Quiet hours
What is Quiet hours?
Quiet hours are the local time window — commonly overnight, such as 9pm to 8am in the recipient's own time zone — during which a business is legally restricted or required to refrain from sending marketing calls or texts under laws like the TCPA. Because recipients span many time zones, a compliant sending platform calculates quiet hours based on the recipient's actual local time, not the sender's, and holds or reschedules a message that would otherwise land during that window.
More detail
Quiet-hours rules vary by jurisdiction — both the specific window and which message categories are covered (marketing typically more restricted than transactional) — so a global sender needs jurisdiction-aware rules, not one fixed window.
A message queued to send during a recipient's quiet hours is typically held and delivered automatically once the window ends, rather than being dropped or requiring manual rescheduling.
Frequently asked
- Whose time zone determines quiet hours — the sender's or the recipient's?
- The recipient's local time zone, since the restriction exists to protect the person receiving the message from being contacted late at night or early morning, regardless of what time it is where the sending business is located.
- What happens to a message that would violate quiet hours?
- A compliant sending platform typically holds it and delivers automatically once the recipient's quiet-hours window ends, rather than sending it late or dropping it entirely, so the message still reaches the recipient just at a permitted time.
See also
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