The Top Instagram Bots for Gaining Followers in 2019
My top Instagram automation picks for 2019 are here!
When I first started blogging about Instagram marketing in 2016, the one common thread throughout all my articles was automation. Us humans are very limited in our capabilities and bots can act as an extension of our own will. The best way to think of Instagram bots is that they are a tool for your brand growth. It is not a solution. Don’t expect overnight results and don’t’ plan on going viral as part of your core strategy. In fact, strategies rapidly evolve as platforms evolve. Following and unfollowing en masse doesn’t work the same way it used to.
I draw parallels between my career in marketing tech startups over the past couple years to the life and death of Instagram bots. Services have risen to the top, fallen and some have returned. Despite my passion for marketing, I’ve spent the last year to put a big focus on my mental health — taking a step back from startup culture and focusing on myself. However, this doesn’t mean I haven’t kept a pulse on the Instagram automation world.
I work closely with some of the tools I’ll go over in this article, where my personal suggestions have directly led to new features being implemented. This is my open disclaimer that there are affiliate links in this blog, but I just want to make 1 thing clear: I have personally tested pretty much every Instagram bot on the market for a minimum of 2 weeks before giving them a fair assessment. These are the best of the best. They offer the best bang for your buck. They give you the most in-depth analytics and give you more targeting options than you’ll know what to do with. The death of Instagress was not the end of Instagram automation, as I predicted years ago. Get creative because Instagram bots are still a driving force in 2019!
Ingramer ($34 Monthly)
Ingramer is an anomaly as far as Instagram bots go — and in some truly amazing ways. Unlike the vast majority of products on the market, its GUI is sleek and easy for beginners to use. From its straightforward targeting options and setup to its analytics view, anyone can pick it up and obtain desired results.
After just a couple weeks testing it out, I found many aspects of Ingramer that I wish other services offered. Given enough time, I can see these aspects being picked up by competitors, giving me a vibe similar to when I was using Instagress in its early days. Unlike BigBangram and InstaVast, you can view all your targeted hashtags with CR, followers gained and in a simple to understand chart. Aside from optimizing conversion rates by split testing hashtag targeting, the other settings that I found myself constantly tweaking on other services I didn’t need to on Ingramer. After the setup stage was complete, I just left it be and the results came naturally. Another thing I really liked was that you don’t have to put any thought into setting up a proper follow / unfollow cycle. It’s just…set up as part of the platform. Sure, you can customize these settings if you want to (which is useful as well), but the default settings worked great for me.
Though I’ve been using InstaVast for the bulk of the time since Instagress died off, I think Ingramer’s a strong competitor to them and I hope to see what they’ll implement in the future. Firstly, they’ll have to catch up in features and this is something you should note before purchasing. Auto DMs, comments and post scheduling are still in development at the time of writing this (March 23, 2019).
Instavast ($10 Monthly)
Simply put: The most powerful AND cost-efficient Instagram bot for gaining followers on the market. At just $10 USD per month, you get access to some very in-depth analytics and targeting options. I’m not going to sugar coat things: most Instagram bots are very similar. There are 6 basic functions that every service offers — auto-liking posts, auto-following, auto-unfollowing, auto-commenting, auto-DMs and more recently, auto-viewing Instagram stories.
What I appreciate most about Instavast comes in how they set up their targeting options. Let’s say you want to auto-like photos with criteria you set (ie. only from users between 500–2000 followers, excluding business accounts and set on a schedule to seem more human). You choose your hashtag and you’re good to go. But now you want to use the same targeting for auto-viewing Instagram stories, while keeping separate stats on each. No problem. You can view completely separate conversion rates by setting up a second target and setting it to automate a single activity at a time.
One feature they’ve implemented that I’ve seen other services also offer is the ability to schedule your first comment on a post. It sounds weird, but it makes sense when you think of how you handle your hashtags. Drop 10 lines of spacer characters like underscores or periods and then your list of hashtags so they’re hidden from plain view.
