Billed for growing
GRO.co prices on your follower count. inDM charges one flat price and meters nothing. That single difference decides which one is cheaper for you, and it changes as you grow.
GRO.co (formerly Grocers List) meters something no other tool in this comparison does: your audience size. Sending is unlimited within a band; what moves the bill is how many followers you have.
For a small account that is a genuinely good deal. Under 15,000 followers their plan is free, with unlimited posts, and that band covers most creators at the point where they are first automating anything.
The shape has a consequence worth naming plainly. A tool priced on follower count bills you more for succeeding, even in a month where you sent less. Cross 500K and Plus goes from $30 to $60; cross 2M and it is $100. The growth you are using the tool to produce is the thing that raises the price.
inDM meters nothing. The free plan sends without limit and Growth is $14.99 flat ($4.99 the first month). Your follower count is not an input to our billing, and neither is your sending: a viral month that adds 40,000 followers and 40,000 DMs changes nothing about what you pay.
The other thing to weigh: their free tier, like most in this category, carries GRO branding on your messages. Removing it means Plus at $30.
Why creators switch
Growing doesn't raise the bill
GRO.co's price steps up as your audience does, $30 on Plus becomes $60 past 150K followers and $100 past 500K. inDM never reads your follower count. The only thing that moves our bill is how many messages you actually sent.
No branding on your messages
GRO's free tier carries GRO branding; "Branding removed" is what Plus at $30 buys, and it buys it inside a follower band. inDM sells app branding removal on Growth at $4.99 for the first month, then $14.99 a month, with no follower band anywhere in it.
One number to forecast
Their pricing is a grid: two plan tiers across four audience bands, plus Facebook add-ons above 500K combined followers. Ours is one plan at one price, and the plans differ in a handful of things, all printed on the card.
Feature by feature
| Feature | inDM | GRO.co |
|---|---|---|
| Comment-to-DMSomeone comments a keyword on a post or reel; they get your link in a DM, instantly. | Yes | Yes |
| Story repliesA reply to your story triggers an automatic DM back. | Yes | Yes Story automations on Plus and above |
| Keyword DMsA DM containing a keyword gets an instant, useful answer. | Yes | Yes Custom keywords on the free tier |
| Follow gateAsk for a follow before the link is delivered. Every link grows your following. | Yes | Partial Verify current gate behaviour on their site |
| Email captureCollect an email address inside the DM thread, attached to the contact. | Yes Asks in the thread, saved to the contact | Yes Save-to-email on Plus and above |
| Live DM previewSee the exact DM (bubbles, buttons, link card) before anything goes live. | Yes Always on screen while you build | Partial Verify current builder on their site |
| Built on your real contentAutomations attach to actual posts, reels, and stories, not an abstract flowchart. | Yes The spine of the product | Yes |
| Unified inboxEvery conversation your automations create, in one view. | Yes | Partial Verify current inbox scope on their site |
| ContactsEvery engaged person becomes a tracked contact (leads, hot leads, customers, superfans), exportable anytime. | Yes Light by design, not a sales CRM | Yes Follower count drives the bill, not contacts |
| AnalyticsTrigger rate, DM click-through, keyword performance, best hours to post. | Yes Trigger rate, keywords and hours on both plans; DM click-through on Growth | Yes |
| Predictable pricingYou can say what next month costs before the month happens. | Yes Nothing is metered, $0 or $14.99, whatever your volume does | Partial Predictable within a band, but the bill steps up as the audience grows |
| Free foreverA free plan that renews every month, not a trial that runs out. | Yes Unlimited messages and every automation type, on one connected Instagram account | Yes Free below 15K followers, with GRO branding on messages |
| Follow-up messageA second DM hours after the first: a thank you, a nudge to follow, or the link again. Optionally only to the people who never opened it. | Yes 30 minutes to 20 hours later, with an option to skip anyone who already clicked; on Growth | No Replies immediately, on the trigger |
| Broadcast DMsOne message, written once, sent to everyone the account is currently allowed to message. On Instagram that means people who contacted you in the last 24 hours, never your whole follower list. | Yes Everyone reachable right now, counted from your own conversation history, with a per-person result afterwards; on Growth | Yes On their Pro tier, from $80/mo and rising with follower count; read from gro.co/pricing 2026-09-17 |
Feature support as of August 2026. Something changed? Tell us and we'll fix it.
