Frequently asked questions
The questions below are the ones that come up before anything else. Where a question has a fuller answer somewhere on the site, this page links to it rather than repeating it — the detailed treatment lives with the topic it belongs to.
Access and safety
What does ReplyTide need access to, and what can it do with it?
You authorise a YouTube channel through standard Google OAuth. ReplyTide never sees or stores your Google password. With that authorisation it reads comments on videos on your channel and posts replies from your account, through the official YouTube Data API. It does not scrape YouTube, drive a logged-in browser session, or act on channels you have not authorised. You can revoke the access from your Google account at any time, and deleting your ReplyTide account revokes it too.
Will automated replies get my channel in trouble?
Automation itself is not what causes problems — YouTube publishes the Data API precisely so software can act on a channel's behalf. What gets channels actioned is unsolicited or repetitive content, rewards made conditional on engagement, and tools that drive a logged-in session instead of the API. The full breakdown of where the lines are goes through each in turn.
Do viewers have to subscribe or comment to get the resource?
No, and they should not have to. Making access conditional on subscribing, liking or commenting is engagement gating, which YouTube's spam policies prohibit. The resource page is public and belongs in your video description too — a keyword reply is a convenience, not the price of entry. The principles page covers why that is a design decision rather than a missing feature.
Does ReplyTide write replies with AI?
No. You write the reply template yourself and ReplyTide sends that text. There is no model generating responses on your behalf, which is deliberate: a plausible-sounding wrong answer posted publicly under your video is worse than no answer. If AI-drafted replies are what you want, a different tool is the right choice.
Can a reply be taken back after it has posted?
Not from inside ReplyTide. Once a reply is sent it is an ordinary comment on your channel, so removing it is done on YouTube's side — in YouTube Studio, or from the comment itself while signed in as the channel.
Plans and limits
What happens if I do not have an active plan?
Nothing runs. Without an active plan every limit is zero: no active campaigns, no matched comments, no posted replies, no captured leads. You can still sign in and set campaigns up, but none of them poll or post until a plan is active. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial.
If my plan lapses, do resource links I already shared keep working?
No. A lapsed plan deactivates your campaigns, and a deactivated campaign's resource page stops resolving — a viewer following a link from an old comment gets a “no longer available” page rather than the file. Worth planning around, because those links stay in your comment history and video descriptions indefinitely, so a lapse is visible to viewers and not only to you. Starting a plan again and re-activating the campaign brings the same link back: the address is stored with the campaign, not reissued.
Can I run ReplyTide on more than one YouTube channel?
Yes, and each channel is billed separately. Plans and entitlements belong to the YouTube channel rather than to the Google profile you sign in with, so one account can manage several channels but each one carries its own subscription.
What do the plan limits actually count?
Matched comments and posted replies are counted separately, and a campaign in draft mode raises the first without touching the second. The pricing page explains each limit, what the 7-day trial does when it ends, and how cancellation and the refund window work.
Getting started and free tools
Is anything usable without signing up?
Three tools are free and need no account at all: the comment exporter, the giveaway winner picker, and comment search. They read public comments through the official API and are separate jobs from campaign automation, so no subscription is involved.
Can I try it without anything posting publicly?
Yes. Campaigns can run in draft mode, where a matched comment produces a reply held for your approval and nothing reaches YouTube until you release it. Running the first week that way is the sensible default. The overview of how keyword replies work covers the setup end to end.
What languages is ReplyTide available in?
The interface and the site are available in English, Japanese and Korean. Your reply templates and resource pages are your own text, so campaigns can be run in any language regardless of the interface setting.
Comparisons and troubleshooting
Questions about how ReplyTide compares to a specific tool, or about YouTube's comment behaviour generally, are answered on their own pages:
- CommentShark, ManyChat, Zapier and vidIQ and TubeBuddy each get a full comparison, including where the other tool wins.
- Comments not showing up and comment sections turned off cover the YouTube-side causes.
- Spam comments and blocked word lists cover moderation, which ReplyTide deliberately does not do.
- Everything else is on the blog.
Support and the people behind it
Who builds ReplyTide?
One person. It is designed, built, tested and supported by an independent developer, and the about page names him rather than hiding behind a company voice. Support email goes to the same person who writes the code.
How do I get help?
Email support@replytide.co. That is the same address on the security contact file and inside the signed-in app, and there is no support queue between you and the person who builds it.