# Comment replies

> Answer comments on your posts, reels and ads automatically — publicly, in a DM or both — and keep the phone numbers people leave.

- Source: https://support.unifunl.io/en/help/leads-automations/comment-replies
- Category: Leads & automations (`leads-automations`)
- Language: en
- Updated: 2026-09-17

---

Someone comments *how much?* under your post at eleven at night. Fifty people read the comment, nobody reads an answer, and by morning the question is buried. **Comment Replies** closes that gap: it answers under the post, opens a DM, and keeps the phone numbers people leave in the thread.

The page describes itself plainly: *Answer comments on your posts, reels, ads and lives — publicly, in a DM, or both — and keep the phone numbers people leave. Rules run top to bottom and the first match wins.*

> **Comment Replies is in BETA.** It carries a `BETA` badge in the product, and two of its options — **Catch numbers during a live** and the **Live broadcasts** post scope — are still marked *Soon*. Everything else described here is live.

## Where it lives

**Automations** now holds three sections: **Follow-Ups** (*re-engage quiet customers*), **Comment Replies** (*auto-reply to post comments*) and **Broadcasts** (*campaigns & templates*). Comment Replies is the middle one.

![Automations, Comment Replies. The BETA badge, the two buttons, and the empty state before your first rule.](https://support.unifunl.io/help/screenshots/62-comment-replies-empty.jpg)

Two buttons sit at the top: **New rule**, and **Test a comment** for trying a comment against your rules before your customers do.

> **Owner and admin only** — like the rest of Automations, this space does not appear for members.

## Start from a ready-made rule

A new rule opens on six starting points. Each one fills in the whole wizard; you edit whatever you like afterwards.

| Starting point | What it sets up |
| --- | --- |
| **Answer price questions** *(most used)* | Replies publicly, then sends the price and how to order in a DM. |
| **Turn commenters into chats** | Quietly DMs everyone who comments, without touching the comment. |
| **Run a giveaway or launch** | Watches the posts you pick for a keyword, likes the comment and DMs the entrant. |
| **Keep complaints off your posts** | Hides angry comments for your review and tags them. No automatic reply. |
| **Catch numbers during a live** *(soon)* | Watches every broadcast, saves the numbers viewers type in the chat and hides them from the public thread. |
| **Start from scratch** | An empty rule — you decide everything. |

![Step one: six starting points, each one filling in the whole rule for you.](https://support.unifunl.io/help/screenshots/63-comment-rule-start.jpg)

From there the wizard runs in five steps: **Start**, **Where**, **When**, **What happens** and **Review**. A **live preview** on the right shows the comment, your public reply, the DM and the tag, updating as you go.

## Where — channel and posts

First a **Rule name**, which only you see, then the channel — Instagram, Facebook or TikTok, listed from your connected accounts.

![Step two: the rule name and the channel, with the warning that appears when a connection lacks comment permissions.](https://support.unifunl.io/help/screenshots/64-comment-rule-where.jpg)

> **A channel can be connected and still not deliver comments.** If the connection lacks comment permissions, the step says so and names what is missing — `instagram_manage_comments`, for instance — with an **Open Channels** button to fix it. Reconnect there before you go on, or the rule will sit and never fire. See [Messaging channels](https://support.unifunl.io/en/help/channels-integrations/messaging-channels).

Then how wide the rule casts its net:

| Scope | What it watches |
| --- | --- |
| **All posts** | Every organic post and reel. Never ad posts. |
| **All ads** | Ad and dark posts only. |
| **Posts and ads** | Everything you publish or promote. |
| **Selected posts** | Only the posts you pick. |
| **Selected campaigns** | Only the campaigns or ads you pick. |
| **Live broadcasts** *(soon)* | Comments left while you are broadcasting. Nothing to pick — every live counts. |

![The post scopes, from every organic post to a hand-picked campaign, and the Include future posts switch.](https://support.unifunl.io/help/screenshots/65-comment-rule-post-scope.jpg)

**Include future posts** decides whether the rule also matches what you publish after creating it. Leave it on for an always-running rule; turn it off when the rule belongs to one launch.

## When — which comments qualify

| Trigger | When it runs |
| --- | --- |
| **Every comment** | Anyone who comments. Best paired with a tight post selection. |
| **Contains a keyword** | The comment contains any one of your keywords. |
| **Matches an exact phrase** | Only an exact phrase match. |

![Step three: the trigger, and the keyword chips the price preset ships with.](https://support.unifunl.io/help/screenshots/66-comment-rule-keywords.jpg)

Keywords are chips, up to twenty, and a comment matches if it contains **any** of them. The price preset ships with the list a Tunisian merchant actually needs — *price*, *how much*, *combien*, *prix*, *ch7al*, *بكم*, *السعر*.

> **Write the keywords your customers type, not the ones you would type.** People comment in Arabizi, in dialect, in three languages at once, and with emojis. A rule that only knows *price* misses most of the thread.

**Comments to never answer** is the other half, and it is optional — use it for spam and competitor mentions.

## What happens — reply, moderate, tag

Pick the outcome first.

| Outcome | What the commenter sees |
| --- | --- |
| **Reply publicly and DM** *(recommended)* | A short public reply plus the real answer in their inbox. Converts best. |
| **Reply publicly only** | An answer under the comment, where everyone reading sees it. |
| **Send a DM only** | A quiet DM. The comment stays untouched. |
| **No reply** | Nothing publicly — just save numbers, like, hide or tag. |

![Step four: the four outcomes, and the rotating variations of the public reply.](https://support.unifunl.io/help/screenshots/67-comment-rule-outcome.jpg)

Both the **public reply** and the **DM** can be a **fixed message** or **AI-written**, and both take several variations of up to 2,000 characters. The wizard rotates between them and tells you when you have enough.

