Before you start
Auto-reply drafts replies in your brand voice and emails them to you to approve, or, for the ratings you choose, publishes a short reply you wrote yourself. Everything starts switched off, and nothing is ever published for a rating you have not explicitly chosen.
Auto-reply is on the Starter plan and above. On Free, Settings > Auto-reply shows an upgrade prompt instead.
Set your brand voice first. Auto-reply uses the same settings, and the default voice is generic.
Reply to new reviews automatically
Everything starts off. Choose the ones worth answering automatically.
Which reviews
Draft it and email me to approve
Recommended. Nothing is published until you click.
Send it automatically
Publishes your own saved wording with no one reading it first.
Wait before replying
Quiet hours
Most replies per day
Turn it on
Go to Settings > Auto-reply and switch on Reply to new reviews automatically. Only reviews that arrive after you turn it on are replied to. Your existing reviews are never touched.
Which reviews
Four presets cover most cases: only 5 star, 4 and 5 star, everything except 1 and 2 star, or all reviews. Pick one, then choose what should happen: Draft it and email me to approve (recommended), or Send it automatically.
Choose for each rating lets you set every rating separately, from 5 stars down to 1 star, plus comments with no rating, so you can send 5-star replies automatically and hold the rest for approval. Per rating you have three choices:
- Don't reply. Auto-reply ignores it entirely.
- Draft for my approval. The AI writes a reply in your brand voice and emails it to you. Nothing is published until you click.
- Send automatically. A reply is published with nobody reading it first.
The sensible default is to draft for approval on anything below 4 stars. An automated reply to an angry customer is the single easiest way to make a bad review worse.
Automatic sending uses your own words
Anything set to send automatically posts your own wording, never AI text. Write one or more short replies, up to 300 characters each, and Dinopix rotates between them so a run of reviews does not carry the same sentence every time. You can use {first_name}, which is left out when a real first name cannot be told from the reviewer's handle.
Keep them short and general. "Thanks so much!" is the right length; anything specific will eventually land on a review it does not fit. You also have to tick I understand these replies are published publicly without anyone reading them first before the settings save. If you set 1, 2 or 3 stars to send automatically, you get an extra warning: a cheerful canned reply to an unhappy customer reads as though nobody read their review.
Where
Choose the platforms auto-reply covers. Platforms we cannot publish replies to are shown but cannot be selected, because a reply that never reaches the customer is worse than no reply. You can still answer those yourself in Dinopix. See which platforms accept published replies.
Choosing Facebook covers comments on your Page posts. Facebook recommendations are left alone, because Dinopix cannot post a reply to them yet. Reply to those on Facebook itself.
TikTok isn't listed: every TikTok reply is written or approved by someone on your team. See Connecting TikTok.
When
- Wait before replying. Immediately, 15 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day or 2 days. A short delay is worth setting. An instant reply reads as automated even when the wording is good.
- Quiet hours. A from and until time in a timezone you choose. Replies wait until the window opens.
- Most replies per day. A cap that limits the damage if something is misconfigured or a sync imports a large backlog at once.
- Only reply to reviews with written feedback. Skips star-only ratings, where there is nothing to respond to.
Auto-reply works through new reviews oldest first. Reviews it passes over never hold up newer ones: a rating set to Don't reply, a star-only rating while Only reply to reviews with written feedback is on, or a review that already has a reply or a draft. So twenty old 1-star reviews you chose not to answer can't stop tomorrow's 5-star review from getting its reply.
If you run several businesses
Settings are per business. Once one is set up the way you want, you can copy that policy to your other businesses rather than repeating the work. Read what you are copying first: it carries the automatic-send choices with it.
Checking it is working
Settings > Auto-reply activity lists every reply auto-reply has written and what happened to it:
- Waiting for you: drafted and emailed for your approval, with a note if the approval email has not gone out yet.
- Sent: published. Each entry says whether it was written by AI or was your own wording sent automatically, and who approved it.
- Blocked: not sent because it contained something on your "never say" list. The entry shows which phrase it contained.
- Discarded: someone threw the draft away.
- You replied yourself: you answered the review before the draft was used.
Reviews auto-reply passes over (see above) are not listed, because nothing was written for them. If auto-reply cannot write replies at all, a red banner at the top says so and shows the last error.
If you manage several businesses, All your businesses at the top of Settings > Auto-reply shows which ones have auto-reply on, how many drafts are waiting or blocked, and flags any that are not working.