Getting started

Instagram account requirements

What your Instagram account needs to be before Dartzo can work — and the one thing on your account that quietly breaks delivery.

Dartzo has two requirements, and both live on your Instagram account rather than in Dartzo. Get them right and setup is a minute. Get one wrong and Instagram refuses your DMs with an error that looks like our bug — so it’s worth two minutes now.

Your Instagram is a Business or Creator account, not Personal.
Dartzo is the only comment-to-DM tool connected to that account.

1. Business or Creator, not Personal

Instagram calls Business and Creator accounts professional accounts, and its messaging API is built only for them. Both work identically with Dartzo — pick whichever fits how you describe yourself. Creator suits individuals, public figures, and content creators; Business suits shops, brands, and services.

Which Instagram account types work

Business

Everything works

Creator

Everything works

Personal

Instagram gives no messaging access at all

Instagram

Switch to a Business or Creator account

yourhandle

128posts8,412followers310following

Your nameCreator · link in bio 👇

Edit profileShare profile

Instagram renames these menus between app versions. If a label doesn't match exactly, look for the nearest equivalent — the path is the same. Switching is free, reversible, and takes under a minute.

1/5

Switching keeps your posts, your followers and your handle exactly as they are, and you can switch back at any time. Once you’re professional, follow Connecting your Instagram account — and if a connect attempt already failed for this reason, just try it again now.

Why a Personal account can never work

This isn’t a limit Dartzo chose, and it isn’t something a paid plan removes. The permissions Dartzo needs — sending a DM, reading comments — do not exist on a Personal account. There is nothing for Instagram to grant, so the authorization fails.

A Personal account can accept our tester invite and still not connect

These are two separate checks, and passing the first tells you nothing about the second. If you accepted the invite and connecting still fails, check your account type before anything else.

What switching actually gives you

Capability	Why Dartzo needs it
Your profile and follower count	Confirms which account you connected and shows it on your dashboard.
Your posts and reels	So you can point an automation at a specific post instead of your whole account.
Comments delivered to Dartzo	The trigger. Without this, nothing tells Dartzo a comment happened.
Private replies (the DM)	The automatic DM Instagram lets you send in response to a comment.
Public comment replies	The optional public reply Dartzo can post under the comment, if you turn it on.

2. Only one DM automation tool per account

Instagram allows exactly one automatic reply per comment

That’s one reply per comment across every tool, not one per tool. If a second comment-to-DM product is connected to the same Instagram account, the two race for that single slot — and whichever loses is refused permanently for that comment. No retry can recover it.

The damage is worse than losing half your DMs, because Instagram doesn’t explain the refusal. It returns a bare server error with no reason attached, so from the outside it looks exactly like Dartzo being broken. On the account where we first found this, 100% of the failures were comments the other tool had already answered.

Dartzo watches for this and tells you. When we see another tool sending from your account, a banner appears across the app explaining what’s happening. It never blocks or pauses anything — your automations keep running and keep winning the races they win — and it clears itself once the other tool stops sending, because at that point it has stopped being true.

Disconnect or switch off the other tool, and every comment starts coming through again.
The banner isn’t dismissible. A dismissed warning would let you forget a condition that’s still costing you leads every hour.
We don’t name the other product. The detection is a strong inference, and we’d rather warn you accurately than accuse a competitor by name.

Does switching to a professional account change how my profile looks?

Your posts, followers, handle, and bio stay as they are. Instagram adds professional features like insights, and shows a category on your profile if you choose one.

Is Business better than Creator for Dartzo?

Neither is better. Dartzo treats them identically — both are professional accounts and both grant the same messaging and comment permissions.

Can I switch back to Personal later?

Yes, Instagram lets you switch back at any time. Dartzo will stop being able to send once you do, because the permissions go away with the account type.

I switched to Business but Dartzo still won’t connect.

While Dartzo is in early access, you also need to accept our Instagram tester invite. Those are two separate requirements — see Connecting your Instagram account for the invite step.

Can I keep my old tool running while I try Dartzo?

You can, but expect both tools to lose DMs while they overlap, because they’re competing for the same single reply per comment. Run one at a time and you’ll see what each actually does.

My DMs stopped and I’m not running another tool.

Then the cause is somewhere else. The most common ones are an access token that needs reconnecting and a tester invite that was never accepted — both are covered in Connecting your Instagram account.