Connecting the number takes minutes and it works. What takes time is Meta's side: four or five things worth knowing UP FRONT, because two of them have to be sorted the same day.
Your own WhatsApp Business number. If you don't have one, inside Meta's window you'll see the option to use a username only: pick it and Meta assigns you one of its own numbers, starting with +1 555. It is free, instant and it works — Meta says these numbers "behave the same way as standard business phone numbers". ⚠ What to know up front is that it can never be moved to another WhatsApp Business account or used outside the platform: the day you want your own, you start over. It unlocks: actually messaging your customers.
That the number is in shape — and this is what cuts signups short most often. Three things, and none of them can be fixed from the panel:
· If the number is NEW, use it for a few days first. Meta looks at whether it has real usage: calls, messages, groups, people saving it. A SIM activated yesterday and pushed straight into signup is prone to having Meta cut the process short. ⚠ This is not in Meta's documentation: it is what we learned doing signups with customers, so it goes as a recommendation, not as a rule.
· It has to be in the WhatsApp BUSINESS app, not in regular WhatsApp — Coexistence finishes by scanning a QR from there. ⚠ And for the other path, Cloud API, the requirement is the opposite: the number cannot be in any WhatsApp app at all. Same number, opposite demands — which is why Meta sometimes answers that it «does not meet the requirements» about a number that works perfectly.
· If it is already connected to another provider, release it there first. Meta takes up to three minutes to notice you let it go.
A Facebook account and a Meta Business Portfolio. Meta's signup asks for it in the last step. If you don't have one it takes minutes at business.facebook.com. It unlocks: reaching the end of signup.
Your phone at hand. In Coexistence you have to open WhatsApp Business on the phone, go to Linked devices and scan a QR code. It unlocks: the step where most people get stuck.
A card on YOUR Meta account. This is a second payment, separate from ours: Meta charges for messages, Connect charges for the infrastructure. Connect's free trial does not make Meta free — Meta charges from the first message of the first day. It unlocks: starting conversations.
If Meta assigns you one of its +1 555 numbers, the panel tells you at connect time and flags it on the number's page. We don't block it, and it isn't a second-class number: we just want you to have the migration fact before you put it on your website, not after.
⚠ Don't confuse them with Meta's «test number», which is a different thing: the one that comes with a development app and its short list of hand-added recipients. A +1 555 from signup has no such limit.
The two payments are laid out on the screen that appears before you pick the mode, with a box you have to tick. It isn't fine print: it's so nobody reaches month's end thinking the plan was everything they'd spend.
We don't publish Meta's prices: they change and they vary by country. The table is theirs: developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/pricing.
🔴 If signup tells you «Meta's servers are temporarily unavailable», there is NO outage. That is Meta's standard wording for a verification-code rate limit: 10 requests in a rolling 72-hour window, the limit is on the number (if you registered it in WhatsApp Business recently, requests were already spent there) and every retry uses up another one. You have to stop and wait. The panel translates it and, on the second failure for the same reason, deliberately stops offering you the button.