> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.useboom.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Smart Sending

> Limit how often one person hears from you, across every initiative in your organization.

Smart Sending keeps your initiatives from piling up on the same person. Without
it, two journeys can message someone minutes apart, and a busy week can reach one
person a dozen times. That annoys people, and on WhatsApp it leads to spam
reports that lower your number's quality rating.

It has two rules, each with its own on/off switch in **Settings › Smart Sending**.

| Rule | What it limits | Checked when |
| - | - | - |
| **Message limit** | At most **N** messages to one person on one channel within **W** hours. | A journey is about to send. |
| **Cooldown** | After any initiative messages someone, no **other** initiative can add them for **D** days. | Someone is added to an initiative. |

Only **proactive** journey messages count and are limited: WhatsApp templates,
SMS and email sent by a journey step. The agent's replies inside a conversation,
and messages your team sends from the inbox, are never limited.

## The message limit

Turn on **Message limit** and pick how many messages, and how often: for example
"at most 1 message per person every day". It applies to WhatsApp, SMS and email
alike. To set different limits per channel, open **Customize per channel**.

The window is rolling, not a calendar day: 1 every day means 24 hours after the
last message, not "once today". The longest window is 7 days, and the limit is
at most 10 messages.

When a send would go over the limit, the step does not send. In the journey it
takes the **Capped, not sent** exit instead of **Sent**:

* **Leave that exit unconnected** and the person's run simply ends.
* **Connect it** to do something else: wait a day and try again, try another
  channel, or end on purpose.

Every message sent counts toward the limit, whichever initiative sent it. The first
message to reach the person takes the slot; there is no priority between
initiatives.

## The cooldown

The cooldown is the longer rule: "don't contact this person from another campaign
for 30 days". It is checked when someone is added, so a person inside their
cooldown is never added in the first place, rather than added and then stopped
halfway. It can be up to 365 days.

It counts messages on any channel from **other** initiatives. An initiative's own
messages never block it. These are always let through:

* Someone who messaged you first, or commented on your post.
* A conversation being handed from one initiative to another.
* An initiative set to **Always send** (below).

If you use [webhooks](/webhooks), a person turned away by the cooldown shows up
as `enrollment.rejected` with `reason: "cooldown"`.

## Always send

Every initiative follows the limit and the cooldown, unless you set it to
**Always send**. Its messages then go out even over the limit, and it ignores the
cooldown. They still count toward the limit, so other initiatives respect them.
Use it for operational messages: document requests, payment links, order updates.

Turn it on in the initiative's **Agent** step, or add initiatives to the
**Always send** list on the settings page.

An initiative that follows the rules skips a message that would go over.
Holding it and sending it once the window clears is coming.

[Transactional messages](/transactional-messages) start on **Always send**, since
a notification has to go out. You can change that in its advanced options.

<Warning>
  Set your operational initiatives to **Always send** before turning on a limit. An
  initiative that sends one person several messages a day, like a document
  collection flow, would otherwise lose most of them. The settings page lists
  every initiative that sent one person more than one message in a day over the
  last two weeks, each with a one-click **Always send**.
</Warning>

## Good to know

* **Nothing is limited until you turn a rule on.** Your organization still records every
  send, so the day you turn a limit on it already knows who was messaged recently.
* **Test sends don't count.** Messages in your test environment, and WhatsApp
  messages to your organization's test numbers, are never capped and never count
  toward either rule.
* **If Smart Sending can't check, the message goes out.** An outage on our side
  never silently stops your messages.
* **To turn a rule off,** flip its switch. It stops immediately.