Category: instagram

21Social.ca Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date May 11, 2021
No Comments on 21Social.ca Instagram Growth Service Review

Our Grade – D

We strongly suspect that this provider runs another tool behind the scenes while charging extreme markup.

At a Glance

21Social.ca strikes us as a late-entrant single owner type of service. The website design is poor and the company, somehow, doesn’t have a Trustpilot page.

Our guess is that this is a single owner service started by someone who became proficient at using FollowLiker or Jarvee. We see no evidence to the contrary that there is anything particularly advanced or skilled going on behind the scenes.

It sticks out in a sea of beautiful, glossy websites as a basic one without the owner demonstrating much competency. Great work if you can get it, but it’s shocking that this business has so many good reviews.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Managed 3rd-party SaaS
Quality of Service	Medium
Business Registry / Location	Canada
Traceable Team	Likely single owner
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	2+ Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	Kind of
External Sites	Facebook
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	Facebook
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

This is a little pricey. Notice that the gold and bronze plans are waitlist only. This is an interesting tactic.

Service Details

This is just a person or maybe two people running FollowLiker or Jarvee. These are advanced 3rd-party growth apps. They are quite complicated to use, and a lot can be accomplished by experienced users.

This becomes obvious when you try to check out and are faced with this:

First of all, the checkout process is a clunky WooCommerce process which makes us doubt that anyone affiliated with this business has a programming background. But the Pinterest inclusion makes things clear.

What’s significant about Pinterest? We’ve investigated over 100 growth businesses. Almost none of them offer Pinterest tools. Nobody would ever develop a Pinterest tool from scratch. We know that these other tools provide Pinterest off the shelf. That’s what’s going on here.

Integrity & Reputation

This business is a massive ripoff. However, they carefully curate reviews and seem to be picky about who signs up. The result is that there are dozens of people on their Facebook page who have been filled with glee at having someone charge them $150 per month to run off-the-shelf software.

I’m equal parts outraged and impressed.

Conclusion

If you want to pay $150 per month for someone to run Jarvee on your account, go for it. Remember, you’ll still be subject to action blocks as Instagram detects your account using automation software.

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Mr. Insta Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date May 11, 2021
No Comments on Mr. Insta Instagram Growth Service Review

Our Grade – D+

Unique business that manipulated its Trustpilot reviews to such an extreme that it was removed from Trustpilot.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Mr. Insta is a very unique Instagram growth service. The concept behind the service is that you can either allow your account to be part of a botnet that likes other customer’s accounts and gets a few likes in return, or you can pay to get a larger amount of these actions directed toward your account.

This type of service can be hard to understand if you don’t have a software background, but the scheme can, in theory, work pretty well. For free–for no money–you can sign up to be in an automated engagement group where you’ll engage with other customers of Mr. Insta. Some of those customers will be on the free plan like you, others will be paying for higher numbers of likes.

The accounts, hopefully, are real, but the engagement, when obtained this way, is completely fake.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Auto Engagement Pod / Private Botnet
Quality of Service	Unknown
Business Registry / Location	Unknown
Traceable Team	No
Functioning Phone	They provide a number, but we doubt it
Longevity	3+ years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	False, misuses name
Active Blog	Yes
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes, integral
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling

Pricing

This service offers free tiers where you can get small amounts of “real” (private botnet) followers in exchange for participating in the botnet. You can also pay low monthly fees to get more traffic from the botnet. Nothing is organic.

Service Details

We already said it above, but nothing is organic with this service. For them to guarantee followers, they control all of the accounts. With enough customers, it might work! Without enough customers, this service is a disaster. Worst of all, you’ll still be subject to blocks from Instagram while using this service.

Integrity & Reputation

In an earlier note, we opined that Mr. Insta had an incredibly large amount of fake reviews on Trustpilot. Today, we noticed that their account has been suspended by Trustpilot.

That doesn’t really build confidence, now does it?

You can also see manipulative activity on SiteJabber.

Yeah, okay. Are they at least honest about what they’re offering?

They don’t mention that their “free” users are what make their paid products possible. They act like this is some type of charity.

They change their tune a bit here, but don’t acknowledge that this massive circle jerk is useless since you are 100% sure that each person only cares about their own following. There is nothing organic about this and most of the people will probably unfollow you as soon as they’re able to.

They also offer tons of other spammy bot services. We can’t even fit them all onto our screen.