The pricing math
Free forever: $0, no card, unlimited messages, every automation type, unlimited keywords, the follow and email gates, automation and audience analytics, the unified inbox and export. Nothing is metered on either plan, so there is no allowance to forecast and nothing to run out of. Free connects one Instagram account. Growth removes app branding, connects up to 5 Instagram accounts, takes the limit off how many automations you keep, carries multiple links in one automation, sends a follow-up message hours after the first, lets an automation wait for a post you haven't published yet, broadcasts one message to your audience, opens the workspace to your team, and shows you who clicks your links and the countries they came from, at $4.99 for your first month, then $14.99 a month. inDM bills in USD at the same price wherever you are. Follower count is never an input to the bill, and neither is volume. There is no number about your account that moves the price.
Priced on follower count, checked 2026-08-14. Free $0 forever for accounts below 15K followers, Instagram only, unlimited posts, no card, GRO branding on messages. Plus $30/mo, rising with audience: $60 up to 500K, $100 up to 2M, $200 up to 3M: adds branding removal, carousel DMs, story automations and save-to-email. Pro $80/mo, rising $110 / $150 / $250 on the same bands: adds scheduled automations, broadcast DMs, lead-magnet DMs, Klaviyo, and Facebook and Amazon deep links. Annual billing saves $60 on Plus and $160 on Pro. Facebook is a $20-30/mo add-on above 500K combined followers, and Paid Memberships carry 15% per transaction on the storefront side. USD only.
GRO prices your audience; inDM prices neither your audience nor your sending. That makes the comparison unusually simple, because only one side of it has a variable. A creator with 8,000 followers: GRO is $0 with GRO branding on the messages, inDM is $0, and the choice is which product you prefer. A creator with 120,000 followers: GRO Plus is $30, inDM is $0 badged or $14.99 unbadged. A creator with 12,000 followers sending 40,000 DMs a month: GRO is $0, inDM is $0: volume never enters our bill at all, which is the scenario where they used to win outright and no longer do. The rule of thumb is now one line: GRO gets more expensive as your audience grows, and inDM does not get more expensive at all. Figures as of 2026-08-14 for GRO.co and 2026-08-16 for inDM.
Their pricing, from the source: GRO.co's pricing page (checked August 2026).
Where GRO.co is genuinely strong
Two places GRO.co is the better answer:
- A free tier that covers most creators. Free for any account under 15,000 followers, with unlimited posts, is the most generous entry point in this comparison for a small account that sends a lot. If you are under 15K and sending heavily, they will be cheaper than us and it is not close.
- A wider commerce surface. Klaviyo, Amazon and Facebook deep links, lead-magnet DMs and paid memberships make them a fuller stack for an affiliate or storefront creator than an Instagram DM tool alone.
What is GRO.co?
GRO.co, formerly Grocers List, is an Instagram DM automation tool aimed at creators who monetise through links, affiliate revenue and email lists. It runs comment triggers with custom keywords, story automations, carousel DMs, lead-magnet DMs and save-to-email, and it integrates with Klaviyo along with Amazon and Facebook deep links on its higher tier.
What makes it structurally different from everything else here is the meter. GRO does not price on messages, contacts or credits. It prices on how many followers you have.
How follower-count pricing actually behaves
Their published structure, checked 2026-08-14:
- Free: $0 forever, for accounts below 15,000 followers. Instagram only, unlimited posts, no card. GRO branding on your messages.
- Plus: $30/mo up to 150K, then $60 to 500K, $100 to 2M, $200 to 3M. Adds branding removal, carousel DMs, story automations, save-to-email.
- Pro, $80/mo, then $110 / $150 / $250 on the same bands. Adds scheduled automations, broadcast DMs, lead-magnet DMs, Klaviyo, and Facebook and Amazon deep links.
Annual billing saves $60 on Plus and $160 on Pro. Facebook is a $20 to 30/mo add-on above 500K combined followers.
Two things follow from this shape, and they pull in opposite directions.
In your favour: sending is effectively unlimited within a band. If you have a modest audience that engages heavily, you can run enormous DM volume without the bill moving at all. Under 15K followers that volume costs nothing.
Against you: the bill goes up when you grow. Not when you send more, when your audience gets larger. Crossing 500,000 followers doubles Plus from $30 to $60 in a month where your sending might have been flat or lower. The metric being billed is the outcome the tool exists to produce.
Neither of those is a criticism of the product. It is just a shape, and it suits some accounts and not others.
How inDM's meter differs
inDM prices on messages sent, and nothing else. Not followers, not contacts, not credits, not connected accounts.