Instavast also has a couple free features that are incredibly powerful. They’re self explanatory, so I’ll just list them out:
- Instagram Banned Hashtag Database
- Instagram Hashtagram Generator
- Bulk Instagram Username to ID
Honestly, Instavast is where my personal bias is going to shine. It’s my favorite. Their customer support is great and they’ve added a bunch of features I suggested they had never considered before. During my break from the tech world, I’ve used them for Bodega Hostels and a handful of travel photographers.
BigBangram ($15 Monthly)
The Big Bang. Neil deGrasse Tyson himself would be proud of their branding. In the beginning, there was nothingness. Suddenly, the phenomenon known as the big bang happened. Rapid expansion and growth. That’s what you can expect from BigBangram for a number of reasons. In my eyes, it’s very similar to Instavast but has a few defining features that make it unique. Here are just a few reasons why BigBangram sets itself apart from its Instagram bot competitors:
- BigBangram provides free proxy setup, where you get to choose a server that your Instagram automation runs from. This greatly reduces the chances of your account being (shadow)banned. With any form of automation comes risk and they’ve played their part in mitigating it where possible.
- The ability to target only active, real accounts and potential customers. No bot networks, no fake accounts, none of that bullshit.
- Comment tracking on par with Iconosquare, which is merely a standalone analytics platform with scheduling capabilities. In my opinion, their UX is better designed, which makes it a better option for rookie marketers.
If you’re not completely sold on BigBangram, they also offer a 3 day free trial. If you haven’t given Instagram bots a shot yet, this is probably the best way to do it. There’s no risk. See what kind of results you can accomplish in 3 days, then upgrade to a paid plan for $15 a month if you like what you see. What do you have to lose?
FollowLiker ($57.99 + $5.99 Monthly)
It sounds expensive, but this is some truly powerful software. You pay an upfront fee for that software for PC or Mac. It allows you to manage one account with some pretty ridiculous capabilities. You can fine tune your targeting options quite a bit more specifically than other options on the market and it becomes your one-stop-shop for Instagram marketing. They give you user and photo search capabilities. You can do your hashtag research from it. You can run all your regular automation needs with FollowLiker.
Shoutouts BAMF for putting me on to FollowLiker, I love it. Stand-alone software with a low monthly upkeep is a godsend if you’re into that sort of thing.
Jarvee ($19.95 Monthly)
Jarvee is an absolute fucking monster. For $19.95 a month, you can manage up to 10 accounts and you’re not limited to just Instagram. No, no no. You get access to Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and tumblr automation. Let’s focus on their Instagram features though because there’s a few highlights that are worth noting:
- Post Scheduling: Most services, including my best buds at Instavast will charge extra for post scheduling. Jarvee offers it out of the box.
- Auto-Reposting of High Performing Content: This is actually incredible for people who are trying to build multiple influencer accounts at scale. Using your typical targeting options, you can hunt down top content then repost it and credit the original poster in the caption. Beautiful.
- Auto-Reply to DMs: This is a common feature with Twitter bots but not Instagram bots for whatever reason. On Facebook Pages, it’s just a built-in feature of the platform. Instagram? Nope. Gotta do that manually. Jarvee’s got you covered though.
CrowdFire ($10 Monthly)
CrowdFire is the Swiss Army Knife of management. If IG isn’t the sole focus of your business, then this is the Instagram bot for you to use this year. They offer automation for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Their pricing plans are based on the number of social profiles you want to manage at once as well as unlocking features in higher tiers. While CrowdFire has shifted focused to a more general social media management platform rather than purely automation, I still highly recommend checking it out.
Honestly, I couldn’t do CrowdFire justice by putting it into words. Just go check out their pricing page. The chart is massive and extremely detailed.
Disclaimer: Instagram bots are tools, not solutions.
I just want to be as responsible as I can when recommending these services because there are just so many people out there abusing automation and ending up with poor results.
“Nice photo! 👍, Great shot!, Wow, amazing pic!”
I hate that shit. Don’t be that person. Find ways to grow your brand manually first and foremost. Research hashtags in your niche. Interact with people. Analyze the people that follow you. Put the time and effort in before using automation to scale up those efforts.That’s all I have to say about using Instagram bots for gaining followers in 2019. I try to be concise when I can.
Cheers to your future brand growth in 2019! 🥂
Originally published at christweten.com on January 10, 2019.
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