Every Automate app feature, explained.

What is Automate?

Automate is a WhatsApp campaign manager for businesses that already have a customer list. You upload the list, write one message, and Automate delivers it person by person - each recipient gets a slightly different version, paced like a human would send it, from a WhatsApp number you own.

It is deliberately not a CRM, a chatbot, or a shared inbox. It does one job: getting your opted-in message to your list safely, and showing you exactly what happened to every single message.

• Your infrastructure. Every account runs on its own dedicated VPS with a private IP. No other sender shares it, so your delivery reputation reflects only your own behavior, and your contacts and logs stay on your server.
• Your numbers. Link the WhatsApp numbers you already have by scanning a QR code - no Business API approval, no Meta paperwork. Run several numbers side by side.
• Flat pricing. No per-message fees, no credits. Your plan is a flat yearly price (see Plans & pricing).

How it works

Under the hood, one server process runs everything:

1. A browser for every number. Each connection is a real, headless WhatsApp Web session in its own isolated Chromium instance. Linking a number is exactly like linking WhatsApp Web on a new computer - you scan a QR code once and the session is remembered.
2. A patient background worker. Uploaded contacts sit in a job queue. A worker sends one message, waits a randomized interval, checks its limits, and sends the next - never faster than the anti-ban settings allow. It survives restarts and resumes interrupted campaigns on its own.
3. A live dashboard. The web dashboard shows every connection's status, the live activity of each campaign, the full delivery history with delivered/read receipts, and charts of your sending volume.

Your first campaign

1. Connect a number. Dashboard → Add Connection → give it a name → scan the QR code with WhatsApp on your phone (WhatsApp → Settings → Linked devices → Link a device). The badge turns green when it is connected.
2. Upload your list. Open the connection → upload a CSV with at least a phone column - plus name and optionally a message column. Up to 50,000 rows per upload. See CSV reference.
3. Write the message. Use {name} to greet each person by name and spintax like {Hi|Hello|Hey} so every message is unique. Attach one image or PDF if you like.
4. Send a test. Use Test message to deliver one copy to your own number first. It renders exactly as a campaign message would.
5. Start. Press Start. The worker takes over: typing indicators, randomized delays, breaks and quiet hours are all handled for you. Watch it live in the activity terminal; pause at any time.

What each plan includes

Messages-per-month is a plan ceiling, not a target: the per-number anti-ban limits (default 100/day, ramping up slowly on new numbers) are what keep your numbers safe, and they always apply. Reach the plan ceiling and campaigns pause until the month rolls over or you upgrade.

How ordering works

1. Submit the order form on automatemessage.com - your name, email, phone number, and optionally your business name. No payment is taken on the form.
2. We reply within one business day to confirm details and send a payment link.
3. Provisioning begins once payment clears. Your dedicated server is hand-built with a private IP; this takes up to 2 days. Login credentials arrive at the email address on the order.

Refunds & cancellation

• 14-day refund window, counted from the day your login credentials are delivered - not from purchase - so provisioning time never eats into your evaluation period.
• Refunds are the subscription fee minus a deduction for the provisioned server (that cost is already spent when the window opens). The exact deduction and final amount are disclosed before you confirm.
• If we cannot deliver your instance at all, you are refunded in full, regardless of elapsed time.
• Accounts terminated for Acceptable Use violations (purchased or scraped lists, fraud, platform evasion) receive no refund.
• Yearly plans are paid in advance and not pro-rated. Cancel any time to stop renewal; access continues through the paid term. Full details: Refund Policy.

Adding a connection

1. Dashboard → Add Connection. Give it a recognizable name ("Shop number", "Client A - flash sale").
2. Scan the QR code shown live in the dashboard, using the phone's WhatsApp → Linked devices → Link a device.
3. Wait for the green badge. The connection syncs your chats (you will see a progress percentage) and then reports Connected, with the linked phone number shown.

The session is remembered on disk, so a server restart does not ask you to scan again. Each connection consumes roughly 400-600 MB of server memory - that is the real limit on how many numbers one plan's server comfortably runs.

