Category: C Rating

Ingramer Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date May 11, 2021
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Our Grade – C

Decently run service with a lot of fake reviews.

At a Glance

Ingramer provides a suite of Instagram growth and research tools and has been around for at least two years. The company is based in Latvia. You can view more ownership information here.

What makes Ingramer unique is that they offer many different tools in addition to the basic follow-unfollow growth model that has worked so well for years. One can assume that they do most of their coding in house to be able to support such an array of activities.

All this being said, while we don’t feel the website is particularly deceptive, this type of growth is not approved by Instagram. There are plenty of customers complaining about awful results and constant intervention being required while using the Ingramer software. This is the case for many providers, as Instagram is cracking down really hard.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Tools + Managed SaaS
Quality of Service	Medium
Business Registry / Location	Latvia / Belarus / Russia
Traceable Team	Kind of
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	2+ Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	False, mis-use name and logo
Active Blog	Yes
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No, you’ll be asked for your password during a long setup process

Pricing

The pricing tiers are kind of bizarre but ultimately the prices are very much in line with competitors. These are the prices for growth.

Service Details

The service is a follow-unfollow bot that might have a few extra bells and whistles. All things considered, they can’t escape the watchful eye of Instagram even with all these buzzwords.

What is nice about Ingramer is that they offer auto-posting and auto-responding features. We have no direct proof that these features work, but, if they do, that’s a nice bonus.

Integrity & Reputation

We respect that Ingramer does not hide that their service runs a bot on your account. However, we do not believe that they fully apprise customers of the risks of running such a bot on your account in 2021.

Not only are the results pretty bad across the board, but as soon as Instagram detects you, there will be consequences for your account, including shadow bans.

The Trustpilot page is bizarre, among the most confusing pages we’ve seen.

Please direct your attention to the 1-star reviews. They don’t appear to be coming from enraged customers or jealous competitors. There are tons of people complaining that the service just isn’t working. Even while responding, Ingramer acknowledges this. It seems a little dishonest to still be running one of these services without advising would-be customers of these issues.

Also, I will note that the vast majority of verified reviews are negative ones. We suspect there are hundreds of fake reviews on this page and it’s incredible that Trustpilot hasn’t made any effort to moderate them.

Conclusion

Software services just aren’t worth it anymore. While Ingramer isn’t a particularly shady service, we’re turned off by the amount of fake reviews. The real reviews suggest that this service has issues, so we’re hesitant to recommend it.

It comes down to this: 500+ reviews on Trustpilot, yet we can’t find a single thorough believable testimony.

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C Rating instagram software

Combin Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date May 10, 2021
No Comments on Combin Instagram Growth Service Review

Our Grade – C

Somewhat unique service with little blatant deception.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Combin is a Russian Instagram growth service that provides apps for automated growth and post scheduling. While the service has been around for a long time, it hasn’t ever gained significant traction.

The one unique thing this service did was launch on Product Hunt, a website used for small SaaS and eCommerce startups. This was pretty cool.

As expected, users immediately saw through the facade when they launched 4-5 years ago:

Alexandra Malis, who was listed as the creator, tried to weasel out of the explanation… but the truth was discovered easily by people who actually know how to program. Combin was asking for a plain text password and trying to give the impression that it was an approved Instagram app.

In the main description, Alexandra criticized other basic follow/unfollow apps and then described how Combin allows people to … do the same exact thing except with a few more clicks.

The service has now been around for years and years and years. There’s still no real evidence that it works properly.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	App
Quality of Service	Unknown
Business Registry / Location	Russia / Germany
Traceable Team	Kind of, most of them hide their identities
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	4+ years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	Yes
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	N/A
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

Combin offers extremely competitive pricing, though it requires customers to do everything themselves. At the end of the day, it’s not saving you that much work, but all of the options might be worth a try.

