WhatsApp Auto Reply: How to Set It Up (and Message Examples to Copy)

How do I set up auto reply on WhatsApp Business?

You need the WhatsApp Business app, not regular WhatsApp. Once you have it, the whole thing takes about two minutes.

Open WhatsApp Business.
Go to the Tools tab. On older versions this lives under Settings, then Business tools.
Tap Away message.
Turn on Send away message.
Tap the message text to edit it, write what you want customers to see, and confirm.
Choose a schedule: always send, a custom schedule, or outside your business hours. The last option uses the opening hours in your business profile, so fill those in first if they are empty.
Choose recipients: everyone, everyone not in your address book, everyone except a list you pick, or only a list you pick.

Greeting messages work the same way. Tools, then Greeting message, turn it on, edit the text. This one sends to customers who message you for the first time, or after 14 days of silence.

That is it. Nothing is approved by Meta, nothing costs anything, and it works on the free app.

Away message, greeting message, quick reply: which is which

The three get confused constantly, and they solve different problems.

Away message fires when you are unavailable, on the schedule you set. This is your "we are closed, we will reply in the morning" message. One per account.
Greeting message fires on a customer's first message, or their first in 14 days. This is your shopfront hello, and it is the one people actually read, because it arrives when attention is highest.
Quick reply does not fire automatically at all. It is a saved snippet you insert yourself by typing a shortcut starting with /. Use it for the answers you type over and over, like delivery charges or your bank details.

The common mistake is putting your most important information in the away message, where only after-hours customers see it, instead of the greeting.

Auto reply message examples you can copy

Short beats polished. Two lines, one useful fact, one clear next step.

Greeting message, general shop

Hi, thanks for messaging Rumah Kopi. We usually reply within an hour during opening hours, 10am to 7pm. Let us know what you are looking for and we will check stock for you.

Away message, after hours

Thanks for your message. We are closed right now and will reply when we open at 10am. If it is about an existing order, send your order number and we will pick it up first thing.

Away message, weekend or public holiday

Thanks for reaching out. We are closed for the weekend and back on Monday morning. Orders placed now will be processed on Monday.

Away message, busy period

Thanks for your patience. We are getting a high volume of messages today and replies may take a few hours. If your question is about delivery times, most orders ship within 2 to 3 working days.

Quick reply, delivery

Delivery is RM10 within Klang Valley and free above RM150. Most orders arrive in 2 to 3 working days. Which area are you in?

Two rules for all of them. Give a real detail, because a message that only says "we will get back to you" tells the customer nothing they did not already assume. And set an expectation you can actually meet, because "we reply within an hour" is worse than silence if you do not.

Can I auto reply on regular WhatsApp?

No. Away messages, greeting messages and quick replies are WhatsApp Business features. Regular WhatsApp has none of them.

You can switch a personal number to WhatsApp Business without losing your chat history, and the Business app is free. Third-party auto responder apps do exist for regular WhatsApp, and they work by intercepting notifications on your phone. They are unofficial, they break with updates, and they carry a real risk to your account. We would not put a business number near them.

Where canned auto replies fall apart

Fixed messages solve exactly one problem: silence. They do not answer anything.

A customer sends "Do you have this in size M?" at 9pm. Your away message says you will reply in the morning. By morning they have bought it from whoever was awake. The auto reply worked perfectly and you still lost the sale.

That is the ceiling. One message, the same for everyone, triggered by the clock rather than by what the customer asked. It buys goodwill for a few hours. It never closes anything, it never checks stock, and it never tells you who was asking.

When you need AI instead of a fixed message

The upgrade is an assistant that reads the actual question and answers it from your real catalogue and FAQs, at 9pm, in whatever language the customer used, and then leaves you a record of who asked and what they wanted.

That is not the same product as an away message, and it is not free. Answering this way means moving onto the WhatsApp Business Platform, where Meta charges for replies inside the customer service window from 1 October 2026. Your free app auto replies are unaffected by that change, but the upgrade path is not free, and we break the numbers down in Meta Business Agent pricing. The trade is straightforward. A few cents per conversation against the orders that currently die overnight. Where the two routes differ, and how to set each one up, is covered in WhatsApp AI.

The takeaway

Set up the greeting message and the away message today, because they are free, they take two minutes, and no customer should ever be met with silence. Write them with a real detail and a promise you can keep.

Then be honest about what they do not do. If your inbox is mostly the same questions about stock, price and delivery, a fixed message is a placeholder where an answer should be. That is what we built EezieLead to fix: real answers from your real products, day or night, with every lead kept as a record. Try it now, start free at eezielead.com.