Category: X Rating

Our Grade – X

This service shut down around the same time as other major providers in mid-2017.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Fan Harvest was an all-in-one Instagram marketing software solution. Their team had mastered Instagram’s private API. They were able to create many useful functions that, even today, aren’t commonplace.

Though the service shut down in 2017, they did rebrand as Recurpost, offering their post scheduling tools as a standalone service.

Business Analysis

Pricing

Fan Harvest offered three plans at wonderful prices. Their cheapest plan only cost $15 per month. You could schedule posts and grow a single account for a cheap price. This was probably the best service in its era, for the price.

You could scale up the service by paying $40 or $65. Frankly, all were great deals!

Service Details

Fan Harvest was one of the most impressive services in its era. They had a talented development team that had created many useful tools. We scoured the internet and were unable to find a single review critical of their service.

Their new offering, Recurpost, seems like a more advanced offering that is compliant with Instagram guidelines. It’s probably worth giving it a shot!

Integrity & Reputation

The offerings were straightforward. Back in the day, service providers didn’t have to lie about their products. Limits back then were much less strict, so everyone got great results. Most unhappy customers were simply really stupid people.

Based on the name and the remnants of the team we could track down, this service was likely based in India. That’s not a bad thing, provided they didn’t lie about it and were still able to offer active support to US-based customers.

Conclusion

Fan Harvest, despite a baffling name, was a valuable Instagram service provider back in 2017. We view the business fondly, and encourage users to check out their new offering called Recurpost.

Our Grade – X

This service shut down during the ban-wave of 2017.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Though not as popular as Instagress or Mass Planner, two services which shut down earlier in 2017, Archie.co was a well-known bot service provider.

It is not know how Instagram convinced Archie to shut down so quietly and without putting up a fight. Archie.co stopped providing service at the end of June, 2017

Business Analysis

Pricing

Archie offered a 3-day free trial and had reasonably-priced plans starting at just $20.

Service Details

This was a bot service back when bot services worked really well. The pricing was inexpensive. Users flocked to services like these. What was provided by Archie influenced the platform of the modern Instagram growth services.

Integrity & Reputation

We were never able to identify the owners. We also are not sure why this service specifically was shut down while there were about a dozen well-known providers also operating at that time. It has been suggested that this was due to blatant references to botting on the site.

There has been some controversy as to whether Archie did anything shady when they closed. Joey Mottershead seems to think that he got screwed, but the story we’re aware of is that they continued servicing all customers through the end of June.

Further, the rumor is that they continued providing service to all customers who were grandfathered in to their stealth phase.

Let us know if you’ve heard otherwise!

Conclusion

Our team is less familiar with Archie than the giants of the 2017 “golden era.” The service was shut down but customer satisfaction was quite high. There are also rumors that the dashboard remained accessible to customers well in excess of the shutdown date.

Our Grade – X

This service has not been active or accessible since 2019.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Instagooo was a relatively unknown Instagram automation service active for most of 2019. Likely pronounced like an elongated “go” rather than, well, “goo,” it was a dashboard tool fairly similar to Instagress.

The service shut down for unknown reasons.

Business Analysis

Pricing

At $20 per month for each service, Instagooo was one of the cheapest service providers at its time.

Service Details

This is, potentially, the most honest description ever provided by an Instagram growth strategy. No lies, no crazy promises. They just tell you how it works.

The general idea on other review sites is that automation services are bad. Why is it that automation services are the only ones to give straightforward explanations of what they do to grow your account?

Integrity & Reputation

If this was a modern service, we’d probably give it a ‘B’ grade. Generally, bot services aren’t effective and often have poor customer support. However, when a bot service is honest about what they’re doing, that’s something we can appreciate.

The service maintained an active presence on Twitter but their presence was otherwise not notable. There is no independent review platform containing reviews of this service, as this service must have been basically closed by the time Trustpilot came around.

Conclusion

This was a straightforward botting service that met an unknown fate. If you know more about what happened, feel free to reach out to us.

Our Grade – X

This service is no longer operating.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Relaxed Social was a short-lived Instagram growth service created in the shadow of Instagress. While it wasn’t the first service to have an awful name, it was one of the first ones to claim it they had a team of growth consultants standing by in order to grow your account.

Of course, this was a lie.

Business Analysis

Pricing

The cheapest plan from Relaxed Social wasn’t very relaxing. It cost $99 back when this type of pricing was preposterous. Presently, some services are able to attract customers at the $100 price point with lofty promises and slick branding. Truthfully, even today, most aren’t actually doing anything special.

