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Guide

Seven questions worth asking before you pick one.

Feature lists in this market look almost identical, and the things that actually differ are mostly invisible until you are six months in. These are the questions that surface them, and how to check each answer yourself.

We have not written this as a scorecard with ourselves at the top. Where we compare well we say so, and where the honest answer is a caveat we have said that too. Every test below is one you can run against us as easily as against anyone else, which is rather the point.

1

Is Meta's fee passed through at cost, or marked up?

Every provider in this market pays Meta the same published rates. A markup on those rates does not appear on a pricing page, it appears on your invoice months later, and it scales with your volume rather than with anything the provider does for you.

How to check

Ask whether conversation fees are billed against your own WhatsApp Business Account at Meta's published rate, or billed by the provider. If it is the second, ask for the multiple in writing before you sign.

Where we stand

Meta bills you directly against your own WhatsApp Business Account, at their rates. We add nothing and take no cut, which also means you can check the figure against Meta's own card rather than against our invoice.

2

Whose WhatsApp number is it?

This is the question that decides how expensive leaving is. If the number belongs to the provider, your customers' route to you belongs to the provider too, and every conversation history attached to it is theirs to hand back or not.

How to check

Ask who the WhatsApp Business Account is registered to, and what happens to the number if you cancel. A provider renting you a number will usually say so plainly if asked directly.

Where we stand

The number is yours, connected directly to Meta. You are not renting it from us, and the number and the customer relationships stay yours if you ever leave.

3

How is the AI priced?

AI is the part of these platforms whose cost is easiest to hide. It can arrive as a separate seat, a per-message surcharge, a higher tier you are pushed onto once volume grows, or an unbounded bill that only reveals itself at month end.

How to check

Ask for the AI cost as a line item, then ask what happens when you exceed it. The second answer matters more than the first: a platform that keeps spending on your behalf without a ceiling is a different risk from one that pauses.

Where we stand

Every plan carries a monthly AI allowance with no separate AI seat and no per-message AI fee. The allowance is also the spend limit: when it is gone the AI pauses and conversations go to your team, rather than billing you for overage you did not choose.

4

Does adding a person to your team raise the bill?

Per-seat pricing quietly punishes the thing you are trying to do. It makes putting one more person on the inbox a budget conversation, which is how teams end up with one overloaded account everyone shares.

How to check

Compare the cost of your team today against the cost at the size you expect in a year, not the headline price.

Where we stand

Seats come with the plan, so hiring someone does not increase your bill. Six on Starter, twenty on Scale, and no per-seat charge on any tier.

5

Can you see what the automation actually did, and what it cost?

Automation you cannot inspect is a liability rather than a saving. When a customer says they were told something, you need the record, and when the bill moves you need to know which conversations moved it.

How to check

Ask to see a single conversation's cost, and ask whether the audit log can be edited by the vendor. An audit trail the vendor can change is a record of what the vendor wants you to see.

Where we stand

Every conversation carries its own credit cost, updated live. Every action, by a person or the agent, is written to a log that nobody can quietly change or delete, us included.

6

What happens on the day you leave?

Every platform is easy to join. The cost of the decision is on the way out, and that is the part nobody demonstrates in a sales call.

How to check

Ask what exports, in what format, and what proof of deletion you receive. Vague answers here are themselves an answer.

Where we stand

Contacts, conversations and analytics export to CSV, and the API extracts everything programmatically. On closure we issue a document stating exact record counts before and after, what was destroyed and anything retained by law, with a verification hash.

7

Is anything sitting between you and your own data?

Many platforms reach your calendar, your CRM or your stock file through a third-party automation service. That is another company in the path, another set of terms, another place an outage or a breach can happen, and often another bill.

How to check

Ask which integrations run natively and which are brokered through something else. The answer is rarely volunteered and is usually easy to confirm once asked.

Where we stand

Connections run on the platform directly, with no third-party integration service in the data path. The honest caveat is that this means a shorter list: the connected apps available today are fewer than a marketplace-based rival will advertise, and custom API tools from Growth up are how you reach anything not on it.

One thing to do before any of this

Work out what Meta will charge you, separately from what any platform charges. Most of the confusion in this market comes from the two being quoted as one number. Our guide to WhatsApp pricing in South Africa covers it, and Meta's own rate card is the source for the figures.

Ask us all seven. We will answer in writing.

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