Scheduling
When a campaign sends, how fast, and what happens to messages queued outside your sending hours.
The When should it go out? block on the last step of the campaign wizard sets when a campaign starts, the hours it may send in, and how fast it goes. None of it can be changed after launch; pause or cancel instead.
Start now, or later #
Leave Start empty and a campaign begins the moment you press Send it. Pick a date and time and the button reads Schedule it; the campaign shows as Scheduled until then.
A scheduled campaign that comes due outside your sending hours doesn't send early and isn't dropped. It waits for the next open hour.
Quiet hours #
Messages go out between 09:00 and 21:00; calls between 10:00 and 19:00. Both are read in your campaign time zone.
Your workspace's sending rules can narrow that, and so can each campaign's Earliest send and Latest send. Neither can widen it. A wider window is narrowed rather than refused, and the wizard shows the hours that will really be used, for example Messages will go out between 10:00 and 19:00 Asia/Kolkata — narrowed to stay inside the quiet-hours limit.
Nothing is lost to quiet hours
A recipient queued at 23:00 stays queued and goes out when sending opens. The campaign stays Sending, and its page shows the time of the next batch, so a campaign sitting still overnight is visibly waiting rather than apparently broken.
The time zone is your workspace's, not the recipient's. If you send across time zones, pick a window that's reasonable in all of them.
Pace #
How should the messages go out? offers two speeds.
Gradual (recommended, and the default) starts at 4 recipients in the first minute and grows by about 60% a minute (4, 7, 11, 17, 27…) up to your Upper limit per minute, and never beyond 40 a minute. Full speed arrives within about five minutes. For calls, a gradual batch also leaves 3 of the workspace's call lines free, so your team can still make calls while it runs.
As fast as allowed goes at the full Messages per minute from the first minute, up to 120 at a time. Use it for something genuinely urgent. Repeated bursts make a number look automated and are hard on a new number.
The number you set is a ceiling, not a promise. WhatsApp's own limits and the workspace's free call lines still apply. A campaign held back by them stays visible with its next attempt time; it doesn't skip anyone.
The pace a campaign launched with shows on its row in the Campaigns list as Gradual or Burst, and on its page as Gradual delivery or As fast as allowed delivery.
Workspace defaults #
Campaigns → Sending rules sets the rules every campaign in the workspace follows, including those Duesly sends: Earliest send, Latest send, Messages per minute, Most messages one person gets a week and the Time zone. Each can only be made stricter than the platform's limits. See Workspace sending rules.
The time zone follows the workspace's own zone, set under Settings, unless you turn Use the workspace time zone off and choose another.
When a campaign stops on its own #
| Status | Why |
|---|---|
| Sending | Working through the list a batch at a time, or waiting for the next open hour or a free line. |
| Scheduled | Waiting for its start time. |
| Paused | Someone paused it. Resume carries on. |
| Stopped | Something that affects every remaining recipient went wrong, usually a disconnected sender. The recipients not yet reached stay queued. Find it under Needs attention, and see It stopped halfway. |
| Done | Every recipient reached a final outcome. |
| Cancelled | Someone cancelled it. Final. |
| Draft / Archived | Never launched, or moved to Archive. |
A campaign that stops for a shared cause stops once, loudly, rather than burning through thousands of recipients discovering the same problem.