WhatsApp Business API in India: what you are actually buying

Every provider of the WhatsApp Business API is reselling the same API from Meta. The messages, the delivery, the template approval and the conversation pricing are Meta's, and no vendor can make them faster, cheaper or more lenient. Anyone implying otherwise is describing their own software, not the API.

So what are you choosing between? Four things.

1. The inbox your team lives in

This is where almost all of the difference is, and it is the part demos skip past. Ask specifically:

• Can I see what nobody has replied to, as a filter, without exporting anything?
• How does a conversation move from the bot to a person — is it a mode, or is it assignment? Modes create chats that are somehow being handled by both.
• What does an agent see? If they see everything, you cannot give it to a fifteen-person team.
• Is the contact record beside the thread, or a click away? The click is the difference between context and "let me just check something".

We wrote a longer list of these in what a WhatsApp shared inbox actually needs to do.

2. Who owns the number

The most important commercial question and the least discussed. If the provider holds the WhatsApp Business Account, moving providers means migrating a number your customers already have — with downtime, re-verification, and template re-approval.

Ask directly: is the WABA in my Meta Business Manager, and can I disconnect it myself? The answer should be yes and yes. Get it in writing before you send the first broadcast.

3. What happens when a template is rejected

It will happen. Templates get rejected for formatting, for category, for a variable in the wrong place — and it usually surfaces when a campaign silently stops.

What you want: rejection visible in the product, in the same notification stream as everything else, addressed to a person who can fix it. What you often get: a status in a list nobody opens. The common rejection reasons, in order.

4. What else the platform does

Here is the question worth asking before you sign anything: what happens when the customer calls instead of typing?

A WhatsApp-first tool has a good answer for WhatsApp and no answer for that. If your business genuinely only ever gets messages, that is fine and a focused tool is probably cheaper. If people ring you — and for most businesses with a phone number on the website, they do — you are choosing between one system that holds the whole relationship and two that each hold half.

Convarza AI came at it from the other direction: nine chat channels and four calling channels in one place, with the same contact record, the same assignment model and the same AI agents across both. The honest comparison, including when a WhatsApp-only tool is the better buy.

What the pricing is actually made of

Two meters, always — and the first one changed shape recently, so anything you read from before mid-2025 is describing a model that no longer exists.

• Meta's message charges. Since 1 July 2025 Meta bills per delivered template message, not per 24-hour conversation window. The rate depends on the template's category and the recipient's country.
• The platform subscription, usually per user or per seat.

The categories are where the money is:

Marketing

Promotions, offers, re-engagement. By far the most expensive, and the one every cost-reduction exercise ends up being about.

Utility

Follows something the customer did — an order, a booking, a payment. Roughly an order of magnitude cheaper than marketing.

Authentication

One-time passcodes. Priced like utility.

Service

Your replies inside the 24-hour window after a customer messages you. Free.

Two consequences worth internalising. First, getting the category right is a pricing decision, not a paperwork one — sending a utility-shaped message under a marketing category costs many times more than it needs to. Getting it wrong the other way gets you rejected. Second, conversations the customer starts are free to continue, which is a strong argument for anything that gets them to message you first — a click-to-WhatsApp ad, a QR on a receipt, a wa.me link in your email signature.

Rates change, and India moved to local-currency billing in January 2026, so check Meta's current rate card for your markets rather than trusting any vendor's blog — including this one.

Ask any provider whether Meta's charges are passed through at cost or marked up, and whether there is a platform fee on top of them. Convarza does not charge per conversation or per message; the plan covers the software and the AI usage, and Meta's charges are Meta's. Our plans.

A short due-diligence list

1. Is the WABA in my Business Manager?
2. Can I export every conversation and contact, today, myself?
3. Is "unreplied" a filter?
4. How does a bot hand a chat to a person?
5. What does an agent-level user see?
6. Are Meta's charges passed through at cost?
7. What happens when the same customer rings the phone number?

Seven questions. Any provider worth using answers all seven in a single call, without a follow-up email.