Best alternatives to ManyChat, Chatfuel, and friends

The honest answer is that most of these tools do roughly the same thing at the feature level: keyword-triggered comment-to-DM, DM autoresponder, story-mention reply. What separates them is the business model and the safety profile.

On business model, the split is "free forever" vs "trial then paid". ReplyMode is the only tool on this list with a free-forever plan that does not force an upgrade through artificial limits. Every other tool above either runs on a 7-to-14-day trial or caps free usage low enough that any real campaign blows past it. If you want to evaluate one of these before paying, that matters.

On safety, the split is "Official Meta API only" vs "mixed Official + grey-area features". ReplyMode, ManyChat, Chatfuel, Customers.ai, ReplyRush, and InstaChamp all run on the Official Meta API. Inflact does not for all of its features, which is why account-safety risk is higher there. If your Instagram account is your business, this is the only line that matters in this entire comparison.