# Quiet Hours & Compliance Sending a marketing message at 3 AM is the fastest way to get blocked, reported, or fined. Quiet Hours makes sure your automated messages only reach contacts at reasonable times — measured in **their** local timezone, not yours. It also includes a stricter mode aligned with US compliance laws (TCPA and Florida's FTSA). --- ## Important: What Quiet Hours Actually Controls Before going further, it's worth being precise about the scope, because this is the single most common point of confusion: - **Quiet Hours applies to follow-ups and AI-scheduled sends** — the messages the platform schedules on your behalf after a conversation exists: follow-up cycles, AI-requested "message me tomorrow" sends, and paused-AI resume messages. It does **not** delay the opening blast of a campaign or broadcast — those go out at the time you launch or schedule them, so pick that time with your audience's clock in mind. - **Quiet Hours does NOT silence the live AI bot.** If a contact messages you at 2 AM, the AI still replies. That's intentional — a real human just started a conversation with your business, and ghosting them until morning looks broken, not polite. - **If you want a hard "no bot replies after 8 PM" rule, that's a separate setting: campaign active hours.** Each campaign has its own active-hours configuration controlling when the AI is allowed to respond at all. Quiet Hours protects outbound sends; active hours gate inbound replies. Use both. - **Quiet Hours does NOT reach into Automations on its own — each automation has its own switch.** The setting on this page covers campaign sends and follow-ups; it does not apply to an automation's steps. Instead, every automation carries a **Respect quiet hours** toggle in its trigger step (click the trigger on the canvas and scroll to the bottom of its settings). Switch it on and that automation holds its message steps between 8 PM and 8 AM in the contact's local time and sends them at around 8 AM instead; the automation's other steps, and the timing of the trigger itself, are unchanged. It's **off by default**, so an automation you built earlier keeps firing exactly when its workflow says. See [Automations](../automations/automations.md). In short: Quiet Hours = outbound throttle. Campaign active hours = inbound bot schedule. Automations = whatever time you built into the workflow, unless you switch that automation's own Respect quiet hours toggle on. --- ## Why Quiet Hours Matter - **User experience.** A notification at 2 AM annoys people, gets your number muted, and makes contacts more likely to mark you as spam. - **Legal compliance.** Several jurisdictions regulate when businesses can send marketing messages: - **US TCPA** — restricts automated calls and texts to between 8 AM and 9 PM in the recipient's local time. - **Florida FTSA** — stricter still, prohibiting Sunday sends and limiting daily calls per recipient. - **GDPR (EU)** — while not time-specific, requires automated outreach to be proportionate and respectful. Quiet Hours is the platform's built-in safety net. Turn it on once and it covers follow-ups and AI-scheduled sends across the whole account. --- ## The Default Quiet Window When Quiet Hours is enabled, the **allowed sending window is 8 AM to 8 PM in the contact's own local timezone**. The contact's timezone comes from their profile when we have it; otherwise it's estimated from their phone number's country code, which for large multi-timezone countries means one representative zone for the whole country. - **Local time means the contact's timezone, not yours.** The platform infers it from the contact's phone-number country code (or a saved timezone on the contact). If you're in Amsterdam and the contact is in Los Angeles, "8 AM" means 8 AM Pacific Time. - **The window is per-day, every day.** Messages scheduled before 8 AM local time are pushed to 8 AM that day. Messages scheduled at or after 8 PM are pushed to 8 AM the next day. - **A small random delay is added** so queued messages don't all fire at exactly 8:00:00 — also a deliverability best practice. - **If the contact's timezone can't be determined, the message sends as scheduled** rather than being deferred indefinitely — this only happens for very rare or unparseable phone numbers. --- ## Enabling Local-Time Sending **How to get there:** Settings → **Profile** (Account group). 1. In the left sidebar, click **Settings** (gear icon). 2. In the Settings menu, click **Profile** under the **Account** group — this is the default section that opens. 3. Scroll down to the **Follow-up timing** card. 4. Toggle **Respect quiet hours** on. > **On a phone?** The left sidebar hides behind the menu icon (**☰**) in the top corner — tap it first to reach Settings. That's it — no save button. The change applies immediately and starts affecting all future follow-ups and AI-scheduled sends on the account. > **New accounts:** Both quiet-hours toggles are ON by default for accounts created after May 2026. Existing accounts default to OFF until you enable them, so your current behavior won't change unexpectedly. --- ## US Strict Mode Right below the quiet-hours toggle, in the same **Follow-up timing** card, is a second switch: **US strict mode (no Sunday sends)**. When enabled, this adds two extra rules **for US contacts only**: - **No Sunday sends at all.