PetalumaFlower
Regular Member
- Jun 23, 2014
- 272
- 92
Hey Everyone,
If you want to schedule posts to Instagram, you may be able to use Schedugram. It lets you upload photos, edit them, add a caption with hashtags, and post the photo immediately, or post it later at a specified time.
I started some new Instagram accounts last month and wanted to schedule the photos to go out across the day so I don't have to do it manually. Since these are white hat Instagrams I am using for a legitimate business, I didn't want to jeopardize them using this Schedugram service if it turned out Schedugram was against Instagram's TOS. So I used Schedugram on one of my old personal accounts to test it out.
Here's what happened:
Pros:
- You get a 7 day free trial to try the service.
- You upload the photos you want to post from your hard drive onto their website.
- You can schedule posts for whatever day and time you want.
- Their interface will tell you if your post failed to post, or if it was posted successfully.
- You can repost posts that you have already posted, instead of uploading new photos from your hard drive.
- The service saves a TON of time if you don't want to log in and out of multiple Instagrams.
- They use tablets that have special software that the owner created that simulates a phone in order to "bypass" Instagram's TOS and the need for access to Instagram's API.
- Through research, I discovered that the owner of this service plans to sell it to Facebook/Instagram or to Hootsuite.
Cons:
- You have to give Schedugram your Instagram username and password. Some people don't like this, but it was fine with me.
- You only get 7 days to test the service. After that, it's $13 a month for one Instagram account, $40 a month for 5 Instagram accounts, and more money if you want even more than that. A lot of people don't like that you have to pay, but I was fine with it.
- After the 7 day trial, the scheduling part of the service pretty much stopped working. Which was the only reason I was using it. After the trial, about 2 out of 10 posts that I had scheduled actually posted to my Instagram. The service says all the posts were posted successfully, however, only 2 showed up on my Instagram. I started to get the impression that if they got overloaded or overwhelmed with too many posts, they would just mark your photos as posted successfully, but they really didn't post them at all. However? (read the next con below)
- Some of my photos that they posted to Instagram were deleted by Instagram. The photos I posted myself from my iPhone were never deleted, but some photos that Schedugram posted were deleted after a few days, or deleted after a few minutes. I figured Instagram probably thought Schedugram's posts were spam, so I searched my Instagram for any "You are spamming" error messages, and checked my email for any violation emails, but never received anything.
- Schedugram states that you can use their service to post to Instagram every 15 minutes. I tried everything from 15 mins, 20 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, 1 hour, 2 hours, and 6 hours apart. Then found out after many of my photos did not post that Schedugram only wants you to post 3-5 times a day, max. So one day I tried posting 3 photos, 5 hours apart, only 2 showed up on my Instagram.
- They have quite a bit of outages. When I first signed up for the service there was a big announcement posted at the top of the screen that said they were experiencing outages where photos were not posting for long periods of time.
- They use tablets that have special software that the owner created that simulates a phone in order to "bypass" Instagram's TOS and the need for access to Instagram's API. I listed this as a pro because they were able to get around the API issue. However, I am listing it as a con for the same reason. Their phone simulator method sounds kinda questionable. Schedugram has only been open since January 2014. Who knows if Instagram/Facebook will say "no" to this method and start banning accounts. This is one reason why I didn't use it on my real Instagram.
- When I was doing research on Schedugram, the owner stated that he would not state who his customers were that are using the service, in case Facebook/Instagram decide to go on a banning spree and start banning accounts that use this service. That response told me that the owner knows this service most likely does not provide value in the eyes of Instagram/Facebook. Another reason I did not try this on my legit Instagram accounts.
- The Schedugram website is very transparent. They tell you EVERYTHING about how the service was created and how it works. That made me more skeptical. The transparency is done in a way that sounds like they want to reassure people that they won't get in trouble with Instagram.
- I could not find any customer reviews on Schedugram. Not even on Blackhatworld. I only found articles written by bloggers telling readers to use it. None of the bloggers stated they had used it themselves. I only found one person on Twitter who said they cancelled their trial after they were never able to post a photo using the service.
My Verdict:
I decided to stop using the service. Once Instagram started deleting some of the photos that Schedugram posted, that was enough to tell me to stop using it. I don't want my Instagrams to get banned. Plus, the scheduling part stopped working. I get the impression that you are courted very well during the free trial and everything works great, but once you become a paying customer, stuff doesn't work as well. It's probably better to wait for a legit company, like Hootsuite or Buffer, to offer this type of service. At the moment, Schedugram probably doesn't add much value to Instagram if Instagram is deleting their posts. I decided to quit while I was ahead.
If you want to try Schedugram, I would first try it on an Instagram that you do not mind getting banned. The Instagram I used for this service was not banned, but you never know. Also keep in mind that the scheduling portion of the service won't be as effective once the trial is over.