Finally, for such a purportedly well-liked and successful provider, they offer no information about where they’re located or who is behind the service. I don’t have any speculation to offer here. I just don’t know who is behind this one

Conclusion

This is a dishonest and opaque service that shouldn’t be trusted. All accounts essentially become part of a private botnet where you can be guaranteed that your “followers” while “real” will only be interacting with you because a computer program forced them to. This is, essentially, a coin app with a prettier website.

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C Rating instagram software

Ingramer Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date May 11, 2021
No Comments on Ingramer Instagram Growth Service Review

Our Grade – C

Decently run service with a lot of fake reviews.

View our grading methodology.

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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B Rating instagram

Social Buddy Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date May 10, 2021
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Our Grade – B+

A well-established, trustworthy service providing solid results

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At a Glance

Social Buddy is one of the oldest Instagram growth services and has been consistently operating for more than 4 years. The company is 100% US-based and has a a great web presence.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Managed SaaS
Quality of Service	Medium
Business Registry / Location	Philadelphia, PA
Traceable Team	Yes
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	4+ Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	Yes
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	Yes

Pricing

Socialbuddy charges a simple $99 per month for their service. Compared to Kicksta or other competitors, this is a pretty high price.

Service Details

Socialbuddy appears to be an advanced software program using well-established follow-unfollow techniques.

Integrity & Reputation

Social Buddy’s Trustpilot page is one of the best that we’ve seen. The reviews don’t seem fake and all negative reviews have responses that make sense.

There is no part of Social Buddy’s website copy or web presence that is suspicious or dishonest. We think this service is worth a try just for that reason.

Conclusion

Social Buddy is a simple, honest, straightforward automation service. Of course, these services are now actively being inconvenienced by Instagram’s restrictions. Ultimately, these services are not compliant with Instagram’s terms, but many people still use them with some success. It’s up to you to decide whether this risk may be worth $100 per month.

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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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D Rating instagram

Instazood Instagram Growth Service Review

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

Our Grade – D-

Heavily marketed service and app that falls very short of expectations and has some of the worst reviews we’ve ever seen.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Instazood is an Instagram growth service (mainly, an app) that markets itself very aggressively. While the service quite brashly admits to being an Instagram bot, there are hundreds of dissatisfied customers and weak customer support responses plainly visible on the internet.

They falsely claim that the program is “Safe to use” and also don’t provide clear pricing on their website. We are highly suspicious of this provider.

While the website is somewhat alluring and the business has been around for a good amount of time, it’s likely that the Canadian owners outsourced many aspects of the business to other parts of the world and are attempting to coast potentially while scamming people.

Truth be told, we couldn’t locate a single obviously real satisfied customer. Even talking to users, agencies, and other site owners, we couldn’t find anyone who had used Instazood and liked it.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Managed/App Software
Quality of Service	Low
Business Registry / Location	Quebec, Canada
Traceable Team	Yes, owners
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	3+ years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	False, misuse color scheme and “Insta”
Active Blog	Not updated in the last few months
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	N/A

Pricing

Behind a 5-day free trial and a forced signup page, Instazood does not reveal prices. Of all the tactics we’ve seen, this is our least favorite. This is the shadiest. There’s simply no reason to do this.

Service Details

If you do get persuaded by Instazood to provide payment details and sign up, you’ll then be ushered to a user portal where you then find out that you have to download their special app from … somewhere. There are users leaving reviews claiming that the app might not even exist and support has responded claiming that it is currently being “worked on.”

How is that for customer service?

Once you download this app, presumably, it’s just a basic follow-unfollow bot that they want you to run yourself because they can’t afford or find good proxies.

Integrity & Reputation

Though this service is honest in admitting to being a bot service, there are many red flags. The first is that the website claims that the service is safe. Services like this are never safe and they can get your account banned!

Next, we have the godawful Trustpilot reviews:

I’m not even going to start quoting the negative reviews. I just can’t believe people are still falling for this. Their customer support rep responding to tickets is clearly some cheap offshore assistant who doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Conclusion

Knowing that there are dozens of active services out there, are you really going to sign up for Instazood? I hope not. While this might have been a decent service years ago, the owners clearly got lazy and decided to coast. The result is that many, many users appear to have been cheated out of their hard-earned money.