** Any message scheduled for a Sunday in the contact's US timezone is pushed to Monday at 8 AM local. - **The standard 8 AM – 8 PM window still applies** on every other day. This mode is recommended if you message any US-based contacts. The Florida FTSA expressly prohibits Sunday telephone solicitations, and the federal TCPA's safe-harbor language uses an 8 AM – 9 PM window — our 8 PM cutoff is intentionally one hour tighter to give you a comfortable margin. **Non-US contacts are unaffected** — a French contact still gets messages on Sunday (within the 8 AM – 8 PM Paris window) even with US strict mode on. Country detection is automatic from the contact's phone number. --- ## What Quiet Hours Affects | Affected | Not Affected | |---|---| | Outgoing campaign messages | Incoming messages (you always receive these) | | Automated follow-ups (all cycles) | AI replies to contacts who message **you** | | Cold-lead follow-ups | Manual one-off messages you type and send yourself | | Scheduled messages | Read receipts and status updates | | AI-requested follow-ups ("message me tomorrow") | System notifications to you | | | **Automations** workflow steps (Send message, appointment reminders) — this setting doesn't reach them. Each automation has its own **Respect quiet hours** toggle in its trigger step, off by default — see [Automations](../automations/automations.md) | The key principle: **if a contact reaches out to you, the AI replies immediately regardless of local time.** Quiet Hours only defers messages that *you* initiate. --- ## What Happens to a Message Scheduled Inside Quiet Hours The message **waits** — it's not dropped or cancelled, just pushed forward to the next allowed moment in the contact's local time. For example, launching a campaign at 10 PM your time to a contact in the same timezone: 1. The message is queued normally. 2. The platform notices it would land inside quiet hours. 3. The send time shifts to 8 AM the next morning (contact's local time). 4. A small random delay (up to ~15 minutes) smooths out the send burst. 5. The message goes out at 8:00–8:15 AM the next day. The shifted send shows up in the chat at the actual send time, and any follow-up scheduling cascades from there. If US strict mode is on and the rescheduled time would land on a Sunday, it's pushed one extra day to Monday 8 AM. --- ## Best Practices 1. **Always enable both toggles if you message US contacts.** TCPA penalties start at $500 per violation and can climb to $1,500 per message for willful violations. 2. **Leave quiet hours on even for non-US audiences.** The 8 AM – 8 PM window is a universally polite default and won't hurt engagement — most people don't check messages outside that window anyway. 3. **Set your campaign send times in your own timezone.** No need to do the math on contact timezones — Quiet Hours handles the per-contact adjustment automatically. 4. **Don't disable quiet hours to "send faster."** Burst-sending outside the window doesn't actually increase delivery — most messaging providers throttle off-hours traffic anyway, and you risk account-level penalties on top. 5. **Pair with the [Follow-Up System](../ai-automation/follow-ups.md).** Follow-ups are the most common source of off-hours sends because they fire hours or days after the original message. Quiet Hours is what keeps a "send at 3 days" follow-up from landing at 2 AM. 6. **Verify your contacts have country codes.** Quiet Hours uses the phone-number country code to infer timezone. Contacts imported without one may fall through to the "send as scheduled" fail-safe. --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **Does Quiet Hours apply to WhatsApp template messages?** Yes. Templates, freeform messages, follow-ups, and cold-lead messages all respect the quiet window. **What if the contact is in a timezone I don't recognize?** The platform supports all standard IANA timezones. If the timezone genuinely can't be resolved from the phone number, the message sends as scheduled rather than being deferred indefinitely. **Can I customize the 8 AM – 8 PM window?** Not currently. It's fixed to match the most conservative legal envelope across jurisdictions. If you need stricter business-hours-only sends, use the **Respect Business Hours** toggle on each campaign's follow-up settings — that one is configurable per campaign. **Does this change anything about the AI replying to incoming messages?** No. The AI always responds in real time when a contact messages you, regardless of local time. Quiet Hours only governs *outbound* messages you initiate. --- ## Next Steps - [Account Settings](account-settings.md) — Manage your profile and security. - [Follow-Up System](../ai-automation/follow-ups.md) — Configure how follow-up cycles work. - [Notifications](notifications.md) — Set up how you're alerted to events. --- Need help configuring quiet hours? [Contact Support](mailto:hi@youraiconnector.com).