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The single mechanism that makes automated-but-compliant messaging possible on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — and the reason there's no grey area to argue about.
When someone messages a business on Instagram, Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp — a DM, a story reply, or a comment the business replies to — Meta opens a 24-hour window. Inside it, the business can reply freely, promotional content included. It's Meta's own permission, granted by the other person's own action of messaging first.
It removes the grey area that a lot of "DM bot" marketing quietly relies on. A system that only ever operates inside a window opened by the other person's own message isn't reaching out to anyone who didn't ask — it's answering. That's the difference between a reply and an unsolicited message, and it's the reason a compliant tool can say plainly what it will and won't do rather than hoping nobody asks.
Once the window closes, free-form replies stop. On WhatsApp, reaching that person again requires an approved message template. On Instagram and Facebook, the business simply can't message until the person writes again — there's no automation workaround for that, because Meta doesn't offer one.
Meta's Messenger Platform offers a "Human Agent" tag that extends the window to seven days. It's reserved for genuine human agents handling a conversation, not automations — using it to stretch an automated system's reach would be a breach of Meta's own policy, enforced at the platform level, not just a house rule.
Replying inside the window is free on Instagram and Facebook, always. On WhatsApp, replying inside the window is free until 1 October 2026; after that Meta charges per message, with the first 1,000 service messages each month free per number. That cost sits on the business's own Meta account, at Meta's price.
See how this shows up inside the product on the product doc, and how WhatsApp pricing works.