Post to Instagram
On a paid plan, Viral Garden can publish a carousel to your Instagram Business or Creator account. A one-slide post goes out as a photo post and a longer one as a carousel, with your caption — by hand from the Playground, at a time you pick, or on a schedule from an automation.
Who can use it
Publishing to Instagram is included on every paid plan. TikTok accounts, YouTube channels and Instagram accounts share your plan's account allowance (Starter 3, Spark 15, Scale 30), counted across all your projects. The Free plan can't connect an account. See Plans & pricing.
Only Business and Creator accounts can be connected: Instagram doesn't let apps publish to personal accounts. Switch a personal account to Business or Creator in the Instagram app first. You sign in with Instagram itself, so the account doesn't need a Facebook Page.
The plan is checked when you connect. An account you connected on a paid plan stays connected and keeps posting if you move to Free.
Connect an account
- Open the project's Accounts tab and click Add account → Instagram.
- Instagram's own screen opens. Sign in to the account you want to post to and allow access. Viral Garden asks for two things: your account's ID, username, name and profile picture, and permission to publish posts. Leave both on — without publishing, the account can't be connected.
- The account appears on the Accounts tab as Connected.
If your browser blocks the popup, the flow falls back to a full-page redirect that returns you to the Accounts tab. Instagram accounts are connected only on the Accounts tab — the automation wizard and the post dialogs list accounts that are already connected.
Each Instagram account can be connected once in your Viral Garden account. To post to it from a different project, remove it from the first project, then connect it in the new one.
Publish a carousel
- On the Playground, click the post's ⋮ menu → Direct Post and pick your Instagram account. (To post it later instead, use Schedule Post: see Post on a schedule.)
- Write a Caption (up to 2,200 characters).
- Click Publish to Instagram.
Instagram processes the post before it goes live, which can take up to a minute — keep the dialog open. When it's done, the dialog says Posted to your @username, with a View on Instagram link when Instagram returns one.
If the connection drops and Viral Garden can't confirm whether Instagram published the post, the dialog says so and doesn't offer to try again. Check the account on Instagram before you publish it again, so it doesn't go out twice.
Only carousels can go to Instagram. Video posts on the Playground publish to TikTok only.
What gets posted
- One slide becomes a photo post; 2 to 10 slides become a carousel, in the order they sit on the canvas.
- Instagram shows every slide of a carousel in the same shape. Viral Garden fits each slide to the first slide's shape, kept between 4:5 portrait and 1.91:1 landscape, over a blurred copy of itself, so nothing is cropped. A 9:16 slide goes out at 4:5 with blurred bars at its sides; to fill the frame, give every slide the same Ratio, 4:5 or 1:1, in the editor.
- Your caption goes on the post. Only the first 30 hashtags and 20 @mentions are kept, and the dialog warns you when a caption has more.
- Posts go to your feed. Viral Garden doesn't publish Reels or Stories.
- Publishing costs no credits.
Limits
- 1 to 10 slides per post, and a caption of up to 2,200 characters.
- Instagram caps how many posts an account can publish in 24 hours. When an account reaches it, a Direct Post says so and posts nothing; a scheduled post waits and tries again an hour later.
Post on a schedule
- Schedule Post — on the Playground, click the post's ⋮ menu → Schedule Post and pick your Instagram account. Pick the date and time under When (up to a year ahead), write the caption, and click Schedule. It goes out within 10 minutes of that time, as the post looks when you schedule it. See Schedule a post.
- An automation — on the Automations tab, click New Automation and pick the account in the Account step. Under Posting settings, check I approve scheduled publishing to this Instagram account: Viral Garden then publishes every post the automation makes, with its caption, at the times you set, without asking again. Instagram automations publish directly — there is no draft mode — and post photos and carousels only, so leave video templates and templates with more than 10 slides unchecked. See Automations.
On a queued automation post, the post's ⋮ menu → Post to Instagram now publishes it right away. If Instagram can't confirm whether an automation post went out, it shows Check Instagram and isn't retried — look at the account on Instagram first.
The AI chat can't publish to Instagram or create an Instagram automation for you — use the Post dialog or the automation wizard.
Staying connected
Viral Garden renews your Instagram access automatically in the background, so the account stays connected whether or not you post. If Instagram stops accepting the connection, the account shows Needs reconnect on the Accounts tab and automations that post to it pause. Click Reconnect, sign in again, then resume the automation. The account's ⋮ → Check status asks Instagram whether the connection still works.
Disconnect an account
On the project's Accounts tab: the account's ⋮ → Remove. This deletes its Instagram access token and account details from Viral Garden right away. Posts already on Instagram stay there. Automations that posted to the account are paused, not deleted, with their queued posts; select another Instagram account in the automation's settings to resume.
To also remove Viral Garden's access on Instagram's side, open Instagram's settings, then Apps and websites, and remove Viral Garden. Removing Viral Garden there also removes the account from Viral Garden.
Terms
Posting to Instagram means agreeing to the Instagram Terms of Use. Meta's handling of your information is governed by the Meta Privacy Policy. See also Viral Garden's Privacy Policy and what Viral Garden does with your Instagram account.