Frequently asked questions

Askenly replies to Instagram comments, Story replies and DMs for you. It sends the link someone asked for, answers common questions, collects email addresses and books appointments, at any hour. When a conversation needs a person, it hands the chat to you in a shared Inbox.

Creators, coaches, online shops, salons, studios and agencies: anyone who gets more Instagram comments and messages than they can answer by hand, and loses customers when replies come late.

Instagram today, through Business and Creator accounts. Facebook and WhatsApp show as Coming soon in the app and the docs, and will be announced in the Changelog when they ship.

No. Automations, scheduled posts and emails run on Askenly’s servers. They keep working while your laptop is closed and while you’re signed out. The browser signs you out after 4 hours without activity, which doesn’t stop anything.

Askenly runs in the browser and works on a phone. The menu moves into a drawer on small screens, and the Inbox, Automations and Appointments all work there.

Yes. Askenly was formerly DM Slide. Existing accounts, automations and tokens carried over unchanged, and the Changelog lists releases under both names.

Askenly uses Instagram’s official API, the same one Instagram provides for business tools. It only messages people who contacted you first, never outside Instagram’s 24-hour window, and it sends at a steady pace within your plan’s per-minute rate.

Yes. Instagram only gives outside tools access to professional accounts. Switching takes a minute in the Instagram app under Settings, then Account type and tools. Your followers and posts stay the same, and no Facebook Page is needed.

No. You sign in on Instagram’s own screen and approve the permissions it lists. Askenly receives an access token, stores it encrypted and never shows it in a browser.

That switch lets connected tools send DMs. With it off, Askenly can see comments, but Instagram refuses every DM it tries to send. Turn it on in the Instagram app under Settings, Messages and story replies, Message controls, Connected tools.

No. Instagram lets a business message people who commented, replied to a Story or sent a DM, and only within 24 hours of their last message. Every automation starts from one of those, so Askenly can’t be used for cold outreach.

Yes. Anyone who sends the single word STOP gets no more automated messages from any automation until they send START. You can still reply to them yourself from the Inbox.

Instagram signs connected tools out. Open Settings → Channels and connect again. The account’s history comes back, and its automations and scheduled posts stay paused until you turn them on.

A few minutes. Choose a goal, pick the post and a keyword, write a short opening DM, add your link and publish. Create your first automation walks through it step by step.

A comment with your keyword on a post or Reel, a reply to your Story, or a DM that contains the keyword. Which ones are available depends on the goal; the Automations guide has the full table.

No. Matching ignores capitals and the words around the keyword, so “guide please!” matches GUIDE. Add plurals and common misspellings as extra keywords, separated by commas.

Test automation on the automation’s page shows the DM without sending it, and Test a comment in Help → System health tells you which automation a comment would start. For a full test, comment from a second Instagram account.

Comments from the connected account never start an automation, so a reply you post under your own Reel can’t send you a DM. Test from another account.

Every matching comment starts the automation. Turn on sending only once per person if you want one DM per person, however many times they comment.

Up to 5, each with its own message and delay. They all go out within 23 hours of the content, because Instagram closes the window after 24, and any follow-up is skipped if the person has replied.

It asks people to follow you before the content arrives. Askenly checks with Instagram first, so people who already follow never see the ask. If Instagram can’t say, the content is sent anyway, so an outage never withholds what your post promised.

They’re saved but paused. Paused automations don’t count toward the limit, so you can keep seasonal ones ready and switch them on when needed.

The chat moves to Assigned in your Inbox, marked unread, with the reason. Automations pause for that person for 24 hours so nothing automated lands in the middle of your conversation.

No. The 24-hour pause ends on its own. Any reply your team sends by hand also starts a fresh 24-hour pause for that person.

Owners and admins get an email, at most once per chat every 30 minutes, and everyone sees open hand-offs under the bell in the header. Choose what reaches you in Settings → Notifications.

