Category: X Rating

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.

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.

Our Grade – X

This website is no longer functioning.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Grow Social Media, with one of the most generic yet optimized-for-google-search names we’ve ever seen, was a short-lived Instagram growth service operating back in 2019. It has been shut down for some time and there is very little information out on the internet about this company.

Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	SaaS
Quality of Service	Medium
Business Registry / Location	London, UK
Traceable Team	No
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	< 10 months
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	No
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Integrity & Reputation

This website had a few positive reviews on Trustpilot.

Conclusion

This website is no longer functioning. The extremely generic company name that is comprised entirely of popular search terms is nearly impossible to find any mentions of.

Our Grade – X

This website is barely functional.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Riotly Social Media, much to our surprise, seems like an Instagram growth service with a legitimate supporting cast. Unfortunately, it appears impossible to sign up on the website, so I don’t think they’re still in business.

Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	SaaS
Quality of Service	Unknown
Business Registry / Location	Hong Kong
Traceable Team	Yes?, Yes
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	1 year
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	Not since 2019
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes
Offsite Testimonies	Trustpilot
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

Riotly had very expensive pricing plans for their automation service. For $250/mo, you could pay for Ampfluence which grows your account using human hands or a cheap social media manager.

Service Details

Though the prices are high, this is a typical follow/unfollow bot service. It’s unclear to me what all these people on the team are actually doing, since they don’t even try to convince you that the actions are performed by humans.

They seem to offer a “Like Bump” service which they say is provided by their exclusive network numbering 1000 accounts. I think this is just a bunch of bots.

Integrity & Reputation

The Trustpilot reviews are nothing to write home about.

Aside from that, this service passes a fair amount of our tests of trustworthiness. They clearly identify the team and the business location while not making any ridiculous claims about results.

Unfortunately, they do seem to lie about their media features and ratings on their “Like Bump” page.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, we fear that something may have happened to this business during the political unrest in Hong Kong. It is also possible that they stopped operating after one of the Instagram updates in 2018 or 2019.

Our Grade – X

Though the website is still live, it seems impossible to proceed to the payment page

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

We Grow Social is an Instagram growth service that claims to grow your following in a 100% compliant way using… Instagram ads?

This makes little sense since any ad campaign will have a relatively-high fixed cost just to run the ads. If you’re an agency that specializes in managing ad campaigns, why not just say that? Unless…

“We Grow Social works around the clock to grow your Instagram followers using FB & IG Ads, advanced targeting, and the management of the interactions with your target audience”

Reading between the lines, part of me doubts that they run ads at all.

Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	“Organic Ads”
Quality of Service	Low
Business Registry / Location	California / We Grow Social LLC
Traceable Team	No
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	2 Years
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	Links to defunct https://www.socialiteblog.com/
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	No
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

This is worth talking about since we never see it. They’ll create some ads for you but they leave completely vague who is responsible for paying for the ads. This seems like an ad manager service, but what’s this “customized campaign running around the clock?” Strikes me as some type of automated activity.

Service Details

This business claims to manage ad campaigns for you but this is likely a front for a basic bot service offered at an inflated price. If you’re just running $50-100 in ad campaigns, an individual can easily do this himself. There’s no reason to bring in a faceless PR company just to help with a little design work.

The language on the website strongly suggests they’re just going to run a bot on your account. Also, giving someone access to your account with ad manager access used to give them free reign in being able to spend credits linked to your card on file. The website doesn’t mention this or any other logical points that would get raised if they actually ran a legitimate business.

Integrity & Reputation

This service doesn’t still seem to be accepting customers, so most of this is moot.

The business is supposedly registered to We Grow Social LLC. We were unable to locate a record of this company. The listed location appears to be an apartment building in Vista, California. It’s impossible to locate any team members or any other company records on LinkedIn.

There is also no record on review platforms, which suggests this business is very old and was mostly shut down prior to 2019.

Conclusion

This service is no longer operating but likely was operating on a false premise.

Our Grade – X

This service is no longer operating as the website displayed a WordPress error page.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

WizzSocial was an Instagram Growth service the operated between 2019 and 2020. This was likely a single-owner service that was only promoted by posts by the owner on Reddit.

Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Managed SaaS
Quality of Service	Unknown
Business Registry / Location	Unknown
Traceable Team	No
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	< 1 year
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	No
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	No
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing & Service Details

All pricing info and, ideally, a screenshot.

This service offered a plan for $125 per month and another for $200 per month. They claimed that “ALL WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. MUST QUALIFY” which makes sense but might just be a marketing ploy. Also, the engagement guarantees accompanying the plans are pretty outrageous. Though, we will give credit where it’s due, it is rare even to see this type of thing described in such detail.

Let’s not forget that these prices are incredibly high. It’s obvious that they’re just going to run a bot on your account, so $200 per month is kind of insulting.

Integrity & Reputation

Well, the website is not longer working. It’s likely that the business is shut down and that the owner has moved on.

We were unable to find any independent reviews for this site.

