A WhatsApp Autoresponder That Knows When to Stop

Write the welcome message and the follow-ups once. Each contact moves through them on their own timeline, inside the hours you choose, and the whole thing stops the second they reply.

Included on every plan. Sent on the Official WhatsApp Business API.

The same WhatsApp chat shown three times as it fills up: on day one a welcome message, on day three that message plus a booking follow-up with a Book a table button, and on day seven both of those plus a members offer and the customer replying

The short answer

What is a WhatsApp autoresponder?

A WhatsApp autoresponder sends a planned series of messages to each contact automatically, spaced out over minutes, hours or days. You write it once and every person who enters moves through it on their own timeline, without anyone sending each message by hand.

A series, not one reply

Up to seven messages in order, each with its own delay. A welcome today, the useful tip tomorrow, the nudge three days later.
Per contact, not per campaign

Everyone starts at their own step one, whenever they join. Somebody who signs up today is on day one while last week's signups are on day seven.
It knows when to stop

A reply ends the series and hands the conversation to a person. So does an opt-out, a STOP keyword or an unreachable number.

The problem

The welcome message goes out. Nothing after it does.

Almost nobody buys on the first message, and almost every business stops after it, because message two depends on a person remembering.

Follow-up needs somebody free

A lead that arrives on Friday evening gets its second message when someone next has a quiet moment. By then they have asked three other suppliers.
New customers get nothing

The onboarding tips, the how-to, the thing everyone gets stuck on. All of it lives in somebody's head instead of going out on day one, three and seven.
The reminder system is a person

A tab of numbers, a column of dates, and someone pasting the same message. It works until the list outgrows the person, and nothing is recorded.

The controls

What keeps it from annoying people

An autoresponder that cannot be steered is just a faster way to lose customers. Four settings are the difference, and each one ships in the product.

Sends inside your hours

Choose the days and hours follow-ups may go out in. A message due at 11pm waits for morning.
Stops when a human is needed

The moment someone writes back they leave the sequence and land in your shared team inbox.
Reporting that names the failure

Sent, delivered, read, replied and failed, for the whole sequence and per step. Open a failed count and it names the reason.
Fills itself

Write a rule instead of picking a list. Contacts join the moment a tag lands or a status changes, and each person enters once.

Your first sequence takes one afternoon

Start with a welcome or a lead follow-up. Approved templates on the Official WhatsApp Business API, and no markup on Meta fees.

Create your first sequence Book a demo

How it works

How to set up a WhatsApp autoresponder

Three screens in the builder, and only the templates involve waiting.

Get your templates approved

Every message in the series uses a WhatsApp template Meta has approved. Write the two or three you need and submit them.
Decide who enters

Pick a fixed list of contacts, groups or a filter, or write an auto-enroll rule so people join in real time as they match it.
Build the series

Add up to seven steps. Choose a template for each, map contact fields into its variables with a fallback, and set the delay before it sends.
Set the hours and launch

Choose the days and times follow-ups may send, decide whether a reply ends it, then run it now or schedule it up to 90 days ahead.

What people run

Six sequences worth writing first

A welcome sequence

Say hello the moment somebody joins, then send the two or three things every new customer needs in their first week. The easiest one to write.
Lead follow-up

An enquiry arrives and gets an answer in seconds. If nobody replies, two more messages go out over the next few days, then it stops rather than nagging.
Onboarding

Walk a new customer through setup one step at a time. Turn on wait-for-delivery so the steps arrive in order even if their phone was offline.
Winning back quiet customers

Tag the people who have gone quiet and let the auto-enroll rule pick them up as the tag lands. Anyone who answers reaches your team instead.
Post-purchase check-in

When an order is tagged as delivered, ask how it went a day later and how to reorder a week after that. Replies land in the inbox, not in a report nobody reads.
A lesson drip

Teach one thing per message across a week, the classic drip campaign, so a new customer learns the product without a single call from your team.

FAQ

WhatsApp autoresponder questions, answered

Including the two things it deliberately cannot do.

