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Meta’s move to per-message pricing for service messages changes the economics of WhatsApp. Most cost increases are avoidable with the right setup. Here’s how to stay in control.
Questions about your setup? Reach out to your Connectly Account Manager.

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01 — Use WhatsApp Flows for multi-step interactions

Impact: High · Effort: Medium Every extra message in a multi-step interaction adds up. WhatsApp Flows let you collect input — forms, selections, booking details — inside a single structured experience, instead of a chain of back-and-forth messages.
With Connectly: Create your flow in Meta Business Manager and call it from any Connectly campaign. Coming soon: build and host flows without leaving Connectly.

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02 — Cap your auto-reply frequency

Impact: High · Effort: Low Customers often send several messages at once, or check back multiple times a day. Without a cap, your bot fires a reply to every single one — and each reply is a billable service message. A simple limit ensures you respond once per window, not once per ping.
With Connectly: Set a frequency cap in your settings (e.g. max one auto-reply per customer per day) regardless of how many messages they send.

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03 — Filter out incoming bots and auto-replies

Impact: High · Effort: Low Out-of-office replies, delivery bots, and automated notifications can trigger your auto-replies and open agent sessions — just like a real customer conversation would. Those interactions count against your bill.
With Connectly: A detection algorithm identifies and suppresses incoming bot and auto-reply messages before they trigger any action or cost on your side.

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04 — Consolidate messages

Impact: Medium · Effort: Low Sending three short messages costs three times as much as one. Combine information into a single well-structured message using buttons, quick replies, or lists — and you’ll likely get better engagement too.
Rule of thumb: if two messages could be sent within seconds of each other, they should be one message.

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05 — Resolve within the conversation window

Impact: Medium · Effort: Low When a customer messages you, a conversation window opens. Responding and resolving within that window is more cost-effective than letting it lapse and reopening it with a new outbound message later.
With Connectly: Use conversation status indicators to see which windows are about to close and prioritise accordingly.

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06 — Keep your contact lists clean

Impact: Medium · Effort: Low Sending to inactive, unresponsive, or opted-out contacts wastes budget with zero return. Regular list hygiene is one of the simplest cost levers available — and requires no product changes to implement.
With Connectly: Use engagement data to flag contacts who haven’t responded in 60–90 days. Re-engage them with a targeted campaign or remove them from regular sends.

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07 — Build a dedicated AI agent for your most important flows Coming soon

Impact: High · Effort: Medium Design an AI agent that manages entire conversations end-to-end — understanding intent, gathering details, and handing off to a human only when genuinely needed. Where the other practices optimise individual messages, an agent replaces an entire flow.
Coming to Connectly: A no-code Agent Builder to design, test, and deploy specialised agents for any flow.