Conclusion

Wizz was an Instagram growth provider that never really got off the ground. There isn’t exactly a shortage of Instagram growth service providers, so the owners of Wizz are probably better off spending their time elsewhere.

Our Grade – X

Though the suspicious-looking website is still live, it appears it is impossible to actually purchase one of their Instagram growth plans This would have been a D- rating, in case you were wondering.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

FameMass (Get it? Recite it slowly) is a social media marketing agency with “real people, real results” that offers an Instagram growth service, an OnlyFans management service (that’s a new one!) and some other scammy-sounding services like paid verification.

Of course, the website does nothing to gain trust or build confidence. It’s simply a bot service charging an exorbitant amount of money.

Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	“Real people” A.k.a. bots
Quality of Service	Unknown
Business Registry / Location	Unknown, likely India
Traceable Team	No
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	1+ Year
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	Uses Instagram’s colors
Active Blog	Yes
External Sites	No
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	No
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Pricing

These prices are outrageous. While the “risk free” trial is a nice concept, there’s no guarantee that it actually works. I want to draw your attention to the fact that their claim is “Real people, real results” but these plan descriptions say absolutely nothing about real people.

Service Details

As touched on above, you can’t offer banned services on your website and then also expect people to believe that you’re offering a legit human-run service. For example, FameMass sells Instagram accounts, YouTube accounts, and Instagram verification, all of which is explicitly forbidden by platform providers.

This service doesn’t appear to be operational. We hope that they never had any customers.

Integrity & Reputation

FameMass has no internet presence outside of this barely-functional website. They also make ridiculous claims about blog features on Forbes and … IBM? I don’t think so. They also try to give the impression that humans are growing the accounts but this is obviously a lie. Even at the high prices, this wouldn’t really be feasible.

It’s impossible to tell how long this site has been closed for.

Conclusion

FameMass doesn’t appear to be accepting new customers, which is great since the service was likely awful and extremely expensive for what it was.

In a rare move, the site has seemingly shifted to posting affiliate articles for OnlyFans, which can be a lucrative way to utilize web traffic.

Our Grade – X

This was one of the first sites to be shut down in the Spring 2017 Instagram ban wave.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Peerboost was an Instagram growth service shut down a very long time ago. Aside from a notable mention in the New York Times, there is little-to-no evidence that this website ever existed. What happened to everything on the internet being saved forever? In the case of Peerbost, the first time the site was scraped, it already was displaying the shutdown message.

Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	Automation
Quality of Service	High
Business Registry / Location	Unknown
Traceable Team	No
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	2015 – 2017
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	False
External Sites	Youtube
Dashboard / Account Management	Yes
Offsite Testimonies	No
Forthcoming About Password Handling	N/A

Pricing

Unfortunately, we don’t know what Peerboost’s full scope of pricing options were. However, what little information we were able to dig up reveals an extremely cheap service with a free trial plan.

You can Try for Free for 3 Days. Once your 3 day trial has ended, there are are payment options ranging from 3 days to 360 days. The most popular options is 30 days for $9.99

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNzc1gdXlePqyl-mF9bIPZw/about

Service Details

This was a cheap bot with great results operational in the early golden age of Instagram automation. This service provided a dashboard, similar to Instagress, from which you could control your account’s activities. Most directly, this could be thought of as a web-based always-on alternative to FollowLiker or Jarvee.

Integrity & Reputation

Well, the company was shut down by Instagram. They didn’t waste any time in complying with the order. That much we know. However, it’s highly likely that this team, like many others, anonymously moved on to another service.

There is nothing to suggest that this was a dishonest service. Remember, back in the day, everyone got great results.

Conclusion

This was a popular service that was one of a select few shut down in the first ban wave. By reviewing this business, we hope to provide a glimpse into just how cheap and effective these early players were.

Our Grade – X

This service is no longer accepting new customers and was replaced by IGClerk, which we’ve already written a review for.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Popamatic was an Australianm Instagram growth service that claimed to grow accounts by hand using their “team of assistants.”

Nearly all the material from Popamatic was copied over to IGClerk, so this won’t be a particularly thorough review.

Business Analysis

Item	Result
Growth Type	“By Hand” which is actually performed by bots
Quality of Service	Low
Business Registry / Location	Australia
Traceable Team	No
Functioning Phone	No
Longevity	1 year
Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding	True
Active Blog	No
External Sites	IGClerk
Dashboard / Account Management	No
Offsite Testimonies	No
Forthcoming About Password Handling	No

Integrity & Reputation

I feel like this Reddit user summarized things pretty well. This service was too good to be true. The “team” page where they list a bunch of generic pictures that they scraped from elsewhere on the internet is just creepy. People will go to great lengths to fool people on the internet.

I find it humorous that “Ana” went from being a “Virtual Assistant” to “The Lawyer” in the rebooted site. Congratulations, Ana.

Conclusion

This service is no longer operating and we recently received work that IGClerk has also shut down. This is good news for everyone except the people who were running these dishonest businesses