Utility templates support the lifecycle of something the customer already did. A typical example is an order confirmation, a payment receipt, a delivery notification, or a subscription renewal notice.
Meta's guidelines set the bar: a utility template is typically triggered by a user action or request, has to be essential or critical to the user, and has to be non-promotional. A message that slips in a discount or an upsell is automatically re-categorized as a marketing template, with the marketing rate.
Utility messages are charged per delivered message at the utility rate of the recipient's country, with volume tiers that lower the rate as monthly volume grows. One recent change: since October 1, 2026, utility templates sent inside an open customer service window are charged too (they had been free since July 1, 2025).
For a Shopify store, utility templates are the order confirmations, shipping and delivery messages that Kanal sends as WhatsApp order notifications.