Good luck!
If you want to schedule posts to Instagram, you may be able to use Schedugram. It lets you upload photos, edit them, add a caption with hashtags, and post the photo immediately, or post it later at a specified time.
I started some new Instagram accounts last month and wanted to schedule the photos to go out across the day so I don't have to do it manually. Since these are white hat Instagrams I am using for a legitimate business, I didn't want to jeopardize them using this Schedugram service if it turned out Schedugram was against Instagram's TOS. So I used Schedugram on one of my old personal accounts to test it out.
Here's what happened:
Pros:
- You get a 7 day free trial to try the service.
- You upload the photos you want to post from your hard drive onto their website.
- You can schedule posts for whatever day and time you want.
- Their interface will tell you if your post failed to post, or if it was posted successfully.
- You can repost posts that you have already posted, instead of uploading new photos from your hard drive.
- The service saves a TON of time if you don't want to log in and out of multiple Instagrams.
- They use tablets that have special software that the owner created that simulates a phone in order to "bypass" Instagram's TOS and the need for access to Instagram's API.
- Through research, I discovered that the owner of this service plans to sell it to Facebook/Instagram or to Hootsuite.
Cons:
- You have to give Schedugram your Instagram username and password. Some people don't like this, but it was fine with me.
- You only get 7 days to test the service. After that, it's $13 a month for one Instagram account, $40 a month for 5 Instagram accounts, and more money if you want even more than that. A lot of people don't like that you have to pay, but I was fine with it.
- After the 7 day trial, the scheduling part of the service pretty much stopped working. Which was the only reason I was using it. After the trial, about 2 out of 10 posts that I had scheduled actually posted to my Instagram. The service says all the posts were posted successfully, however, only 2 showed up on my Instagram. I started to get the impression that if they got overloaded or overwhelmed with too many posts, they would just mark your photos as posted successfully, but they really didn't post them at all. However? (read the next con below)
- Some of my photos that they posted to Instagram were deleted by Instagram. The photos I posted myself from my iPhone were never deleted, but some photos that Schedugram posted were deleted after a few days, or deleted after a few minutes. I figured Instagram probably thought Schedugram's posts were spam, so I searched my Instagram for any "You are spamming" error messages, and checked my email for any violation emails, but never received anything.
- Schedugram states that you can use their service to post to Instagram every 15 minutes. I tried everything from 15 mins, 20 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, 1 hour, 2 hours, and 6 hours apart. Then found out after many of my photos did not post that Schedugram only wants you to post 3-5 times a day, max. So one day I tried posting 3 photos, 5 hours apart, only 2 showed up on my Instagram.
- They have quite a bit of outages. When I first signed up for the service there was a big announcement posted at the top of the screen that said they were experiencing outages where photos were not posting for long periods of time.
- They use tablets that have special software that the owner created that simulates a phone in order to "bypass" Instagram's TOS and the need for access to Instagram's API. I listed this as a pro because they were able to get around the API issue. However, I am listing it as a con for the same reason. Their phone simulator method sounds kinda questionable. Schedugram has only been open since January 2014. Who knows if Instagram/Facebook will say "no" to this method and start banning accounts. This is one reason why I didn't use it on my real Instagram.
- When I was doing research on Schedugram, the owner stated that he would not state who his customers were that are using the service, in case Facebook/Instagram decide to go on a banning spree and start banning accounts that use this service. That response told me that the owner knows this service most likely does not provide value in the eyes of Instagram/Facebook. Another reason I did not try this on my legit Instagram accounts.
- The Schedugram website is very transparent. They tell you EVERYTHING about how the service was created and how it works. That made me more skeptical. The transparency is done in a way that sounds like they want to reassure people that they won't get in trouble with Instagram.
- I could not find any customer reviews on Schedugram. Not even on Blackhatworld. I only found articles written by bloggers telling readers to use it. None of the bloggers stated they had used it themselves. I only found one person on Twitter who said they cancelled their trial after they were never able to post a photo using the service.
My Verdict:
I decided to stop using the service. Once Instagram started deleting some of the photos that Schedugram posted, that was enough to tell me to stop using it. I don't want my Instagrams to get banned. Plus, the scheduling part stopped working. I get the impression that you are courted very well during the free trial and everything works great, but once you become a paying customer, stuff doesn't work as well. It's probably better to wait for a legit company, like Hootsuite or Buffer, to offer this type of service. At the moment, Schedugram probably doesn't add much value to Instagram if Instagram is deleting their posts. I decided to quit while I was ahead.
If you want to try Schedugram, I would first try it on an Instagram that you do not mind getting banned. The Instagram I used for this service was not banned, but you never know. Also keep in mind that the scheduling portion of the service won't be as effective once the trial is over.
Good luck!