Free forever is unlimited messages with every automation type, unlimited keywords, the follow and email gates, automation and audience analytics, unified inbox and contacts, no card. It connects one Instagram account. Growth removes app branding and connects up to 5 Instagram accounts, two of the things it adds, at $4.99 for the first month, then $14.99, with no volume tier above it, because there is no volume being counted.
Your follower count never enters the calculation. An account at 2,000 followers and an account at 2,000,000 pay the same for the same volume of DMs. A viral week that adds 40,000 followers does not change the bill unless it also produced more sends.
Nor does volume, on either plan. There is no adjustment to make for fair comparison, because there is no number of ours to adjust.
Working out which is cheaper for you
Because the meters measure different things, division does not settle it. Three real scenarios do:
- 8,000 followers, 6,000 DMs a month. GRO: $0, with GRO branding on the messages, or $30 to remove it. inDM: $0, or $14.99 to remove app branding. Effectively the same offer at the same price; nobody wins this row.
- 120,000 followers, 4,000 DMs a month. GRO Plus: $30. inDM: $0 badged, or $14.99 unbadged, because we never see the 120,000. We win clearly.
- 12,000 followers, 40,000 DMs a month. GRO: $0. inDM: $0. Volume is not an input to either bill, so this row is a tie. It was theirs outright until we stopped metering on 2026-08-16.
The pattern: GRO gets cheaper the more you send relative to your audience. inDM gets cheaper the bigger your audience is relative to what you send. Find yourself on that axis and the answer is usually obvious.
Branding, and broadcasts
GRO's free tier carries their branding on your messages, "Branding removed" is one of the things $30 Plus buys. That is the norm across this category rather than anything unusual.
inDM sells the same removal at a different price and without the band: Remove app branding is one of the things Growth buys, at $4.99 for the first month, then $14.99 a month. GRO's removal price is $30 and it also depends on how many followers you have; ours is $14.99 whoever you are.
Broadcasts were the clear gap here until September 2026, and are not one any more: both tools send them. The shapes differ. GRO puts Broadcast DMs on Pro, which starts at $80/mo and climbs with your audience. inDM includes them on Growth at $14.99 whoever you are, and the audience is computed rather than chosen: everyone who messaged you, replied to a story, or tapped a button in one of your automations in the last 24 hours. That is the only group Instagram lets a business message, on either tool. Afterwards you see what happened to each person, one by one.
Both tools run on Instagram's official API, so both sit under the same DM limits Meta enforces per account, and the underlying comment-to-DM mechanic is the same on either.
Already using it?
Switch from GRO.co: what carries over, what doesn't, and what the move actually costs.
Questions, answered plainly
Is GRO.co free?
Yes, for accounts below 15,000 followers: unlimited posts, Instagram only, no card. GRO branding appears on your messages on that tier; removing it means Plus at $30/mo. Above 15K followers the paid bands begin. Checked 2026-08-14.
Why does GRO.co charge more as I grow?
Because follower count is their billing meter rather than message volume. Plus is $30 up to 150K, $60 to 500K, $100 to 2M and $200 to 3M. The bill responds to audience size, so it can rise in a month where you sent fewer DMs. inDM meters nothing at all, and never reads your follower count.
Which is cheaper, GRO.co or inDM?
It depends only on your audience size, because that is the one thing either tool prices. At 120,000 followers, GRO Plus is $30 and inDM is $0, or $14.99 with app branding removed. Below 15,000 followers GRO is free with GRO branding, which is close to the same offer as our free plan. Sending volume no longer separates them: GRO does not meter it and, since 2026-08-16, neither do we.
Does inDM do broadcast DMs like GRO.co?
Yes, since September 2026. inDM sends one message to everyone inside Instagram's 24-hour messaging window: everyone who DMed you, replied to a story, or tapped a button in one of your automations in the last day. It is included on Growth at $14.99 a month, where GRO includes theirs on Pro, which starts at $80/mo and rises with your follower count. Neither tool can message your whole contact list or all your followers, because Instagram does not allow that.
Can I switch from ManyChat or another tool?
Yes. Disconnect isn't even required first: connect your Instagram to inDM, rebuild your key automations (most creators have three or four that matter), preview, and set them live. Conversation history doesn't transfer between tools, no tool can import another's, so export your contacts from the old tool for your records. The switch guides walk through the order of operations.
Is Instagram DM automation allowed?
Yes. When it runs through Meta's official Instagram API on a professional account, and only messages people whose own action invited it, like commenting a keyword or replying to a story. That's exactly how inDM works. What breaks the rules is different: unofficial apps that ask for your password, scraping, purchased engagement, and cold outreach to people who never engaged.