Connection statuses

Connection settings

Every connection has its own anti-ban profile, edited from Connection → Settings. Changes take effect on the very next message - no restart needed.

The dashboard shows each connection's progress as sent / effective cap with the reason (configured limit or warm-up cap) spelled out.

Proxies

Each connection can route its traffic through its own HTTP or SOCKS proxy. When you run several numbers from one server, give each its own residential or mobile proxy so they do not all share one network identity.

• Proxy details are set when the connection is created. To change them later, delete and recreate the connection (contacts on it are removed too - export first).
• The proxy password is stored encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM) and is never sent back to the browser - the dashboard only shows whether one is set.
• If the server's SESSION_SECRET is ever rotated, stored proxy passwords must be re-entered.

Re-link, disconnect & delete

• Re-link wipes the stored login and generates a fresh QR. Use it when the phone unlinked the session or the number was re-registered.
• Disconnect logs the number out of WhatsApp Web but keeps the connection row, its settings and its contacts, so you can re-link the same number later without losing anything.
• Delete removes the connection, its browser, its auth data and all of its queued contacts. Delivery history survives (it copies the connection's name and number into every record). This cannot be undone.

Importing contacts (CSV)

Upload a CSV on the connection's page. Only phone is required; name and message are used if present, and a media-URL column can attach a per-recipient file. Full column list in the CSV reference.

• Up to 50,000 rows per upload, 20 MB per file (2 MB for PDFs).
• Numbers already pending or sending on this connection are skipped as duplicates. Numbers already sent or failed are not skipped - re-sending to a past audience works.
• Phone numbers are stripped to digits and must include the country code (919876543210, not 9876543210). Values Excel mangled into scientific notation (9.19877E+11) are repaired automatically.
• Header names are forgiving: Phone Number, phone_number and phonenumber are all the same column.
• A row's own message or media wins; blank rows fall back to the dashboard's default message and attachment.

Writing messages

One template goes to everyone, rendered per person:

• {name} - replaced with the contact's name (blank if none). {phone} - their number.
• Spintax varies the wording - see below. Both work in any language.
• The compose box shows a live preview of a rendered example before you send.

Spintax

Spintax is the personalization engine. Write alternatives inside curly braces separated by pipes, and every recipient gets one chosen at random:

{Hi|Hello|Hey} {name}! Our new catalog is live.
Claim your {20% off|discount|welcome offer} {today|this week}.

Spintax nests, so you can vary whole sentences:

{{We miss you|It has been a while} - here is 10% off|Your 10% welcome code is waiting} {name}!

Why it matters: two hundred identical messages from one number is a bulk-sender fingerprint. Two hundred messages that differ in wording, with the offer intact, look like a person writing to people. With a handful of spintax choices your campaign produces thousands of unique bodies.

Attachments & media

• One attachment per campaign: JPG, PNG, WEBP or PDF. PNG/WEBP are re-encoded to JPEG; PDFs are delivered as documents (2 MB cap).
• Or put a URL in the CSV's media column to attach a different file per recipient (up to 16 MB, fetched server-side).
• Every image is re-encoded slightly for each recipient, so one campaign is not one identical file hash shared with everyone. See Typing & media variation.
• If an attachment cannot be loaded, the contact fails rather than sending the text alone - a message written around a missing brochure is worse than no message, and it cannot be unsent. Fix the file and retry; nothing was dispatched, so no quota was spent.

Sending a test message

Before committing to thousands, send one copy to yourself: Connection → Test message, enter a phone number, and Automate delivers the rendered message immediately. The test is a true preview - spintax expanded, {name} filled - and the number is validated exactly as in a campaign. It counts against the day's quota because it is a real message from a real account.

Start, pause, resume & stop

When the last contact is processed the campaign finishes itself and the connection's badge resets. A campaign interrupted by a restart or a Redis blip resumes on its own - see Crash recovery.

Retrying failures

• Retry all re-queues every failed contact of a connection in one click.
• Retry one re-queues a single contact - handy after fixing one bad row or re-attaching a file.
• Contacts failed as not on WhatsApp are never retried. The number is not on WhatsApp; retrying would only burn quota and repeat the strongest ban signal there is. They are reported separately in the retry response and the health report.
• Contacts failed as opted out are never retried either - they asked to stop.

