How to Connect Instagram & Facebook to Gorgias

What the Meta channel actually brings into Gorgias

The Facebook, Messenger & Instagram integration is a single Meta connection that lights up several distinct channels at once. On the Facebook side you get Messenger conversations, post comments, ad comments, and page recommendations (reviews). On the Instagram side you get direct messages, story mentions, post comments, and ad comments. Each of these becomes a Gorgias ticket routed into the same queue, tagged, and assignable like any email — the difference from a plain inbox is the social-native actions that ride along with it.

The behaviour worth understanding up front is that comments and messages are different animals. A Messenger or Instagram DM is a private one-to-one thread, much like email. A comment is public: per Gorgias' Facebook comments documentation, Gorgias "will create a ticket in your helpdesk every time a user comments on a post (even on dark posts)." From that ticket an agent can hide the comment, like or unlike it, jump to the post, reply publicly, or — within seven days — send a private Messenger reply instead. That public/private split is the whole reason social support needs its own tooling rather than a forwarding rule.

Before you start: roles, business accounts, and permissions

Meta gates this integration tightly, and most failed connections trace back to one of three prerequisites.

Facebook Page role. You must be an Admin, Editor, or Moderator on the Facebook Page you want to connect. Per the Gorgias connect-your-social-channels guide, if you lack a qualifying role the integration fails and shows a warning banner.

Instagram must be a business account, linked to the Page. A personal Instagram account will not connect. The Instagram account needs to be a business (or creator) account, and it must be connected to the Facebook Page from the Page's own Settings → Instagram → Connect Account screen, with "Allow access to Instagram messages in Inbox" toggled on before you authenticate.

Meta permissions. During the OAuth handshake Gorgias asks for a minimum set of Page permissions — including "Show a list of the Pages you manage," "Read content posted on the Page," and "Manage accounts, settings, and webhooks for the Page." Decline any of them and the corresponding feature simply shows up disabled inside Gorgias. Grant them all; you can still choose which channels to actually turn on afterward.

Step 1: Open the Meta integration and log in with Facebook

Everything starts in one place.

1. In Gorgias, go to Settings → App Store → All Apps → Facebook, Messenger & Instagram.
2. Confirm your browser is logged into the correct Facebook account — the one with Admin/Editor/Moderator rights on the Page.
3. Click Log in With Facebook in the top-right corner.
4. Authorize the Gorgias app and accept the requested Page permissions.

The screen above is the connect page for the Meta channel — the state you see before any pages are linked. This is the honest starting point: an empty integration with a single Login with Facebook button, not yet a populated social inbox. Once you complete the OAuth flow and add a page, this same area fills with your connected Pages and the channel toggles described below.

Step 2: Pick your Page and choose which channels to enable

After authorizing, Gorgias shows the Pages you manage.

1. Select the Page you want to bring into the helpdesk.
2. Choose your import settings (whether to backfill recent conversations).
3. Click Add page.
4. Tick the channels to enable: Messenger, Facebook posts and comments, ad comments, recommendations, Instagram DMs, Instagram comments and mentions, and Instagram ads.
5. Click Save Changes.

You do not have to enable everything. A brand that wants private support but not public comment moderation can turn on Messenger and Instagram DMs while leaving comments off — and vice versa for a team focused on cleaning up the comment section under paid ads.

Step 3: Turn on Instagram DMs specifically

Instagram direct messages have one extra dependency worth calling out: per Gorgias' Instagram documentation, Instagram direct messaging "is only available on non-legacy plans." If you are on an older Gorgias plan and DMs never appear, that plan gating is usually why. On the Instagram side, make sure message access is allowed for connected tools (in the Instagram app, under the account's message controls) so DMs and story mentions can flow through. Once live, Gorgias will "receive and reply to Instagram direct messages and story mentions" as normal tickets.

Comments, ad comments, and auto-hide rules

This is where social support diverges most from email, so it deserves its own walkthrough.

Every comment on a Facebook post — organic or on a dark post (an ad that never appears on your timeline) — creates its own ticket. Facebook ad comments land in the same place: Gorgias notes that "tickets created for Facebook ad comments will be under the Facebook Comment channel." From any comment ticket, an agent can hide, like/unlike, open the post, reply publicly, or send a private Messenger reply within the 7-day window.