Service Details

Combin is a hybrid app that allows you to take actions on Instagram from your computer. You control your own destiny; you put the work in yourself and pay for their tools.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an undetectable bot like Followyst. It’s still making Instagram API calls, so you’re still running a large risk of getting action blocks!

Integrity & Reputation

We don’t believe that Combin is particularly dishonest or disreputable. However, their website is a bit sterile and doesn’t really inspire confidence. Further, while they have a few 5-star reviews, many of them seem fake.

Conclusion

It’s likely that Combin has amassed several hundred customers after being around for several years. While it might be worth giving this service a shot, we don’t see the long term viability compared to simply using a hashtag tool and taking your own actions manually, which is compliant with Instagram’s terms.

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C Rating instagram

Creative Talent Agency Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date March 17, 2021
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Our Grade – C

You’re going to pay $250/mo for someone to run a bot on your account.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Creative Talent Agency is a bespoke marketing agency that happens to offer an Instagram growth service. We’re in no position to comment on their other services but we will apply some of our trust tests to their Instagram growth business. At $250 per month, it had better pass all of them!

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	“Dedicated account manager”
Quality of Service	Unknown
Business Registry / Location	Unable to determine
Traceable Team	Brigette Cooper
Functioning Phone	Yes
Longevity	2+ Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	No
External Sites	Facebook
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	No
Forthcoming About Password Handling	Yes

Pricing

This service costs $249 per month. That is a premium price.

Service Details

Details about this service are pretty scant. First you’re told that you get a “dedicated account manager” which has you thinking that it’s going to be a human clicking every action for you… but does anyone on this team look like they’re going to do that?

Here’s what it looks like to me: Connor Heffernan corresponds with you once then him and Bridget McCarthy run Jarvee on your account. How in the world could these two people actually manage “500+ clients”? They can’t!

When you read more into the service, it’s pretty clear that they’re just running a bot.

Integrity & Reputation

We have no knocks on this company from an Integrity and Reputation standpoint. It does seem to be a legitimate social media agency offering an array of blended services from a talent/marketing agency standpoint. There are no reviews of the business that we can find.

Conclusion

Overall, while this service might be slightly more bespoke than others, paying $250 per month for someone to run an automated program on your account is outrageous.

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Agency C Rating instagram

Jumper Media Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date March 17, 2021
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Our Grade – C-

Service with unique sales model lies about what it offers and has a litany of dissatisfied customers.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Jumper Media is US-based marketing agency primarily providing Instagram growth services. Unlike most services we review, which are usually clear-cut scams or well-known providers, Jumper required a lot of analysis!

If you don’t feel like reading further, our most important conclusion is that they definitely aren’t growing accounts by hand, in one huge contradiction that is exhausting to unravel. There are dozens of customer reviews supporting our conclusion.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	“Growth by Hand”
Quality of Service	Low
Business Registry / Location	San Diego, CA
Traceable Team	Yes
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	2+ Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	Kind of
External Sites	Facebook
Dashboard / Account Management	Unknown
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

Jumper Media’s pricing is hidden but since they have a large team and premium pitch it’s likely they’re charging well over $100 for their cheapest plan. We think this is kind of silly since they’re almost definitely running a bot and upselling it as if it’s some bespoke service.

You must set up a call with Jumper Media in order to hear prices. It’s likely that they are performing outreach to originate most of their sales or that they’re using this to hide something.

After doing further research, we realized that they probably do this to use direct sales tactics in order to get you sign up for a full year of service upfront. This is a no-no in most industries, but especially in the growth space. So much can change and you’ll feel like you were scammed.

Service Details

Jumper Media provides two clear-cut services to grow your Instagram:

We have a team of real people that will sign into your Instagram account on a phone, and start interacting with your target audience by liking their pictures and viewing their Stories.
Partner with mega-influencers to dominate Instagram in a (borderline unfair) new way.

Distilled to our language, they offer “Growth by hand” and “influencer/giveaway growth.” Each has its merits. They also link to an Influencer marketing service that we won’t get into.

