WhatsApp Cloud API is a service offered by WhatsApp, the use of which involves a payment proportional to the volume of conversations handled.
A conversation is defined as a 24-hour message exchange between you and your customers.
The system will charge by conversations and not by individual messages.
Listed below are the principles that determine the initiation of a conversation and the corresponding classification of the conversation.
Classification of conversations #
Conversations are classified into one of the following categories:
- Marketing: marketing-type conversations include items such as promotions, offers, informational updates, or invitations to customers to respond or take action.
- Utility: utility-type conversations facilitate specific, agreed-upon requests or transactions, or provide updates to the customer on an ongoing transaction. These may include transaction confirmations, updates on transactions, and/or post-purchase notifications.
- Authentication: authentication conversations allow users to be verified via single-use access codes, possibly at multiple stages of the login process (e.g., account verification, account recovery, security checks).
- Service: service conversations are intended to respond to your customers’ requests.
It is important to note that marketing, utility and authentication conversations can only be initiated using predefined messages (templates). In contrast, service messages can be initiated only with free-form messages. For more details, see the section‘Starting conversations‘ below.
For more information on conversation classifications and how to choose the most appropriate category when creating Templates, see the Templates documentation.
Start of conversations #
Conversations are initiated when you send a template-based message or a free-form message, based on the following conditions.
Marketing conversations, utilities and authentication #
Marketing, utility, and authentication conversations begin when you send a message based on an approved marketing, utility, or authentication template to a customer, provided an open conversation of that specific category does not already exist between you and that customer.
For example, if an open authentication conversation already exists between you and a customer and you send another message based on an authentication template within 24 hours, a new conversation will not be initiated. But if you send a marketing message, then a new marketing conversation will be opened. This means that there may be two conversations open at the same time.
Service conversations #
Service conversations begin when less than 24 hours have passed since the last message sent by the customer, you send a free-form message to a customer, and no open conversation of any category already exists between you and that customer.
For example, if an open conversation of any category already exists between you and a customer and you send a free-form message within 24 hours, a new conversation will not be started. However, if there is no open conversation and the customer sends you messages (initiating a customer service period) and you respond within 24 hours with a free-form message, then a new service conversation will be initiated.
Customer service windows #
When a customer sends you a message, a 24-hour customer service period is initiated. During this period, you have the option of sending both free-form and template-based messages. Outside this period, however, you can only send template-based messages.
Multiple conversations #
Multiple conversations can be kept active simultaneously between you and a customer. This can occur in the following scenarios:
- A marketing, utility, or authentication conversation already exists between you and a customer, and you send a message based on a template from a different category within 24 hours.
- A service conversation already exists between you and a customer, and you send a message based on a template within 24 hours.
Let’s give some examples: #
- The business sends a template message of any category to 100 customers. 100 different paid conversations will be opened immediately, one for each customer, regardless of whether the customer responds or not.
- The customer writes to the business: if the business responds the paid conversation is opened, if the business, for whatever reason, does not respond the paid conversation is not opened;
- If I send a template message from the marketing category to a customer at 11 a.m. today, a paid conversation starts immediately, if I write the same customer another message from the marketing category at 9 p.m. (after 10 hours) it remains within the same conversation that is already open;
- If I send a template message from the marketing category to a customer today at 11.00 am, a paid conversation starts immediately, if I write another template message from a different category to the same customer, e.g. utility after 10 hours, then a second conversation will be charged for this new category, which will last 24 hours from the time the message from that category was sent;
- If I write to a customer today a paid conversation starts immediately, if I write to the same customer in 2 days (thus passed 24 hours) another paid conversation will start.
Do not confuse the conversation with the 24-hour customer service window where you can respond with free messages. They are two separate things.
Conversations are only used to calculate the economic part of the message exchange. The 24-hour customer service window only defines the type of message you can send to the customer.
Costs #
Within the Spoki platform, the cost for each conversation category is fixed and determined by the type of recharge purchased, ranging between €0.14+VAT and €0.10+VAT for recipients located in Italy.
The cost of conversations may vary depending on the recipient’s area code. WhatsApp charges different rates by country, with significant differences depending on whether the recipient resides, for example, in Italy, India, Brazil, or Germany.
While the requirement to pay for sending conversations might seem unwelcome to businesses, which are used to WhatsApp being free, this is actually a great advantage for everyone, as it ensures the sustainability and effectiveness of this communication channel in the long term. In fact, if all companies could send unlimited free messages, WhatsApp would quickly be inundated with SPAM, as has happened with email. The result would be that we all, as WhatsApp users, would distance ourselves from the application and stop using it.
The rules applied by WhatsApp on this channel encourage the sending of more targeted and personalized communications.
One final note: the price Spoki charges for conversations already includes the WhatsApp fee.
