Frequently asked questions

One is ours and the other is Meta's, and they are separate. (1) You pay WAIA Connect for the infrastructure: your plan, per connected number, with no message cap. (2) You pay Meta for the messages, with your own card added to your Meta account: we do not charge it, we do not see it, and we add nothing on top. ⚠ The three costliest confusions, said up front: the free trial is OURS, not Meta's — those are days without paying us, and Meta charges from the first message of the first day; Meta charges PER MESSAGE delivered, not per conversation — conversation-based pricing existed until 1 July 2025 and Meta retired it, so estimating per conversation comes out far short; and with no card in Meta your number still works — you receive and you reply within 24 hours, the one thing you cannot do is start a conversation with a template. ⚠ And if you connect with Coexistence, whatever goes out from your phone costs nothing. We do not copy Meta's prices here because they change and vary by country: see their rate card. Verified against Meta's documentation on 2026-09-04.

This is Meta's change, not ours, and it does not change what Connect charges. Today a free-form reply inside the 24-hour window is free; from 1 October 2026 Meta starts charging for those messages, at the same rate as utility and authentication templates in each market and with no volume discount. ⚠ On that same date Meta also starts charging for utility templates sent in reply inside an open window, which are free today. ⚠ The 24-hour window does NOT go away: it still exists, it opens and resets with each customer message, and it still governs whether you can send free-form text — what changes is that those messages stop being free. The 72-hour free-entry-point window (conversations started from a click-to-WhatsApp ad or a Facebook/Instagram button) stays free. Meta publishes per-country rates by 1 September 2026; and from 1 August 2026 its own AI agent is billed by token (US$ 2 per million). You pay Meta directly, as always: we add nothing on top. Re-verified against Meta's documentation on 2026-09-04.

No, and this is the first thing that changes if you're coming from connecting WhatsApp some other way. The rule is WhatsApp's, not ours: you can reply freely, but you can't start freely. When a customer writes to you a 24-hour window opens and inside it you reply whatever you want. Once that window closes —or when you want to write first— WhatsApp only lets you send a template: a message written in advance and approved by Meta, with slots for the variable parts. It's approved in minutes and then you send it as often as you like. It exists so the platform doesn't fill with spam, and no provider can skip it — whatever they charge. ⚠ If your case is replying (support, questions, sales), you live inside the window and may never need one. And this is exactly where Connect saves you the ugly part: an industry catalog, a pre-check that tells you what Meta will reject before you send it, and a link so your end customer can propose theirs. Explained from scratch, no jargon →

You need a WhatsApp Business account. We are already the Meta-verified Tech Provider (that's what enables Coexistence). Business verification on Meta may be required to raise your sending limits, and it's done from your Business Manager — we don't do it for you, but it doesn't block getting started.

Connecting a number is an Embedded Signup (Meta's own popup): a few minutes. With Coexistence the number keeps working on the phone; nothing to migrate and no approvals to wait for to start integrating.

We don't. It's 14 days free with no payment method: you create the account, connect a number and test the whole integration. When the trial ends nothing is charged on its own — if you don't subscribe, sending pauses and that's it (you keep receiving). It's a real difference from most providers, which ask for the card before letting you in. ⚠ Careful with this one: the trial is OURS, not Meta's. You pay Meta for the messages with your own card from day one, and to add it Meta will ask you for a payment method in your Meta account. Without that card the number still works (you receive, and you reply within 24 hours): the one thing you cannot do is start a conversation with a template.

Yes. When you connect your number, if it was on another provider Connect detects the migration and asks you to confirm before re-pointing the inbound. From then on inbound messages arrive at Connect. The number is never lost.

After a grace period, sending is blocked and you keep receiving messages and logging in to settle up. ⚠ That lasts one month: if the payment is still outstanding after a month, the whole service is suspended and your numbers stop receiving. We email you before it happens, with how many days are left. At any point, before or after, you pay and everything comes back — nothing you configured is deleted. And either way your number and WABA stay yours: you can take them to another provider whenever you want, we don't hold them or disconnect them at Meta.

Payments are processed through MercadoPago or Polar, depending on which you pick when you subscribe, and whichever you use gives you the payment receipt. If you need an invoice in your company's name, write to hola@waiaconnect.com and we'll sort it out.

From Billing in the panel. Upgrading is immediate; downgrading applies at the end of the current period (you don't lose what you already paid). ⚠ If you move down to a plan with fewer numbers than you have connected, the panel warns you first: disconnect the extra ones so the change applies cleanly.

This is Meta's limit, not ours, and it counts distinct contacts you start a conversation with in 24 h — replying inside an open window doesn't count. The ladder is 250 → 2,000 → 10,000 → 100,000 → unlimited, and it goes up with business verification, volume and quality. ⚠ Since 7 October 2025 the limit is per business PORTFOLIO, not per number: if you have three numbers in the same portfolio, all three share one limit (before, each number had its own). If you manage numbers for several customers, that changes your math. Verified against Meta's documentation on 2026-08-30 — Meta changes this, so confirm before you size anything.

These are two different things and it pays not to mix them: the one above is how many people you message; this is how fast the messages go out. Meta allows up to 80 messages per second per number on the Cloud API, and up to 1,000 with the automatic upgrade; a number on Coexistence (the one that keeps working on the phone) has a fixed pace of 20 per second. On our side: you don't lose messages by sending faster. The queue absorbs them and drains at a controlled rate, with retries and idempotency — there is no hidden quantity cap in there. Meta's numbers, verified 2026-08-30.

Really. What defines your plan is how many numbers you can have connected, not how many messages you send. We can do that because our cost is infrastructure, not each message: the server sustains tens of millions of messages a month, measured. The messages themselves you pay to Meta, directly and at their price — we add nothing on top.

You move up a plan from Billing (it's immediate). On the largest plan you can also add individual extra numbers; write to us and we'll sort it out. And if you need many more, ask us for a custom plan.