Author: Larry

Our Grade – X

This service has been closed for some time and its only lasting web presence is what you can find on review sites.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

SARA Agency was an Instagram growth service modeled after Instagress. It was a SaaS dashboard allowing you to use infinite accounts and take infinite actions. It was likely shut down by Instagram as this type of service is in violation of their terms.

Business Analysis

Pricing

SARA.Agency’s services were priced competitively.

Service Details

For a bot service using traditional follow/un-follow methods, this was a decent choice. However, the claims are a bit silly. 20x faster, 40x faster, 50x faster? Faster than… what?

You can only take so many actions in a day, so even as you target by location, gender, and hashtag, it’s hard to tell how your actions would actually be magnified. From a software perspective, it’d cost nothing more to provide.

Integrity & Reputation

This provider was upfront about being a bot service. They did offer an affiliate program, which is why you might see some shining testimonies on certain sites that were active during this era. Though the team isn’t identifiable and their social media accounts were poorly maintained, this was an incredible value for the price, since you could run unlimited accounts.

Conclusion

It is kind of crazy that you were able to run unlimited accounts using this software for such a cheap price. It’s not clear why SARA.agency shut down but it’s likely because they didn’t develop their software in-house and thus were suffered from service outages. It is also possible that the “agency” was shut down directly by Instagram, similar to Instagress.

Our Grade – X

A previously well-known service that is no longer operating.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Social Captain was a popular Instagram growth service that operated from 2018 to 2020. They claimed to grow your account “automagically,” promising “organic, real, and targeted growth.”

At least one of us had used the service when it was still around, and it worked pretty well. Ultimately, it was a basic managed SaaS service, but was among the best values in its era.

Business Analysis

Pricing

Social Captain had great prices. They offered a 7-day plan for $15, a monthly plan for $39, and a “turbo” plan for $99 per month. The $39/month plan existed at a very competitive price point and was a great value.

Service Details

Social Captain was a typical SaaS service that engaged “real” users on Instagram by liking their photos, following them, and occasionally leaving comments. The idea behind this “follow/un-follow” growth model is that, if your content is high quality, some proportion of the people you interact with automatically will follow you back.

The success of this method is proportional to the amount of actions you can take per day, which, in 2021 terms, is not that many. Because the results are worse, many traditional SaaS providers have shuttered.

Integrity & Reputation

Social Captain did maintain several social media profiles while it was active. There was not an overwhelming amount of positive reviews (from what we can remember), but this was a high-volume service that certainly had many satisfied customers.

The service shut down before Trustpilot really gained traction, so there aren’t any reviews there.

What Happened to Social Captain?

We aren’t completely sure what happened to Social Captain, but it’s likely that they weren’t getting the results for customers that they once were. Unfortunately, when you have such large customer volume, if you have a prolonged service interruption (1+ weeks), you can get shut down fairly easily if many of those customers dispute their payments within a short time frame.

There is no official statement from Social Captain regarding why they shut down.

Conclusion

Social Captain was a viable service that several of us have used. If it was still around, it would be a top-five managed SaaS provider.

Our Grade – X

FanBump shut down voluntarily and the website still exists.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

FanBump was a successful and respected Instagram growth service that had thousands of concurrent customers at its peak. I will say it’s a bit ironic that the self-proclaimed “safest” service ended up shutting down for “safety reasons.”

Business Analysis

Pricing

FanBump’s main plan professional cost $99 per month.

Service Details

FanBump was an organic Instagram growth service using software automation methods that were widely accepted at the time

Integrity & Reputation

This was a reputable service run by a highly-visible CEO. Though there were a fair number of bad reviews, most were responded to be the owner himself and his replies were convincing

Conclusion

This was a good service at the time, though a bit expensive compared to others that were growing accounts in the same way.

Our Grade – X

This service has been closed since some point in 2019.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

This was a small Instagram growth provider that operated for a short time. Head Copilot claimed to help users get more followers while being 100% compliant with Instagram’s rules. They were unique in that they did some promotion on Reddit via an official Reddit account.

Business Analysis

Pricing

We are unsure of this service’s pricing structure.

Service Details

This was likely a SaaS service, but it is also possible that Head Copilot was a desktop automation service.

We have very little to investigate, but based on the language used on Reddit, it is likely that this service was maintained by someone in India.

Integrity & Reputation

There are few traces of this company remaining on the internet. Most notably is a customer complain shared on Reddit, where the company’s Reddit account responds and makes quite clear that customer relations is not their strong suit.

Conclusion

This service was most likely a scam and it likely shut down due to a large amount of chargebacks from customers. We are happy that this service is no longer operating.

If you had an experience with Head Copilot while it was operating, leave a comment below!