Conversations and the 24-hour window
A conversation is all the messaging with one person. The 24-hour window decides when you may send them a free-form message.
Last updated: September 30, 2026
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A conversation is all the messaging with one person. The 24-hour window decides when you may send them a free-form message.
Last updated: September 30, 2026
A conversation is all the messaging done with one person through one account; every row in the inbox is a conversation. The messaging window is the period that decides when you may send a free-form message in it. Without understanding both, there is no answer to "why did my message not go out".
⚠️ The 24-hour rule is a restriction on Meta's side and applies to every tool that uses their API. {{brand.name}} cannot extend it; it can only display it correctly and obey it.
A conversation is the whole exchange between one person and one account. Even if the person writes again months later, the same conversation continues; no second row is created. Inside it, what the person wrote and what you and your automations sent sit in order.
Every message has a status, shown by the marker beside it: Received, Sending, Sent, Delivered, Read or Failed.
A conversation has two basic properties:
The inbox filters rest on these two properties: Open, Assigned to me, Unassigned, Unread, Closed and All. Which filters you see depends on your access policy.
The window is counted from the person's last message to you, and it is 24 hours on both Instagram and WhatsApp.
Once the time is up, the outcome depends on the channel:
The screen states this as well: "24 hours have passed since the last message. Under Meta's rules, no reply can be sent until the person writes to you again."
💡 If the human agent window is enabled for your Instagram account, the period for a team member writing from the inbox extends to 7 days. The extension covers human replies only; automations stay at 24 hours in every case. When the extension also expires, the screen says the human agent period has run out too.
Only a message the person sends you opens the window. These do not:
The distinction is visible in two separate stamps on the contact card: the time of the last event of any kind from the person is kept apart from the time of the last message they wrote. The "first contact" condition looks at the first; the messaging window looks at the second.
When someone comments on your post, you may send one private message in response to that comment, and the 24-hour rule is not applied to it. Meta grants this per comment and expects it to be used within 7 days of the comment.
In practice this means the first message of a comment-triggered flow goes out even if the person has never written to you. If they reply to it, the normal 24-hour window opens and the flow continues comfortably; if they do not, the flow's later messages run into the window.
There are two ways to account for the window inside a flow:
When a pending message cannot be sent because of the window, the step is skipped and the reason is written into the run log; the flow does not vanish silently, and you can see it in the Logs tab.
Every message you send carries a status marker, and it lets you spot window problems early:
Incoming messages have a single status: Received.
If a message keeps coming back as Failed, check the window first and then the connection state on the Settings › Connection page.
A café receives "are you open tomorrow?" at 11 p.m. on Friday.
Read the window correctly and you neither keep a customer waiting nor design a message that was never going to be delivered.
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