· Product
Why FoxlyFlow now paces your WhatsApp messages
Every FoxlyFlow WhatsApp channel now has sending limits: messages are spaced out, capped per hour and day, kept away from people who never wrote to you, and paused at night in your recipients’ time zone. Nothing is dropped. A message over a limit waits in Queued and goes out when it fits.
Why sending limits
WhatsApp judges a number by how it behaves, not by a published quota. Its Messaging Guidelines rule out “repeated unwanted contact” and the use of “unofficial clients, bulk messaging, auto-messaging, auto-dialing, or automation to harm WhatsApp or our users.” Developers running WhatsApp Web integrations report the same pattern:
- Messages to people with no chat history are the fastest way to get restricted. One report puts the threshold at 15–20 such messages in a day, followed by 24-hour, then 48-hour restrictions and finally a permanent ban.
- WhatsApp has tightened its detection of automation on linked devices, and flagged accounts take weeks to recover, if they do.
- WhatsApp is testing a monthly cap on messages to people who don’t reply: each unanswered message counts against it.
FoxlyFlow’s WhatsApp channel is an unofficial WhatsApp Web session, so these rules apply in full. Sending limits keep a channel from behaving like the spam WhatsApp is built to stop, and they keep your contacts from getting messages they never asked for.
What FoxlyFlow does
Before every send, FoxlyFlow checks the channel against six limits. A message over any of them stays Queued and is retried when it fits; the others keep flowing.
| Limit | Default | What it prevents |
|---|---|---|
| Sends per minute / hour / day | 8 / 200 / 1,000 | Bursts no person could type |
| New-channel ramp-up | 20 on day 1, ×1.8 a day (about 680 by day 7) | A fresh number going from zero to full volume |
| New contacts per day | 10 people who never messaged the channel | Cold outreach, the top cause of restrictions |
| Identical texts per hour | 5 | Blasting one message to a list |
| Gap between sends | 3–8 seconds | Machine-gun sending when a queue drains |
| Quiet hours | 22:00–08:00 in the channel's time zone | Outreach landing in the middle of the night |
FoxlyFlow also respects WhatsApp’s own restrictions. When WhatsApp stops a number from messaging new contacts, messages to new contacts wait until it ends, 24 hours if WhatsApp gives no end time. Chats with people who already talk to you continue. Whoever runs FoxlyFlow can change every limit.
Quiet hours and your channel’s time zone
Each channel has the time zone of the people it messages. FoxlyFlow uses it for quiet hours and to reset daily limits at local midnight.
- When you create a channel, pick the recipients’ time zone from a searchable list (city, region or GMT offset). Your own zone is detected and preselected.
- Later, change it on the channel page, or with
PATCH /v1/channels/{id}.
Quiet hours only hold outreach. If someone wrote to you in the last 24 hours, your reply goes out at night too. Channels created before this change use UTC, so set their real zone.
What you’ll see in the dashboard
- Queued messages show a clock and “Waiting to send (sending limits)” until they go out.
- New message explains why a message may wait, with the quiet-hours zone of the channel you send from.
- The channel page shows the time zone picker and the same explanation.
What limits can’t do
Limits make FoxlyFlow a considerate sender. They don’t make a WhatsApp Web number immune: WhatsApp can still restrict or ban numbers that break its terms, and reports from recipients weigh heavily.
- Message only people who opted in and expect to hear from you.
- Let contacts write first where you can: a chat they started is not cold outreach.
- For bulk, marketing or high-volume notifications, use the official WhatsApp Business Platform (Cloud API).