Understanding Wati Pricing: A Comprehensive Analysis of Their 2024 Plans

Selecting the right WhatsApp marketing software is crucial for businesses aiming to enhance their customer engagement and sales. Among the myriad of options available, Wati has emerged as a notable player.

This blog delves deep into Wati's pricing structure, providing a detailed analysis of its plans and features to equip businesses with the information needed to make an informed decision. Explore the ins and outs of Wati's offerings that makes it a contender in the crowded field of WhatsApp marketing tools and how its pricing and features stack up against your business needs.

What is Wati?

Wati is a WhatsApp Business API solution provider that facilitates customer engagement, sales, and marketing conversations on WhatsApp. It’s designed to help businesses automate conversations and manage customer interactions effectively. WATI empowers businesses to leverage WhatsApp for sales, marketing, and customer support activities. It also facilitates seamless integration with CRMs, helpdesks, and third-party applications, enabling the automation of WhatsApp messaging for streamlined business communication.

Who Uses WATI?

WATI is primarily used by B2C businesses seeking to enhance customer service and engagement through WhatsApp. It's ideal for companies aiming to communicate with customers or send WhatsApp notifications effectively.

Exploring Wati's Pricing Plans: A Detailed Breakdown

Wati's pricing is available in many currencies, including USD and INR. Your location determines your billing currency—customers in India are charged in INR. For other countries, the billing currency depends on the specific regional settings and applicable currency.

Wati offers three pricing tiers:

1. Growth Plan
2. Pro Plan
3. Business Plan

Wati's USD Platform Pricing

Wati USD pricing starts from $49 per month:

• Growth Plan: $49/month
• Pro Plan: $99/month
• Business Plan: $299/month

Wati's INR Platform Pricing

Wati’s INR pricing starts from ₹2,499 per month:

• Growth Plan: ₹2,499/month
• Pro Plan: ₹5,999/month
• Business Plan: ₹16,999/month

At a glance, Wati's pricing seems reasonable. Especially with their 25% discount offer for annual subscriptions for all plans.

However, there are additional costs to consider. Every month, your Wati subscription will include three types of charges:

• The platform subscription fee, which varies depending on your chosen plan.
• A per-conversation WhatsApp marketing fee based on Wati’s conversation rate card charges
• Fees for additional features like users, additional chatbot sessions, and Shopify app integration (usage-dependent)

Understanding the hidden and additional costs associated with Wati's pricing

Before we discuss each additional cost header for Wati's pricing, let's first understand the different types of WhatsApp conversations and their associated costs.

1. Conversations:

This is how Meta defines a WhatsApp conversation: A conversation includes all messages delivered within a 24-hour period.

A conversation starts when the first business message is delivered and ends 24 hours later. The first message can be initiated by the business (business-initiated) or a business reply within 24 hours of a user message (user-initiated).

To properly understand Wati's WhatsApp conversation rate card pricing, we need to understand the four categories of WhatsApp conversations created by Meta.

There are 4 categories of WhatsApp Conversations:

• Marketing: Enables you to achieve a wide range of goals, from generating awareness to driving sales and retargeting customers. Examples include new product, service, or feature announcements, targeted promotions/offers, and cart abandonment reminders.
• Utility: Enables you to follow-up on user actions or requests. Examples include opt-in confirmation, order/delivery management (e.g., delivery update); account updates or alerts (e.g., payment reminder); or feedback surveys.
• Authentication — Enables you to authenticate users with one-time passcodes, potentially at multiple steps in the login process (e.g., account verification, account recovery, integrity challenges).‍
• Service — Enables you to resolve customer inquiries

IMPORTANT: WhatsApp bills customers per conversation. A conversation simply means a templated or non-templated message initiated by the brand

Now that we understand the types of WhatsApp conversations, let's look at how Wati charges for it.

Wati’s approach to WhatsApp conversation pricing for all plans involves a markup fee in addition to Meta’s messaging rates.

This means the cost per conversation aligns directly with Meta's current rates, varying by the user's country location + Wati’s markup on each conversation. For example, here are the current pricing rates of Meta for India in USD compared to Wati’s pricing rates for India in USD:

Meta’s WhatsApp Conversation Pricing Rates for India:

• In USD:
  • Marketing: $0.0099 per conversation
  • Utility: $0.0042 per conversation
  • Service: $0.0040 per conversation
  • Authentication: $0.0014 per conversation
• Source: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/pricing/

Wati’s WhatsApp Conversation Pricing Rates for India:

• In USD:
  • Marketing: $0.0119 per conversation
  • Utility: $0.0050 per conversation
  • Service: $0.0048 per conversation
  • Authentication: $0.0050 per conversation

Source: Wati Conversation Rate Card

Here’s how the Wati markup fees break down for each type of conversation in India, expressed in USD:

• Marketing: A 20.20% increase, with a $0.002 markup per conversation.
• Utility: Marked up by $0.0008 per conversation, an increase of about 19.05%.
• Service: Each service conversation costs $0.0008 more, a 20% markup.
• Authentication: The markup for authentication is $0.0036 per conversation, a substantial 257.14% increase.

This markup strategy underpins Wati's pricing model, supporting its extensive features and enhanced services.

In Wati's most expensive plan, the business plan costing ₹16,999 per month, a 5% discount is applied to the Wati Conversation Rate Card. This discount reduces the markup fees across all conversation types by 5%.

