- After a customer messages your Page or Instagram account, you have 24 hours to reply freely.
- After 24 hours, only a few narrow exceptions apply, and promotions are not one of them.
- Reply fast, say the assistant is automated, and let a person take over at any time.
A beauty salon runs an Instagram ad on Friday. By Saturday night there are forty comments asking “how much?” and twelve DMs. The owner answers some on Monday.
By then, most of those people have booked somewhere else. A few replies don’t even send, because the window had closed.
Facebook Messenger and Instagram have clear rules for business messages. They are simple, and they reward businesses that reply fast. We build to them in our Facebook Messenger and Instagram DM bot service.
Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, updates its messaging rules from time to time. This guide explains the main ideas. Check the official pages under Sources before you launch.
What is the 24-hour window on Messenger?
When a customer sends a message to your Facebook Page, a 24-hour clock starts. Meta calls this the standard messaging window.
Inside the window, your business can reply freely. You can answer questions, send a booking link or ask for details.
Every new message from the customer restarts the clock.
If the conversation started from a click-to-Messenger ad, Meta allows a longer window, up to 7 days.
When 24 hours pass with no message from the customer, the window closes. After that, your Page can only send a message in a few narrow cases.
What can you send after 24 hours?
Meta allows a small number of exceptions. The best known are message tags. Each tag has a specific purpose, such as:
- an update about an event the customer registered for
- an update about an order or purchase they made
- an update about their account
A message tag is not a way to send offers. Using a tag for a promotion breaks the rules and can get your Page restricted.
For promotions, Meta has separate options with their own rules: marketing messages to people who agreed to receive them, and Sponsored Messages, which are paid ads delivered in Messenger and labelled as sponsored.
There is also a “human agent” option. It gives a person on your team a longer window, 7 days, to reply by hand. It needs approval from Meta, and it is for people, not for automated messages.
| Situation | What your Page can send |
|---|---|
| Customer wrote in the last 24 hours | Any normal reply, automated or by a person |
| 1 to 7 days later, a person replying, feature approved | A reply typed by your team |
| Outside the window, with a matching purpose | A message tag for that purpose only |
| A promotion after the window | No message tag. Use opted-in marketing messages, Sponsored Messages, posts or ads |
Do the same rules apply to Instagram DMs?
Mostly, yes. Instagram business accounts can be connected to automation through Meta’s messaging API. The same idea applies: you reply inside 24 hours of the customer’s last message.
Two things are different in practice:
- Instagram DMs often start from a story reply or a comment. Your assistant should understand which post or story the person means.
- Instagram customers expect very short replies. One or two sentences, then a clear next step.
How do comment replies work?
Many enquiries arrive as comments, especially on ads. “Price?” “Available Saturday?”
Your system can send one private reply to a comment, within 7 days of the comment. That message lands in the person’s inbox and starts a normal conversation. From then on, the 24-hour rule applies.
Two habits help:
- Reply publicly once, briefly. “Sent you a message” shows others that you answer.
- Never post personal details in public. Prices for a specific job, addresses and phone numbers belong in the DM.
What must an automated assistant tell customers?
Meta’s policy says automated chats must tell people they are automated where the law requires it, and Meta recommends doing so as good practice. Laws are moving the same way. In the EU, for example, the AI Act requires that people are told when they are interacting with an AI system, unless that is obvious.
That is good practice anyway. Three rules keep you safe and keep customers happy:
- Say it is automated in the first reply.
- Offer a person. A button or a word, like “Type TEAM to talk to us”.
- Hand over properly. When a person takes over, the assistant stays quiet. We explain this step in chatbot hand-off: when a human must take over.
Step by step: a setup that follows the rules
- Connect your Facebook Page and Instagram account to Meta’s business tools, with admin access in your name.
- Write the approved answers: hours, services, areas you cover, prices you already publish.
- Build the flow. n8n, a tool that connects your apps and runs steps automatically, receives each message. Claude, an AI model, writes the reply from your approved answers.
- Save every lead to a sheet or your CRM, with the time of the first message.
- Add alerts so your team knows when a conversation needs them, well before the window closes.
- Test with real accounts before any customer sees it.
Automation recipe: answer every DM and comment inside the window
- When this happensA customer sends your Facebook Page or Instagram account a message, or comments on a post or ad.
- The system doesThe system records the time, because the 24-hour window starts now.
- ThenClaude answers from the information you approved and says it is an automated assistant.
- ThenFor a comment, it sends one private reply that invites the person to continue in the DM.
- ThenQuestions about price, complaints or anything unusual are passed to your team with a summary.
- You onlyTake over conversations that need judgment, and reply yourself when the assistant hands over.
- Messenger Platform
- Instagram Messaging API
- n8n
- Claude
- Google Sheets
Common mistakes
Answering on Monday. The window has closed for anything sent on Friday or Saturday. Speed is the whole game here.
Using message tags for offers. It looks like a shortcut. It is a fast way to get a Page restricted.
A bot that never lets go. When a customer asks for a person, the assistant must step back.
Bot replies in public comments. Long automated replies under ads look like spam. Keep public replies short and move the conversation to DMs.
A simple next step
Open your Page inbox and Instagram DMs. Count how many conversations from last week waited more than a day for a reply. That number is your starting point.
WhatsApp has similar rules, with templates for messages after 24 hours. They are explained in WhatsApp Business rules, explained simply. Reply speed matters on every channel, as how fast you should reply to a new lead shows.
Want help setting this up? Book a free video call and I’ll look at your inbox with you.
Sources
- Meta: Messenger Platform and Instagram messaging policy
- Meta: Instagram messaging for businesses
- EU AI Act, Article 50: transparency obligations
This guide was drafted with AI assistance, then reviewed, fact-checked and edited by MD Al Amin.
Quick questions
Can I send a promotion to everyone who ever messaged my Page?
No. Outside the 24-hour window you cannot send promotional messages. Keep promotions for your posts, ads and opted-in channels.
Do the same rules apply to Instagram DMs?
Mostly yes. Instagram messaging for business accounts also works inside a 24-hour window after the customer writes, with a longer window only for replies typed by a person, when that feature is approved.
Can the bot reply to comments on my ads?
It can send one private reply to a comment, which starts a DM conversation. After that, the normal messaging rules apply.