Instagram DMs
Connect Instagram DMs with Instagram Login on a professional account — no Facebook Page required, using Instagram's official API.
CoPhrase answers Instagram DMs through Instagram's official API, connected with Instagram Login. You log in with the Instagram account itself. No Facebook Page, no Business Manager gymnastics.
What you need
A professional Instagram account — a Business or Creator account. A personal account cannot connect; switching to professional is free and takes a minute in the Instagram app.
That's it. Since Instagram opened up direct login for professional accounts, the old requirement to have a Facebook Page linked to your Instagram account is gone. (Connecting via a linked Facebook Page still works as a fallback if that's how your account is already set up.)
Setup
Make sure the account is professional
In the Instagram app: switch the account to Business or Creator if it isn't already.
Connect with Instagram Login
Start the Instagram connection in CoPhrase. You'll authorize with Instagram directly and grant permission to read and send messages for that account.
Pick the agent
Choose which agent answers on this account. Done — DMs start flowing into your inbox.
Instagram DMs arrive in a later wave
This is an official Meta integration, which means it's gated on Meta's app review — a process with its own calendar. Instagram DMs ship in the channel-expansion wave, after the web chat widget, Discord, and WhatsApp.
The 24-hour window
Instagram's rules on when you can message someone are strict, and they're the main thing that shapes how the agent behaves here.
- The window opens only when the customer DMs you. Nothing you send opens or extends it.
- Inside the window: the agent replies freely.
- Outside the window: you cannot send. There is no template escape hatch on Instagram like there is on WhatsApp.
- You can never message someone first. Instagram has no cold-DM route through the official API — and that's fine, because CoPhrase is inbound-first by design.
There is one extension: a Meta-approved tag lets a human (not the bot) continue replying up to 7 days after the customer's last message — for handoff cases where a person needs to follow up on something the agent escalated. It applies to human replies only.
If a window closes on a thread with a pending reply, the inbox tells you plainly, rather than silently failing to send.
Capabilities
| Official API | Yes |
| Ban / restriction risk | None from using it as intended |
| Outbound message length | 1,000 characters — enforced before sending, because Instagram silently truncates |
| Outbound media | Text and images |
| Inbound media | Images, audio messages (voice notes), and video — read and transcribed for the agent |
| Cold outreach | Not possible |
The agent is told the 1,000-character limit before it writes, so it composes a reply that fits rather than having one amputated at the end.
Things to know
Instagram customers lead with voice notes and photos. This is the channel where that happens most. Audio messages are transcribed and images are described before the agent replies — that's on by default, not a setting you have to find.
Story replies and mentions arrive as DMs. They land in the thread like any other message.
Comment-to-DM — the pattern where a comment containing a keyword gets a public reply plus a DM that starts an agent conversation — is on the roadmap. It is not available at launch.