WhatsApp templates, opt-outs, and sending limits: keeping your Business number healthy

WhatsApp is strict because its users expect it to be spam-free. Meta enforces that with a quality rating on every business number: send content people don't want, collect opt-out complaints, or use templates Meta hasn't vetted, and your rating drops — which shrinks how many messages you can send a day and can get templates paused.

The upside of playing by the rules is exactly why the channel is worth using: messages from a healthy number are trusted and opened. Tiram's job is to build those guardrails in, so following the rules is the default rather than something you have to remember.

Templates, opt-out management, messaging-tier gating, and spend caps are all part of Tiram's WhatsApp channel, which is included in the Gold and Platinum plans. The Silver plan does not include WhatsApp — the screens don't appear and the APIs are plan-gated.

As with the rest of WhatsApp in Tiram, this is a plan-tier gate, not a platform gate: the same controls apply on the cloud app and the offline Windows/Mac desktop app.

WhatsApp won't let a business start a conversation with free-form text — the opening message must be a template Meta has approved. Tiram supports three routes: a custom template you build in the editor and submit (Meta reviews it and marks it Approved or Rejected), a Template Library template — Meta's own pre-vetted designs, which approve instantly — or an imported template already living on your WhatsApp Business Account.

Every template carries a clear status in Tiram — Draft, Pending approval, Approved, or Rejected — and if Meta rejects one, the reason is surfaced in the WhatsApp activity feed so you can fix and resubmit rather than guess.

Meta sorts templates into categories, and the two you'll use are utility and marketing. Utility templates are transactional — an invoice or an order update — and back Tiram's one-tap invoice sending. Marketing templates are promotional — offers, announcements, re-engagement — and are what campaigns broadcast.

The category isn't cosmetic: it sets the per-conversation cost and the opt-out expectations, and Meta will recategorise a template if you label a promotion as utility to dodge the rules. Pick the honest category and both your costs and your compliance stay predictable.

The common reasons a template is rejected: promotional wording inside a utility template, placeholder or variable mistakes (unfilled examples, mismatched counts), content that breaks WhatsApp's commerce or messaging policy, or sloppy formatting. Because Tiram surfaces Meta's rejection reason, you're not left guessing which of these tripped it.

The fastest way to skip the review entirely is Meta's Template Library: those templates are pre-vetted, so they approve instantly and are a safe starting point when you just need something live today.

Respecting opt-outs is the single most important habit for a healthy number. In Tiram, when a customer replies STOP, an opt-out is recorded automatically and that customer is excluded from every future campaign — no manual step, no risk of messaging them by accident. You can also opt a customer out, or back in, by hand on the Contacts screen; the presence of an opt-out is what excludes them, and removing it re-subscribes them.

Because the exclusion is automatic and campaign-wide, your list stays clean as it grows — and the opt-out complaints that damage a quality rating are kept low by design.

Meta caps how many business-initiated conversations a number can start per day, in tiers — commonly 250, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, or unlimited. Your tier rises automatically as your number maintains a good quality rating and steady volume. Tiram knows your current tier and gates sends against it, so a large campaign can't accidentally push past the day's limit and get the number flagged.

This is why opt-out discipline and honest template categories matter beyond politeness: they're what let your tier climb, which is what lets you reach more customers over time.

On top of Meta's limits, Tiram gives you a spend ceiling you control: a cap for the utility category and one for marketing, over a reset period you choose (daily, weekly, or monthly). Once a category hits its cap, sends in that category pause until the next period or until you raise it — and the campaign builder always shows the budget you have left. It's a cost guardrail you set, separate from Meta's own billing.

To keep an eye on everything, the channel-health and activity surfaces show your delivery and read rates, failures, opt-outs, and any pending or rejected templates — so if the number's health starts slipping, you see it early and can act before Meta does.