What is the Messenger Platform?

1. A developer creates a Meta app with the Messenger use case and connects a Facebook Page to it.
2. Someone who manages the Page grants permissions such as pages_messaging, and the app receives a Page access token: the key it uses to send and receive that Page’s messages.
3. When someone messages the Page, Meta sends a notification to the app’s webhook straight away, carrying the text and an ID for the sender.
4. The app answers through the Send API, addressing the reply to that ID.

The sender’s ID is page-scoped: the same person has a different ID for every Page they write to, so an app can’t follow someone from one business to another. Instagram conversations use an Instagram-scoped ID that works the same way.

Meta’s requirements grow with the app’s reach. A business connecting its own Page can start testing straight away, while an app that serves other people’s Pages needs Meta to approve its permissions through App Review, and some uses also require business verification.

These limits belong to Meta, not to any one app. A tool that promises to message every follower of your Page, or to send an offer a week after a chat went quiet, is promising something the platform doesn’t allow, and an app that breaks the rules can lose its access.

Beyond plain text, the platform gives developers ready-made pieces to assemble conversations from:

• Quick replies: up to 13 tappable answers attached to one message.
• Generic templates: cards with an image, a title and up to three buttons, or a swipeable carousel of up to 10 cards.
• Persistent menu: buttons that stay available for the whole conversation.
• Ice breakers: up to four questions a new visitor can tap to open a chat.
• Get Started: the button that begins a conversation with a Page’s bot, which also has to be set before a persistent menu appears.
• Message tags: labels, such as the human agent tag, that allow particular messages outside the 24 hours.

A Page can also share one conversation between several apps and its own inbox, so a bot can deal with the routine questions and hand the chat to a person when it gets stuck.

Instagram uses the same platform when a professional account is linked to a Facebook Page: Meta’s Instagram documentation lists messaging for those accounts as running through the Messenger Platform. Accounts connected with Instagram Login use the Instagram API’s own messaging instead, under the same 24-hour and private-reply rules.