“with a free account only 5 DMs can be sent in a 24 hour window” there may be some misunderstanding here. There’s no “free account”, as all accounts on Twitter are free, and there’s no way to pay to be able to send more Direct Messages. The way the API works is that for each Direct Message received, you can respond with up to 5 messages (which is reset when the next inbound message arrives), across that 24 hour period. This is to enable longer conversations.
Example:
user says “hello”
you reply “hi, nice to hear from you” / “how are you today” / “how can I help you” (3 messages)
user replies “I’m great” / “I wanted to ask about … x” (reset)
Nice post! A couple of things to note:
Example:
Hope that helps!
Hi Andy! Thanks for commenting this very helpful piece of info.