Can Claude answer Instagram DMs?

Why I wanted Claude answering my DMs

As a business owner, I know how important it is not just to monetize your audience on social media, but to also own your audience. ManyChat has come on the scene and been an amazing solution at turning a social audience into an asset your business owns… your email list! You can now turn every post into an opportunity to easily put your most engaged audience onto your own email list.

However, the tiers on ManyChat add up quickly. Not only is 25 contacts a very low limit on the free plan, it is also restrictive in the types of automations that you can set up. The advantage of ManyChat is that it is an official integration and doesn’t put your account at risk by using it.

Reducing your operating costs is very important in business, particularly as we are all dealing with an inflationary environment. So in an effort to keep my personal business costs low, I found a way to forgo the expensive ManyChat subscription, and create my own personal application with most of the features I actually used, for a fraction of the cost. And you can do this too, even if you’re not tech savvy!

What Claude can and can’t do on its own

Like I said, Claude is not just doing this by signing up for a Claude Code subscription, it takes some work. And not all of the features of ManyChat can be replicated at present. However, the features that I was able to reproduce by essentially creating my own software were significant enough for me to fully forgo using ManyChat entirely.

So, first of all, you do need a Claude Pro plan because you will need Claude Code for this. Claude Code is going to build the tool that replaces ManyChat, so no actual coding on your end. But you do need to set some things up.

Also, you do NOT want to create a tool that logs into your Instagram account through a web browser and responds to comments by clicking around on the screen. This is not allowed by Instagram and can get your account restricted! There is an official way that takes some manual setup, but is actually more efficient, and it’s officially approved in the end.

Instead of going through a browser, you set up a Meta developer app, which, if you do it right, can be published for your own Instagram account without Meta’s App Review, using the official API. This is also better because none of your personal passwords are being given to a browser bot. Instead, the API secret code lives in a private file for proper password security.

What you’ll need

So you are going to need more tools to complete this automation than just Claude Code, including:

• A web address (I have a place you can get one for free for this project!)
• A server (this is the additional ongoing cost; the best one I found is $6 a month through DigitalOcean)
• Your Instagram account needs to be a creator or business account
• A Google Cloud account (only if you want to auto-respond to YouTube comments)
• Apify (if you want to load, but not respond to, TikTok comments)
• A privacy page (if you don’t have a website, you can use Notion to host this)
• An email tool (I would imagine you already have this if you are using ManyChat, though!)

What Claude Code can’t do for you

1. Well, you need to create all your own accounts and passwords.
2. Saving your API keys.
3. You also have to do the actual testing after the tool gets built. You either need a second account or a friend to help you with comments and DMs for testing.

The limitations of this DIY ManyChat replacement

• First of all, it doesn’t work with all the same applications as ManyChat does. Setting up an officially approved Instagram connection is relatively straightforward, as long as you don’t select any extra customizations in your Meta app. (For the YouTube part, don’t add a logo to your Google app: even just adding a logo routes it into manual verification, which takes weeks!)
• However, integrating with Facebook does require a manual approval process. This can be done through your own setup, but it takes more time to get through this process. TikTok also doesn’t offer a way to reply to comments like Instagram does.
• ManyChat is currently testing auto-responses in TikTok DMs; you cannot self-replicate this integration. However, even ManyChat does not have the ability to auto-respond to TikTok comments.
• Finally (and this likely applies to only a small group of people), there are limitations around WhatsApp. You can set up an official API connection to respond to messages. This is not something that I used, and it is out of scope for this article. But if you choose to build this, know there are costs per message with WhatsApp.

For everything else ManyChat does and doesn’t do compared with this setup, see how I replaced ManyChat with Claude.

The 3 ways to set it up

What is cool about this setup is that it can be personalized to how you want to run your business. Once you have your software created, there are 3 main ways that you can communicate with your audience.

1. Keyword DMsSomeone comments a keyword and gets your link automatically.
2. Claude draftsEvery other comment or DM gets a draft reply that you send or edit.
3. Fully automaticClaude answers everything itself, through its paid API.

1. Keyword DMs. You can use this tool as a way to auto-respond to keywords, sending people a link to get them on your email list, as you would do with ManyChat. Once it’s set up, this part runs on your server on its own, without using Claude at all.

2. Claude drafts, you approve. Additionally, you could also have Claude draft responses to all DMs and comments. Then, when you go to review your messages in the tool, you can send as is or simply update before replying. There’s one caveat to this:

• You cannot directly reply to TikTok through the tool, but you can copy and paste between the two.

3. Fully automatic replies. If you want to get really techie with your setup, you can also set it up to auto-respond to all comments and DMs on Instagram.

• You would need to add a Claude API key for this to be completed, which could incur an additional cost beyond the monthly Claude subscription.
• When setting this up, you need to be sure to include very specific instructions on your business, your voice, and how to answer the most common comments and questions.

Want to view an interactive demo of my personal software? Check it out →

Instagram’s DM rules for automation

These are Instagram’s rules, so they apply to every tool, ManyChat included:

• You can send one private DM per comment, and you have 7 days from the comment to send it.
• After that, you can only message someone within 24 hours of their last message to you.
• No cold DMs: you can only message people who commented or messaged you first. The one exception is ManyChat’s Follow to DM beta for new followers, where Meta decides which accounts qualify, and accounts under about 1,000 followers usually don’t.
• You need a creator or business account. Switching is free.
• An app that only works on your own account doesn’t need Meta’s App Review.

What I chose and why

For me, I chose not to set up fully automatic replies, for two reasons. The first is I made this whole tool in order to save money, so I want to keep the tool’s costs as low as possible. It might not be a huge cost; it depends on a few factors, including the Claude model you run it on as well as how much volume of comments and DMs you have.

The second reason that I chose not to was because I am then responsible for what my Claude responds in the messages and comments. I have seen enough stories of chatbots hallucinating that it’s not something I am personally comfortable with yet. So I prefer to leave the messages in my tool in draft status, and if I’m happy with their accuracy and feel they match my voice, only then send.

Build it yourself or use my kit

To see what ManyChat would cost for your audience, try the ManyChat cost calculator.

If you’d like to build your own, my guide on how I replaced ManyChat with Claude walks through the setup and the traps. If you’d rather skip the setup, Chat Manager is my own software as a kit that Claude sets up with you.