What is a cold send on WhatsApp?
Definition
A cold send is a first message to somebody who has never written to your number. It is the highest-risk thing an unofficial WhatsApp integration does, because it is exactly the shape of unsolicited marketing, and Wapito meters it separately from ordinary replies with its own hourly ceiling.
In more depth
The distinction the abuse systems care about is not how many messages you send but how many strangers you message. Fifty replies inside live conversations look like a busy support desk; fifty first-contact messages from a young number look like a list being worked. Wapito treats a recipient as cold when there is no record of inbound contact and no prior relationship on the channel, and it applies an hourly ceiling that starts very low on a new number and rises with the warm-up ladder. Sends refused by the guard are not counted against you, so the ceiling cannot be gamed by retrying. The way to stay comfortably inside it is not to tune the number but to change the flow: get the first message to come from the customer, by putting a click-to-chat link on your site, a QR on a receipt, or a keyword in an email. An inbound-first design is both safer and more effective, because the people who write to you are the people who wanted to hear from you.
In the Wapito API
On the wire it is the field cold_sends_hour:
{
"cold_sends_hour": 8,
"cold_send_cap": 10,
"warmup_day": 1
}On the official Cloud API
On the official platform the same idea is enforced commercially and technically: outside the customer service window a business can only send pre-approved templates, and each one is charged.
Wapito is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or certified by WhatsApp or Meta Platforms, Inc. WhatsApp is a trademark of Meta Platforms, Inc.
Related terms
Related
Endpoints that use it
Reference
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