Can you schedule Instagram Stories for free?

A story in ReelDrop is one photo or one video. Photos can be JPG, PNG or WEBP. Videos can be 3 to 60 seconds long; MP4 and MOV upload as they are, and other formats such as WebM, MKV or AVI are converted in your browser first. A video too big for Instagram's story limit is compressed before it uploads.

Queue up to 10 at once. Drag the tiles into the order they should play and they publish one after another in that order, as separate stories, the same as posting them one by one from the app.

There is no caption. Instagram's API takes none on a story, so the caption box, the first comment and collaborators disappear when you switch to Story.

Instagram's publishing API puts a photo or a video on your story and nothing else. It has no way to add stickers, so a link sticker, a poll, a quiz, a question box, a countdown, a mention, a location, music or a GIF cannot be scheduled by ReelDrop, or by any other tool that publishes through the official API.

If a story needs one of those, schedule the photo or video and add the sticker in the Instagram app once it is live, or post that one from the app. Stories disappear 24 hours after they go live, the same as any other story.

Schedule opens the Schedule story window. Schedule next slot uses the next free time from your posting slots; Schedule custom time lets you pick the date and time. Every story in the queue goes on your calendar for that time and publishes in order.

Share to story posts the queue straight away instead, uploading and publishing each story in turn with the progress on screen.

If something fails part-way, the window lists which stories were scheduled and which were not, and Retry remaining picks up from there without doubling the ones that already went through.

A story that asks a question gets its answers in your DMs. The Attach automation card in the composer connects a story-reply automation to the story you are scheduling, so everyone who replies gets the link, the price or the booking page in a DM without you opening the app. An automation can also be aimed at a story that is already live.

Story-reply automations are on Influencer and up; on Starter the card says so and offers the upgrade. A vote in a poll or a quiz is not a message, so it triggers nothing; a typed reply does.

The short version, in plain steps. The docs have the same walkthrough with screenshots.

Every three hours while a story is live, ReelDrop records its views, reach, replies, shares, profile visits, follows, and taps forward, back and away, including for stories you posted from the Instagram app. Analytics ranks them under Top stories by engagement.

Instagram reports replies as 0 for viewers in Europe and Japan, and a story that expired before your account was connected cannot be filled in afterwards.

Three photos, the soup, the cake and the opening hours, queued the night before for 7:30. They go up in that order every morning without anyone touching a phone during the rush.

A creator schedules a story that says "Reply GUIDE for the free chapter" and attaches a story-reply automation in the same composer. The story goes up at 6 pm; everyone who replies gets the chapter in a DM within seconds.