Messages – WhatsApp Business Platform – Documentation – Meta for Developers

Conversations

Conversation-based pricing is changing starting June 1, 2023. Please see our Pricing Changes document to learn how this will impact you.

Conversations are message threads between you and your customers. Conversations can last up to 24-hours and must be initiated by you (business-initiated) or your customers (user-initiated). Customers can initiate a conversation by sending you any type of message, but you can only initiate a conversation with a template message. Once the conversation has begun, you can then send any type of message to the customer.

User-Initiated Conversations

A user-initiated conversation is a message thread started by a customer who sends any type of message to a business. No prior opt-in is required. When the business responds to the customer it begins a 24-hour customer service window. All messages sent back and forth between the customer and the business within this window are associated with the conversation.

Business-Initiated Conversations

A business-initiated conversation is a message thread started by a business that sends an approved template message to a customer. Prior opt-in is required. When the business sends the template message it begins a 24-hour customer service window. All messages sent back and forth between the customer and the business within this window are associated with the conversation.

Once the customer replies to the business’s template message, the business can begin sending any type of message to the customer.

For more information, see:

Customer Service Window

A customer service window is a 24-hour window of time that starts when a business replies to a customer’s initial message in a user-initiated conversation, or sends a customer an initial template message to start a business-initiated conversation.

Once a customer service window has started, a business can send any type of message to the customer. After the window expires, a new conversation must be initiated by either the customer or business in order to start a new customer service window.

Conversation-based Pricing

Conversation-based pricing is changing starting June 1, 2023. Please see our Pricing Changes document to learn how this will impact you.

Businesses are charged per conversation, which includes all messages delivered in a 24 hour session. See Conversation-Based Pricing for information.

Scaling Business-Initiated Conversations

Businesses initiate conversations by sending customers a message template from a registered business phone number. Businesses can send message templates to up to 250 unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period, but will need to complete business verification and display name approval in order to scale messages beyond 250.

See Messaging Limits for an explanation of how we automatically scale the amount of message templates you can send to unique customers.

Read Receipts

Businesses can set up read receipts and customers can elect to send read receipts back. If the customer opts out of sending read receipts, the business will only be able to see that the message was delivered. For more information, see: