If you're coming from connecting WhatsApp some other way, this is the first thing that changes — and it's WhatsApp's rule, not ours.
The rule, in one sentence: you can reply freely, but you can't start freely.
When a customer writes to you, a 24-hour window opens. Inside that window you reply whatever you want, in whatever words, as many times as you want. Every new message from the customer resets it. That's the easy part and it works the way you'd expect.
When the window closes —or when you want to write first, to someone who never wrote to you— WhatsApp won't let you send free-form text. It only lets you send a template.
A template is a message written in advance and approved by Meta. You write it once ("Hi {{1}}, your order {{2}} is ready for pickup"), Meta reviews it, and once approved you can send it as many times as you like, changing only the variable parts. What Meta reviews is the fixed text, not each send.
Why it exists. It's how WhatsApp keeps itself from becoming a spam channel: if anyone could write to anyone with any text, the platform would fill with unsolicited messages and people would stop opening it. Approval is the toll. It isn't a Meta whim and there's no way around it — no provider can skip it, whatever they charge.
How long it takes. Usually minutes; sometimes hours. And a rejected template isn't lost: you fix it and resubmit.
When you need no template at all. If your case is the customer writes first and you reply — support, questions, selling over WhatsApp — you live inside the window and may never need one.
🔴 This is failure number one in our own customer base. One customer collected 68 rejections trying to write outside the window with not a single template loaded. Their integration wasn't broken: they were missing this concept.
And this is where Connect saves you the ugly part, which is what the price is for: an industry catalog of templates already written to pass approval (for whoever doesn't know what to write — almost everyone, the first time); a pre-check that fixes the template as you type and tells you what Meta will reject before you send it — a rejected template means days of waiting; and a link so your own end customer can propose the one they need, which you correct before it goes out.
⚠ Templates cost money. Not to us: you pay Meta, with your card and at their price, like any message. Our plan has no message cap; Meta's side is separate (step ⑥).
The category drives the price. Marketing is the most expensive, utility and authentication are cheaper, and Meta rejects a marketing template dressed up as utility. The pre-check warns you when that's about to happen.