1. How do I set an automatic welcome message on WhatsApp?

The free WhatsApp Business app has a built-in greeting message that goes out when someone messages you for the first time, and an away message for outside your hours. Both are one message, the same for everyone, with no reporting. On the Official WhatsApp Business API you can instead run a welcome series: a greeting straight away, then the follow-ups you choose over the days after, personalised per contact and stopping the moment they reply.

2. What is the difference between an autoresponder and an auto reply?

An auto reply is one instant response to an incoming message. An autoresponder is a planned series that unfolds over time whether or not the person writes back. If you want an instant answer to a keyword, or a menu the customer taps through, that is a WhatsApp chatbot. If you want a welcome message today and a follow-up on Thursday, that is this.

3. How many messages can an autoresponder send?

Up to seven steps. Each step waits up to 30 days before it sends, measured from the previous message, and a contact's whole journey can span up to 90 days. Step one always sends immediately when someone is enrolled, so only the follow-ups wait for your send window. Each contact enters at most once, so nobody receives the series twice.

4. What is the difference from the free WhatsApp Business app?

Six things, and the number of messages is only the first.

	Free app greeting and away messages	A drip sequence
How many messages	One, the same to everyone	Up to 7, in order
When they send	Instantly, on an incoming message	On a delay you set, up to 30 days per step
Personalised	No	Yes, per contact
Stops when they reply	Not applicable	Yes, and hands the chat to your team
Reporting	None	Sent, delivered, read, replied, failed, per step
Starts on its own for new contacts	No	Yes, with an auto-enroll rule

5. What happens when a customer replies?

By default they leave the series and the conversation appears in the shared team inbox so a person can take over. That is the stop-on-reply setting and it is on unless you turn it off. Switch it off for purely transactional journeys, and the scheduled messages keep going while replies still arrive in the inbox as normal.

6. Is this the same as a drip campaign?

Yes. Drip campaign, drip sequence and autoresponder all describe the same thing: a planned run of messages that goes out over days rather than all at once. Inside Waplify the feature is called a sequence, so that is the word you will see in the builder and in the setup guide.

7. When do the follow-ups actually send?

Inside the send window you set, in your workspace timezone. The default is 9:00am to 9:00pm, and anything due at 11pm waits for the morning rather than waking someone up. Step one is the exception: it sends the moment a contact is enrolled, so a person who has just joined or just written to you never waits.

8. What reporting do I get?

Enrolled, sent, delivered, read, replied, clicked and failed for the whole sequence, then the same breakdown for every individual step, so you can see which message loses people. Open a failed count and it lists the real reasons rather than a total. The contact log exports to CSV. One honest limit: clicked counts quick-reply taps only, because WhatsApp does not report taps on link buttons to anyone.

9. Can contacts be added automatically?

Yes. Instead of choosing a list, write an auto-enroll rule and contacts join in real time as they are created or updated to match it, for example when a tag is applied or a status changes. Conditions use the same filters as the audience picker, opted-out contacts are never enrolled, and each person can only ever enter once, so the rule can run for months without messaging anyone twice.

10. Can I send birthday or renewal reminders?

Not from a date field yet. There is no per-contact date trigger, so nothing fires on its own on someone's birthday. Two things do work today: a rule that fires when a contact is created or updated, so writing a status or applying a tag starts the series, and a webhook from any outside scheduler, which lets your own system decide the date and call Waplify on the day.

11. Do I need approved message templates?

Yes. Every step uses a WhatsApp template Meta has reviewed, because these are messages your business starts rather than replies inside an open conversation. That requirement is what keeps a number healthy, so it is worth treating as the feature rather than the hurdle.

12. Will an autoresponder get my number banned?

The ban risk people have heard about comes from automating a personal number with unofficial tools. Sending through the Official WhatsApp Business API, on approved templates, to contacts who opted in, is the sanctioned path and is what Waplify does. Enrollment is gated on opt-in, and a STOP keyword or a Meta-recorded opt-out removes the contact and is logged as the reason they left.

13. How is this different from a broadcast?

A broadcast sends one message to a whole list at once, and everyone gets it at the same moment. An autoresponder sends a series, and each contact moves through it starting from whenever they joined. Use a broadcast for an announcement and an autoresponder for a journey. Both are covered on the WhatsApp automation page.

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