Apple reviews brands before they go live on Messages for Business, and the review is unusual: it looks at the conversation a customer would have rather than the code behind it. Teams that treat it as a technical certification tend to fail it, and teams that treat it as a design review tend to pass.
What are the reviews, and in what order?
The Experience Review comes first. Apple reviews "the full customer journey" from your entry-point setup "through to full conversation resolution", judged in your test environment against what Apple describes as quality, usability and policy standards. This is the one that decides whether your brand can be commercial at all.
The commercial account submission follows it. Apple is explicit that this step "happens after your Experience Review is approved", and it is the quicker of the two: Apple says the submission review "typically takes 1–3 business days".
A final review comes last, and it is easy to miss because it hides inside the launch button. Apple: "When you are ready to launch, click the 'Go Online' button at the top of your account in Apple Business Register. This submits your account for Apple's final review before going live." Apple's guidance is to give your provider the launch date in advance so they can tell Apple it is coming.
The order has a planning consequence. Everything customer-visible, including brand assets and the response hours you advertise, is configured after the conversation itself has been approved, so the review happens on a test account rather than on a finished public one.
What do you submit?
A recording. Apple asks for "a screen recording captured on an iPhone showing the end-to-end user experience for Apple's team to review", and your provider submits it on your behalf.
What the recording has to contain is the part worth planning for. Apple expects it to demonstrate the conversation flows, the entry points, the automated responses, the handoff to a live agent and the edge cases, with iOS as the testing priority and macOS covered where feasible. That means the review is a rehearsal of your channel: the flows have to exist and work before Apple sees them, including the unhappy paths.
What passes, and what fails?
Apple publishes both sides, which makes this the most checkable part of the whole process.
Apple states what passing needs:
"Clear flows, proper feature usage, correct naming, automated agent disclosure, and a complete end-to-end experience."
And what fails:
"Dead ends, missing disclosures, incorrect product naming, bare URLs, broken flows, text-only experiences that don't leverage platform features, slow response times, or policy violations."
Read that failure list as a design brief, because five of those are decisions rather than defects:
- Dead ends. Every branch has to end somewhere, including the ones where the automation cannot help.
- Missing disclosures. An automated agent says it is automated.
- Incorrect product naming. Apple's own naming of the channel and its features, used exactly. Getting the channel's name wrong in your own copy is a documented failure reason, which is one reason the old Business Chat name is worth scrubbing before you submit.
- Bare URLs. A link belongs in a rich link message rather than pasted as text.
- Text-only experiences. A conversation that could have used a Time Picker, a List Picker or a Quick Reply and used a paragraph instead reads to Apple as an unfinished implementation.
The policy side is checked here too, and the requirement that catches teams is staffing: Apple requires that "The business must provide access to a live agent in this channel during its regular business hours" and that "A business must not provide a limited or bot-only solution."
How long does it take, and what happens next?
Budget for iteration rather than for a queue. Apple's own expectation is that "Most accounts require 1–3 rounds of review", and each round is a new recording of a changed experience, so the elapsed time is mostly your team's turnaround rather than Apple's.
When you pass, Apple "changes your account status to commercial in Apple Business Register". After that the account is yours to launch: the commercial submission runs its one to three business days, and going live is a button, with Apple's own caution attached to it: "Do not enable your account until your live agent team is staffed and ready to receive messages."
What actually shortens this?
Two things, and neither is technical.
Pick a provider who has taken brands through the review recently, and ask them for the failure reasons they see most. Apple requires an MSP to supply a "Conversational designer who can assist brands to build smooth and efficient customer journeys in Apple Messages for Business", so a provider with nobody to name for that role is missing something Apple asked them for. What a Messaging Service Provider is, and how to choose one covers the rest of that conversation.
Then design against the failure list before you record anything. Most rejections in it are visible in a walkthrough of your own flow diagram, which is a cheaper place to find them than a review round.
Every Apple requirement on this page comes from Apple's own documentation, read on 4 September 2026: Pass the Experience Review, Register your account, Go live, Appendix A: Policies and MSP onboarding.