Reusable contact lists

• Lists are independent of any connection - "Loyalty customers", "Diwali 2026", "Client A - leads".
• Import by CSV (phone + name), add contacts by hand, or export any list back to CSV for editing elsewhere.
• Duplicate checking is per list: the same number can live in several lists.
• Hard ceiling: 100,000 saved contacts across all lists combined, enforced at import time.
• Deleting a list never touches contacts already copied into a campaign queue.

Launching from a list

On any list: Apply to connection, choose the connection, write the default message, optionally attach media. The whole list is copied into that connection's queue as pending contacts, skipping numbers already queued there. The copy is a snapshot - later edits to the list do not change contacts already queued.

How the protection stacks

WhatsApp restricts numbers that behave like bulk senders. Every control below exists to make one number's behavior look like a person's: it validates before it sends, it starts slow, it varies everything, it pauses often, and it stops itself when something looks wrong.

Number validation

Before every send, the recipient is resolved against WhatsApp. Numbers that are not on WhatsApp are skipped permanently - no message is attempted. This is the single strongest ban signal there is: ordinary users never message numbers that are not registered, bulk senders with stale lists do it constantly.

• Results are cached for 30 days, so each number is looked up once, not once per campaign.
• The lookup also resolves country-code variants, fixing silent non-delivery to numbers written in local formats.
• Skipped contacts are marked not on WhatsApp and never consume your daily quota (nothing reached WhatsApp) - and never retry.

Warm-up ramp

A brand-new linked number sending at full volume is the most recognizable bulk pattern there is. With warm-up on (default), the number's real limit starts at 20 messages on day one and grows about 1.6× per day until it reaches your configured daily limit - typically within a week:

* Capped by your configured daily limit - warm-up can only lower a limit, never raise it. It keys off when the connection was created, so re-linking an old, already-warm number does not reset the ramp; turn warm-up off per connection for those.

Daily & hourly limits

Two ceilings per connection: a daily limit (default 100) and an hourly limit (default 30, disable with 0). The hourly one exists because a daily cap alone lets a number spend everything in one burst and then idle for 23 hours - not a shape a human produces. When a limit is reached the queue parks itself and tells you when it resumes; both sent and failed dispatches count, and only dispatches that actually reached WhatsApp count.

Random delays & send order

• The pause between messages is drawn randomly between your min and max delay (default 10-60 s), so intervals never repeat.
• Send order is randomized within the queue - the worker picks from the next 50 pending contacts at random. Sending in exact CSV order reproduces whatever ordering the list arrived in (by area code, alphabetically, by batch), which is a very regular signal.

Coffee breaks

Every M messages (default 30) the queue takes a break of N minutes (default 15) - deliberate idling that keeps the number looking human. The counter is stored on the connection, so a restart cannot silently skip a break, and pausing/resuming does not reset it.

Quiet hours

Two quiet-hours layers, both optional:

• Your window - set restricted hours per connection (e.g. 22:00-08:00, correctly spanning midnight). The queue sleeps through the window and resumes after.
• Their window - a contact whose own local time is inside your window is held back until morning, using a timezone derived from the country calling code. Someone in a different country does not get your 11 p.m. at their 3 a.m.

The default shipped to every account - 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. - is also what our Acceptable Use Policy asks you to respect.

Typing & media variation

• Typing indicator. Before each send the recipient sees "typing…" for a duration scaled to the message length - a long message types for longer, jittered, then clears before the message lands.
• Media variation. Images are re-encoded per recipient (slightly different quality and width, metadata stripped), so one campaign to 500 people is not one identical file hash 500 times.

Circuit breaker

When a number is in trouble, pushing on is how a temporary restriction becomes a permanent ban. The circuit breaker stops the queue for you:

• Five consecutive failures pause the queue and raise a warning in the activity feed.
• One unmistakable signal - rate limited, blocked, banned, unauthorized, or a dead session - pauses immediately rather than waiting for five.
• Resuming after a breaker trip is a deliberate operator action: check the connection (try a test message) before you continue.

Best practices