The powerful part is automation. Using Gorgias Rules, you can act on comments the moment they arrive — for example, auto-like every positive comment and auto-hide anything matching a profanity or spam keyword list. A few honest mechanics to keep in mind:

• Hiding is quiet. If you hide a comment in Gorgias, you (and the original commenter) still see it when logged in, but other users cannot. On Instagram, a hidden comment "will still be visible to the person who posted it, but not to other Instagram users." There is no notification that a comment was auto-hidden.
• Likes alone are free. Per the docs, "if you only like a Facebook comment, the ticket won't be billable" — useful when you build a like-everything-positive rule.
• You can only reply to top-level comments. Agents can reply to top comments on a post, "not comments on comments left by other customers." Replies to nested threads have to happen natively.

Native Meta connection vs. a third-party social tool

Should you use Gorgias' built-in Meta channel or bolt on a dedicated social-media management suite? For most ecommerce support teams, native wins on ticket unification; a separate tool wins on deep publishing and analytics you probably do not need in a helpdesk.

For running support, the native channel is almost always the right call — it keeps a WISMO comment next to the customer's order history. If you also need to schedule campaigns and report on reach, that is a marketing tool's job, not your helpdesk's.

The honest limits — and where an AI layer picks up

Gorgias' Meta integration is a genuinely strong piece of native plumbing: it unifies channels, respects Meta's permission model, and gives agents real moderation controls. But be clear about what it does not do. It brings a comment or DM into a ticket — it does not read the message, understand that "still not here??" under a shipping ad is a WISMO query, and draft the reply. It enforces your auto-hide keyword list, but it cannot tell an angry-but-legitimate return request from spam. And when the message is "where's order #5120?", the native channel just creates the ticket and waits while an agent goes to look it up.

That reasoning-and-answering gap is exactly where an AI agent layer fits. The broad category of AI agents for customer service exists to do the work a channel integration can't. Macha is one such layer, and it runs on top of the Gorgias you already use as a native connector — it does not replace Gorgias or its Meta channel. Once connected, Macha reads the same social tickets your Meta integration creates and drafts or posts grounded, on-brand replies: answering a DM return question against your policy, handling a WISMO comment by fetching live order status through a custom tool that turns your Shopify or shipping API into something the agent can call, and triaging by intent so an urgent complaint under an ad doesn't sit in the same undifferentiated pile as a compliment. If you want the deeper wiring, see the Macha–Gorgias integration and the wider list of best Gorgias integrations. (Credits are consumed per AI action, not per resolution — the pricing page breaks it down.)

The clean division of labour: let Gorgias own the channel — bringing every DM, comment, and ad comment into one queue with the right moderation controls — and layer an agent on top for the part the channel can't do, which is actually understanding and answering fast. And if voice or messaging is also on your roadmap, the same pattern applies to WhatsApp on Gorgias.

FAQ

Where do I connect Facebook and Instagram in Gorgias? Go to Settings → App Store → All Apps → Facebook, Messenger & Instagram, then click Log in With Facebook in the top-right corner. You must be logged into a Facebook account that is an Admin, Editor, or Moderator on the Page you want to connect.

Why won't my Instagram account connect? Two common reasons: the Instagram account is a personal account rather than a business/creator account, or it isn't connected to the Facebook Page. Link it from the Page's Settings → Instagram → Connect Account with "Allow access to Instagram messages in Inbox" turned on. Note that Instagram DMs are only available on non-legacy Gorgias plans.

Do Facebook and Instagram comments become tickets? Yes. Gorgias creates a ticket for every comment on a post — including on dark posts and ads — and ad comments appear under the Facebook Comment channel. From the ticket you can hide, like/unlike, reply publicly, or send a private Messenger reply within seven days.

Can I auto-hide negative comments? Yes, using Gorgias Rules you can auto-hide comments matching keywords and auto-like positive ones. Be aware that hidden comments are still visible to the original poster and to you when logged in — they're just hidden from other users, with no notification that they were hidden.

Can I add AI to my Gorgias social channels without replacing Gorgias? Yes. An AI agent layer like Macha connects to Gorgias as a native connector and runs on top of your existing helpdesk and its Meta channel — it doesn't replace them. It reads the DMs, comments, and ad comments your integration creates and drafts or sends grounded replies, while Gorgias stays the system of record for every social ticket.

Ready to turn social comments and DMs into answered tickets instead of an ever-growing backlog? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Gorgias in minutes.