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Template categories

Neelke Stadler Updated by Neelke Stadler

It's important to understand how WhatsApp categorizes your template for pricing purposes, as Meta charges on a per-message basis.

Rates vary based on the template's category and the recipient's WhatsApp phone number's country calling code.

Message templates can be categorized as:

  • Marketing templates – Enable businesses to achieve a wide range of goals, from generating awareness to driving sales and retargeting customers.
  • Utility templates – Enable businesses to follow up on user actions or requests, since these messages are typically triggered by user actions.
  • Authentication templates – Enable businesses to verify a user’s identity, potentially at various steps of the customer journey.
  1. Consider template category guidelines before creating a new template
  2. Stay updated on your template's approval status after template creation
  3. Learn about automatic category updates to templates in production
WhatsApp automatically validate the category you indicated per your content and their template guidelines.

Automatic category update

Meta introduced a recurring process to identify and update approved templates that should be of a different category, per theirs template category guidelines.

If this process is too frequent in your account they can update the category with no advance notice and trigger emails/webhooks to confirm the category change.

Categorisation appeals

When you receive notice that a template’s category will be updated you can:

  • Create a new template
  • For utility templates that will be updated to marketing:
    • You can request a review:
      • If the review is approved – The template’s category will not be updated as previously notified.
  • If the review is not approved – The template will be updated to marketing, as previously notified.
You have 60 days to review and appeal these changes in Business Support Home.

You can view all your results in your WhatsApp Manager panel by navigating to Account tools > Message templates and clicking the “See all updates” button in the Alerts banner or on the Manage Templates tab:

  1. Select your template
  2. Edit the content so it aligns to the guidelines of that category
  3. Re-submit the template for approval
Our first customers will not have access to their WhatsApp Manager, only the BSP has access for numbers created before mid 2021. You will need to reach out to us to assist you with the appeal process.

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