Service Incident - May 19, 2026 - Message Delivery | All Pods - Messaging delivery issue across WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram social messaging channels

Summary

On May 19, 2026 from 4:05 UTC to 5:07 UTC, customers across all pods experienced disrupted inbound message delivery for WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram conversations. During the incident window, some end-user messages were delayed or not delivered into Zendesk messaging. Outbound messaging (messages sent via API) was not impacted.

Timeline

May 18, 2026 11:53 PM PT | May 19, 2026 4:53 UTC
We are currently aware of an issue affecting message delivery across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram social messaging channels. Our engineers are actively investigating the issue and working closely with our vendor partner to resolve it as quickly as possible. We’ll share another update as soon as more information is available. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

May 19, 2026 12:27 AM PT | 5:27 UTC
We’ve confirmed that inbound message delivery has partially recovered across both channels. WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram are now seeing partial recovery, though message delivery may still be intermittent. Our partner Meta has acknowledged the issue and is actively working to resolve it. We’ll continue to monitor closely and share further updates as more information becomes available.

May 19, 2026 12:53 AM PT | 5:53 UTC

We’ve confirmed that inbound message delivery has fully recovered across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, and all channels are now operating normally. Thank you for your patience and understanding while we worked with our partner to resolve this issue.

Root cause analysis

This incident was caused by an upstream disruption in webhook delivery from the social messaging platform that provides WhatsApp/Messenger/Instagram integrations.

What that means

For these channels, inbound messages rely on webhooks being delivered from the upstream platform to Zendesk endpoints. During the incident window:

The number of inbound webhook requests reaching Zendesk dropped sharply.

The webhook requests that did arrive were processed successfully (no application-side error spike was observed).

Why Zendesk couldn’t prevent it

Because the disruption occurred upstream of Zendesk (before requests reached our application), there was no change we could apply within Zendesk to restore inbound delivery. Our focus during the incident was:

Rapid detection and validation

Clear customer communication

Escalation to the upstream provider

Confirming end-to-end recovery once delivery resumed

Resolution

Inbound delivery recovered as the upstream webhook delivery issue cleared. We monitored inbound traffic and performed functional testing until we confirmed:

Inbound messages were consistently arriving across channels

Volume had returned to normal baseline levels

What we’re doing next

While upstream outages can’t be fully prevented on these channels, we’re taking steps to improve detection and response:

Updating internal escalation guidance for upstream social messaging incidents.

Establishing shared production test accounts for WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram to validate impact and recovery faster.

Continuing to refine monitoring so we can more quickly distinguish between platform-side delivery drops and issues within Zendesk.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For current system status information about Zendesk and specific impacts to your account, visit our system status page. If you have additional questions about this incident, contact Zendesk customer support.