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Sent, blocked, unknown and Needs Review explained

Every send ends in exactly one status. Read them correctly and you will know whether to retry, walk away, or open Instagram and check.

Applies to Ins Autopilot 3.22 and later · Updated 2026-10-18

What this helps you do

Every outreach attempt ends in exactly one status. The status is not decoration — it tells you whether a contact was used, whether anything actually went out, and whether you are allowed to try again.

There are five of them: sent, blocked, failed, skipped and unknown. Only one of them is a successful delivery. Reading them correctly is the difference between a retry that fixes a problem and a retry that sends somebody the same message twice.

The Safety interventions block in Insights, listing entries such as Wrong account prevented, Recipient could not be verified, Duplicate prevented and Retry limit reached, with a Needs attention block below.12
Figure 1Insights keeps a list of what was deliberately stopped before it reached Instagram. Nothing in this list is a delivery, and nothing in it was retried behind your back.
  • 1 Insights in the navigation rail.
  • 2 Safety interventions: each line is something that was stopped before it reached Instagram.

What this is not

A status describes what happened to one attempt, not what the other person thinks. sent does not mean read, agreed, interested or qualified. blocked does not mean Instagram banned you.

The extension reports what it can observe. When it genuinely cannot observe the outcome it says so instead of guessing, which is the entire reason unknown exists as a state rather than being folded into one of the others.

sent

sent means Instagram confirmed the send. It is the only status that counts as a delivery, and the only one that spends one of your Trial contacts.

It appears in History and adds a DM sent entry to the contact's Activity timeline. There is nothing to fix and nothing to retry. What it does not tell you is whether anybody read it or will answer — a reply is a separate, read-only observation that arrives later, if it arrives at all.

The Insights Delivery view: the delivery tab is selected and the health section shows the buckets of messages by what happened to them.12
Figure 2Delivery is where the five statuses are grouped. A confirmed send is the only one you do nothing about.
  • 1 The Delivery tab inside Insights.
  • 2 The buckets: what was delivered, what was not, and what still needs a decision.

blocked and failed

blocked means the system refused the attempt before anything left the browser. The common causes are a Trial contact that has already been used, a daily cap that has already been reached, or a signed-in account that changed during the session. Nothing was sent, so nothing is consumed, and the contact is not recorded as contacted. Correct the cause and retry.

failed means the attempt genuinely did not go out. Like blocked it costs nothing, and it is safe to retry — retrying a proven failure does not spend a second contact.

blocked Refused before anything left the browser Usually an already-used Trial contact, the daily cap, or an account mismatch Nothing was sent — fix the cause, then retry failed The attempt genuinely did not go out Costs nothing Safe to retry without double-counting
Figure 3Both spend nothing. The difference is who stopped it: blocked is your own pre-send check, failed is the send itself.

Why blocked does not spend your allowance

Counted as a contact Only a delivery Instagram confirmed. sent Not counted blocked — never reached Instagram. failed — did not go out. skipped — never attempted. nothing spent Held for review unknown — delivery unconfirmed. It uses nothing while it waits, and it is never retried automatically. unresolved
Figure 4The allowance tracks what you actually delivered, not what you attempted.

The Trial counts confirmed contacts, and consumption is tied to delivery. A blocked attempt never reached Instagram's send path, so there is no delivery to count. Charging for it would make a limit you hit by accident look like a message you sent.

The same reasoning covers failed and skipped: the allowance tracks what you actually delivered, not what you attempted. unknown is the one deliberate halfway case. It is not confirmed, so it does not spend a contact either, and it is also never retried automatically.

unknown and Needs Review

unknown — shown in the interface as delivery needs review — means Instagram never confirmed delivery in either direction. The message may be sitting in the thread. It may never have arrived. The extension cannot tell the difference, and it will not pretend that it can.

So the attempt is held for review instead of being resolved for you, and it is never retried automatically. Automatic retry is the one response that is certainly wrong here: if the first message did arrive, a retry sends the same person the same text a second time.

To resolve it, open the Instagram thread yourself and look. Manual review ends in one of three conclusions.

  • delivered — you can see the message in the thread. It becomes sent and spends a contact.
  • not delivered — the thread does not contain it. It becomes failed and can be retried safely.
  • unresolved — you still cannot tell. It stays unknown, keeps its place in review, and is still never retried automatically.
1 Instagram did not confirm delivery The message may or may not have arrived. 2 It is held for review, not resolved for you It is never retried automatically, because a retry could duplicate a message that did arrive. 3 Open the Instagram thread yourself Look before you do anything else. 4 Resolve it one of three ways delivered becomes sent and spends a contact; not delivered becomes failed and is safe to retry; unresolved stays in review.
Figure 5Never resend an unknown by hand before checking the thread. A duplicate outbound message is worse than a missing one.

Never resend an unknown by hand before checking the thread. A duplicate outbound message is worse than a missing one.

skipped

skipped means the attempt was deliberately not made — you had already contacted this person, or the handle resolves to your own account. Nothing was sent and nothing was consumed.

Whether it can be retried depends on the reason. A contact you have already reached does not become available again on the Trial, while a skip caused by a wrong setting can be corrected and the send tried again.

Choosing the next action

  • sent — do nothing. If you want to follow up later, that is a Pro capability, and the reply stops the sequence by itself.
  • blocked — fix the stated cause, then retry. Nothing was sent.
  • failed — retry. It is safe, and it does not double-count.
  • skipped — check the reason and correct it if it was a mistake.
  • unknown — open Instagram first, then resolve it to delivered, not delivered or unresolved.
1 sent do nothing 2 blocked fix the stated cause, then retry 3 failed retry safely 4 skipped check the reason 5 unknown open Instagram first
Figure 6The next action for each status. A Bulk run never hides individual results behind a summary.

Status is decided per attempt. A Bulk DM Queue run never hides individual results behind a summary — each recipient keeps its own line.

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