The WhatsApp 24-hour window, and which replies are free

What opens the window, and for how long

The customer service window opens when a WhatsApp user messages you. Not when you message them — that is the whole point of it. It lasts 24 hours.

Any inbound message from the customer counts, including a reply to something you sent. So a template that gets answered opens a window, and that is a large part of why a template with a question in it is worth more than one without.

Inside the window: free-form, and free

Inside an open window you can send non-template messages — plain text, an image, a document, a voice note — written in the moment rather than pre-approved. Meta’s documentation states that all non-template messages are free.

This is the part worth internalising. Everything your team types by hand, for the whole 24 hours after a customer writes in, costs nothing. A support conversation that runs to forty messages costs the same as one that runs to two.

There is a second rule alongside it that is more often got wrong: utility templates sent inside an open window are also free. That matters for exactly the messages a live conversation tends to need — an order status, an appointment confirmation — which you may want to send as a structured template rather than typing.

Be precise about the limit of that, though. It is utility templates, not templates in general. A marketing template sent inside an open window is charged at the marketing rate exactly as it would be outside one, and so is an authentication template. Anyone who tells you templates are free inside the window is describing a rule that does not exist, and it is the kind of claim a customer discovers on their own invoice.

Outside the window: templates only

When the 24 hours lapse, free-form messaging stops being available. Meta is explicit that non-template messages can only be sent inside an open window, and that templates are the only message type that can be sent outside one.

This is not a billing rule, it is a capability rule, and it is the thing that surprises teams moving from the WhatsApp Business app. You cannot simply type a follow-up to a customer who went quiet three days ago. You send an approved template or you send nothing.

And that template is charged. On Ohanvi's Pay as you go plan a marketing message to India is ₹1.0357, which is Meta's published rate plus the plan's percentage. Every plan publishes its own per-message price, and Meta prices by the country your customer is in rather than your own.

The 72-hour free entry point

There is a second, more generous window, and it is the most under-used mechanic in the whole platform.

When a customer reaches you through a Click to WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page call-to-action button, Meta opens a free entry point window of 72 hours after your first response. Inside it, any message type is free — marketing templates included.

Three days, any message, no charge, on exactly the traffic you have already paid Meta to acquire. If you run click-to-WhatsApp ads and treat the resulting conversations like ordinary ones, you are paying for messages Meta would have given you.

What this changes about how you work

Get the conversation started, then talk. The expensive part of WhatsApp is the message that opens a conversation; the conversation itself is largely free. A campaign that gets 200 replies has bought 200 windows, and what happens inside them costs nothing.

Write templates that invite an answer. A broadcast that ends in a question converts a one-way charge into an open window. One that ends in a full stop does not.

Answer inside the day. A reply at hour 23 is free and a reply at hour 25 needs an approved template and a charge — and templates cannot say whatever you want, because they were written and approved in advance.

And route click-to-WhatsApp traffic deliberately, because those conversations carry 72 free hours rather than 24 and most teams never notice the difference.

Where this shows up on an Ohanvi bill

Replies your team types inside an open window are free on every Ohanvi plan, including the ₹0 one. That is not a plan feature; it is Meta’s rule, and no provider can charge you for a message Meta does not charge them for without that being their own margin.

What Ohanvi bills is the message that opens the conversation, at the published per-message price for your plan and the destination country, plus automated messages your system sends on its own. The pricing page publishes both, and Meta’s own rate card is linked from it so a bill can be reconciled line by line.

If you are trying to work out where your money actually goes, split your monthly volume into messages that started a conversation and messages that continued one. The second group should be close to free. If it is not, something is sending templates where free-form would do.