• Commercial messaging allows businesses to communicate with their customers using WhatsApp, such as through order, transaction, and appointment information, delivery and shipping notifications, product and service updates, and marketing
• You may only initiate chats if you are sending a transactional notification, and only via approved Message Templates
• Do not try to send unwanted, automated, or bulk messages using WhatsApp. WhatsApp uses both machine learning technology and reports from users to detect and ban accounts sending unwanted messages.
• WhatsApp is committed to using the resources at its disposal–including legal action–to prevent abuse that violates their Terms of Service, such as automated or bulk messaging, or non-personal use.
• WhatsApp prohibits publishing falsehoods and engaging in illegal, threatening, intimidating, hateful, and racially or ethnically offensive behavior. Messages must not contain offensive content, for example sexually explicit materials or nudity, determined at our sole discretion.
• As per WhatsApp Business Terms of Service, beginning on December 7, 2019, WhatsApp will take legal action against those who determine are engaged in or assisting others in the abuse that violates our Terms of Service, such as automated or bulk messaging, or non-personal use, even if that determination is based on information solely available to us off our platform

Businesses should adhere to the above guidelines in order to be compliant with WhatsApp’s terms. Failing to do so may result in a business account getting banned or may also lead to legal action from WhatsApp.

As per WhatsApp Terms, Messaging limits determine how many unique users your business can send messages to on a daily basis. This includes new conversations as well as existing conversations with users. The messaging limit does NOT limit the number of messages your business can send, just the number of users you are trying to message. It also does NOT apply to messages sent in response to a user-initiated message within a 24-hour period.

• Tier 1: Allows your business to send messages to 1K unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period
• Tier 2: Allows your business to send messages to 10K unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period
• Tier 3: Allows your business to send messages to 100K unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period

Every new WhatsApp-enabled number is initialized at Tier 1. WhatsApp monitors message volume, and will automatically move customers between tiers based on the total number of unique recipients across the past 7 days. If you exceed the daily limit for your tier, your messages will be undelivered.

Because WhatsApp encrypts messages, it relies on user feedback to measure the quality of messages. WhatsApp uses this feedback to track an internal “quality rating” for senders that can affect how users are able to move between rate limiting tiers. Factors including the frequency rate of “report spam” and “block” on your sender may influence the quality rating.” Senders with the low-quality rating may not be eligible to move up in rate-limiting tiers.

A business’s phone number will be upgraded to the next tier if:

• Its quality rating is not low, and
• The cumulative amount of users it sends notifications adds up to twice its current messaging limit within a 7-day period.

Once the business reaches this threshold, it will be moved to the next tier. The minimum amount of time that this upgrade can occur is after 48 hours when the business is sending messages up to their current limit every day.

Example 1:- A business is upgraded from Tier 1 to Tier 2 when it messages a total of 2,000 users within a 7-day period.

Example 2: The chart explains the concept of messaging limit in a rolling 24-hour window.

Quality Rating

It shows the quality of the messages your customers received in the past 24 hours. Under the Quality Rating column, there are three different quality states:

• Green: High quality
• Yellow: Medium quality
• Red: Low quality

Statuses

There are different statuses for phone numbers that refer to its connectivity:

• Pending: This is when a business first sets up a phone number that hasn’t yet been on-boarded and approved
• Connected: The phone number is online and functioning normally
• Offline: The phone number is currently not reachable by WhatsApp servers or is not otherwise online

Occasionally, a phone number may show one of two particular statuses that are related to quality and messaging limits: Flagged and Restricted.

• Flagged: This is a warned state. When the quality rating reaches a low (red) state, the phone number is moved to a Flagged status. If the quality rating improves to a high (green) or medium (yellow) state over 7 days, the phone number will return to a connected status. If the quality rating does not improve within 7 days, the number will still return to a connected status but with a lower messaging limit imposed on it.
• Restricted: Phone numbers that reach their messaging limit are moved to a restricted state. During a Restricted state, the number will be unable to send any notification messages until the 24-hour window for sending messages is reset. They can still respond to any messages initiated by users.

To maintain high quality, WhatsApp recommends the following:

• Make sure messages follow the WhatsApp Messaging guidelines
• Only send messages to users who have opted to receive messages from your business
• Make the messages highly personalized and useful to users. Avoid sending open-ended welcome messages 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.