Guide · Templates · For the owner whose campaign stopped halfway

WhatsApp template quality rating: why Meta paused your template, how long for, and how to get it back

Every approved WhatsApp template carries a quality rating that Meta sets from how customers react to it: blocks, reports, and whether the message is read. A template that falls to low quality is paused automatically, for three hours the first time, six hours the second, and disabled the third. Here is how the rating works, what pausing and pacing do to a campaign, and how to get a template back.

Published 1 October 2026 · Updated 8 October 2026

The four ratings

Meta rates each template from usage, customer feedback and engagement. In WhatsApp Manager the rating sits beside the template under Message Templates; Meta's page names the two signals that move it as negative feedback from WhatsApp users and low read rates.

Quality pending: A new template, before any customer has reacted to it. It can be sent. Meta updates the rating on its own as feedback arrives.
High quality: Little or no negative feedback. The template can be sent and nothing is held.
Medium quality: Negative feedback from several users, or low read rates. It can still be sent, and Meta's page says it may soon be paused or disabled.
Low quality: The same signals, worse. It can be sent, but it is in danger of being paused or disabled, and Meta's page tells you to address what users are reporting.

Rating and status are two different things

The rating is Meta's read on how customers receive the template. The status is whether it may be sent at all: active, paused, in review, rejected or disabled. A template keeps working at medium and low quality; it stops working when its status changes.

Meta's help article describes it differently

Meta's Business Help Center article on template quality says the rating reflects how customers received the template over a rolling 24 hours, shown as green, yellow or red. When a template reaches low quality, it says the status becomes Flagged, a warning, and you are emailed. Flagged returns to Approved after 7 days in a row at high or medium quality. If the rating does not improve within 7 days, the template is Disabled, and while it is disabled it can be neither sent nor edited. That differs from the three-hour and six-hour pauses on Meta's developer pages. Our reading: whichever words your screen shows, treat a low rating as urgent, because both pages end with a template that stops sending.

What pausing is

When a template reaches low quality, Meta pauses it automatically to protect the quality of the phone numbers that have used it. The pause has a fixed length, and it escalates.

First time: paused for three hours.
Second time: paused for six hours.
Third time: disabled. It can no longer be sent until it is edited and re-approved.

A paused template cannot be sent. Meta rejects every attempt, does not charge for it and does not count it against your messaging limit, but a campaign that keeps trying is simply failing quietly. Meta's advice is to stop any automated sends that rely on the template until it is active again.

It unpauses on its own: After the pause has run, the status returns to active and the rating is reset from the most recent customer feedback. If you never stopped the campaign, it starts delivering again by itself.
Unless it was paused by pacing: A template paused during pacing, described below, has to be unpaused by hand: in WhatsApp Manager, or by whoever runs your system through the API.
You are told three ways: A WhatsApp Manager notification, an email, and a webhook to your software. The same three arrive again when the template is active.
The phone number is not touched at first: Other templates keep sending from the same number. Meta's page adds that a business which consistently sends templates that reach low quality may eventually see the number itself affected.

Pacing: Meta holds the campaign while it listens

Pacing is the mechanism that gives customers time to react before a template reaches everyone. It applies to marketing and utility templates, and it watches new templates, templates that have just been unpaused, and older templates that are not rated high quality. A history of low quality is one of the main reasons a template gets paced.

What a paced send looks like: The first messages go out normally. At a threshold Meta does not publish, the rest are held while early feedback comes in. Good feedback releases the held messages to the whole audience; bad feedback drops them, pauses the template, and tells the account admins by Business Suite notification, WhatsApp Manager banner and email.
How long it holds: Meta's page says its own guardrails make a decision within a reasonable time, with the goal that even a paced campaign's messages are delivered within an hour. If feedback has not settled the question by then, the held messages are released anyway.
Utility templates: Paced only after one of your utility templates has been paused, and then for the next seven days.

Portfolio pacing is a second, separate hold

Meta is rolling out a batching mechanism for the whole business portfolio. It applies to portfolios that have sent fewer than 500,000 template messages across all their numbers in the last year, and to portfolios under review for suspicious activity. A large burst of templates is delivered in batches with feedback checked between them. If the feedback suggests abuse, the remaining messages are dropped, the portfolio is blocked from sending or creating templates while Meta reviews it, and it may be disabled, with a right of appeal. For a new business sending its first big campaign this is the rule to know.

Getting a template back

Stop the campaign first. Every rejected attempt is a message a customer never got; find the ones that failed before anything else.
Read what customers are doing. Blocks and reports on a message mean the wrong people got it or did not expect it. Low read rates mean the message is not worth opening. The opt-in guide covers the first problem.
Edit the template if the words are the problem. Editing sends it back to review, and it cannot be sent until it is approved again. A disabled template is recovered the same way: edit, add a sample, submit; Meta's page says a decision comes within 24 hours.
Appeal a rejection with a sample attached. Meta's Business Help Center says a rejected template can be appealed through Direct Support, and every appeal needs a sample, which you add by editing the rejected template. The sample must not contain real customer details. A template name that says what the message is, rather than a number, also helps the reviewer, who is outside your business.
Change the targeting if the audience is. Meta's page names business logic, targeting and delivery settings as things to change when the content is fine.
Unpause by hand if pacing paused it. The link is in WhatsApp Manager beside the template; it does not come back on its own.

Questions

Our template says Flagged. What does that mean?

Meta's Business Help Center calls Flagged a warning status that follows a low quality rating, and says you get an email when it happens. If the rating recovers to high or medium for 7 days in a row, the template returns to Approved. If it does not improve within 7 days, the template is Disabled and can be neither sent nor edited.

Our template says paused. Are we being charged for the messages that failed?

No. Meta's page says attempts to send a paused template are not charged and do not count against the messaging limit. They are rejected, so the customer does not receive them either.

How long is a WhatsApp template paused for?

Three hours the first time it reaches low quality, six hours the second time. The third time it is disabled rather than paused, and has to be edited and re-approved.

Why did only part of my campaign go out?

Most likely pacing. Meta sends the first messages, holds the rest while it watches early feedback, and either releases or drops them. If the template was new, recently unpaused, or not rated high quality, it was a candidate. A portfolio under its first-year volume can also be batched across the whole account.

Does a paused template hurt my phone number?

Not immediately. Meta's page says pausing does not initially affect the number and other templates keep sending. A pattern of templates reaching low quality can eventually affect the number, which is why the fix is the content and the audience, not waiting out the pause.

Sources

Meta's developer documentation: template quality rating, read 1 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: template pausing, read 1 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: template pacing, read 1 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: business portfolio pacing, read 1 October 2026.
Meta Business Help Center: about your WhatsApp Business message template's quality rating, read 8 October 2026.

More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.

Want someone watching the ratings before a campaign stalls?

We set up a business's WhatsApp number on a proper system that shows each template's rating and status, stops a campaign the moment a template is paused, and tells you what customers did. A short call is the easiest way to see whether it fits your business.

Book a demo