Integrity & Reputation

Here’s where things more-or-less fall apart for our friends at Jumper Media.

First, we need to assess the claim that they’re growing accounts by hand.

No bots, no software. Smiling team pictured at the beach in California!

Wow, now that is a massive team. Not to invoke stereotypes, but you probably don’t expect anybody in the first row of this picture to be sitting in a back room writing computer code.

One LinkedIn search tells a different story. The company doesn’t seem to employ a single US-based woman, nor can we find evidence that they ever did.

The picture clearly isn’t fake, right? All the people in the picture have Jumper Media shirts on! Our opinion is that they paid for 15 women from a UCSD sorority to come down for the photoshoot. This is what we alluded to in our opening. The level of deception here is just impressive.

What about that “no software” claim? Seems to me like their Russian programmers might have something to say about that:

Believe it or not, you don’t bring in the Russians to do website design. They’re obviously helping with the underlying platform that grows customers’ accounts. I wonder how the customers feel.

In an extremely-rare display of force on Yelp, people are not happy with Jumper Media.

We’re shocked by what we’ve uncovered here. All of these people can’t be exaggerating. When a company “looks legit” we’re usually hesitant to give bad reviews, but this helps us believe that we should trust our gut instinct.

On Trustpilot, it’s a similar story, though they’ve padded their page with dozens of fake one-sentence reviews.

The one thing that impresses us is that many of the men in the picture above do indeed appear to be employed by Jumper Media. It’s crazy that they run such a thick sales team without adding any other services. Focusing on Instagram growth knowing you’re vulnerable to any and every change Instagram makes must make for a stressful “10,000 sqft office” environment.

Conclusion

This service claims to be a premium player but really it’s the same old type of botting sold directly to unsuspecting targets. They seem to have a large sales team who will sell to customers who won’t do the requisite research which is good for business but bad for customer satisfaction. There is no question why there are so many dissatisfied customers out there. Jumper Media oversells and under-delivers a basic product.

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C Rating instagram

IGAssistant Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date March 13, 2021
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Our Grade – C-

This is a long-running provider that doesn’t really pass our trust tests and doesn’t appear to have been updated in years.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

IGAssistant is an Instagram growth bot that has been around for many years. The website provides a wealth of information regarding what goes on inside an Instagram growth bot.

This type of service is forbidden by Instagram so it’s surprising that the service hasn’t been shut down. It’s likely located in a foreign country with a single owner despite claiming to be registered in Houston, Texas.

Additionally, our researchers uncovered that the login flow for this website is similar to several other sites that we’ve reviewed here. This means that this provider might be using someone else’s software behind the scenes. That is concerning and doesn’t bode well for the customer.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Managed SaaS
Quality of Service	Low
Business Registry / Location	Houston, Texas claimed (but likely offshore)
Traceable Team	No
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	Since 2018
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	False, uses “IG” in name
Active Blog	Not updated since 2019
External Sites	Reddit
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

IGAssistant’s pricing is hidden behind a login process that requires you to create an account and validate your Instagram account.

Hmm, this login interface looks suspiciously similar to some other services that we’ve reviewed. It’s likely that some providers have purchased a white-labeled growth platform in order to stay in business. This signup flow is generic and we suspect that it did not originate with IGAssistant.

Service Details

This provider admits that it’s running a bot and provides a really nice amount of detail regarding these activities.

These explanations are straightforward and believable.

Integrity & Reputation

Though the business claims to be based in Houston, Texas, there is no evidence backing this up. Further, based on the language used by this company’s Reddit account, this is clearly based in India or another country:

Nobody who speaks English as a first language would address someone as “Dear” on the internet.

There aren’t that many Trustpilot reviews likely because this service hasn’t really been maintained or updated in years. Here is the latest review:

There is no traceable team and in various places on the website, it is clear that whoever wrote the website copy is not a native English speaker.

