no trial clock, no card
Free Instagram DM automation, catch included
1,000 DMs a month, 3 automations, all five trigger types, and lead capture inside the conversation. The catch is one line at the bottom of every DM, and we would rather tell you about it in the first paragraph than let you find it after setup.
Start freethe catch, up front
What the free plan holds back
- The DMChat signature
- Every free DM ends with “Automated by DMChat.io ⚡”. Removing it is the main reason people upgrade, and we would rather say so than bury it.
- Automated follow-ups
- Paid. It is the highest-value thing we build, and it is what makes Pro worth paying for.
- Lead CSV export
- Paid — though your contacts are always yours, and we will export them for you if you leave.
- Retriggering missed comments
- Paid.
- More than one Instagram account
- Paid. Free covers one handle; Pro carries three, which is where most creators land.
now the good part
What free actually includes
- DMs every month
- 1,000, resets monthly
- Automations running at once
- 3
- Trigger types
- All five — comment, DM keyword, story mention, story reply, live
- DM formats
- Text, tappable buttons, and swipeable card carousels
- Follower-only unlocks
- Included, with a real Instagram follow check
- Lead-capture forms
- 1 automation, 50 leads a month
- Analytics
- 7-day window, with failure reasons
- Templates
- All of them. Never gated.
- Time limit
- None. It is a free plan, not a trial.
- Card required
- No
Free plans across the category
Free means something different at every tool in this space, and one of them counts contacts rather than messages — which is not comparable at all, and is exactly why it gets confusing.
| Tool | Free plan | Entry paid |
|---|---|---|
| DMChat | 1,000 DMs / month | $15 / mo |
| ManyChat | 25 contacts | $14/mo Essential — 250 active contacts |
| LinkDM | 1,000 DMs / month | $19/mo Pro — 25,000 DMs, 3 accounts |
| CreatorFlow | 500 DMs / month | $15/mo Pro — 5,000 DMs, 2 accounts |
Competitor pricing as published in August 2026. Contacts and DMs are different units and do not convert cleanly — a tool counting contacts charges you again for the same person next month.
what people ask us first
Free plan questions
Forever. There is no trial clock and no card. We watched another tool in this category kill its free plan and lose its entire funnel, and we are not repeating it. Every creator who signed up before we started charging also keeps the launch limits permanently, even if the free plan changes for new signups later.
The signature. Every DM sent on the free plan ends with “Automated by DMChat.io ⚡”, so your audience sees where it came from. That is the deal — you get a genuinely working product, we get a line in the inbox of someone who just engaged with a creator. If you would rather your DMs did not say that, that is what Pro is for.
We keep sending into a 20% grace band and email you to say so. Past that we queue rather than silently dropping anyone. What we never do is charge you automatically for going over — the whole point of a flat cap is that the bill cannot surprise you.
Yes — a Business or Creator account. That is an Instagram rule, not ours: automated messaging is only available on those account types. Switching is free and takes a minute in the Instagram app.
For most creators, most months, yes. Where it runs out is the month a reel performs — a few thousand comments in a day is not unusual. That is the moment to look at Pro, and also the moment most tools would have sent you a bill instead of an email.
$15/mo for 30,000 DMs, or $9/mo locked forever for the first 99 creators who take it. Flat either way — the price does not move with how well your posts do.
Start on free. Stay on free if it fits.
Plenty of creators never outgrow 1,000 DMs a month, and that is a perfectly good outcome for us. Upgrade when your posts make you, not when a clock runs out.
Create a free account