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Facebook Messenger

Messages sent to your Facebook page through Messenger arrive in the inbox, and replies go back from the page.

What you need​

  • A Facebook page for your business.
  • An admin role on that page.
  • A Meta Business account, which the page setup creates if you do not have one.

Connecting​

Add an inbox of type Messenger. You are sent to Facebook, you pick which page to connect and approve the permissions, and you return with the page name and id filled in.

FirstReply subscribes to the page's message webhook, so new messages arrive in seconds rather than on a poll.

The token is refreshed automatically. If page access is revoked on Facebook's side, the inbox is marked unhealthy and needs reconnecting.

The 24-hour window​

Meta applies the same rule as on WhatsApp: free-form replies are allowed within 24 hours of the customer's last message. Outside it, only specific approved message types may be sent.

For support this rarely bites — people who ask a question are usually still there — but a follow-up two days later will not go through.

Limits​

Replies are capped at 2,000 characters. The editor enforces it.

Replies are plain text. Formatting is stripped.

Attachments are not supported on this channel.

Contacts​

Messenger identifies people by a page-scoped user id, so the contact carries their Facebook display name and no email address. If you need one, ask for it in the conversation; the reply is stored on the contact.

The same person writing from Messenger and from email arrives as two contacts, which you can merge.

What does not arrive​

Only Messenger conversations reach the inbox. Comments on your page's posts, reviews and mentions do not. If most of your inbound social traffic is comments rather than messages, this channel will look quieter than you expect.