The five questions readers email us most. Answers below are the same ones we'd give over coffee.
- Is buying followers safe?
- It depends entirely on the service. The reputable ones we rank deliver from real accounts with profile photos, posting history, and paced delivery instead of an instant dump. The unsafe ones use bots, ask for your password, or dump 5,000 followers in three minutes. Our reviews assess which category each service belongs to, drawing on vendor-advertised terms, published user reviews, and our hands-on 30-day pilot of five Instagram follower services, before we publish a score.
- How do you score services?
- Five categories with fixed weights. Account quality (30%), retention (25%), delivery speed (20%), customer support response time (15%), and pricing (10%). Scores are editorial, built from vendor-advertised terms, published user reviews, hands-on signup and checkout checks, and, for five Instagram follower services, a hands-on 30-day retention pilot. The full rubric is published at our methodology page. Scores get re-checked quarterly because services drift.
- Do services pay you to rank them higher?
- No. Some links on this site are affiliate links, meaning we earn a commission when a reader subscribes through us. That commission never moves a score. The proof: services that pay the highest affiliate rates are not the ones at the top of our rankings, and we publish 1-of-1 reviews that disqualify services even when they offered to pay us. Our affiliate disclosure has the full breakdown.
- How often do you re-test services?
- Top picks get re-assessed every quarter. The full ranking refreshes twice a year, with an emergency re-review triggered whenever a service ships a major change to its delivery infrastructure or pricing model. Last quarter we dropped two services from the top ten after their standing weakened in our review.
- What happens if a service stops delivering after I buy?
- Start with the vendor. Most services ranked here advertise a refill or replacement term, and the window is printed on each service's card and in its review, so quote your order reference and hold them to what they published. If support does not respond, a card chargeback or a PayPal dispute is the route that remains. Those have their own filing deadlines and evidence requirements, set by your payment provider and by the terms of the account you paid with, and neither the timing nor the outcome is anything we can promise on their behalf. Check those terms before you rely on them.