What Meta charges you for each conversation
Who bills what, Meta’s categories, the free windows, and why meruma adds no margin.
The most common confusion about WhatsApp: meruma does not charge you for conversations. Meta does, directly to your business, on the card you loaded into your Meta account. We charge for the meruma plan and nothing on top of that.
You can work out your own case with real numbers in the WhatsApp cost calculator.
The categories
Meta charges per template message, and the price depends on what it is for:
- Marketing. Promotions, news, cart recovery. The most expensive one.
- Utility. Confirmations, shipping, appointment reminders, invoices. Things about a transaction the person already started.
- Authentication. One-time codes.
You pick the category when creating the template, but Meta reviews it and can reclassify it. Send a promotion dressed as a utility message and it gets reclassified to marketing and billed as such.
The two free windows
There are two situations where writing costs nothing:
- Service. When the person writes to you, a 24-hour window opens in which you can reply freely, with no templates and no cost. It resets with every message they send.
- Ads that open a chat. Facebook or Instagram ads that lead to WhatsApp open a free 72-hour window.
Once the window closes, writing again requires an approved template, and that one is charged.
What this looks like in practice
If your team answers what comes in, most of the volume is free. What you pay for is what you start outside the window — a promotion, a reminder, a follow-up — and that is your call, message by message.
Why usage is paid outside and not to us
Because it is the honest way. Many platforms resell Meta’s messages with an undeclared margin, so you pay more than it costs and have no way of knowing how much more. In meruma Meta bills your business directly: you see the real number, and if you move to another tool, your Meta account and your number stay with you.
Number quality
Meta measures the quality of every number. Too many blocks or reports can lead it to restrict or suspend sending, and that is out of our hands. The way to avoid it is to write only to people who agreed to hear from you, and to honour every opt-out immediately.
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