WhatsApp's new pricing model: What it means for your business

Starting 1st of July 2023, WhatsApp will be changing its pricing model to a use case-based system for all businesses worldwide that are communicating over the messaging platform.

What is changing?

In the new pricing model of Whatsapp, fees for business-initiated conversations will be determined by the type of message used to initiate them. There will be three categories of templates: Authentication, Marketing, and Utility.

Authentication: a business-initiated template concerning one-time passcodes, account verification, account recovery and integrity challenges

Marketing: any business-initiated template that does not qualify as utility or authentication. Can include promotions, offers, informational updates, or invitations for customers to respond / take a certain action.

Utility: a business initiated template that facilitates an agreed-upon request or transaction or update to a customer about an ongoing transaction, including post-purchase notifications and recurring billing statements.

Each category will have its own 24-hour conversation window and will incur separate charges.

Example: if a business sends a marketing message, the business will be charged the marketing category fee, however if the business then follows up 3 hours later with a utility message, the business will be charged the utility category fee too. Furthermore, that message will trigger a separate 24-hour window. Within the 24-hour window of the utility message, the business can however send additional utility messages without extra charges.

Additionally, user-initiated conversations, where a business responds to a non-templated message from a user, will be renamed "Service" conversations. The price will stay identical.

Meta will also increase the free window for conversations that start from ads that Click to WhatsApp and Facebook Page CTA from 1 to 3 days starting on March 1.

Starting July 1st, only user-initiated conversations will count towards the first 1000 free conversations given to each WABA/business per month. Previously, both user-initiated and business-initiated conversations counted towards this limit.

What does it mean for me?

Depending on your volumes, workflows and messaging habits the new pricing can have an effect on the total fees charged by Whatsapp. Any business that would previously send out a few business initiated templates while remaining under a thousand conversations can now expect to be charged by WhatsApp. However, businesses that are heavily relying on automated WhatsApp (order) status updates or post purchase notifications might experience reduced costs, as an ‘’utility’’ message is significantly cheaper compared to a “business initiated’’ message in the old pricing model.

For full details on this pricing change, see Meta’s Developer Documentation here.

What do we do to keep prices low?

Due to various global circumstances, price levels worldwide drastically increased over the last 2 years. The price of our subscriptions did not, however, in any way, as we at Grasp will continue to do whatever we can to provide and further improve our services to you under the same pricing conditions.

Furthermore, In relation to the new conversational pricing policy of WhatsApp, we are pleased to inform you that the new charges of WhatsApp will continue to be fairly converted without any margins or added costs.

On top of that we're announcing a temporary discount for all new and existing customers. Until 30th of June 2023, you are eligible to connect 1 additional WhatsApp number per Grasp account for FREE, saving you 25 euros per month. This discount can't be combined with any other discount. For more information, please contact us on support@getgrasp.com.