It’s likely that Relaxed Social never got off the ground.

Service Details

Relaxed social, on Reddit, claimed to do things without bots. But also conflated this with “organic” activity. On their website, they refer to organic activity, too. What does that mean? Essentially, nothing.

We see no evidence that this wasn’t simply an expensive bot service masquerading as something else. It’s also possible that it was an experiment gone wrong where the owner had no idea what he was doing.

Integrity & Reputation

The Reddit marketing push hasn’t been particularly successful for any company that has done it. Do I personally trust any company who shills for their own products on Reddit? Not really.

There’s such a low chance that this company was doing what they said they were doing at such a low price. Back then, they were still able to take “hundreds” of actions per day per account. How could you hire someone–anywhere–to do that while still making a profit? You can’t.

Conclusion

Relaxed Social was a forgettable growth service but is notable for being one of the first to utilize Reddit for marketing while claiming to grow accounts by hand (before that even mattered). Behind the scenes, the owner was probably just running Follow Liker.

Our Grade – X

This service is no longer operating and wasn’t ever worth purchasing.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Woomco was one of those Instagram growth services with such a stupid name that we just had to check it out. Back in the original iteration of this site in 2019, we stumbled across Woomco right before it closed. It was a generic Instagram growth service that lied about not using bots.

They claimed everything was real, but everything was likely fake.

It seems that Woomco has gone through many iterations in the shady marketing space, such as this way back in 2013. I’m not convinced that this was the same owner, but anyone dumb enough to use this name probably belongs under the same umbrella.

Business Analysis

Pricing

We lost our record of Woomco’s pricing. It was likely $50 per month.

Service Details

Woomco was a managed SaaS Instagram growth service. In other words, you paid them to run a bot on your behalf. Back in 2017, the results would have been pretty good even if the operator didn’t know what they were doing. Into 2019, most services could not remain viable.

Woomco shut down around August 2019.

Integrity & Reputation

Woomco was always a small operator and was likely run by a single owner. It didn’t pass the scam test in any way. There wasn’t live chat, there was no visible team or office location, and there were no other social media profiles. The few reviews on Trustpilot–and it’s shocking that people were still using Woomco into 2019–are quite negative.

There are very few mentions of this site remaining, despite its distinctive name. We dug up one blog post that seems to be some type of paid placement.

Conclusion

This site didn’t last long. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. If that book was Woomco, you’d have been smart not to have purchased that book.

Our Grade – X

SocialSteeze has been shut down for several years.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

SocialSteeze.net was an Instagram growth service active through 2019.

This service was fairly popular with excellent branding on their website. This was a service that grew your account using a bot but didn’t admit it.

It’s likely that this service shut down due to the more stringent Instagram activity limits in late 2019.

Business Analysis

Pricing

We believe that SocialSteeze charged about $50 per month for their service. This was a fairly typical price point in 2018.

Service Details

SocialSteeze promised “real growth, real people” but there is no way to guarantee this with an automation service. Sure, they probably weren’t sending fake followers, but it’s impossible to know this for sure. With this dishonest branding, it’s likely that many customers found themselves disappointed.

Integrity & Reputation

We start with the classic “featured in” illusion:

Then we move to Trustpilot, where no negative reviews have been responded to:

This website has no active web presence, registered business entity, or identifiable team. There are no signs of trustworthiness here.

Conclusion

This service might have gotten decent results for clients at the time, but still managed to anger plenty of customers. We cannot recommend any reboots or spinoffs of this business.

Our Grade – X

This service recently shut down.

View our grading methodology.

At a Glance

Socialflight.co was a long-tenured Instagram growth service. They grew your account using a bot but charged fairly high prices. At one time, they did have an affiliate program and the service worked fairly well, which is why they are spoken of fondly by so many blogs across the web.

Socialflight shut down some time in 2020.

Business Analysis

Pricing

This is a cached page. Socialflight.co charged $129 per month for a combination Instagram/Tiktok growth service during the last iteration of their service.

Service Details

Socialflight was a run-of-the mill bot service that worked fairly well. When their prices were cheaper, it was a service that was competitively priced.

Integrity & Reputation

Socialflight.co hid that they were using bots behind the scenes. They also appeared to still sign up customers and not service them after the service wasn’t working well. There are plenty of bad reviews that have not been responded to.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Socialflight likely had its day, but is no longer operating and leaves a path of unhappy customers.

So, why did this service shut down? Likely because it became harder and more expensive to run an Instagram bot service.