If the main reason you pay for ManyChat is to send a link when someone comments on a reel, OpenReply is worth a look. It’s an open-source tool for Instagram Business and Creator accounts. You can run a keyword campaign without paying per contact. The trade-off is that you have to keep it running yourself.

From a comment to a private reply

In the demo I used for the video, a shop asks people to comment GUIDE. Someone writes “GUIDE! need this”, OpenReply picks up the keyword, and the shopper gets a private message with a Shop the new drop button. You choose the keyword, message and destination for each campaign. OpenReply campaign demo

At 0:18 in my walkthrough, you can see how the same comment looks to the campaign and to the person receiving the link.

You can also leave a public reply under the comment to let the person know to check their inbox. If a reader says the link never arrived, the delivery log shows whether the message was sent, skipped or failed. A tracked button lets you see how many clicks a campaign produced. OpenReply features on GitHub

What self-hosting involves

The public site gives you a preview. To send real DMs, you deploy the web app and a separate background worker. The web app receives incoming comments. The worker takes matching replies off a queue and sends them through Instagram’s official API. It needs to keep running after you close the dashboard.

The worker is the part to budget for alongside the web app and data storage. It handles queued sends and retries.

You can connect Instagram using your own Meta app or pay for the optional Zernio connection. OpenReply’s code is free either way. In the video I budgeted a few dollars a month for a small installation. Your actual bill depends on where you host the worker and databases. The setup guide includes a prompt you can give a coding assistant to walk through deployment. Official setup guide

Would I use it?

For one creator account that regularly gives away a guide or links to products, I’d consider OpenReply if I already looked after a small server. One popular reel can bring in hundreds of keyword comments without adding a per-contact software fee. If I wanted to set up a campaign and leave the infrastructure to someone else, I’d stick with a managed tool like ManyChat.

I’m independent of OpenReply and ManyChat. Neither sponsored this review.