It’s subtle, but a native English speaker wouldn’t say “draw the attention.”

Conclusion

There isn’t all that much evidence suggesting that this services is a complete scam. We don’t have a favorable view because there’s no transparency and it’s obvious that the owner isn’t actually based in the US. Once we establish that this service runs afoul of Instagram’s guidelines and doesn’t even display prices on the website, there’s not much upside for a customer. It’s likely that the service will be shut down eventually, if it isn’t already operating in a “ghost” state.

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C Rating instagram

Stim Social Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date March 12, 2021
No Comments on Stim Social Instagram Growth Service Review

Our Grade – C-

Long-running service with shady and information-sparse website that has almost certainly gone through an ownership change.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Stim Social is a long-running Instagram growth service originally based in the Philippines. We’ll give credit where it’s due, it’s been around almost since the beginning. However, there are a number of red flags and many parts of the website look like they haven’t been updated in five years.

We suspect that this service effectively “shut down” at some point then was fairly recently purchased by someone else in an off-market transaction.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	SaaS
Quality of Service	Unknown
Business Registry / Location	Utah / Florida
Traceable Team	Kind of
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	3 Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	No
External Sites	LinkedIn
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

Stim Social hides pricing and forces you to sign up and link your Instagram account before displaying it.

This is quite strange and suggests that the service has something to hide. Or, at the least, they realized that they get more conversions if they force people to go through the signup process first. We think this is dishonest.

Service Details

Stim Social offers both Instagram and TikTok growth plans. They still list their original “how it works” on their webpage. It’s useful as a relic of the golden era of botting:

Aside from this explanation, the website tells you absolutely nothing about how the service works or what you can expect. This is a red flag.

Integrity & Reputation

The terms and conditions of this service leads you to Manila, in the Philippines.

However, the website footer leads you to…

SUNNY FLORIDA BOAT COMPANY LLC
3218 E Atlantic Blvd, ste 2082 Pompano Beach FL 33062

This company was just recently reinstated by a Mr. Branko Panich down in Florida.

http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail?inquirytype=EntityName&directionType=ForwardList&searchNameOrder=SUNNYFLORIDABOAT%20L080000450680&aggregateId=flal-l08000045068-ff4991d5-9d40-4619-90c4-407c657e9601&searchTerm=Sunny%20Films%20International%2C%20%20LLC&listNameOrder=SUNNYFLORIDABOAT%20L080000450680

I have the same question as you: why is a boat company being used as a front for an Instagram growth service? Your guess is as good as mine, but something tells me the reason isn’t to benefit customers.

The website is not transparent at all and provides very few insights into what the service does or how it works. Here’s one thing we found amusing–they blame customers’ continuing to use their accounts regularly as the main cause of action blocks. That’s hilarious.

Next we have the Trustpilot reviews, which contain the typical distribution for a fake service. We’ll be honest, we held off on reviewing this website for so long because it looks horribly neglected and we figured there was no way people were still using it. Amazingly, we were wrong. People are still having bad experiences with Stim Social in 2021.

Now, do I hate “customers” who up-sell services to “clients”? 100%. They’re usually the worst people to work with.

Going further back in the reviews, there are a lot of positive ones, but they all use the same cliche statements and never provide any useful detail. This is an obvious attempt by the owners to boost their appearance on Trustpilot.

Conclusion

This service has been around for a long time but the website is ancient and it’s not clear whether it’s based in the Philippines or is actually associated with a boating company in Florida.

While we were able to locate a former employee who claimed to have grown the customer base to “10,000+” back in 2017, we’re highly suspicious of the current iteration of this service.

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Agency C Rating instagram

Assistagram Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date March 7, 2021
No Comments on Assistagram Instagram Growth Service Review

Our Grade – C

This is a premium agency that can’t be a scam like the high-volume Instagram growth services, but we’re suspicious.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

We first learned of Assistagram a few years ago. Though it seems like a typical marketing agency with a millennial flare, and generally wouldn’t be something we reviewed, the web presence of this company has us curious about what’s really going on here.

