Before a business is allowed to send notification messages to their consumers on WhatsApp, they must first receive consent from the consumer to communicate with them on this channel via an explicit opt-in process.

On July 9th, 2020, WhatsApp updated its business policy to make it easier and simpler for brands to obtain opt-in from their consumers for the WhatsApp channel. Brands are no longer required to obtain opt-in via a third-party channel like SMS or email, but can now also obtain opt-in within the WhatsApp thread itself or by using an interactive voice response (IVR).

WhatsApp still expects clarity on requests for opt-in, brand name usage, and compliance with local and all applicable laws.

Please take special note of the following:

• Businesses must clearly state that a person is opting in to receive messages from the business over WhatsApp

• Businesses must clearly state the name of the business that a person is opting in to receive messages from

• Businesses must comply with all applicable laws

• Only transactional notifications are currently allowed on the WhatsApp Business Platform

• While the updated policy is more flexible, businesses should continue to optimize for the user experience while obtaining opt-in, e.g.:

  • Explicitly call out the types of messages a consumer is opting into (e.g. delivery updates)

  • Avoid messaging consumers too frequently

  • Provide instructions for how customers can opt out and honor these requests

NOTE: Only applicable to our self-serve/Connect Lite clients. If you are on one of our paid packages, please reach out to your account manager or our Sales Team.

The total price you will pay for using WhatsApp via Clickatell consists of two components:

• Clickatell Price

• WhatsApp Price

An overview of these components is given below. For detailed/specific pricing information, please contact Sales.

Clickatell Price

Clickatell offers various monthly WhatsApp Business Message bundles. These bundles include:

• Fixed monthly fee - You will be charged a fixed monthly fee for the duration of your subscription.

• Volume limit - A Business Message Bundle includes a fixed number of outbound messages. If you stay within the volume limit, you will only be charged the fixed monthly fee and there won’t be any out-of-bundle fees. Inbound messages received from end-users are free and don't consume your Business Message Bundle.

• Out-of-bundle rate - When the volume limit has been reached, each additional outbound message will be rated at a specified out-of-bundle rate per message.

WhatsApp Price

WhatsApp charges a fee per conversation.

• All conversations are measured in fixed 24-hour sessions and charges differ for business-initiated vs. customer-initiated conversations and per region.

• These 24-hour conversation sessions start whenever the first message is delivered by a business, either in response to a user inquiry or if a business-initiated message template is delivered.

• Conversation-based fees are deducted from your account balance at the start of every conversation. If you have a prepaid account, it is important that your account balance is sufficient to cover these fees.

• Each WhatsApp Business Account gets 1,000 free service conversations each month across all of its business phone numbers. (Marketing, utility, and authentication conversations are not part of the free tier.)

• These fees are in addition to the Clickatell fees.

Note: Since 1 February 2022, WhatsApp no longer charges for the sending of message templates. Instead, these are also included in the cost per conversation.

Also see:

• WhatsApp Business Pricing Update blog

• Facebook's conversation-based pricing page

Sending media via WhatsApp

Businesses are limited to submitting 20MB per message/payload (this can include multiple media files per message). Clickatell will compress the media when required to ensure successful hand-off to the WhatsApp server for delivery.

Clickatell currently only allows a particular account to do 1,000 uploads per 24-hour period. The main purpose of this is to prevent abuse on an account level. To increase the media upload limit, please log a ticket with support to review this request.

Receiving media via WhatsApp

For receiving media, WhatsApp supports the following limits per media type:

Images: 5MB
Documents: 64MB
Audio: 16MB

Clickatell is bound to comply with WhatsApp server requirements and to ensure that all media callbacks are within the limits stated above when delivering to the business.

Also see:

• Which message types and media formats are supported by the WhatsApp Business Platform?

• What messaging limits apply to my WhatsApp Business account?

WhatsApp makes use of the UTF-8 character set and any characters within this set are supported. Being a richer messaging platform, additional formatting and media types are also supported over and above plain text. A maximum of 4096 characters can be sent at a time and messages that are longer will be truncated.

Rich text can include hyperlinks and formatting such as bold, italics, strike-through, code formatting, line breaks, and emojis.

Various media formats are also supported. These include the following popular formats:

Images – JPEG, PNG

Documents – PDF, MS Word, MS Powerpoint, MS Excel, plain text

Audio – ACC, MP4, AMR, MPEG, OGG, codec = OPUS

Video - MP4 (with H.264 video codec and AAC audio codec)