WhatsApp Business not sending the welcome message: causes and fix

If WhatsApp Business is not sending the welcome message, what is happening is that the automatic greeting did not trigger: either it is not activated, or the contact does not meet the condition that activates it, or the message did not leave the server. It is not a serious error and it does not break anything: your account keeps working and you can keep replying by hand. In most cases the business owner fixes it from the WhatsApp Business panel or from the tool you use, without touching a single line of code. This guide takes you through the causes one by one, then through the concrete steps, and at the end through the cases where the greeting does not arrive because the real problem is something else.

What it means exactly that the welcome message is not sent

The welcome message is an automatic reply that triggers when someone writes to you for the first time, or when they write after some time without doing so. It is different from a campaign template (HSM): the welcome message responds to an incoming message, the template starts the conversation. That difference matters a lot to understand why one works and the other does not.

When we say it is “not sent”, in practice there are three different scenarios and it is worth knowing which one is yours before touching anything: (1) the message never appears in the chat, (2) it appears as sent but the customer says they did not receive it, or (3) it appears for some contacts and not for others. Each one points to a different cause.

• Scenario A: the greeting never appears in the conversation. It is usually a setting that is disabled or misconfigured.
• Scenario B: the greeting shows as sent but the customer does not see it. It is usually delivery, the number, or the customer's device.
• Scenario C: it works with some contacts and not with others. It is usually the trigger condition (first contact, time of day, label).

Cause 1: the automatic greeting is turned off or was left unsaved

It is the most common cause and the easiest to rule out. In the WhatsApp Business app, the welcome message lives inside Business tools → Welcome message. If the switch is off, it never triggers. If you activated it but closed the screen without saving, it also stays off.

Watch out for a detail that confuses many people: the welcome message and the away message are two separate things. You can have one enabled and the other not. If the customer writes outside your business hours and you expect the welcome greeting, what actually triggers (if configured) is the away message. If neither is active, the customer simply receives nothing automatic.

1. 1Open the WhatsApp Business app on the business phone.
2. 2Go to Settings → Business tools → Welcome message.
3. 3Check that the toggle is enabled (not gray, not off).
4. 4Review the text: if it is empty or only has spaces, it is saved as off.
5. 5Tap Save and go back into the screen to confirm it stayed enabled.
6. 6Test from another number that has never written to you and see if it arrives.

Cause 2: the contact does not meet the condition that triggers the greeting

The greeting triggers with the first message from a new contact, or with the first one after a period of inactivity. If the person had already written to you before and that period has not passed yet, the system considers it an ongoing conversation and does not send a welcome. It is not an error: it is the rule working.

This explains scenario C, the one where “some receive it and others do not.” Before thinking about a technical problem, check whether the contacts who do not receive the greeting are precisely those who had already written recently. If so, nothing is broken.

• The contact already wrote to you before and the configured inactivity period has not passed yet.
• The contact wrote to you from another channel (Instagram or Messenger) and the greeting is only configured for WhatsApp.
• You are testing from your own number, which already appears as an existing contact in your database.
• The incoming message came from a campaign and the system treats it as a reply, not as a first contact.

Cause 3: business hours leave the greeting out of range

If you set up the welcome message with a time window, it only triggers within that window. Outside the window, no welcome message is sent: an absence message is sent instead, if configured. Many businesses think the greeting isn't working when in fact they're testing at 22:00 and their window ends at 20:00.

The opposite also happens: you set up the greeting without a time window, but the absence message with a time window, and you end up with two overlapping messages or none at all. Check both settings together, not separately.

Cause 4: the message goes out but doesn't arrive (delivery, not configuration)

If the greeting shows as sent in the chat and the customer swears they didn't see it, the problem is no longer the configuration: it's delivery. Here the typical causes are on the recipient's or the number's side, not your greeting.

• The customer has blocked or reported the business number.
• The customer uninstalled or changed phones and didn't restore their history.
• The customer has WhatsApp offline or with notifications silenced and didn't see it.
• The business number is under review or has a limited status on Meta's side.
• The customer uses an unofficial version of WhatsApp that doesn't receive business messages properly.

To rule this out, send a manual message from the same number to the same contact. If the manual message doesn't arrive either, the problem isn't the greeting: it's the channel. If the manual message arrives and the automatic one doesn't, go back to causes 1 to 3.

