Messaging Limits and Quality Rating

The manner in which you can use the platform is limited by WhatsApp messaging limits. Your ability to use the platform is dependent on your business maintaining a good quality rating. This document covers:

• Messaging Limits
• Quality Rating

Start Messaging Customers

Since May 2, 2022, businesses can start messaging customers after completing the Embedded Signup or On Behalf Of (OBO) onboarding processes. Business verification and display name review are no longer needed to get started onto the WhatsApp Business Platform. The WhatsApp account checks are triggered automatically and conducted asynchronously. After signup, businesses can:

• Respond to unlimited customer-initiated conversations in 24-hour messaging windows.
• Send business-initiated conversations to 50 unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period per phone number.
• Register up to 2 phone numbers.

Messaging Limits

Messaging limits determine the maximum number of business-initiated conversations each phone number can start in a rolling 24-hour period. A business-initiated conversation starts when the first message is delivered to a customer and ends 24 hours later. A conversation can’t end before then.

If you reach your messaging limit, you can start more conversations as soon as one or more active conversations end. Messaging limits do not apply to user-initiated conversations.

There are four levels of messaging limits that apply to businesses that have completed Business Verification:

• Allows your phone number to have 1,000 business-initiated conversations (with 1,000 unique customers) in a rolling 24-hour period.
• Allows your phone number to have 10,000 business-initiated conversations (with 10,000 unique customers) in a rolling 24-hour period.
• Allows your phone number to have 100,000 business-initiated conversations (with 100,000 unique customers) in a rolling 24-hour period.
• Allows your phone number to have unlimited business-initiated conversations in a rolling 24-hour period.

For an example, see the chart below:

Increasing Messaging Limits

Your messaging limits are automatically increased based on the volume and quality of the messages you send. Conversely, your limit can also be decreased if more of your messages are reported or blocked by users.

Limits for a phone number can be increased if the following three items are true:

• The phone number quality rating is not low.
• Within a 7-day period, the phone number starts business-initiated conversations with twice the amount of unique customers supported in the current messaging limit.
• The phone number has been at the current messaging limit for at least 48 hours.

Once the business reaches this threshold, its limits are automatically increased.

As you increase your messaging activity, you should always analyze phone number quality to ensure that your customers are not blocking or reporting your messages. Businesses need to demonstrate that they can send high or medium quality messages at higher volumes before they can get higher messaging limits.

Example

In the example below, a business with a messaging limit of 1,000 business-initiated conversations gets its limit increased to 10,000 when it messages a total of 2,000 unique users within a 7-day period. The first table shows how the business reaches the 10,000 messaging limit in 2 days. The second table shows how the business reaches the 10,000 messaging limit in 4 days.

Example

Flagged Status

Flagged businesses that have a low quality rating can not get higher messaging limits. After a business is Flagged, it must return to the Connected status, and then restart the process to increase their limit.

If your business has a "Flagged" status and the quality rating doesn't improve, your messaging limits will be decreased. See more information about the "Flagged" status here.

Unlimited Messaging

It takes at least 7 days for a phone number with a messaging limit of 1,000 business-initiated conversations to reach the unlimited messaging limit.

Quality Rating

Your quality rating is based on how messages have been received by recipients over the past seven days and is weighted by recency. It is determined by a combination of quality signals from conversations between businesses and users. Examples include user feedback signals like blocks, reports and the reasons users provide when they block a business.

The phone number status, quality rating, and messaging limits for your WhatsApp business account are listed in the Phone Numbers tab in WhatsApp Manager.

Phone Numbers Tab

See About WhatsApp Business Account Message Quality Rating for information.

Maintaining High Quality

• Make sure messages follow the WhatsApp Business Policy and Commerce Policy.
• Only send messages to users who have opted into receiving messages from your business.
• Make the messages highly personalized and useful to users. Avoid sending open-ended welcome or introductory messages.
• Be mindful of messaging frequency; avoid sending customers too many messages a day. Be thoughtful of informational messages, optimizing for content and length.

FAQ