WhatsApp Business Platform’s New Conversation-Based Pricing: 2023 Updates

If you’re using WhatsApp Business to connect with your customers, there’s some news you’ll want to know about. WhatsApp is changing the way they charge businesses for their conversations in 2023.

Instead of paying a flat rate, businesses will be charged per 24-hour conversation, and the price will vary depending on the type of conversation.

For example, if you’re having a conversation with a customer that’s about a utility question like a billing issue or product support, you’ll be charged a certain rate. If the conversation is related to authentication or marketing, you will be charged differently.

It’s important to note that user-initiated conversations, like when a customer messages you first, will be considered service conversations and won’t be subject to these new rates.

Overall, these changes to WhatsApp Business Platform’s pricing are designed to make it fairer for businesses and incentivise them to provide better customer service. Now let’s dive into the details.

New Changes to WhatsApp Business Platform: What to Expect?

Four New Conversation Categories are launched in the  WhatsApp Business Platform.

Utility:

Business-initiated conversations that have to do with a transaction, like purchase notifications or billing statements for customers who have opted in.

Authentication:

Business-initiated conversations that help businesses verify users using one-time passcodes. These conversations can happen during account registration, account recovery, and when there are security concerns.

Marketing:

Business-initiated conversations are designed to promote a product or service to customers who have opted in. Any business-initiated conversation that doesn’t fit into the Utility or Authentication categories would be considered a Marketing conversation.

Service:

Finally, Service Conversations are initiated by users and are meant to help resolve customer inquiries. So if a customer messages you first, that conversation falls into the Service Conversation category.

How WhatsApp Conversation Pricing will Work for the New Categories

So here’s the deal: WhatsApp conversation pricing will depend on the template category. Basically, when you send a template message, it starts a new conversation in that category and incurs the charge for that category. Now let’s look at how it works.

Scenario #1

If you’re already in an open Utility conversation with a customer and you send a marketing template message, it will start a new and separate marketing conversation, and you’ll be charged for that Marketing conversation.

Scenario #2

You won’t be charged for sending multiple templates of the same category during an open conversation.

So, if you’re in an open utility conversation, you can send multiple utility templates without incurring additional charges.

Scenario #3

To start a service conversation, businesses must respond to a user’s message within 24 hours with a free-form message.

If a business sends a template message, it will create a new conversation based on the template category.

Scenario #4

Consider this, a marketing conversation started when you sent a marketing message. Then, a utility message was sent later that day, creating a new conversation for utility purposes.

This means there will be separate charges for both the marketing and utility conversations.

Scenario #5

Let’s say a template message was sent containing both utility and marketing content. If a template message has any marketing content, it is considered a marketing message. As a result, you will be charged for one marketing conversation.

Check out our blog on using templates for automated messages if your interested to know more.

Now let’s look at how the pricing works for these new categories.

WhatsApp conversation pricing rate card

The cost of conversations depends on the customer’s country code. Charges differ between business-initiated and service conversations and vary by country or region.

Open rate card.

Why are we informing you about this?

So, here’s the scoop on WhatsApp’s new templates: If you’re looking to drive sales, marketing conversations may be worth the extra cost, while utility conversations can be a great option for maintaining existing sales at a lower price point.

We want to make sure you’re always in the know about the latest WhatsApp features and changes, so you can keep chatting, save some cash, and keep your business growing. 💚