What is inbox automation?

• Acknowledges: an instant reply to someone’s first message, so they know it arrived and roughly when to expect an answer.
• Answers: replies to keywords such as PRICE or HOURS, or to the questions people tap when they open a new chat.
• Collects: asks for an email address, an order number or a preferred date, and saves the answer.
• Delivers: sends a link, a file or a product card once the person has replied.
• Sorts: labels chats, separates sales from support, and passes anything unusual to a person.
• Covers the gaps: an away message outside working hours that says when someone will be back.

Meta Business Suite has automations of its own for Facebook, Messenger and Instagram, including an instant reply to a first message, an away message, answers to frequently asked questions and replies to custom keywords. They’re free and suit an inbox with a handful of predictable questions.

Connected apps use Meta’s messaging API instead. Meta sends them each new message as it arrives, and they can hold a multi-step conversation, send buttons and link cards, answer comments with a private reply, and remember where each person is in a flow. Comment-to-DM and AI reply tools work this way.

A quick test of whether a tool uses the official route: it should send you through Meta’s own login screen to connect your account. A tool that asks for your Instagram password instead isn’t using the API.

• Start conversations. A tool can message someone only after they’ve reached out first: a DM, a Story reply or mention, or a comment, which allows one private reply.
• Message all your followers. Mass DMs aren’t possible through Meta’s own tools or its API.
• Reply whenever it likes. Replies must go out within 24 hours of the person’s last message, apart from support from real people under the human agent tag, which stretches that to 7 days.
• Join group chats. Meta’s API handles one customer per conversation.
• Run on personal accounts. Only Instagram professional accounts (Business or Creator) and Facebook Pages can use it.

• Text length: an Instagram message can carry at most 1,000 bytes of text. Plain English letters take one byte each, but Devanagari letters take three and most emoji four, so a reply written in Hindi fits about a third as many letters.
• Names and follow status: a tool can read someone’s name, username and whether they follow you only after they’ve messaged the account, tapped an ice breaker or used the persistent menu.
• Folders: once a tool answers a request, Meta moves the chat to General, whatever your inbox settings.
• Pace: Instagram allows at most 750 private replies to comments per hour per account, and Messenger lets a Page send, each day, up to 200 times the number of people who have messaged it.

Tip: End every automated path with a way to reach a person, such as “Reply TEAM and someone will pick this up.” A flow that answers PRICE perfectly but loops on everything else feels like a locked door.