Chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and the idle-chat quota

About five minutes of reading

A chat that has gone quiet is still an active chat. The default ceiling is 500, shared with SMS, WhatsApp, and Apple Messages for Business.

Connect Customer prices a chat message at 0.010 USD sent or received, and the worked example includes manager questions and AI replies as messages. SMS and third-party messaging are 0.014 USD per message before the provider's delivery fee. Basic prices are lower and listed separately.

Persistent chat is the documented way to avoid counting a long silence against the quota. Widget origins must be allowed or the browser will not start the session.

• StartChatContact is an API. Call it from your backend.
• The same queue and routing profile can include chat with its own concurrency.
• Attachments and rich messages have size limits. Email attachments are a different channel.
• Alarm on concurrent chats at 80 percent.

Number on this page: Concurrent chats 500. Includes idle chats

Confirm before relying. Prices, quotas, and exam names change. Use the source linked on this page.

Picture from this room.

1. Start. API or widget.
2. Flow. Same ideas as voice, different prompts.
3. Queue. Chat channel on the profile.
4. Idle. Persistent chat or close it.

What usually goes wrong: Load-testing the widget from a laptop and calling that capacity planning.

Connect Customer service quotas - Amazon Connect Customer AWS docs. last checked 2026-10

The prose is a study paraphrase. The link is the source of the facts.

Glossary

• Outbound campaign Proactive voice, SMS, or email. The name replaced high-volume outbound communications on 20 Jun 2022. Voice minutes are 0.045 USD on Connect Customer.
• Check call progress The block that branches on answering-machine detection. Campaign flows only.
• Persistent chat A chat that can go quiet without holding a concurrent-chat slot the way an abandoned idle chat does.
• WhatsApp A third-party messaging channel counted inside the concurrent chat quota. Connect Customer prices the message at 0.014 USD before delivery fees.

Mind map

Open the Channels and campaigns mind map

Sister technologies

Each channel has its own quota, its own price unit, and its own way of getting stuck in an active state.

Config and troubleshooting

Load-testing the widget from a laptop and calling that capacity planning.

Chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and email do not share the voice concurrency of 1. Set MediaConcurrencies for the channel you are opening. Quotas for concurrent chats are still an instance limit.

RoutingProfile

Resources:
  ChatProfile:
    Type: AWS::Connect::RoutingProfile
    Properties:
      InstanceArn: !GetAtt CampusInstance.Arn
      Name: ChatAndVoice
      DefaultOutboundQueueArn: !GetAtt OrdersQueue.QueueArn
      MediaConcurrencies:
        - Channel: VOICE
          Concurrency: 1
        - Channel: CHAT
          Concurrency: 2

Integration map

Join records on ContactId. The integration map room lists the seams.

Cross-platform bridges

A CUCM calling search space is not a routing profile, but the profile is the closest idea of 'who can receive what'. A partition is not a Connect object. A UCCX CSQ and a UCCE skill group map to a queue. Precision steps map to routing criteria. A script, an Architect flow, and an Avaya vector map to a contact flow.

Open the mapping room

Future hooks

Hooks you can adopt later: EventBridge contact events, the CTR stream, agent events, Kinesis Video, Customer Profiles events, Cases, Show view, data tables, External Tool, and the flow language JSON in your pipeline. Live Sync and Agentic CX are the 2026 hooks for guided and agentic experiences.