As you send WhatsApp campaigns to your users, Meta evaluates the quality of your business-initiated templates and the phone numbers you use to send WhatsApp campaigns. These quality ratings determine what content you can send to users and what daily messaging limits apply to your business portfolio.
# In this article
# Messaging limits
Meta enforces limits on the number of business-initiated conversations an organization can send per day. A newly created WhatsApp business portfolio has a starting messaging limit of 250 business-initiated conversations per rolling 24-hour period, but this limit can be increased by maintaining high quality ratings, getting your business verified, and consistently sending high-quality WhatsApp campaigns that get good engagement from recipients.
# Increasing your messaging limit
There are two ways to increase your messaging limit. You can increase your initial messaging limit from 250 to 2,000 by completing one of Meta's scaling paths such as verifying your business and sending high-quality message templates to at least 1,000 unique recipients in a 30-day period.
Once your business portfolio's messaging limit has been raised to 2,000 messages/ day, you can further increase your messaging limit via automatic scaling. There are four possible messaging limit tiers:
- Tier 1: 2K business-initiated conversations per 24 hours
- Tier 2: 10K business-initiated conversations per 24 hours
- Tier 3: 100K business-initiated conversations per 24 hours
- Tier 4: An unlimited number of business-initiated conversations per 24 hours
To learn more about how to increase your business portfolio's messaging limit, see Meta’s support articles Messaging Limits and Scale Your WhatsApp Business Account Capabilities.
# Reaching your messaging limit
If you reach your business portfolio's messaging limit in a 24-hour period, your phone numbers will be temporarily restricted — you won’t be able to send new business-initiated messages until one or more active conversations ends. To learn more, see Meta’s support article Reaching Your Limit.
When you send a WhatsApp campaign, if the number of intended recipients exceeds
your portfolio's sending limit, some users won’t receive the message. For
example, if the volume of sends for your portfolio is at 950/1000 of its sending
limit for a 24-hour period, and you send a WhatsApp campaign to 70 users, 50
will receive the message and 20 won’t. The 20 users who didn’t receive the
message will have a whatsAppSendSkip event logged on their user profile for the
campaign. If this happens, you can use Iterable’s segmentation
tool to identify which users didn’t receive the campaign.
# Phone number statuses and quality ratings
Your WhatsApp portfolio's phone numbers can have the following statuses:
Connected: This status indicates that the phone number is set up and available to send outgoing messages within your business portfolio's messaging limit.
Restricted: This status occurs when you reach your business portfolio's messaging limit in a 24-hour period. (Unaffected by phone number quality ratings.) When this happens, all phone numbers in your business portfolio have the
Restrictedstatus and can't send outgoing messages until 24 hours have elapsed. You can still respond to customer-initiated conversations. Any WhatsApp campaigns that you attempt to send while your phone numbers are restricted will generate send skip events.
Meta determines the quality rating of each phone number in your WhatsApp business portfolio based on recipient feedback and engagement received within the past 7 days, with more recent messages being weighted more heavily. WhatsApp phone numbers can have the following quality ratings:
- Green: High quality
- Yellow: Medium quality
- Red: Low quality
A WhatsApp phone number's quality rating decreases if customers block the messages they receive from the number and provide a block reason such as No longer needed, Didn’t sign up, Spam, or Offensive messages. To avoid this, be sure to follow best practices for sending WhatsApp messages, such as obtaining user opt-in and sending high-quality templates.
To learn more about phone number status and quality ratings, see Meta's article About WhatsApp Business Account Message Quality Rating.
# Template approval statuses and quality ratings
In addition to requiring approval for business-initiated templates, Meta also evaluates the quality of these templates as they're sent in WhatsApp campaigns and users interact with them. Templates that have low read rates and/or have received negative feedback from users receive lower quality ratings and are at risk of being paused or disabled. When this happens, any campaigns that use these templates will fail — so it's important to monitor your templates' quality ratings.
Meta evaluates the quality of each template based on engagement data and feedback received from your customers within the past 7 days. Iterable displays the following approval statuses and quality ratings for business-initiated templates:
# Draft
The template has not yet been submitted to Meta for review.
# In Review
The template is still under review by Meta. Review can take up to 24 hours.
# Approved (no quality rating)
The template has been approved for use by Meta and has not yet received read rate information or user feedback. Its rating will be updated when this information becomes available.
# Approved (high quality)
The template has been approved for use by Meta and currently has good read rates and has received little or no negative user feedback.
# Approved (medium quality)
The template has been approved for use by Meta but currently has low read rates and/or has received negative user feedback. The template may soon be paused or disabled.
# Approved (low quality)
The template has been approved for use by Meta but currently has low read rates and/or has received negative feedback from multiple customers. This rating puts the template at high risk of being paused or disabled.
# Rejected
The template has been rejected during Meta's review process and/or violates one of its policies. You must edit the template to address Meta's rejection reasons, then re-submit to Meta for approval before the template can be used in a WhatsApp campaign.
# Paused
The template cannot be sent for a period of 3 or 6 hours, due to poor read rates and/or recurring negative user feedback. See Meta's Template Pausing documentation to learn more.
# Disabled
The template has been previously paused twice and now cannot be sent to users.
# In appeal
An appeal was submitted for the template in Meta Business Manager and a decision is pending.
# Pending deletion
The template was deleted in Meta Business Manager and is scheduled for removal in Iterable. If campaigns using this template were sent prior to its deletion, Iterable will attempt delivery for up to 30 days before the template becomes unavailable.
# Reinstated
The template was previously disabled by Meta but has been restored and can now be sent to users again.
# Want to learn more?
For more information about some of the topics in this article, check out these Iterable resources. Iterable Academy is open to everyone — you don't need to be an Iterable customer!
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