To be clear, we’re not aware of anyone having been scammed by this service and normally we wouldn’t even review a full-service agency like this. Something is just a little … off.

We don’t think it’s particularly fair to review marketing agencies without having tried them or spoken to them, so this review is written strictly from an outsider’s perspective. We will modify this review if Assistagram furnishes any information that we think is important.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Agency
Quality of Service	Unknown
Business Registry / Location	Des Moines, Iowa
Traceable Team	Yes – Owner is Zach Benson
Functioning Phone	You can schedule calls
Longevity	3+ years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	False, “gram” in name
Active Blog	Not since 2019
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	No
Forthcoming About Password Handling	N/A

Pricing

This is a bespoke service that does not display prices on the website. We don’t find this particularly suspicious, though it is unprecedented in the Instagram growth industry.

Service Details

Assistagram claims to be a full-service Instagram agency.

Seems a little… I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it, but something here is rubbing me the wrong way. There’s too much salesmanship backed up by nothing aside from the claim of having serviced “over 517 accounts.”

The full service offering is quite impressive and transcends any basic bot services.

For me, what it comes down to is that the website is extremely basic and even unprofessional for someone actually trying to attract luxury clients with huge budgets. It seems more pitched toward small wannabe-influencers who will pay a lot of money for things and never complain because they have no idea what they’re doing.

Integrity & Reputation

Let’s start with this claim:

Assistagram is an Instagram marketing agency with a network of 220 million Instagram followers to drive brand awareness, leads, and sales.
Main header on Assistagram’s front page

This doesn’t make any sense. What does it mean for an agency to have “a network of 220 million Instagram followers”? Can someone please explain that? There’s a lot of social media experience on our team here and we can’t decipher what is meant by this or why an agency would claim this.

Next, we have the classic “bar of lies”:

Except, amazingly, these articles are real–Assistagram paid for the placements! Yes, you can do that. All the other services we review just lie about their non-existent features. Here is the Forbes article that they paid for.

The claim from the 2018 Forbes article was that in one picture the founder was “drinking tea while traveling in Bali and running his seven-figure business.” Since, back in 2018, that was how everyone who was full of shit talked, it leaves me suspicious of the founder.

Is this someone I want to trust with my money or my Instagram account? No. Is this someone a fake influencer would be likely to pay? Absolutely.

Even though all of these articles are extremely generic and all seem to be paid placements, you can view more of them on the founder’s personal website.

As you would expect, the website doesn’t have an active Trustpilot page because it doesn’t have all that many customers. It’s a different type of service. However, the website does contain some fake, cheap-actor “influencer testimonials.” I’m not even going to link it. Just look at the picture.

The website itself hasn’t been updated seemingly since we first viewed it several years ago. The blog hasn’t been updated since 2019.

When you click the Instagram link on the website it just sends you to the owner’s Instagram. Thanks to his paid news article placements, he has a blue check on Instagram. He is now known as the “Maldives Mastermind.”

You can’t make this shit up. Not somebody I want to pay to manage my social media profiles. But this begs the question …

How funny would it be if behind this facade, this guy was just running follow-unfollow bots on your account to grow your Instagram? The site’s blog stopped updating right around when the last large Instagram change was, so your guess is as good as mine.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a bizarre service that seems bespoke but is shrouded in secrecy behind the founder’s cult of personality. Until we see some real results or proof of what they’re doing, we have a hard time recommending this service to anyone.

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C Rating instagram

Instacaptain Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date March 7, 2021
No Comments on Instacaptain Instagram Growth Service Review

Our Grade – C-

Like most other bot services, this provider lies about most things and there’s very little proof that it works at all.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Instacaptain is an Instagram growth service based in India, though the service claims to be a suite of tools supported by a team of 45 people, it’s just another generic bot service with a single owner.

The website doesn’t pass most of our trust tests and makes some confusing and contradictory claims. Hilariously, though they’ve rebranded recently, they did use to use the headline “Instagram bot which works in 2020.”

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Basic bot
Quality of Service	Low
Business Registry / Location	India
Traceable Team	Single owner
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	2 Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	False
Active Blog	No
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	Yes

Pricing

Instacaptain has two inexpensive plans. One is for $23 per month and the other is $29.99 per month. Truthfully, this is one of the smallest differences in price that I’ve ever seen. Seems like the only difference for $6 extra is that they’ll turn the knob a little bit and offer slightly better customer support. Remember, this is just a single guy running a bot, so there’s essentially no difference.

Service Details

Instacaptain is, at its core, a bot service. Here’s an archived capture of their homepage:

We do believe that the company has at least one programmer because they’ve pivoted to offering some tools to help you better make sense of your niche on Instagram in addition to the bot. Ultimately, we don’t think that these tools provide enough value to be worth checking out.

Integrity & Reputation

Right off the bat, we’ve got a silly lie:

This service doesn’t have anywhere near 5000 customers. This is fake social proof in order to fool unsuspecting customers. If this was real, they’d have more reviews. About those reviews …

The owner of Instacaptain likely just had some of his friends in India write fake reviews.

First of all, this review doesn’t make sense since the website itself claims that they don’t offer a trial. Further, do I really believe that someone named Miranda is working in customer service here? According to Instacaptain, the company has 45 employees!

This is a humungous lie. This picture is a generic picture of some other company taken at some type of conference. Meanwhile, the company has no LinkedIn presence. Have you ever known a company of 45 people in which none of them list their involvement on LinkedIn? Me neither.

The company is located in India. We know this because they provide their address on the privacy policy page.

While doing our initial research, we did uncover a statement listing the founders’ name. It seems that the original source page was edited, but thankfully we had copied the text.

Our brand InstaCaptain is operated by Ankit Srivastava, 27 year old internet entrepreneur who owns a variety of other businesses such as WedoShopify, LaMusiq Android app, IamAnkitSrivastava.com. Located in India, and launched in 2019. InstaCaptain already has a team of 8 members working 24/7 to provide you with the best service possible.
InstaCaptain

The site also has one of those generic “featured in…” fib bars.

As usual, we looked up article placements for this company. None of them exist.

However, rather than giving these guys a D-range review, I give them a C, because I like the way this review was responded to.

To be clear, there doesn’t seem to be a single legitimate review left by a satisfied customer.

Conclusion

The price is right, but everything else is pretty suspicious. The service is cheap enough that it might be worth taking a risk on but the untruthfulness is so flagrant that we don’t see any reason to trust this company. Let us know if you’ve had a different experience.

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C Rating instagram Uncategorized

Upleap Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date March 6, 2021
No Comments on Upleap Instagram Growth Service Review

Our Grade – C-

There are many layers of deception behind this service and nobody is raving about the results.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Upleap is a popular Instagram growth service. “Popular” in that the firm has an affiliate program and has been ranked highly by many of the shill bloggers.

Upleap’s claim is that you’ll grow faster with a dedicated account manager. The reality is that their single “dedicated account manager” is a fake persona. They’re just running a bot on your account, and don’t seem to be very good at it.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	“Dedicated account manager” — basic follow/unfollow bot
Quality of Service	Low
Business Registry / Location	MKN Media Ltd. / Kuala Lumpur / Malaysia
Traceable Team	Single owner hiding behind fake personas
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	2+ years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	Yes
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

If Upleap actually was growing accounts by hand using dedicated account managers, these prices would be somewhat decent. Considering it’s just another bot service, I don’t think it’s worth paying for.

Service Details

Upleap is forthcoming about the methods they use to grow accounts. Though they never reveal that they’re just using bots. They also claim that you get a dedicated account manager, but that’s just the persona they use whenever people file support tickets.

