You might be surprised to learn, like I was, that one of the most popular ways to grow your social media presence is to buy your own followers, likes, and other engagement from an online growth services provider.
Brands, influencers, even celebrities – they all do it. So, I thought, “Why can’t I do it for my Instagram account?”
After just a little research, though, I realized that I couldn’t just jump in with both feet. In reality, I had a fine line to tread.
When done right, the strategy of purchasing engagement can lead to organic (i.e., unpaid) growth further down the line.
This follows the logic that the more people engage with your content, the higher the algorithm will rank your content and your account in search results, thus exposing you to more users who will follow and engage with you for free.
But when done wrong, it can cause you to fall backward – usually because you bought engagement from bots rather than from human beings.
The difference may seem subtle, but appearances can be deceiving. You see, all the most popular social media platforms have policies against bot engagement, so anytime they detect it, they’re quick to remove it.
Bottom line is, it’s a huge waste of your time and money to buy engagement from bots.
Unfortunately, bots are the majority of what you’ll find available on the internet nowadays.
But does that mean that there’s no way for you to take advantage of growth services to help you become more popular on social media?
I thought that was the case – until, lo and behold: I discovered that there are some growth services providers out there that source their engagement from real accounts run by real people.
It was at that point that I decided to give one of them – a highly rated and reviewed website called Viralyft – a try.
What follows is a breakdown of how my experience with this provider went. I’ll be covering the pricing, engagement quality, delivery experience, and customer support team to give you a thorough look at whether Viralyft is everything it claims to be.
But first: here’s a little more background on the Viralyft company.
What Is Viralyft?
The practice of purchasing followers, likes, etc. is not a new thing – and neither is Viralyft. From Years in business, Viralyft was founded by current CEO Sebastian Jacob to be a service that would cut through the “toxic culture and the lack of respect that many marketing agencies exhibit toward clients.” Jacob, having been the head of marketing for multiple corporate marketing firms, knew firsthand that clients were looking for something different: something fresh, honest, and affordably priced.
All of which Viralyft claims to offer via its (very reasonably priced) engagement plans. For just a few dollars or a little more, you can buy a small or large quantity of followers, likes, comments, views, or shares, depending on which social media platform you’re using. The accounts that provide the engagements in your order are 100% real and operated by humans, Viralyft says, and are therefore highly unlikely to drop off your account.
Currently, Viralyft offers engagement plans for the following platforms:
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Twitter (X)
- Threads
- SoundCloud
- Clubhouse
- Telegram
It’s important to note that for many of their plans, there are two different tiers: High-Quality and Premium VIP Quality. Both are great – but the second tier goes the extra mile in ensuring that the accounts providing you with engagements are from mostly English-speaking countries, as well as highly active on social media.
Also (and this should come as no surprise), the Premium VIP Quality engagements are a little pricier than the High-Quality packages. I’ll discuss whether the extra cost was worth it or not in my review breakdown below.
Viralyft Review Breakdown
For my review of Viralyft, I decided to purchase a small plan of 100 Premium VIP Quality Followers on Instagram.
I’ll be breaking down my experience into four sections, all of which tie into guarantees and claims that Viralyft makes on their website: pricing, engagement quality, delivery experience, and customer support team.
Let’s begin.
1. Pricing
Right off the bat, I was impressed by Viralyft’s pricing. My plan only cost $4.99, which came out to a little over $5 with tax. Not bad! That was low enough for me to feel safe in case Viralyft didn’t work out in the end, yet high enough that I knew I was getting the Premium package (for reference, 100 High-Quality Followers only costs $2.89).
2. Delivery Experience
The next thing I want to address is the delivery experience. Never having used a growth services provider before, I was interested to see how this part works.
Here’s how Viralyft does it:
- They ask you for your Instagram account username. Just a heads up: your account must be set to public status for Viralyft to be able to deliver your engagement, no matter what type you purchase.
- After you place your order, they start sending your followers, likes, or whichever type of engagement you bought to your Instagram account. In my experience, I started seeing my followers tick up within a couple of hours.
- They stagger the delivery over a period of 24-48 hours. This was surprising to me at first, but it actually makes a lot of sense. This strategy helps the increase in engagement appear natural and organic instead of sudden and paid for.
It took less than 24 hours for me to receive all 100 of my new followers. So far, so good!
3. Followers Quality
Next, let’s dive into the quality of the followers I received.
As a reminder: I bought the Premium VIP Quality plan, which cost almost twice as much as the lower tier version. I was definitely expecting a lot here.
I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed! I didn’t look at every single profile that followed me, but I made sure to vet a majority of them – probably 30-40 accounts in total – and they all had profile pictures, posts on their feeds, and genuine-sounding names. Overall, they appeared 100% real.
At this point, I feel confident that anyone who cares to look at the followers I bought from Viralyft won’t be able to tell them apart from the followers I generated using organic strategies.
4. Customer Support Team
Lastly, as part of my experiment with Viralyft, I wanted to check out their customer support team.
This is something else that a lot of growth services get wrong. Too often have I read reviews from customers on different websites claiming that they tried to reach out for help and didn’t receive any.
Once again, though, Viralyft came through. I reached out to them via their live chat bot on their website as well as by email. The live chat representative responded almost immediately, and I received a reply to my email within a few hours of my sending it.
What did I ask about, you may be wondering? Did I have any problems? Well, I did have one issue: three weeks after receiving my order, I noticed that three or four of the followers I purchased seemed to have disappeared. I don’t know if it’s because they decided they didn’t like my content or what happened. This is the problem I asked Viralyft about in my email.
Thanks to how quickly Viralyft got back to me, I was able to get a refill for my missing followers within a few hours. Since then, I haven’t noticed any other drop-offs.
As for the live chat, I simply asked if it was possible to get more followers than what was listed on their website.
Spoiler alert: yes, it’s possible. Viralyft does custom orders upon request. How cool is that?
Does Viralyft Work?
Even though every stage of the process with Viralyft was smooth and untroubled, you’re probably more curious about what benefits I received from this service. Did the followers I purchased for my Instagram account help me grow?
In a way, yes. But here’s two things I suggest you keep in mind.
- I only bought 100 Instagram followers. That might be a big leap for a nano or even a micro influencer, but it’s barely a drop in the bucket for a macro or mega influencer. I don’t have many followers, so my count definitely improved with these new additions.
- Buying engagement alone isn’t going to make you grow on social media. The most important thing I’ve learned by using Viralyft is that their service is just one tool. There’s so much more you should be doing – content creation, post scheduling, outreach, etc. – to raise your follower count and engagement rate. The good news, though, is that paying for some of it can ease the burden of marketing yourself and give your account a boost at the same time. It makes the path to popularity easier, but if this is the only strategy you’re using toward that goal, you’re using it the wrong way.
Bottom Line: I’ll Be Using Viralyft’s Services Again
I have several things I’m doing right now to grow my Instagram account. After my great experience the first time around, I’ll absolutely be adding Viralyft’s services to my marketing toolkit for the foreseeable future.
