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Message delivery states and what they mean

Last updated: 17 July 2026

A message you send from the inbox shows as queued, sent, delivered, read, or failed. Bulk sends, broadcasts and sequences, additionally show a sending state while the batch is actively going out. Most failures are temporary, and Stravax Engage retries automatically until the message goes out; a message only stays failed when the underlying reason will not change on its own, such as an invalid recipient.

What do the different states mean?

State What it means
Queued The message is waiting to be sent
Sending A broadcast or sequence batch is actively sending it right now (bulk sends only)
Sent The message reached WhatsApp successfully
Delivered WhatsApp delivered it to the recipient's device
Read The recipient opened it
Failed The send did not succeed and will not be retried further

Delivered and read arrive as status updates from WhatsApp after the send, so a message normally walks forward through sent, delivered, read; it never walks backward.

Why did my message fail?

Failures fall into two kinds. A transient failure, a temporary hiccup somewhere in the pipeline, is retried automatically, and the message still goes out, exactly once, once the retry succeeds. A terminal failure is one where retrying would not help, such as an invalid recipient; those settle as failed right away, and any fee that was already charged is refunded. A broadcast message your wallet could not cover is different from both: it is never attempted and never charged, and it is counted separately as skipped (insufficient credits) rather than as a failure.

What happens if a message can't be delivered after repeated attempts?

If a message keeps failing after several attempts, Stravax Engage stops retrying and settles it as an observable failed message rather than dropping it silently. Any fee already debited for that attempt is refunded, including when WhatsApp accepts a message and only reports the failure afterward; that refund settles automatically shortly after the failure report arrives.

What if a message gets stuck partway through sending?

Occasionally a message can get claimed for sending and then never settle, for instance if something interrupts the process mid-send. A background check runs regularly to catch messages stuck like this: after about an hour with no update, it marks the message failed and refunds any fee that was charged. Messages that are still genuinely in progress are left untouched.

Does a retry ever send the same message twice?

No. Stravax Engage tracks each send attempt so that a retry, or a duplicate delivery notification arriving after a message already succeeded, never results in the message going out twice.

Broadcasts and recovery messages

For bulk sends, broadcasts and abandoned-cart recovery messages, a message can also be skipped before it is ever attempted, with no fee charged, for three separate reasons the campaign reports distinguish: the sending number already used its volume budget for the day, the number is paused for quality reasons, or the wallet balance could not cover the message (shown as skipped, insufficient credits).

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