Delivery statuses
Every broadcast has a status, and so does every person it's sent to.
What do the broadcast statuses mean?
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Scheduled | Waiting for its date and time. You can still cancel it. |
| Running | Sending now. The Sending now box at the top counts these. |
| Completed | Every message has been handed to WhatsApp. Delivered and read numbers keep going up as people open their phones. |
| Cancelled | Someone clicked Cancel. Anyone not yet sent to was skipped. |
What do the statuses for each person mean?
Click Recipients on a broadcast to see each person and their status.
| Status | Meaning | WhatsApp ticks |
|---|---|---|
| Pending | Waiting in the queue to be sent. | – |
| Sending | Being sent right now. | – |
| Sent | WhatsApp accepted the message. It hasn't reached the phone yet (the phone may be off or offline). | ✓ one grey tick |
| Delivered | It reached the person's phone. | ✓✓ two grey ticks |
| Read | They opened it. | ✓✓ two blue ticks |
| Failed | WhatsApp couldn't deliver it. The reason shows in red under their name. | ! |
| Skipped | KiliChat didn't send it, on purpose. The reason shows in red. | – |
A message moves forward only: sent → delivered → read. It never goes backwards.
Read receipts
If a customer has turned off read receipts in WhatsApp, their messages stay at Delivered even after they read them. So the real read rate is usually a little higher than KiliChat shows.
What do the numbers in the Delivery bar mean?
The bar shows, out of everyone who wasn't skipped:
- % delivered: delivered or read.
- % read: read.
- N failed: how many failed.
The Audience column shows the total number of people and, below it, how many were skipped.
Why are people skipped?
| Reason shown | What it means |
|---|---|
| Opted out | They unsubscribed, for example by replying STOP. |
| Blocked | Your team blocked this contact. |
| Outside the 24-hour window | A regular message can only go to people who wrote in the last 24 hours. |
| Broadcast cancelled | The broadcast was cancelled before their turn. |
Skipped people are never retried.
Why did a message fail?
The red text is WhatsApp's own reason. Common ones are "Message undeliverable" (often the number isn't on WhatsApp), "This message was not delivered to maintain healthy ecosystem engagement" (Meta limited marketing to that person) and rate-limit messages. See Why didn't some contacts get it? and Meta error codes for what each one means and what to do.
Why are many messages stuck on "Sent"?
Sent means WhatsApp accepted the message but hasn't confirmed delivery. It's normal for some people to stay on Sent for hours if their phone is off. If most messages stay on Sent for a long time, KiliChat may not be getting delivery updates from Meta. See Broadcast stuck.
Can I see everyone's status?
The Recipients window shows the latest 500 people, most recently updated first. For a full picture, use the Delivery bar on the Broadcasts page, which counts everyone.