# ① Before you connect — what you'll need

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._

## Notes

- 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](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/pricing#rate-cards).
- 🔴 **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.