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.
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.
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.
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.
WhatsApp is getting expensive as hell.
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
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.
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.
I mean surely this was always going to happen? A fixed fee just means less frequent users subsidising everyone else.