Messages
This document provides an overview of how messages work on the WhatsApp Business Platform.
You can send the following message types using the platform:
- Text messages
- Media messages: image, video, audio, document, and sticker messages.
- Contact messages
- Location messages
- Interactive messages: List messages, Reply button messages, and Single and Multi Product Messages.
- Template messages
The following endpoints allow you to send a message from a phone number to a customer:
Conversations
Conversations are 24-hour message threads between you and your customers and are the basis for pricing. Conversations can be opened by sending either free-form messages or template messages. See Pricing to see how conversations are opened and closed, and how they factor into our pricing model.
Scaling Conversations
To learn how to increase the number of conversations you can open in a 24-hour window, see Messaging Limits .
Read Receipts
You can set up read receipts and customers can elect to send read receipts back. If your customers opt out of sending read receipts, you will only be able to see that the message was delivered. For more information, see:
- On-Premises API: Marking Messages as Read
- Cloud API: Marking Messages as Read
Message Status
For each message you send, a notification about the status of the message will be sent to your webhook callback. In the table below, click the arrow in the left column for the WhatsApp app equivalent to each status, if available.
deleted
A message sent by the customer was deleted by the customer. Upon receiving this notification, you should ensure that the message is deleted from your system if it was downloaded from the server.
delivered
A message sent by you was delivered to the customer's device.
failed
A message sent by you failed to send. A reason for the failure will be included in the callback. Check the error message documentation for help debugging:
- On-Premises API Errors
- Cloud API Error Codes and Troubleshooting
read
A message sent by you was read by the customer. read
notifications are only available for customers that have read receipts enabled. For customers that do not have it enabled, you only receive the delivered
notification.
sent
A message sent by you is in transit within our systems.
For On-Premises API users: To receive notifications for sent
messages, set the sent_status
setting to true
in the application settings
. The sent
status notification is disabled by default.
warning
A message you sent contains an item in a catalog that is not available or does not exist.
The order of these notifications in your app may not reflect the actual timing of the message status. View the timestamp to determine the timing, if necessary.
FAQs
Yes! WhatsApp allows you to format selected text inside your messages with Bold, Italics, Strikethrough or Monospace.
There may be cases where you need more time to handle a customer query and may only be able to provide a response after 24 hours. We recommend creating message templates to either:
- deliver the result to the user, or
- prompt the user to reply in order to activate the customer service window.
In both cases, please ensure you provide as much context to the message template as possible. For example:
- "Hello {{1}}, regarding the issue you reported earlier, we regret to inform you that {{2}}. Apologies for any inconvenience caused."
- We have updates regarding your ticket. Please respond back if you'd like to continue support."