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B Rating instagram

Kicksta Instagram Growth Service Review

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

Our Grade – B

This is likely the dominant player in the Instagram growth space and the service, while imperfect, has gotten the job done for thousands of people.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Anyone who has read any of our 100+ other Instagram growth service reviews has definitely heard of Kicksta. While the business used to be known as Kickstagram, they likely changed their name due to rumors that Facebook/Instagram was shutting down sites that improperly used the “insta” or “gram” trademarks.

Since starting up many years ago, Kicksta has been well established as a frontrunner in the Instagram growth space. They use “Artificial Intelligence technology,” which means they’re still using the classic follow-unfollow method, but this doesn’t mean Kicksta has an awful product.

Being involved with other smaller services, we often see customers arrive after trying out Kicksta. The branding can inflate users’ expectations and some end up dissatisfied. Make no mistake, this is a high-volume service that is absolutely not a scam.

However, software-based growth services are under a lot of pressure, so there’s a pretty high chance that it won’t meet your expectations.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Managed SaaS
Quality of Service	Medium
Business Registry / Location	San Diego, CA
Traceable Team	Yes
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	4+ Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	Yes
External Sites	Appear to have shut down their Facebook page
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes
Offsite Testimonies	Yes
Forthcoming About Password Handling	Yes

Pricing

Kicksta provides a competitive pricing tier at $49 per month. They offer even more features at $99 per month. Both of these are good deals and these are the standards that most other firms in the space use when setting up their services.

Service Details

For the most part, Kicksta sets the standard for bot services. They offer a nice video to onboard you and have some advanced features present in their bot which can help improve the efficacy of the actions that they take on your behalf.

Unfortunately, it appears that Kicksta has been hit pretty badly by Instagram’s most recent round of bot cleanup. Many, many users are facing action blocks and forced password resets. It’s likely that the end may be near for software services like this one.

Integrity & Reputation

Kicksta has a respectable Trustpilot page. Though they have plenty of bad reviews, they offer many plausible explanations. Compared to how many customers they likely have, I don’t think the 3.3 average review means this is an awful service.

However, recently, customers have been complaining about prolonged action blocks and Kicksta not honoring their refund policy. If this continues without explanation, or we hear from more of their customers, we will update this review.

Conclusion

Kicksta has had a really good run as one of the most popular bot organic engagement services. With Instagram’s latest round of changes, it seems that dissatisfied users are running to other service providers who can actually guarantee compliance with Instagram.

It will be interesting to see what happens over summer 2021 with this service. Its fate will likely be the barometer for the final stage of Instagram growth software. We have nothing particularly bad to say about Kicksta but siding with a large provider is risky whenever there is a chance that they might have to suddenly lay off some of their employees or get a cease and desist from Instagram.

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instagram X Rating

InstaNobel Instagram Growth Service

Post author By Larry
Post date April 1, 2021
No Comments on InstaNobel Instagram Growth Service

Our Grade – X

This service is no longer operational.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

InstaNobel was an early Instagram growth service provider operating between 2017 and 2020. Originally billed as an Instagress replacement, InstaNobel was forthcoming about being an automated service. The site changed very little over the years but started offering a TikTok service in 2020 before vanishing without a trace.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	SaaS
Quality of Service	Unknown
Business Registry / Location	“New Jersey”
Traceable Team	No
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	3+ Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	False, “Insta” in title
Active Blog	No
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

This service offered reasonably-priced automation services based around basic Instagram functions. Interestingly, the majority of service-providers in this space no longer offer such expansive offerings.

Service Details

As you can see above, this provider offering promotional, DMing, commenting, and scheduled posting features. We rarely find such a thing, but there is a separate website providing setup instructions. You can find it here.

Integrity & Reputation

The Trustpilot page doesn’t reveal much.

The business claimed to be located in New Jersey, in the US, but we found a cached page in which a message was written in Cyrillic. We also found a registry page on Gust that claims the site was based in Russia.

Overall, we’re not particularly trusting of Russian providers. We’re even less trusting of Russian providers that claim to be based in New Jersey on LinkedIn and then vanish without a trace.

Conclusion

While InstaNobel didn’t win any awards for having a creative name, it probably was a profitable business for its small team for a few years. Like many others, it couldn’t stand the test of time. This service has been reviewed by nearly every other review provider out there, so we’re not going to get any deeper. They’re closed and this is just a retrospective.

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A Rating instagram software

Hashtag Fox Instagram Hashtag Tool Review

Post author By Larry
Post date March 30, 2021
No Comments on Hashtag Fox Instagram Hashtag Tool Review

Our Grade – A-

A trustworthy, highly-functional hashtag discovery tool with no downsides.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Here at Pretty Good Reviews, we’re cynical. We like investigating shady websites. When we decided to start reviewing Instagram tools, we knew that things would be different. Hashtag Fox is a shining example of the type of service that has us appreciating what a great provider can be. They’re not out to scam you or mislead you–they offer a hashtag discovery tool and other useful metrics that provide real value to your marketing strategy.

Best of all, they provide these metrics in real time unlike any competitors that we are aware of.

The contents of this review will be a little bit different than most others we write, however, the formatting will be similar.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Service Type	Hashtag Tool SaaS
Quality of Service	High
Business Registry / Location	Europe
Traceable Team	Yes
Functioning Phone	N/A
Longevity	1+ Year
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	No
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	N/A

Pricing

Hashtag Fox costs $30 per month and offers a free trial. At the time of writing, they are offering a special discount for $15 per month! These are great prices considering you’d otherwise have to use an assistant or dig up the hashtags yourself. When you consider that the queries are dispatched as you execute them, this is a really high-value service for the money. Nobody else has a product like this!

Service Details

Hashtag research is a critical part of any Instagram strategy that seeks to gain maximum exposure. Perhaps you are a marketer looking for hashtags to investigate. A tool like this is invaluable and, despite vague suggestions to the contrary, this type of service is not offered by any major growth services.

Setup was almost instant and we were blown away by how well the search function worked. For example, we search for hashtags similar to #newyorkcity.

The results were instant and were up-to-date. Even as we re-ran the query, the results changed slightly. That’s really impressive!

Hashtag Fox can supplement your own organic growth strategy and can help you discover unique insights about your own account’s stats, such as the much-discussed engagement rate!

This is a truly useful stat that is difficult to calculate yourself. It updates regularly. The site also allows you to save your searches and review them later.

Integrity & Reputation

There is nothing to suggest this is a dishonest business. They don’t have to mislead you or convince you otherwise. You can sign up for the free trial, see for yourself, and cancel if you are dissatisfied.

The Trustpilot page has a lot of positive reviews. Some are suspiciously short, we have to admit, but overall the business seems honest. The one negative review was responded to in a way that we deem satisfactory. As you can see above, we use it ourselves–this was not media provided by the business.

Conclusion

Overall, Hashtag Fox is worth using. We use it ourselves and it’s incredibly useful. A tool like this can supplement your Instagram strategy, whether you’re an agency or someone simply trying to expand his or her own account.

Let us know about your experience in the comments or if we missed anything. Would you like to see more Instagram tool provider reviews?

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Agency B Rating instagram

NR Media Agency Instagram Growth Service Review

Post author By Larry
Post date March 17, 2021
No Comments on NR Media Agency Instagram Growth Service Review

Our Grade – B-

While we see no reason not to trust this business, this strikes us as an add-on service from a full-service agency and there’s just no way the results or customer service will justify the price tag.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

NR Media Agency is a US-based social media marketing agency that happens to offer an Instagram growth service. Since this product seems to be a minor offering of theirs, the company as a whole should not be judged based on this brief overview.

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Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	SaaS
Quality of Service	Unknown
Business Registry / Location	Chicago, IL
Traceable Team	Yes
Functioning Phone	Yes
Longevity	Since 2014
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	No
External Sites	LinkedIn
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	No
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

This service costs $97/mo, which is on the expensive side. The going rate for automation services is about $50, which is still not cheap considering you can run one yourself practically for free.

Service Details

This is a run-of-the-mill growth service offering from a marketing agency. The agency only has two employees, so it’s obvious that the 24/7 aspect is performed while nobody is watching.

Integrity & Reputation

We see absolutely no reason not to trust this business! From what we can tell, this is an honest agency supported by full-time staff. Of course, the only dishonest part is not telling potential customers that this type of thing is against Instagram’s rules–this is why we suspect larger agencies just don’t bother. It’s not worth having to explain why a client’s account was blocked while charging them $100 per month.

Conclusion

Though this service isn’t doing anything wrong, we can’t recommend paying $100 per month from such an unknown, localized provider. I’m happy to see smaller agencies wading into the software space, but there’s no evidence supporting why a purchase here would be worth the time or money.

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