Most setup guides in this category stop at "connect your account". The part that decides whether the thing works is what you type into three fields and what you read the next morning.
This is the whole of it, in order. Fifteen minutes end to end on a first account.
Before you start: what has to be true
Two requirements, both Meta's rather than ours. Your Instagram account has to be a business or creator account, and you need to be able to log in to it yourself when the permission screen appears.
Step one: connect Instagram
One button, and then Meta's own login and permission screen. Three scopes get
asked for, and they are written in plain English before you approve:
instagram_business_basic to know which account this is,
instagram_business_manage_comments to read comments and reply to them, and
instagram_business_manage_messages to send the DM you wrote.
What is not on that list matters as much: nothing about posting on your behalf, nothing about following or liking, and no password — Meta handles the login, so it never reaches us.
Step two: write the trigger
Three decisions, and the defaults are usually right.
Which post. Any post, a specific post, or your next post. "Next post" is the one creators underuse: set the automation before you publish the Reel and it is live the second the Reel is.
Which words. Type what people actually comment, not what you would write.
In India that means Hinglish: price, kitne, kitne ka, link, bhejo,
dedo, cod, size. Matching ignores case and punctuation, so PRICE? and
price are the same thing.
Which words should stop it. Negative keywords are the half nobody sets
up. not interested and nahi chahiye are worth adding on day one, because
a reply that arrives after somebody has said no is the one that makes a brand
look automated.
Step three: write both replies
The public reply keeps the post moving — a short line under the comment so the next reader sees the thread is alive. The private reply carries the link or the price.
Both are templates you wrote, which means both are free and unlimited here, however many people receive them. This is the part of the bill most people get wrong when comparing tools: the repetitive majority of your inbox should not cost anything anywhere.
Step four: test on yourself, then go live
The test runs the real pipeline against your own account: the same matching, the same gate, the same message. It spends no credits and it does not touch a single follower.
Read what it produced before you press anything. If the public reply sounds like a brand voice you do not have, change it now rather than after four hundred people have seen it. Then press Go live.
- Test on myself. The whole pipeline, your account only, no credits spent.
- Read the two messages end to end. Would you have sent those, in those words?
- Check the gate output. It shows which checks ran and what they decided.
- Go live. Nothing has reached a follower until this point.
- Comment on your own post from a second account if you have one. This is the closest thing to a live rehearsal.
Step five: read Activity the next morning
This is the step that separates an automation you trust from one you hope about. Every send and every refusal is listed with a reason, and ten checks run in a fixed order before anything goes out: kill switch, connection, takeover, window, dedupe, cooldown, quiet hours, rate budget, credits, content safety.
What you are looking for on day one is the refusal reasons. window closed
means Instagram's clock ran out — 24 hours for a DM, 7 days for a comment.
takeover means you answered that person by hand and the automation stood
down, which is correct behaviour. duplicate means Instagram redelivered an
event and the second reply was suppressed.
Widen the keywords that missed, narrow the ones that fired on the wrong comment, and add the negative keyword you did not think of.
Checklist
Pricing, including what stays free forever, is on pricing. What Meta's windows allow and refuse is in is Instagram DM automation safe, and the Indian tools worth comparing on cost are in the cheapest way to automate Instagram DMs in India.