Our Grade – X
This progenitor service was shut down after a request from Instagram in April 2017.
At a Glance
Instagress is widely considered as the service that started it all. Not the first to run or provide an Instagram bot, but the first to offer a dashboard from which users could automate their activity.
Though many services have moved away from the dashboard approach, Instagress is still a model for how these services operate and market themselves.
Instagress shut down in April 2017.
Business Analysis
| Item | Result |
| Growth Type | SaaS Website / Automated Growth |
| Quality of Service | High |
| Business Registry / Location | Unknown |
| Traceable Team | Anonymous |
| Functioning Phone | No |
| Longevity | 2013 – 2017 |
| Doesn’t Misuse IG Branding | False |
| Active Blog | False |
| External Sites | None |
| Dashboard / Account Management | Yes, the original |
| Offsite Testimonies | No |
| Forthcoming About Password Handling | N/A |
Pricing
Oh, that’s why everybody used Instagress! Instagress only charged $10 per month for their monthly plan. This price was absurdly low, affordable even for those in developing countries.
Their 3 days for $1.99 deal was just as good as any free trial.
Unfortunately, our group is unable to reach consensus on just how many customers Instagress had. Remember that, back in 2017, Instagram only had about 750,000,000 monthly users. Today, that number is nearly doubled, north of 1,300,000,000 monthly active users (though plenty are fake accounts and secondary/business accounts).
Service Details
Instagress provided a dashboard from which you could log in and tune your activities. This was a follow/unfollow service. There were also features to leave comments and likes.
Before the major Instagram restrictions, most accounts could get hundreds of followers per month while using this service. Even if an account’s content was awful, it would be taking so many actions that it was bound to get a satisfactory amount of reciprocal likes.
People often ask us: why? How? Who are the people so interested in these real accounts growing via automated activity? Four years ago, most Instagram users were naive. They simply weren’t aware of the bot activity because it wasn’t commonplace.
Further, there were plenty of users on Instagram who were internet virgins. Underserved communities across the world were getting access to the internet and cheap smartphones. If you are dirt poor living in Bangladesh and you see that someone from America interacted with you, of course you’re going to follow them back! At scale, this is still a great method to get “real” followers.
Integrity & Reputation
Before Instagress shut down, it wasn’t particularly well known that Instagram took a hard line against bots. There had been only a few news articles and nobody was really paying attention to it. Remember: Twitter allows some bots and post scheduling.
It was big news when Instagress stopped operating. Ultimately, many people think that since they used “Insta” in their name, that was the kiss of death. There are a few–though not many–different services from that era still operating. Since this ban wave, Instagram has been more focused on fake accounts, not automated engagement services, which makes sense.
All sources point to Instagress being fairly “trustworthy.” However, as highlighted by the New York Times, they were notably anonymous. Nobody knows who was behind the business and the website still exists, though prominently features the “closed” message.
We speculate that this was a US-based service and that Instagram/Facebook sent a very scary cease and desist letter to the company. They complied and shut down while offering refunds to all subscribers.
There have been rumors that Instagress, along with other shuttered services, have re-opened under other names. We were unable to substantiate these claims.
What continues to shock us is that some businesses still use parts of “Insta” and “Gram” in their names. It’s idiotic. And it’s no surprise that the majority of them don’t end up getting good reviews from our team.
Conclusion
Instagress was an early player in the space that anyone who claims to have been around “since the beginning” will surely remember. Instagram’s legal action against the company surely scared away many imitators. Due to changes in guidelines and bot detection software, we’ve never seen a service operate as cheaply as Instagress.