Integrity & Reputation

The owner of Upleap went really far to try to create fake personas. Let’s start with the “account manager” Kate Fernandez.

This is obviously a fake profile. If I was a clueless person not from America, this is how I’d try to create a fake American. Pick the 10th largest city in Ohio and set that as the location, say I went to Ohio State, and claim to have worked for Amazon as a generic “account manager” for two years after studying “Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services.”

Yeah, it’s highly unlikely an American would use this wording to describe their business on LinkedIn. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any matches for this photo of “Kate Fernandez,” but I also couldn’t find any records of her actually being a real person. This is just the start.

Next, we have the figurehead of Upleap, “Emily Trevino.”

There are shallow social media personas on several popular platforms all using this picture of an attractive woman who seems to be of mixed heritage. Five minutes spent actually reading what little content there is reveals that Emily is a figment of someone’s imagination. But… whose imagination?

Well, if Upleap is to be believed, the company has an association with MKN Media, based at in a foreign place I’ve never even heard of:

Now, if we scroll farther down that page …

Who is Ahmad Khan?

This is the owner of Upleap. If all else fails, how do you identify the owner of a shady social media service? They’ll brag on LinkedIn about how much money they make! If that’s not enough, I will highlight the fact that “Ahmad Khan” does contain the same letters used in the MKN Media acronym, appearing in the same order.

Anyway, anyway, anyway, this service has something to hide. The fact of the matter is that they don’t seem to get clients very good results and their Trustpilot does nothing to inspire confidence. They respond to very few negative reviews and Ahmad seems to have given up as of late.

Conclusion

This service went farther than most others to establish fake personas, though the single-owners’ bragging about the amount of money he makes allowed us to positively identify him.

This service has awful Trustpilot reviews and we see no reason to use this service versus competitors.

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C Rating instagram X Rating

GramGrowing Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date February 27, 2021
No Comments on GramGrowing Instagram Growth Service Review

Our Grade – X

A service that seems trustworthy but has very little social proof to the point and some website failures suggesting that it may no longer be operational. [Editor: Revised from a C- rating to an X rating.]

View our grading methodology.

When attempting to select a plan, it appears that the store is not functioning

At a Glance

GramGrowing is small Instagram growth service with a single owner that has been around for a few years. They don’t make too many suspicious claims and keep a low, though outdated, web presence. Though you seem to be able to force a product checkout, it does not appear that this service is still operating. The tenses in this review will shift.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	SaaS
Quality of Service	Medium
Business Registry / Location	GramGrowing, LLC – The owner’s parents’ house in Wisconsin
Traceable Team	Single owner
Functioning Phone	Text only
Longevity	3+ Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	False, uses “Gram” in name
Active Blog	No
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

GramGrowing offers two pricing plans, one at $97/mo and another at $147 per month. These are “typical” price points, but we caution users from jumping into this without reading further.

Service Details

It’s notable that you get a “campaign manager” but nowhere does the service claim that they won’t just be running a bot on your account. It also might be a bit of foreshadowing seeing that the “cancel anytime” item is featured as the first bullet point under each service option.

Things start to get ridiculous when the provider suggests that you could get hundreds or thousands of followers per month. This might have been true in 2018, but it isn’t true now.

The service claims to have a “no questions asked” full refund policy.

Integrity & Reputation

This service might only have a single guy as the owner, but at least the owner is verifiable and is US-based.

The details of the service are left vague, but you’re never blatantly lied to.

What is a “genuine marketing technique”? This is doublespeak for “we run bots that don’t usually get caught be Instagram.”

This service only has one Trustpilot review from 2019. This strongly suggests that they may no longer even be operating.

Conclusion

This service doesn’t have the markings of an obvious scam. It seems to simply be abandoned. Though this service was around for a while, we don’t believe it ever gained traction past 2019.

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