What’s changing?

We want to inform our Zendesk customers using WhatsApp that Meta will be slowly rolling out changes to their WhatsApp pricing model. Most notably for many of our Zendesk customers, service category conversations will be free starting November 1st, 2024.

Later, starting July 1st, 2025 for Zendesk customers, Meta will be changing their pricing model further. This next change will move away from 24 hour conversations as the basis for pricing interactions and towards using Message Templates and their respective categories as the basis for pricing. As part of this change, Service category Message Templates will be free. Utility category Message Templates will also be free but only if sent during an open customer service window.

All details about these changes, Message Template categories and pricing per Message Template per region can be found on WhatsApp’s Business API Pricing Page.

What do I need to do next?

The most important thing to do is be aware of this change and take the time to understand how it may impact your business and budgets.
If you only use WhatsApp for inbound use cases, you will see a decrease in your WhatsApp Usage invoice for Q4 2024 onwards.
If you use Message Templates via macros, the Sunshine Conversations APIs, through our Relay app or any of our 3rd party outbound WhatsApp apps, please review the category assigned to your templates to best understand the impact to your business.
- You can do this by navigating over to your WhatsApp Business Account and selecting the Message Templates option in the right side of your screen.
- If you do not have access to your WhatsApp business account through the Meta Business Manager, you will need to request access from the admin appointed within your company.
If you have any questions or concerns about how these changes may impact your business, our Zendesk Advocates are here to help.
- Please note that we do not have additional tools available to estimate the future costs of your WhatsApp usage and ask that you use what’s available under the Insights section of your WhatsApp Business Account Management tools. There you can see your current usage along with the category applied to the conversation and the region in which that conversation occurred.

As a reminder, unless you have specific arrangements with Meta to get invoiced directly by them, all charges are first sent to Zendesk and are then passed through and invoiced by Zendesk to our customers on a quarterly basis.