The 24-hour window: how to answer your Messenger and Instagram messages in time

When a customer writes to you on Messenger or Instagram, a clock starts. Meta lets a business reply freely for 24 hours after the customer’s last message. After that, the conversation closes: sending a message is refused, except in the special cases Meta provides for.

What the rule says

The window reopens every time the customer writes again. It doesn’t depend on who replied: until the customer writes, the countdown keeps running.

• Inside the window: you can send free-form messages (text, images, links).
• Outside the window: sending is refused by default. Meta provides a few exceptions, such as a tag reserved for a human answering a support request, which extends the delay to 7 days.
• Public comments: to reply privately to a comment, Meta allows one message within 7 days of the comment.

Why it’s a team problem

A 24-hour rule is easy for one person to follow. With several people, it gets much harder:

• nobody knows which conversation expires first;
• a “I’ll look at it tomorrow” can use up the window without solving anything;
• weekends and public holidays eat part of the delay.

Three habits that keep conversations from slipping away

1. Sort by deadline, not by age. The oldest conversation isn’t necessarily the most urgent: the one that expires in two hours is.
2. Reply short, right away. A useful first message (“Got it, here’s the link…”) beats a perfect answer that arrives too late.
3. Share the conversations out. A conversation assigned to someone has an owner; a “shared” conversation doesn’t.

Where Postbiz comes in

In the Postbiz inbox, every Messenger and Instagram conversation shows the time left in its window, and the ones about to expire come first. Private messages and comments live in the same inbox: no need to hunt for them across three apps.

For the details, see the inbox and the status of each network.