How to Auto Reply to Instagram DM Messages: Simple+AI Method

In this tutorial, I will show you how to automatically reply to Instagram DMs. I’ll explain two easy ways to do it:

• A simple keyword-based bot (free + fast to set up)
• An AI-powered bot that replies like a human (trained on your business data)

Plus, I’ll give you a FREE template you can copy and paste to get started in minutes.

Let’s dive in!

What is an Instagram DM Bot?

An Instagram DM bot is a program that automatically replies to DMs and comments on Instagram.

Here’s what it can do:

• Automatically send DMs to those who comment on your post
• Answers questions about your business
• Inform followers of new products or deals

Why use an Instagram Auto Reply Bot?

Instagram has 2 billion monthly, and 500 million daily active users.

And let’s face it.

Manually replying to messages in your Instagram DM takes a lot of time, and often feels like it never ends.

That’s where Instagram Auto-Replies come in.

Instagram auto reply bots let you:

• Reply immediately to messages in your Instagram DM
• Send messages 24/7, even when your business is offline
• Filter between standard questions (which you can auto-reply to) and custom questions (handled by humans)

You can even use the Instagram reply bot for multiple purposes:

• Customer Support > Auto Reply to standard questions
• Marketing > Deliver Free Lead Magnets inside your Instagram DM
• Sales > Run Giveaway Campaigns

And there’s much more that you can do with it.

So let’s see how this Instagram DM bot looks inside Instagram.

Instagram Auto Reply Message Example

Before I show you how you can set this up yourself, I will show you a simple example of an Instagram Auto-Reply message:

If someone types in something related to guides to my Instagram account, they instantly get a message back if they want to get a free ebook.

And if they want to get it, they can get it directly inside my Instagram DM. This chat automation will always reply, even when I’m sleeping and my business is offline.

That’s what an Instagram DM bot can do. If you want to set this up for your own Instagram account, then follow the rest of this tutorial!

How to Create Instagram Auto Reply Bot for Free

Here’s how you can create an Instagram DM bot in 3 simple steps:

1. Create a Free Manychat Account and connect it to Instagram
2. Set Up the Auto Reply Trigger in Manychat
3. Add the content to the Instagram DM Automation

Step 1: Create a Free Manychat Account and connect it to Instagram

The first step when making an Instagram DM bot is to create your Manychat account. It’s one of the best Instagram bot platforms.

I have used Manychat for the last 5 years for almost all of my clients because it is:

• Easy to use, you can get started without any chat automation experience
• 100% Meta-Approved, so you can use them without the risk of getting banned
• Cheap, they offer a free plan and their paid plan already starts at $15/month

So you can just click on the button below to create your free Manychat account (and get my 100% discount code):

Here, you can click on Get Started:

Choose Instagram and then log in with your Instagram account:

I have a separate video that explains all the steps you need to take to connect your Instagram account to Manychat.

There are some settings you need to check, so I highly recommend looking at this as well:

How To Connect Instagram Account to Manychat

Step 2: Set Up the Auto Reply Trigger in Manychat

Once you are logged in to Manychat and connected your Instagram account, we can create our Instagram automation.

So let’s say, someone asks a question about the return policy of the business. Then we can automatically reply to that message.

To start making your Instagram auto reply bot in Manychat, go to Automation and click on New Automation:

Each Manychat automation starts with a trigger. The trigger is the event that starts the automation.

In our case, we want to start this automation when a user asks a question about the return policy.

To do that, we can click on New Trigger:

Choose Instagram and then click on User sends a message:

Set it to Message contains return and add a Message Condition:

And set the Message Condition to message contains policy, so it looks like this:

Then, click on Create. Now, this automation will start when someone sends a message with both return and policy in it.

Step 3: Add the content to the Instagram DM Automation

After we’ve created the trigger, we can start with creating the contents of the Instagram Automation.

As a first step, you can add an Instagram Message:

Then we can answer the user’s question:

At EcommerceBizz you always have the option of returning your order within 14 days after delivery. Make sure that the products have not been worn and have all tags attached when they are returned.

After you answered the question, you always want to ensure a good customer experience. So you want to verify that you actually answered their question.

We can add a next message and ask: Did I answer your question?

And add two quick replies to that message:

Quick replies on Instagram are buttons that appear below your message where users can click on.

