captions from a single platform.
Key Features:
- Free landing page so you don’t have to worry about remembering to update your “link in bio”
- Add a link to your Instagram posts with a click
- Get reports and analytics showing Instagram metrics like followers, likes, and comments
- Find your top-performing posts
- Plan and schedule multiple image posts
- Add hashtags in the first comment
Pricing
- Free plan included
- Pro: $14.99/month
- Advanced: $24.99/month
- Max: $49.99/month
14. Later
Founded in 2014, Later (formerly Latergramme) was considered the first-to-market scheduler for Instagram. Initially designed as a simple tool to help users plan their Instagram strategy and schedule posts ahead of time, it was later developed with more features, including Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and TikTok scheduling options alongside its original form.
Key Features:
- Easy scheduling of your IG carousel posts and stories
- Visual planner with a drag-and-drop feature for your IG posts
- Suggested hashtags for your content
- Insights on the best time to post for optimal engagement with followers
Pricing
- Starter: $16.67/month
- Growth: $30/month
- Advanced: $53.33/month
15. Follow Adder
Follow Adder is one of the most reliable and popular companies when it comes to Instagram automation. With a user-friendly and intuitive interface, you can easily manage your account and expand your online influence on the app.
Key Features:
- Account scraping feature to build your network and audience
- List creation of photos, comments, and users for content and audience management
Pricing
- Basic: $24/month
- Premium: $48/month
- Pro: $94/month
16. UseViral
UseViral team of experts is on a mission to make sure you get the best possible followings for your Instagram profile. Their tailored growth services can increase your brand’s exposure and numbers by using cutting-edge AI technology to refine targets and maximize exposure while maintaining high levels of engagement with your followers.
Key Features:
- AI-powered solutions for targeted demographics
- Hashtag and user suggestions and targeting
- Follow, unfollow, and comment liking features
Pricing
- Depends on service. Check website
17. Stormlikes
Stormlikes is a company that understands how social media is important for brands in this day and age. They specialize in providing only genuine followers, views, and likes for your Instagram accounts. If your business is prioritizing velocity in terms of IG growth but doesn’t have time or money on hand, this may be an option worth looking into.
Key Features:
- Automatic IG account boosts on followers, views, and likes
- 24/7 customer support on Live Chat
- Quality engagement from genuine IG users
Pricing
The pricing of Stormlikes is based on the type of engagement you are considering:
- Likes: starting at $2.09 per 50 likes
- Views: starting at $2.99 per 500 views
- Followers: starting at $4.34 per 100 followers
- Auto Likes: starting at $23.99 per 50 auto likes
18. SocialPilot
SocialPilot is one of the best Instagram automation tools available. You can use it to manage your Instagram accounts as well as other social media platforms. SocialPilot can help you manage more than 100 social profiles, analyze and report on your performance, find and share content, and even upload up to 500 posts using the Bulk Scheduling feature.
Key Features:
- Create customized posts for multiple social media accounts
- Analyze and report your social media content’s performance
- Organize your social content with a visual calendar
- Get content suggestions using the content curation feature
- Upload 500 posts with bulk scheduling
- Collaboration features to manage your team
- Access your social media conversations from a single social inbox
- Manage approval workflows seamlessly
- Canva integration
Pricing (billed annually)
- Professional: $22.50/month
- Small Team: $37.50/month
- Agency: $75/month
- Agency+: $150/month
19. Nitreo
Nitreo is a revolutionary new way for your business to organically grow its following on Instagram without any hassle or stress. You can have an unlimited number of followers requiring less commitment than other methods to get more exposure and engagement. Moreover, with its AI-powered features, you get real-time insights into how your posts are performing in comparison with each other, which can improve content management.
Key Features:
- Automated engagement to build rapport with users
- Data insight on your followers to improve your content and marketing strategies
Pricing
- Essential Plan: $49/month
- Speed Plan: $82/month
- Nitro Plan: $166/month
What Businesses and Marketers Should Consider When Choosing an IG Automation Tool
As marketers, you are always looking for new ways to save time and effort while still achieving your goals. Instagram automation tools can be a huge help in this area, but it’s important to choose the right tool for your needs so you don’t end up wasting time and money.
When choosing an IG automation tool, you want to take the time to evaluate the value it will provide for your business.
Automation Features for Publishing
Publishing is the most basic Instagram automation feature. Automation tools for Instagram should, at the very least, allow you to schedule posts in advance. This way, you can take the time to create high-quality content without worrying about when you will have time to post it.
In addition, some Instagram automation tools will also help you optimize your posts for maximum engagement. For example, they may help you choose the best time to post based on when your audience is most active. Alternatively, they may help you choose the best hashtags to use so that your content is more likely to be seen by people who are interested in what you have to say.
