Your WhatsApp broadcast is stuck pending. Here's what to check.
Check three things first, in this order: whether your template is still in review, whether you've hit your 24-hour messaging limit, and whether your quality rating dropped. Those three cover most stuck broadcasts. Template review sits with Meta and nobody can speed it up, but you should at least be told it's the reason.
Somebody schedules a campaign at half past six and it still hasn't moved at eleven. No error, no explanation, and support replies tomorrow. We've heard this exact story enough times to write it down.
Work through the checks below in order. Most of the time you'll find it in the first two.
Check these six, in this order
Look at the template status, not the campaign status
A campaign will sit in a queue indefinitely if the template it uses is still under review. Review usually finishes in minutes, sometimes hours, and occasionally it stalls overnight.
Open the template itself rather than the campaign. If it reads pending, the campaign isn't broken; it's waiting.
Check whether the template was rejected after you scheduled
Templates get re-reviewed, and a template approved last month can be rejected this month. Some platforms leave the campaign queued rather than telling you.
A rejected template means the campaign will never send. Fix the template, resubmit, and reschedule.
Work out which messaging tier you're on
Business numbers start limited to a set number of unique customers in any rolling 24 hours, and the tier rises as you send successfully. Hit the ceiling mid-send and the rest queues until the window resets.
If your broadcast is bigger than your tier, it will crawl rather than fail. Split it across days or raise the tier first.
Read your quality rating
Blocks and reports drag the rating down. Red usually means reduced limits, and reduced limits mean a broadcast that trickles.
Rating recovers on its own with clean sending, so the fix is fewer, better-targeted messages for a week rather than a workaround.
Confirm the number and display name are actually approved
A number pending verification, or a display name still in review, will accept a scheduled campaign and then hold it.
Check the business account, not the campaign screen.
Rule out billing and the scheduled timezone
A failed payment method on the business account pauses sending without touching the campaign.
And check the timezone you scheduled in. A 6:30pm send set in the wrong zone genuinely does look identical to a stuck one.
Match the symptom to the cause
| What you're seeing | Usually means |
|---|---|
| Nothing sent at all, no errors | Template still in review, or the number isn't approved yet |
| Sent to a few hundred, then stopped | You hit the 24-hour messaging limit for your tier |
| Trickling out slowly over hours | Rate limiting, often after a quality rating drop |
| Some contacts delivered, many failed | A list problem rather than a sending problem. See the list guide below |
| Everything queued after a working campaign yesterday | Template re-reviewed and rejected, or a billing failure |
| Delivered, but hours after you scheduled it | Provider-side queue, or the wrong timezone on the schedule |
Stop it happening again
Submit templates a day early. Review is the single most common cause and it's the one you can plan around. Get the template approved, then build the campaign.
Know your tier before you build the list. Sending 40,000 messages on a 10,000 tier isn't a bigger campaign, it's a four-day campaign.
Warm the number up. New numbers sending large volumes on day one is the fastest route to a quality rating problem.
Pick a platform that tells you. The delay is often unavoidable. Being left to guess for four hours isn't.
Template review time belongs to Meta. No platform, provider or reseller can push your template to the front of that queue, and anyone claiming they can is selling you something.
Messaging tiers rise on their own schedule based on your sending quality and volume. You can't buy your way up.
What a platform can genuinely do is show you queue position and sending progress while it's happening, so you know whether to wait or to start fixing something.
Watch a broadcast run instead of guessing
Amplifeed shows template status, queue position and sending progress while the campaign runs, so a delay comes with a reason attached. Take twenty minutes and see it on your own list.
Book a 20-minute demoRelated questions
How long does WhatsApp template approval take?
Usually minutes, sometimes a few hours, and occasionally overnight when volumes are high. Nobody can accelerate it, so submit templates before you need them rather than alongside the campaign.
Why did my broadcast send to only part of my list?
That's normally a list problem rather than a sending problem: missing country codes, duplicates, or contacts your rules excluded. It can also be a messaging tier ceiling reached mid-send.
Can I resend a broadcast that got stuck?
Fix the underlying cause first, then reschedule. Resending against the same broken template or the same exhausted tier repeats the outcome.
Does a stuck broadcast still cost money?
You're billed for messages that actually send. Queued messages that never go out aren't charged, but check your provider's billing terms, because they vary.