So if someone clicks on the Yes button, we can just thank them.

And if they click on the No button, we can connect them with one of our support agents that can answer the question for them:

Manychat also has a built-in live chat, which is great. You can just forward a conversation to a human agent that can answer any question your customer has.

To forward a conversation to a human agent, we need to add the Actions element to our flow:

Within this Actions element, we need to add three actions.

So you can just click on + Action, select Live Chat and then click on Mark conversation as Open:

In Manychat, you have two conversation types

1. Closed conversations, conversations handled by the chatbot
2. Open conversations, conversations handled by your agents

By setting the conversation as open, it will be handled by your agents.

The next action we will add is called the Assign Conversation. With this action, we can assign the conversation to a specific member or a group of team members.

So you can just add another action, select Live Chat and click on Assign Conversation:

And select the team member you want to assign the conversation to:

And lastly, we will notify the person that is assigned to this conversation.

Just add another action, choose Livechat and click on Notify Assignees:

Now, your final Instagram automation should look like this:

And that’s it. Now you can just hit Set Live in the upper-right corner and your Instagram auto reply bot is working.

How to Auto Reply to Instagram DM using AI

The next step is to set up Instagram AI responses. We will train AI on your data, such as your website or documents of your business. Then, the AI can automatically reply to questions based on that.

And Manychat’s built-in AI tools aren’t that good, so that’s why we will use Relevance AI.

We can do it in 3 simple steps:

1. Train Relevance AI on your own data
2. Connect Manychat to Relevance AI using Make.com
3. Publish and test

Step 1: Train Relevance AI on your data

Relevance AI lets you build a custom AI assistant trained on your own content. This includes your website, support articles, product info, or onboarding docs.

You can even hook it into tools like Shopify or Google Calendar so it can handle things like order lookups or booking requests.

They have a free plan, and paid plans start at $19/month.

Click the button below to create your free Relevance AI account:

Create Free Relevance AI Account

Then click Sign Up:

After creating your account, go to Agents and select New Agent:

Next, choose Give agent knowledge to upload your data:

You can add files, drop in PDFs, or paste URLs directly. For example, here’s a support document from an eCommerce store:

Once uploaded, enable Allow agent to search so the assistant can be more efficient:

Save changes in the top-right corner:

Finally, give the agent a name and write a short instruction prompt so it knows the tone and style it should use:

When you’re done, hit Run and ask a few test questions. It should already respond based on the data you uploaded:

Step 2: Connect ManyChat to Relevance AI using Make.com

Now we’ll connect the chatbot to Relevance AI. This will mean that Instagram DM chatbot can send incoming questions to the AI and deliver the response back instantly.

For this, we’ll use Make, a no-code platforms that ties various tools together.

Use the button below to get 30 days of Make Pro free (only available through my link):

Get 30 Days of Make Pro for Free

I also have a full tutorial showing how to connect ManyChat and Relevance AI using Make. This video is for WhatsApp, but it works exactly the same for Instagram as well:

Now let’s set everything up inside ManyChat.

Go to Settings → Instagram in ManyChat:

Locate the Default Reply. This is the automation that triggers whenever someone DMs you and no other flow takes over.

Click Select Existing and choose the Default Reply from my free template (download it from here).

Next, open the trigger settings and switch it to Every time so that it captures all incoming messages:

Inside the flow, we store the user’s DM in a custom field (“Relevance AI > Question”, and then send that information to Relevance AI through Make.

Here’s what that Make integration looks like:

This setup runs in four simple steps:

1. An Instagram DM triggers the Default Reply
2. The user’s message is sent to Relevance AI using Make
3. Relevance AI generates an answer and sends it back to ManyChat (saved in “Relevance AI > Answer”)
4. The automation sends the answer to the user

The automation that sends the response is named “Instagram Chatbot > Send AI Answer” in the template:

This flow sends the answer and asks if it was helpful. If it wasn’t, the conversation gets handed off to a human agent.

Step 3: Publish and test

Once everything is connected, click Set Live in the top-right corner:

Then head to your Instagram page, send a DM, and your AI assistant should reply immediately:

Free Auto Reply to Instagram DM Template

So that’s how you automatically reply to Instagram Messages with an Instagram auto reply bot!

If you want to get started quickly, just fill in the form below and you will get direct access to my FREE template 👇