WhatsApp’s New Pricing Policy: The Hidden Truths You Must Know

WhatsApp claims it has a user-base of over 2 billion and keen business owners understand the potential of this most widely used messaging platform. You might ask what makes WhatsApp different from those other messaging platforms? Well, WhatsApp has an average open-rate of 98%. Crazy, right? Further, direct/instant messaging feature along with the large user-base and higher average open-rate of WhatsApp, enables businesses to communicate with their target customers at each stage of the marketing funnel.

In recent years WhatsApp has become the primary marketing tool for a lot of small to large sized businesses across the world. Now, if you want to leverage this tool for yourself, it becomes essential to completely understand their pricing policy so as not to incur wasted spends, right? iNextCRM has made it simpler for you to understand in this article dedicated to WhatsApp conversation based pricing.

Now you may be wondering…

via GIPHY

What is Conversation Based Pricing

Unlike some other messaging platform which charges on per message basis, WhatsApp uses conversation based pricing model and charges on number of active conversations you are having with your customers.

What is a Conversation

According to Meta, a conversation is a messaging thread between you and your customers, which remains active for 24 hours starting from the time your message gets delivered. The key here is that as soon as your message gets delivered, the 24-hour window starts for a single conversation. This is surely a cost effective model which costs you only for meaningful conversations.

Another thing to note here is that the cost will also depend upon the category of conversation you are having.

What are Conversation Categories

Now that we have what a conversation is, lets understand what the conversation categories are. Conversations are categorized into four items which serves different purposes from promotional content marketing to resolving customer issues or queries as below:

Marketing: This type of conversation is used for marketing activities like brand awareness, new product or service launch messages, special offers promotions, sales or cart abandonment reminders with call-to-actions to customers. It has distinct templates to help you out and differs from other categories of conversation.

Note:

“The templates you create and submit to Meta for moderation should include their categories.

Meta will not approve those templates whose content differ from category mentioned.”

Utility: This is used when you want to follow up with a customer who has taken a specific action on your website. For example you can send message to a customer who has some items in cart, some delivery related queries, updates to billing information or ask their feedback for certain orders or experiences on your website.

Authentication: It is useful to confirm customer identities at multiple stages of security like login, account recovery etc. through OTPs or help messages. These conversation by default maintain the highest tier security for their sensitive nature.

Service: This category of conversation is used to help your customers having questions or problems by sending assistance through messages.  

Tip: Service based conversations are initiated by your customers and they are not charged. But remember that whenever a customer messages you, a 24 hour service window opens. You are free to send free-form messages within this service-window and once it time limit is hit then you can send only template messages which is charged.

Are you confused about the opening of conversations and how you are charged? Don’t worry, iNextCRM is here to help.

Conversation Duration Explained</>

via GIPHY

Marketing, Utility or Authentication category

Let’s understand the conversation opening and durations of the first 3 categories of conversations. Whenever you send a Marketing, Utility or Authentication category template to your customer, Meta opens a conversation of the specified category after checking first if any other conversation is previously open between the two parties.

During this time period of 24 hours you can send another marketing template for free. But if you send any other category template then the marketing conversation will be closed and new conversation of new template category will be opened for the next 24 hours.

This new conversation will be charged unless it is a service based conversation i.e. customer replies back in the message thread. More on this in next point.

These 3 category conversations lasts for its 24 hour duration and cannot be closed until a “free-entry point conversation” is opened which lasts for 72 hours. We will understand this in next points.

Service category

Now let’s understand about service based conversations. As we already know from the above mentioned tip that a 24 hour service-window opens only when a customer messages you, so you cannot open a service-window yourself.

Service Window

We know there might be much confusion about this service window so let’s see what has Meta said about it below.

When you send a marketing message to a customer then a 24 hour marketing conversation is opened. If the said customer replies back, then a 24 hour “customer service window” opens.

You can send free-form messages to this customer within this 24 hour when the customer service window, but remember that a new service conversation will not be opened as the marketing conversation is already in progress.

After the marketing conversation expires after its 24 hour time duration, the 24 hours duration of “customer service window” still remains open. Within this period, if you send a free-form message to this customer then only a service conversation is opened for 24 hours duration. Now, you can send free-form messages within this new 24 hour period of service conversation.

Hope it clears any doubts you might have between service conversation and customer service window.

Note: You cannot open a service conversation by yourself unless a “customer service window” is open.

Free Entry Point Conversation

via GIPHY

The conditions for opening a Free Entry Point Conversation is either the customer using a mobile device messages you through either CTAs mentioned above or you respond to their messages within 24 hours.

From June 1, 2023, the first 1,000 service conversations each month are given free of charge by Meta encouraging businesses to engage their audience via WhatsApp.

Note: All existing conversations are closed when a free entry point conversation is opened and it remains open for a duration of 72 hours.

Tip: Customer service window gets priority over free entry point conversation. You can send free-form messages only when customer service window is open and after it expires but free entry point conversation is open, then you can send only templates.

Conversions Rates for Different Countries:

The price of each conversion varies and is dependent upon the category of conversion and the geographical location. Please understand that the rate card for different countries corresponds to their WhatsApp Business Account’s currency.

Note: Authentication-International rate applies for Indonesia as of June 1, 2024 and for India as of July 1, 2024.

Note: The above data is from Meta.

Some Future Predictions for WhatsApp’s pricing policy

Conversation-Based Model: WhatsApp has a 24-hour conversation based model now which charges businesses worldwide on active conversation or message thread instead of number of messages. As this model encourages more meaningful communication and is more customer-centric, it is safe to assume that this model is here to stay.

Business and User Initiated Conversations: Business initiated messages are charged based on the type of template used and geo-location. The pricing for these templates may increase further but the user-initiated conversations which are free for 24-hours is an USP of WhatsApp and so we believe it will remain free. The restrictions may be tightened a bit in future. This is a boon to attract small businesses and startups and an excellent marketing strategy of WhatsApp.

Value Focused Enhancements: As the base of businesses increase, WhatsApp most probably will roll out updates in the form of better messaging capabilities, analytics and integration with other Meta products.

Anticipated Changes: As the WhatsApp business model evolves, we may see a lot of newer messaging or template types, other capabilities such as e-commerce features, CRM integrations and new security features.

Conclusion:

Compared to other marketing and advertising platforms, WhatsApp has one of the most potential for growth considering its large user-base alone. But consider the average open-rate of messages on WhatsApp, the familiarity and personal sentiment of users and now the user-centric pricing model with affordable costs.

These facts alone makes WhatsApp one of the most attractive marketing tool for businesses of all sizes across the world. The aggressive pricing is also aiming towards small businesses and startups. Understanding WhatsApp Business policies along with the pricing model enables you to leverage this attractive platform for an initial boost for your business while keeping your costs lower and building engaging customer relationships by seamless communication.

But to use this platform effectively you need a similarly user-friendly, insightful and powerful CRM like iNextCRM while managing everything from one place and keeping your costs lower. iNextCRm with its WhatsApp business API, Chatbot, Drip marketing and analytics, will optimize and manage all your marketing activities while providing valuable insights to make the right business decisions.

iNextCRM offers distinct pricing models according to your needs and also provides a free trial. Then, what are you waiting for?