Yes. You can send photos and attach video, audio or a PDF to Instagram replies.

1 seat on Free and Starter, 2 seats on Growth and 10 seats on Scale. Invites last 7 days.

Members reply in the Inbox and work with automations, posts and contacts. Owners and admins can also connect Instagram, change settings, invite people and manage billing.

Add your services and hours in Appointments, then create a Book an appointment automation. People get your next three open times, reply 1, 2 or 3 to book, and receive a confirmation and reminders by email.

Yes. They can write something like “Tuesday afternoon” or “more times” and get a new set of times that fit.

No. Booking is always free for you and your customers, with no payment step.

Yes. Connect Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook in Appointments → Availability. Your busy events block times, and every booking, change and cancellation is written to the calendar.

Yes. Turn on Require approval for a service. Its bookings arrive as Tentative and get no emails until you confirm them.

Only if you set a capacity above one for that service, for classes or group sessions. Otherwise each time can be booked once, even if two people reply at the same moment.

Yes. Every workspace has a public booking page, and each service has its own link. Appointments shows how many people opened each link and who booked.

Yes, with the Get more sales goal on Growth and Scale. The DM asks for an address, confirms it in the chat and saves it to the contact.

A short email sequence follows over the next days. It stops when they click a link in an email, buy or reply. Opens don’t count, because some mail apps open every email automatically.

Yes. Replies arrive in your Inbox as email chats, and you can answer them there. Your reply goes out by email, threaded, from your business name.

Yes. Send purchases from Shopify, Stripe or your own checkout to the conversion address on the automation’s page. Each sale is counted as revenue and ends that person’s sequence.

Yes. In the builder, Send test email sends to your account address, or to one address you type (up to 10 an hour).

Suggested replies in the Inbox never do: they fill the composer and you decide whether to send. On paid plans, the business assistant in an Answer questions automation does reply on its own, from your Business profile, and hands anything it can’t answer to a person.

Only from your Business profile, business knowledge, hours, services, saved answers and the recent messages in that chat. It doesn’t search the web and won’t make up prices or policies.

20 a day on Free, 100 on Starter, 400 on Growth and 1,500 on Scale.

Fill in Settings → Business profile, including business knowledge on paid plans. Read website can copy your homepage text into the knowledge box for you to edit.

Posts, carousels of up to 10 items, Reels and Stories, from Schedule in the app menu. Each one publishes at the time and time zone you pick.

Yes. Link a comment-to-DM or comment-to-booking automation while scheduling, and the first comments get a reply straight away.

It shows as Failed with Instagram’s reason, such as an account that needs reconnecting or media Instagram can’t use. Fix it and schedule it again.

Only people in your workspace. Each workspace is isolated by database rules, so nobody in another workspace can read your data.

Contacts, conversations and history stay in Askenly, and the stored access token is deleted. Remove permanently deletes one disconnected account’s records, 7 days after you confirm.

Yes. Contacts → Import / Export downloads contacts as a CSV file, and Export in Appointments downloads bookings, without contact details unless you ask for them.

Yes. The Free plan needs no card and includes 3 live automations, 1,000 DMs a month and 1 Instagram account.

$19, $39 or $77 a month, month to month. Payment is handled on Stripe’s secure pages and Askenly never sees your card.

Automated DMs pause until the month resets in UTC or you upgrade. You can still reply by hand from the Inbox.

Yes. Cancel or change plans from Settings → Billing & subscription at any time. Nothing is deleted when you move to a smaller plan.

Yes, from Starter. The MCP server lets an assistant read your workspace, and on higher plans draft automations, schedule posts and book appointments, within your plan’s limits.

Signed in, open Help → System health. It checks your Instagram connection and automations and can test a comment. The Troubleshooting guide covers the most common problems step by step.

Signed-in customers can open a request from Help in the app. If you saw an error screen, include the Error ID it shows, along with what you were doing and roughly when.