These two get compared in India because both get described as DM automation. They are different products on different platforms with different meters, and the honest way to choose is to name where your customers actually message you. Everything about AiSensy below was read from their own pricing page and checked on 24 September 2026.
What their pricing page shows
A free forever tier with the WhatsApp Business API and ₹50 of conversation credits, then Basic at ₹1,500 a month, Pro at ₹3,200, Premium at ₹9,100, Unlimited at ₹45,000 and Enterprise on request. Plans carry broadcasting speed, agent logins — one owner plus five on the lower plans, with extra seats at ₹750 a month each — tags and custom attributes. Two builders are priced separately on the same page: a drag-and-drop chatbot builder at ₹2,500 a month for five chatbots, and a WhatsApp AI agent builder at ₹1,350 a month including 1,000 AI messages. An Indian virtual number is ₹2,000 plus GST a year.
And below all of it, the number every WhatsApp platform in India has to show: Meta's own per-message rates. Their page lists marketing at ₹1.09, utility and authentication at ₹0.145 and service messages free for Indian users.
When we read that page, Instagram messaging was not part of it. Instagram appears elsewhere on their site in the context of ads that click through to WhatsApp.
What we do instead
Instagram comments and DMs on the official Graph API, and nothing else. No WhatsApp, no broadcasts, no campaign tool, no catalogue, no virtual number. One credit is one reply written by the model; templated replies are free and unlimited. Free tier 100 credits, no card, packs from ₹499.
Where WhatsApp earns its cost
Where Instagram replies earn theirs
| AiSensy | PostEngage | |
|---|---|---|
| Channel | WhatsApp Business API | Instagram comments and DMs |
| Monthly | From ₹1,500, per their pricing page | No subscription required |
| Per-message charges | Meta rates listed on their page | Not applicable on Instagram |
| AI, as sold | Agent builder add-on, per their page | One credit per written reply |
| Broadcasts and campaigns | Core of the product | Not built here |
| Instagram comment automation | Not on the pricing page we read | The whole product |
The mistake worth avoiding
The expensive mistake is buying a WhatsApp platform to solve an Instagram problem, because the two costs behave differently. A WhatsApp stack has a monthly, add-ons, seats and a per-message rate that grows every time you reach somebody. An Instagram comment reply inside the window has none of those, whoever you buy it from.
The reverse mistake is real too: if your business lives on order updates and COD confirmations, no Instagram tool can help you and you should be reading their page rather than ours.
What ours actually does, screen by screen
- 01
Connect Instagram
Three permissions: read comments, reply to them, send the DM you wrote. Meta handles the login, so your password never reaches us, and disconnect sits on the same screen.
- 02
Write the trigger
Choose a post or your next post, then type the words customers actually use — Hinglish included. A negative keyword holds the reply back when somebody says "not interested".
- 03
Write both replies
A public reply that keeps the post moving and a private reply that carries the link or the price list. Both are templates you wrote, so both are free at any volume.
- 04
Test on yourself, then go live
The test runs the whole pipeline and the same ten checks against your own account and spends no credits. Nothing reaches a customer until you press Go live.
- 05
Read Activity in week one
Every send and refusal with a reason — window closed, takeover, duplicate, quiet hours — so a missing reply is a line you can look up.
The ten checks, briefly
Before any reply leaves, ten checks run in a fixed order: kill switch, connection, takeover, window, dedupe, cooldown, quiet hours, rate budget, credits, content safety. The first failure stops the send and writes down the reason, so a reply that never went out is readable afterwards rather than a mystery. Takeover is the one businesses notice first — the moment a person on your team answers by hand, the automation stands down on that conversation instead of talking over them.
Deciding in one line
If the money arrives on WhatsApp, buy AiSensy. If the money starts in an Instagram comment, start free here and see how much of your inbox your own templates already cover.
The rest of our numbers are on pricing, the Indian tool that does both channels in one bill is Interakt, and the limits both products live inside are in is Instagram DM automation safe.