Automated Features for Engagement
Engagement is another important Instagram automation feature. Consider the automation tools that can help you like and comment on other people's posts, as well as follow and unfollow other Instagram users.
Some Instagram automation tools will also help you track who has liked, commented on, or shared your posts. This information can be valuable in helping you to understand what type of content your audience is most interested in.
Finally, some Instagram automation tools also offer the ability to send direct messages to other Instagram users. This can be a great way to build relationships with other Instagram users, as well as promote your product or service.
Pricing Options Including Free Trial
If you aren't sure whether an Instagram automation tool is right for you, it's important to consider the pricing options. Many Instagram automation tools offer a free trial so that you can try out the features before committing to a paid subscription.
Moreover, several IG tools offer a pay-as-you-go option, which can be a good choice if you only need to use the tool for a short period.
Finally, some Instagram automation tools offer a discount if you pay for a year's worth of service upfront. This can be a good option if you are sure you will be using the tool for an extended period.
Instagram Automation Tool Reviews
Reviews are a great way to get an idea of what other people think about an Instagram automation tool. When reading reviews, it's important to keep in mind that not all reviews will be positive.
However, if you see a large number of negative reviews, that may be a sign that the Instagram automation tool is not right for you. This is especially true if the negative reviews mention the same issues.
Adherence to Instagram Terms of Service
The importance of this Instagram automation tool feature cannot be overstated. Instagram has strict rules about what automation tools can and cannot do.
If an Instagram automation tool is not updated to keep up with changes to the Instagram platform, it may stop working properly, which could lead to your Instagram account being banned.
Compatibility With Other Social Media Platforms
The purpose of automation is to make your life easier, not to make it more difficult. Instagram automation tools that are compatible with other social media platforms can save you a lot of time and effort.
For example, if you also use Twitter, look for an Instagram automation tool that allows you to cross-post your content to both Twitter and Instagram. This way, you only have to create your content once, and it will be shared on both platforms.
The Kind of Followers of Your Instagram Growth
While new followers could be good, they might not be the most active and ideal Instagram users that you’re looking for. In fact, you want to ensure that real followers are active and will engage with your content.
The Instagram growth tool you use should bring in high-quality, targeted Instagram followers that will be interested in what you have to say. Additionally, the Instagram automation tool should help you to avoid getting fake followers.
You want Instagram users that will regularly like, comment, and share your posts. These are the Instagram users that will help you to grow your account organically.
Wrapping Up
Instagram is a fantastic platform for building your business. It allows potential customers and collaborators to see what you do and learn about your brand's unique offers. They are also able to get a good sense of your market position as they see how your long-time followers engage with your account.
Your Instagram posts have a lot of promise for reaching new customers, but you need to be smart about the way that you manage your influencer business. Using one or more of the Instagram automation tools on this list will help you stay on top of your Instagram marketing while developing authentic relationships with your followers, attracting more followers, and expanding your reach.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Instagram allow automation of posts?
According to Instagram’s terms and conditions, automation is not allowed. Instagram will force time delays on users for certain amounts of likes, follows, or unfollows to stop bots and automation. However, there are ways to automate your Instagram content and the tools available have become increasingly smart in mimicking human behavior. Automation tools can cope with time delays and they can also randomize their actions, like humans might. Instagram automation tools can normally only post, follow, unfollow, like, direct message, and comment on posts.
What can you automate on Instagram?
Although Instagram automation is not allowed, you can use Instagram automation tools to boost your engagement and automate a number of tools. You can automate likes, comments, follows, unfollows, direct messages, story views, scheduling, and reporting. Liking posts is the safest task to automate because many people will like content on the platform without necessarily liking it.
Has Instagram killed bots and automation?
Instagram has made automation against the rules in its terms and conditions. However, despite the outcry from marketers that bots are indeed dead, there are a number of ways to use bots and automate Instagram tasks. Many people have found success using Instagram automation tools and bots to boost their engagement. However, automation tools and bots have become much trickier to use. Make sure to use caution to avoid getting blocked by Instagram.
What professional tools can help manage Instagram?
You can use a big variety of professional tools to help manage Instagram, from Instagram’s business tools to social scheduling platforms to Instagram automation tools. In Instagram’s business tools section, you can work with your profile and add contact information, see your insights and analytics, promote content, and use Instagram shopping. If you use a social scheduling platform, you can also automate posts and access a wider variety of analytics. Instagram automation tools can also help increase engagement as well.
What Instagram bot works best?
Instavast is an Instagram automation tool that uses bots to comment, like, and message. One bot costs $15 a month. Instazood, another tool, can be used to automatically like, comment, follow/unfollow, and schedule posts. It also lets you view Instagram Stories and send direct messages to your target audience. One bot is $11.99 a month. Instamber is an Instagram automation tool that lets you automate interactions with your target audience, schedule posts, manage comments, and send bulk direct messages. One bot costs $10 a month.