Cause 5: you use the official API and the greeting isn't implemented as an automatic reply

Here the whole diagnosis changes. If your WhatsApp Business runs on Meta's official API (WhatsApp Cloud API), the welcome message isn't an app option: it's an automation that has to be configured in the platform or system you use to handle customers. If that automation isn't created, there's no greeting, even if the account is perfect.

With the official API, the greeting must also respect the conversation window: if the customer writes to you, a window opens in which you can reply freely. That automatic greeting, as a response to an incoming message, falls within that window. It's different if you want to start the conversation yourself: for that you need a template approved by Meta. Template approval can take up to 48 hours, and Meta does not guarantee a shorter timeframe.

If you use a customer service tool on top of the official API, check there whether the automatic welcome reply is active and whether it has a schedule. In Wando, for example, schedule-based auto-replies are configured from the dashboard and the AI suggests replies for the team to approve, but the automatic welcome is still a setting you have to turn on: it doesn't turn on by itself.

How to fix it step by step

The order matters: first rule out the simplest things, then move on to the complex ones. If you skip steps, you'll end up changing things that were already working.

1. 1Confirm which platform you're on: the WhatsApp Business app (phone) or the official API with a customer service tool. The path is different.
2. 2If it's the app: go to Business tools → Greeting message and check that the toggle is active and the text isn't empty.
3. 3Check the greeting's time slot. If it has a schedule, test within that time slot.
4. 4Check the away message separately: it's not the same thing and it's often misconfigured.
5. 5Test with a number that has never written to you. Don't use your own phone.
6. 6If the message doesn't arrive even manually from that number, the problem is with the channel or the number, not the greeting.
7. 7If you're on the official API: go to your customer service tool and check that the automatic welcome reply is created, active and without conditions that block it.
8. 8If you use templates to start conversations, check that they're approved. Approval can take up to 48 hours.
9. 9Write down what you tested and at what time: if you need to escalate to support, that's the first thing they'll ask for.

How to keep the greeting from breaking again

• Keep the greeting text short: a greeting, one line about what you do and a specific question. Long messages get read less and reported more.
• Don't mix the welcome with the away message: they're two messages with two functions. If both say the same thing, the customer gets noise.
• Check the greeting every time you change tools, numbers or business hours. That's where it breaks.
• Test with a new number once a month. It's the only way to know it's still working.
• If you use the official API, write down who manages the auto-replies. When that person leaves, the greeting breaks and nobody knows why.
• Don't change several things at the same time: if you touch the greeting, the schedule and the template together, you won't know afterward which one was the problem.

When this problem is just the symptom of something else

There are cases where the greeting doesn't arrive because something bigger is failing. If you see any of these signs, stop looking at the welcome message and tackle the underlying problem.

• No automated message works: not the welcome message, not the away message, not the quick replies. The problem is the platform or the number, not the greeting.
• The number appears with a limited or under review status in the Meta panel. Until that is resolved, delivery may fail.
• The API access token expired or was revoked. When that happens, the tool stops sending and the greeting is just the tip of the iceberg.
• The webhook stopped receiving events: if your tool doesn't find out that a message came in, it can't trigger any automated response.
• Messages go out with delays of hours or never go out to certain contacts. There the problem is delivery or number quality.
• The greeting works but the team doesn't see the conversations. That is an inbox problem, not a welcome message problem.

For any of these cases, the reference is Meta's official documentation on the WhatsApp Business API: there you'll find the number statuses, the conversation windows and the delivery conditions. There is no shortcut or magic setting that bypasses those rules.

What to check if the greeting arrives but the customer still complains

Sometimes the greeting arrives fine and the customer still says they weren't attended to. That is not a problem with the welcome message: it is a process problem. The greeting is the entry point, not the service.

• The greeting promises something that no one delivers afterwards ("we reply in minutes" and no one replies).
• The greeting doesn't say what to do next, so the customer writes and is left waiting.
• The greeting arrives at any time and the customer thinks there is someone on the other side when there isn't.
• The greeting is sent twice because of a duplicate configuration problem between the app and the tool.

Frequently asked questions about the WhatsApp Business welcome message

These are the most common questions that come up when the automatic greeting doesn't work. If your case isn't here, the answer almost always lies in first checking whether you're on the app or the official API: the diagnosis changes completely.