Blotato Launches DM Automations for Instagram and Facebook

The comment says “BLITZ” and the link is already in their inbox.

Blotato now has DM automations for Instagram and Facebook. Someone comments on your post or sends your account a message, and Blotato replies with a direct message you wrote once, plus up to three link buttons. Set it up in the web app, or tell Claude or ChatGPT to build it for you.

Keyword-to-DM flows are not new. ManyChat has sold them for years. Building one from your agent, on the same key that published the post, is.

I built Blotato and I use it every day, so weigh that however you like. If you want to run this, paid plans start at $29 a month, and API access begins with a paid plan rather than the trial.

What a DM Automation Does

Three parts, and that is the whole model.

• A trigger. Either a comment on your post or reel, or a direct message someone sends your account. Comment triggers can watch one specific post or every post on the account.
• Keywords. Optional. Matching ignores case, matches whole words, and tolerates a line break inside a multi-word phrase. Any one keyword firing is enough. Leave it empty and every comment matches.
• A message. Up to 640 characters, plus up to three link buttons at 20 characters per label.

A comment trigger answers with a private reply to the comment. A message trigger answers with a standard DM.

Automations start as drafts and go live when you publish them. Edits to a live automation publish the moment you save.

Your Agent Can Build the Whole Flow

Eight endpoints cover it: list, get, create, update, delete, plus runs, logs, and analytics. All eight are in the DM automations API reference, and seven are exposed on the MCP server at mcp.blotato.com/mcp as blotato_create_automation, blotato_list_automations, blotato_update_automation, blotato_delete_automation, blotato_list_automation_runs, blotato_list_automation_logs, and blotato_get_automation_analytics. The single-get is API-only, because the list tool already returns the full object.

So you never have to open the builder. Paste this into your agent:

walk me through how to setup blotato DM automations

Or skip the walkthrough and describe the flow you want. Name the page, name the trigger keyword, paste the links, and the agent creates it and takes it live.

The largest share of new Blotato API signups now arrives through MCP, which is why the tool surface shipped alongside the builder rather than months behind it.

Reading the Results

Every automation carries all-time totals: triggered, completed, failed. Runs and logs sit behind their own endpoints, so an agent can pull the failure reason on a specific run instead of guessing.

One quirk. A run stays open until its message settles, so completed plus failed is sometimes lower than triggered. That is timing, not lost messages.

Limits Worth Knowing Before You Build

Instagram and Facebook only. Twitter/X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, and YouTube are not supported.

The messaging windows are Meta’s, not ours. A private reply to a comment is allowed once per comment, within seven days. A reply to a message has to land within 24 hours of that person’s last message. Miss the window and the send fails.

That one-reply rule is per comment, not per tool. If you already sent a private reply to a comment, through Blotato or anything else, Meta rejects the second one. Worth knowing if you are migrating a flow off another platform and leaving it running during the switch.

No cold outreach. An automation only answers people who contacted you first. Your own comments and the messages your account sends never start a run, so you cannot trip your own flow while replying to people manually.

Every DM an automation sends counts toward your plan’s monthly active-contacts limit:

• Starter. 1,000 contacts a month.
• Creator. 6,000 contacts a month.
• Agency. 15,000 contacts a month.

A contact counts once per month no matter how many times you reach them, and the count resets at the start of each month.

The behavior at the cap is worth knowing. A manual send is rejected once you hit the number. An automation is not. It keeps firing and carries the count past your plan number, so the ceiling will not stop itself.

If you connected your Instagram or Facebook account before comments and messaging launched in July, reconnect it. The automation needs those permissions and an older connection does not carry them.

This just shipped, so your stats build as your posts collect comments. I would rather put it in your hands now and improve it in the open.

“What nobody had was one key that publishes across nine platforms, installs the flow that answers the comments, and reports back on both, with an agent driving all three. That used to be three vendors, three approvals, and three bills.” - Sabrina Ramonov, founder of Blotato

Where to Find It

Open Automations in the web app and click New automation. Or point your agent at the MCP server and ask it to create one. Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cowork, Cursor, and Codex all connect over the documented setup, and ChatGPT connects through Developer mode on the web. There is a setup page per client.

Available on all paid plans, alongside the comments and messaging endpoints and analytics behind the same key.

More coming.