> **Variations are not decoration.** The product says it outright next to the DM: *repeats can get your page restricted*. Identical replies under twenty comments in a row is exactly what platforms police. Write three.

The DM carries the hard limits worth knowing before you rely on it:

> **One DM per comment, ever — and only within 7 days of the comment. There is no retry if it fails.** A commenter you already DM'd will not be DM'd again by that comment, and a comment older than a week is out of reach.

**AI instructions** steer an AI-written message, and there is a sensible fallback: if you run out of AI credits, the rule sends one of your fixed variations instead of nothing. **Let the AI take over the chat** hands the conversation to autopilot after the opening message — see [AI Autopilot](https://support.unifunl.io/en/help/inbox/ai-autopilot).

**Moderation and tagging** closes the step: **Like the comment** (not offered on every channel), **Hide angry comments instead of replying**, which holds complaints for your review, and **Tag the commenter**, which puts a tag such as `price-inquiry` on the lead so you can filter for it later in the [Leads CRM](https://support.unifunl.io/en/help/leads-automations/leads-crm).

## Phone numbers left in comments

This is the quiet feature that pays for the rest, and it has its own switch: **Save phone numbers left in comments**.

![Saving phone numbers left in comments, and the moderation and tagging options underneath it.](https://support.unifunl.io/help/screenshots/68-comment-rule-phone-moderation.jpg)

The product explains exactly what it does: *We read the number straight from the comment and save it on that customer's lead, tagged `phone-collected` and filed under the post it came from.*

Three things follow from that, and each one matters:

- **No AI, no credits.** Reading a number out of a comment costs you nothing.
- **It still happens when replies are rate-limited.** Even when the rule has hit its hourly ceiling and stops replying, it keeps collecting.
- **The number lands on the lead**, tagged `phone-collected` and attributed to the post — so you can filter your leads by it. See [Leads CRM](https://support.unifunl.io/en/help/leads-automations/leads-crm).

> **During a live, the number is the sale.** Viewers type their number into a fast-moving chat once and never again. Collection is the difference between a live that produced a list and a live that produced nothing.

## Pacing and launch

The last step opens with a plain-English summary of the whole rule — *when someone comments price, how much… on any of your posts, reply publicly, send a DM, and tag them as a lead* — and then the pacing.

| Pace | Delay |
| --- | --- |
| **Instantly** | Replies the moment the comment lands. |
| **Feels human** *(recommended)* | Waits 30 seconds to 2 minutes. |
| **Relaxed** | Waits 2 to 5 minutes. |
| **Custom** | Your own range. |

![Step five: the rule in one sentence, then the pacing and the guardrails.](https://support.unifunl.io/help/screenshots/69-comment-rule-pacing.jpg)

> **Replies that land instantly look automated.** That is the product's own warning, and it is right: an answer half a second after the comment reads as a bot to every other person scrolling past. **Feels human** costs you two minutes and buys the reply its credibility.

Three guardrails sit underneath. **Max replies per hour**, 60 by default, stops the rule after that many in an hour. **Only once per person per post** prevents answering the same person twice under the same post. **Priority** decides the running order — lower runs first, and the first matching rule wins.

**Turn it on now** launches it; off saves it as a draft. **Create and turn on** finishes.

> **Order your rules narrowest first.** Because the first match wins, a broad *Every comment* rule at priority 1 will swallow everything and your careful price rule below it will never run.

## FAQ and troubleshooting

### My rule never fires

Check three things in order: the channel has comment permissions (the **Where** step warns you and names what is missing), the rule is turned on rather than saved as a draft, and no broader rule sits above it on priority.

### The commenter never got a DM

A DM is sent once per comment and only within seven days of it, with no retry on failure. On top of that, platforms only allow a DM in response to an interaction — a comment older than the window cannot be reached.

### Can I answer comments on my ads?

Yes. Choose **All ads** for ad and dark posts only, or **Posts and ads** for everything.

### Will it reply to the same person over and over?

Not if **Only once per person per post** is on. Across different posts, each post is its own opportunity.

### It replied to a complaint

Use **Keep complaints off your posts**, or turn on **Hide angry comments instead of replying** — complaints get hidden and held for your review rather than answered. Adding the terms to **Comments to never answer** stops the rule engaging at all.

### Does collecting numbers cost credits?

No. Number collection runs without AI and keeps working even when the rule has stopped replying for the hour.

## What's next?

Comments bring people in. Follow-ups bring back the ones who went quiet.

[Follow-ups](https://support.unifunl.io/en/help/leads-automations/follow-ups)

## Related articles

- [Follow-ups](https://support.unifunl.io/en/help/leads-automations/follow-ups.md): Automatically message a customer who went quiet — three content strategies, a silence delay, and guardrails that stop it becoming spam.
- [WhatsApp campaigns](https://support.unifunl.io/en/help/leads-automations/whatsapp-campaigns.md): Broadcast an offer to the leads most likely to buy — the four-step wizard, the three campaign types, audience scoring and how to read the results.
- [Leads CRM](https://support.unifunl.io/en/help/leads-automations/leads-crm.md): Everyone who writes to you becomes a contact, scored automatically by purchase intent. Filter, search and act on them.
- [Messaging channels](https://support.unifunl.io/en/help/channels-integrations/messaging-channels.md): Connect WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, TikTok and the web widget so every conversation lands in one inbox.