Starting a Conversation
If it has been more than 24 hours since the customer’s last message, the only way to start a conversation with them is to send a template message.
The conversation between the company and the customer begins when the customer receives the first message from the company. The conversation is available for 24 hours.
The company gets 24 hours. A service conversation opens immediately after the company responds.
Conversation Billing
The company has 24 hours to talk to the customer.
Billing for utility, authentication, and marketing conversations begins when the customer receives the first message from the company.
All service conversations are free.
The conversation cost of depends on the categories of templates being sent. Available categories: utility messages, authentication messages, and marketing messages.
There is no charge for template messages. Conversations are billed instead of individual messages.
No, you don’t. Billing for conversations only begins with the first message the company sends to the customer.
The conversation category depends on the category of the template used in the broadcast. To find out the template category:
- go to the Settings → Template section and select the required template;
- in the API interface, use the method to get a list of templates.
Marketing conversations are more expensive because they provide more value to companies than authorization or service conversations.
In WhatsApp, outgoing traffic is split like SMS. This makes utility and authentication messages cheaper.
General Questions
Conversations are divided into four categories: service, utility, authentication, and marketing. Learn more about conversation categories.
Refer to the official documentation of Meta for the criteria used to determine the template category.
The number of messages in a single conversation is unlimited.
A new conversation will open, and the 24 hours will start counting down again. Typically, most conversations last less than an hour.
Learn more about adding WhatsApp operator templates.