WhatsApp message costs

Sending a campaign involves two separate costs, and they are billed by two different companies.

• Campaign recipients come out of your Fetchply plan. One recipient is used each time WhatsApp accepts a message.
• WhatsApp's own charge is billed straight to your WhatsApp business account by the payment method attached to it. Fetchply never collects it and cannot discount it.

Neither figure includes the other, and the review screen keeps them apart on purpose.

What WhatsApp charges for

Three things decide the price of one message.

1. The type of message. Promotional messages cost the most. Order and account updates and one-time codes cost less.
2. Where the recipient is. WhatsApp groups countries into pricing regions, and rates differ sharply between them. The same promotional message can cost several times more in one country than another.
3. Whether it was delivered. You are charged when a message reaches someone. Messages WhatsApp refuses, and anyone Fetchply leaves out before sending, are not charged.

Reading the estimate before you send

The review step shows an Estimated WhatsApp charge with a breakdown by destination, showing how many recipients are in each and the rate applied.

Read it as a ceiling, not an invoice.

• It is the maximum. The estimate assumes every single message is charged at WhatsApp's published rate. Real charges are frequently lower.
• It uses published list rates. The date those rates took effect is shown beneath the total. Amounts are before tax, and your account may be billed in a different currency.
• Unpriced recipients are excluded, not free. If a number cannot be matched to a destination WhatsApp publishes a rate for, it is reported separately as unpriced and left out of the total. Those messages can still be charged. Fetchply will not invent a rate to make the total look complete.
• Rates change quarterly. WhatsApp can adjust rates at the start of January, April, July and October. When the rates Fetchply holds predate the most recent change, the review adds a reminder to check the current ones.

When messages are not charged

• Someone messaged you recently. When a customer writes to you, a 24-hour window opens. Order and account updates delivered inside that window are usually not charged.
• They came from an ad or a link. If someone reaches you through a click-to-WhatsApp ad or a similar entry point, a 72-hour window opens in which messages are not charged.
• The message never arrived. Undeliverable messages, for example to an inactive number, are not charged.

Promotional messages are the exception: every one that is delivered is charged, with no free window.

Because Fetchply cannot know whether a particular person messaged you recently, the estimate never assumes a free window. That is why the real charge is often below the estimate rather than above it.

What results tell you afterwards

Once WhatsApp confirms delivery, the results screen reports how each message was actually billed:

• Charged by WhatsApp — the message was delivered and billed.
• Not charged — the message fell inside a free window.
• Delivered with optimization / Delivered without optimization — on an optimized-delivery campaign, whether WhatsApp was able to optimise each message. Messages sent without optimization were still delivered and charged normally. This is not a failure.

Billing details only appear once WhatsApp sends a receipt, so this section stays empty for a short while after sending, and for campaigns sent before this feature existed.

About the broadcast list in the WhatsApp app

The WhatsApp Business phone app has its own broadcast list feature. It is not the same thing as a campaign, and Fetchply cannot send through it.

• A broadcast list reaches at most 256 people.
• People only receive it if they have already saved your business number in their own phone contacts. Anyone who has not saved you silently receives nothing.
• There is no scheduling, no personalisation, and no delivery reporting.

Campaigns have none of those limits: they reach everyone who gave permission whether or not they saved your number, and they report delivery per person.

If you want to keep using the phone app as well, connect your existing number so both work together. You can then keep handling one-to-one chats and app broadcast lists on your phone while Fetchply runs campaigns and automatic replies on the same number.

Finding your WhatsApp invoice

1. Open Meta Business Manager.
2. Go to All tools → WhatsApp Manager.
3. Open the billing section to download monthly invoices and see itemised delivery charges.

The invoice there is the authoritative record. Fetchply's estimate and result counts are for planning and review, not billing.