Marketing, Utility, and Authentication templates

Every WhatsApp template belongs to a category that Meta uses to decide how the template is reviewed, who can receive it, and how much Meta charges for it. You choose the category when you create the template.

The three categories

Category	What it is for	Examples
Marketing	Anything that promotes your business or tries to sell.	Offers and discounts, new products or services, a new branch, invitations to an event, “we miss you” messages.
Utility	Updates about something the customer already did or asked for.	Booking or order confirmation, a change to an appointment, a delivery update, a payment receipt, a reply to a support request.
Authentication	One-time codes that verify a customer’s identity.	“Your verification code is 482913.”

In the template form you can choose Marketing or Utility. Authentication templates cannot be created from the portal.

How to choose

Ask whether the message would make sense if the customer had not done anything with you recently.

• If it only makes sense because of a specific booking, order, or request, it is Utility. Keep it factual and about that one transaction.
• If it would make sense to send to anyone, or it mentions an offer, a discount, or “check out”, it is Marketing.

A utility message that also carries a promotion, such as “Your order has shipped, and here is 20% off your next one”, counts as Marketing.

Caution

Do not submit a promotional message as Utility to reach more customers or to pay less. Meta checks the content and will reject the template or move it to Marketing, and tkana checks each template’s real category before sending, so customers who opted out of marketing are still left out.

What the category changes

• Who can receive it. Customers who opt out of marketing messages stop receiving Marketing templates, from campaigns and from automated messages alike. Utility and Authentication templates still reach them. See How customers opt out of marketing messages.
• What Meta charges. Meta prices template messages by category, and marketing messages usually cost the most. Meta bills these charges to your Meta account. See Who pays for WhatsApp template messages.
• How strictly Meta reviews it. Utility templates must stay tied to a transaction. Marketing templates are reviewed for misleading content and are the ones most likely to be paused if customers block or report you.

When Meta changes a template’s category

Meta sometimes reclassifies an approved template, most often from Utility to Marketing, when it decides the content is promotional. When Meta announces a change, the WhatsApp Health card on the Marketing page shows Template category change coming, with the affected templates and the date the change takes effect. Before that date you can:

• Accept the change. From then on the template is charged and treated as Marketing, including for opted-out customers.
• Appeal in WhatsApp Manager on Meta’s side, if you believe the template is truly a utility message.
• Rewrite the template to be purely about the transaction, as a new template.

An approved template keeps the category it was approved under when you edit it. To change the category yourself, clone the template, choose the new category, and submit the copy.

Related

• Create a WhatsApp template
• Track Meta’s review and fix a rejected template