Here’s the adjusted breakdown of Wati’s business plan markup fees in India with the 5% discount, expressed in USD:

• Marketing:
  • Original Markup: $0.002 per conversation
  • Discounted Markup: $0.002 - ($0.002 * 5%) = $0.0019 per conversation
  • Adjusted Increase: 19.19%
• Utility:
  • Original Markup: $0.0008 per conversation
  • Discounted Markup: $0.0008 - ($0.0008 * 5%) = $0.00076 per conversation
  • Adjusted Increase: 18.10%
• Service:
  • Original Markup: $0.0008 per conversation
  • Discounted Markup: $0.0008 - ($0.0008 * 5%) = $0.00076 per conversation
  • Adjusted Increase: 19%
• Authentication:
  • Original Markup: $0.0036 per conversation
  • Discounted Markup: $0.0036 - ($0.0036 * 5%) = $0.00342 per conversation
  • Adjusted Increase: 244.29%

This refined markup strategy aligns with Wati's premium pricing model, offering businesses slight cost relief on the business plan.

For those looking to calculate conversation costs precisely based on their chosen Wati plan and local currency, Wati provides a dedicated Conversation-Based Cost Calculator.

You can access this tool to estimate your specific expenses here.

Transitioning from Wati's pricing strategy, let's discuss another significant aspect: Free Service Conversations.

Free Service Conversations:

Wati offers 1,000 free service conversations monthly across all plans, a standard practice supported by Meta across WhatsApp marketing tools. This free tier is refreshed monthly based on the WhatsApp Business Account's time zone. Note that marketing, utility, and authentication conversations do not qualify for the free tier.

This explanation clarifies Wati’s pricing strategy for WhatsApp conversations. Next, we will explore Wati's pricing for Users.

2. Users:

Users here refer to company users or team members authorized to interact with customers through the Wati platform. They can manage conversations, respond to queries, and provide support or sales assistance. Essentially, they are a business representative handling customer communications on WhatsApp and other channels offered by Wati.

Wati offers a uniform structure for user pricing across all its plans, with up to 5 users included in each plan:

• Growth Plan: Includes 5 users. Each additional agent costs ₹1,299 per month.
• Pro Plan: Includes 5 users. Each additional agent costs ₹1,299 per month.
• Business Plan: Includes 5 users. Each additional agent costs ₹1,299 per month.

This consistent pricing strategy for additional users ensures clarity and simplicity, aiding businesses in straightforward budgeting and scaling efforts as they grow.

This summary provides an overview of Wati's user pricing structure. Next, we will explore Wati's pricing structure for Chatbot sessions.

3. Chatbot Sessions:

Here is how Wati defines "Chatbot Sessions": A "Chatbot Session" occurs each time a chatbot is activated through customer interaction. This excludes automation triggered by default or keyword actions that don’t involve a chatbot.

Wati calculates the number of chatbot sessions monthly based on the billing month rather than the calendar month.

For example, if your plan starts on the 18th of any month, your chatbot session count will reset on the 18th of each subsequent month.

This method ensures sessions are tracked precisely within each specific billing period.

Wati's chatbot session offerings are tiered across their Growth, Pro, and Business plans. The pricing details for each plan are as follows:

• The Growth Plan provides 1,000 chatbot sessions per month.
• The Pro Plan doubles that with 2,000 chatbot sessions per month.
• The Business Plan significantly increases the offering to 5,000 chatbot sessions per month.

This structure allows businesses to choose a plan based on their messaging volume needs, ensuring they have sufficient chatbot sessions to engage with their customers effectively.

Wati's additional chatbot sessions can be purchased starting from a package of 1,000 chatbot sessions at ₹2,000 per month.

Businesses can buy up to 200,000 sessions per month for ₹146,200.

This flat-rate pricing for additional sessions is consistent across all plans.

Our overview has detailed Wati's chatbot session costs. We will now examine how Wati prices its Shopify app integration.

4. Wati Shopify App Integration:

Wati offers a Shopify app plugin to seamlessly integrate WhatsApp marketing for e-commerce businesses, enhancing their Shopify store experience. Features include abandoned cart recovery, WhatsApp marketing solutions, and no-code chatbots. It offers WhatsApp broadcasts, order confirmation via WhatsApp to reduce return-to-origin (RTO) rates for cash on delivery (COD), and automated order updates for better customer service.

Wati charges a flat fee of $4.99 per month for this integration, which is an extra cost on top of any Wati plan you select.

Pros & Cons of choosing Wati as your WhatsApp marketing software

Pros:

• Broad functionality catering to various business types.
• Automation capabilities with chatbots.
• User-friendly interface for managing customer conversations.

Cons:

• Limited personalization for D2C brands.
• Support is available only through email and chatbots.
• Pricing can be a barrier for small businesses needing advanced features.
• Getting approval for the WhatsApp Business API involves a fee, and you must pay extra if you want Green Tick Verification.
• Template Message Strategy or consultation services are not available.
• The integration of chatbots and other software is self-serve, with no support provided for these integrations.

Conclusion

Our comprehensive analysis of Wati's pricing has explored its pricing models for various services. Weighing the benefits of Wati's features against the costs and understanding the additional chatbot session pricing is crucial for businesses considering Wati as their WhatsApp marketing platform.