I just implemented a WhatsApp bot for a small business. Implementation was fairly easy. What was horrible was navigating the mess of Meta Business Manager with personal and business entity accounts, unlinking the app to free the phone number, getting that reverified, yada yada yada. Just give people an easy API setup and start seeing great things happen.
dzonga [3 hidden]5 mins ago
WhatsApp business api is in a weird situation.
the poor countries use WhatsApp mostly due the fact that sms was costly.
so you're tryna to monetize against businesses serving poorer users. yes - they maybe more in number but margins are razor thin.
the richer countries where margins are higher - sms, email, etc are cheaper & permission less. so eventually most providers most settling on email & sms/rcs.
pbronez [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It's weird how hard it is to get programmatic access to a mobile-first messaging service. Telegram is the only one that makes it easy. WhatsApp and iMessage have first party solutions that assume you're a business with 1:M comms. Signal doesn't want bot users at all.
Maybe I need to start looking at SMS/MMS proper, but that's putting a lot of information in the clear and giving up a lot of features.
monkeeguy [3 hidden]5 mins ago
WhatsApp is getting expensive as hell.
Puvvl [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Yeah, the July 2025 shift to per-message billing made marketing way pricier. The country spread is wild too, India is ~$0.0094/msg vs Germany ~$0.124
toast0 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I left WA in 2019, while the business api program was still very early, but that looks pretty close to pricing for SMS. Which makes market sense (imho) because it's a substitute good. SMS pricing varies wildly by destination country, sometimes by destination network.
Skimming the page, also note that the quoted prices are for marketting messages, other types of messages are much less expensive.
parthdesai [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> but that looks pretty close to pricing for SMS. Which makes market sense (imho) because it's a substitute good
People switched to whatsapp because:
1. It was free unlike SMS
2. It was ubiquitously available like SMS (unlike BBM)
3. It was genuinely a good product.
This feels like Whatsapp (Meta) is rug pulling the users once everyone has moved to Whatsapp, almost analogous to what Uber did. Drive Taxis out of business with predatory pricing, and then increase the prices.
claw-el [3 hidden]5 mins ago
For SMS, the access to a specific consumer is often gated by a monopoly (that user’s telco provider) so they get to charge whatever they like. Therefore you see the variance (the greediness of individual telco). When WhatsApp join in the business messaging game, they want to maintain good relationship with the telcos and they also like the sweet margins they see they are making there.
philipwhiuk [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I mean surely this was always going to happen? A fixed fee just means less frequent users subsidising everyone else.
HN.zip
the poor countries use WhatsApp mostly due the fact that sms was costly.
so you're tryna to monetize against businesses serving poorer users. yes - they maybe more in number but margins are razor thin.
the richer countries where margins are higher - sms, email, etc are cheaper & permission less. so eventually most providers most settling on email & sms/rcs.
Maybe I need to start looking at SMS/MMS proper, but that's putting a lot of information in the clear and giving up a lot of features.
Skimming the page, also note that the quoted prices are for marketting messages, other types of messages are much less expensive.
People switched to whatsapp because:
1. It was free unlike SMS 2. It was ubiquitously available like SMS (unlike BBM) 3. It was genuinely a good product.
This feels like Whatsapp (Meta) is rug pulling the users once everyone has moved to Whatsapp, almost analogous to what Uber did. Drive Taxis out of business with predatory pricing, and then increase the prices.