3rd Party Integrations

Third-party integrations, priced in the open

Some of what Consaya does depends on somebody else's network — a message carrier, a tax network, a payment rail. Those parties charge you, not us, and we do not take a share of any of it. So rather than let you discover the cost on someone else's first invoice, we publish it here: what each one charges, which route we would take, and the date we last checked.

Last reviewed: 29 August 2026 · Reviewed every two weeks

WhatsApp Business Platform

WhatsApp alerts: what they cost, and who you buy them from

Consaya can send your team their reminders and approvals over WhatsApp. The software side is ours; the messages are not — you buy those from Meta, either directly or through a provider. Not one dirham of it passes through Consaya, so what follows is not a price list of ours. It is what we found when we costed the options, kept current so you can check our working.

What you are actually paying for

You are billed per message, not per conversation

Meta moved from conversation-based to per-message billing on 1 July 2025. You are charged when a template message is delivered — not when it is sent, and not for the 24 hours around it. Anything undelivered is free.

The rate depends on the message category and the country code you are sending to. Four categories exist: marketing, utility, authentication and service.

Almost everything Consaya sends is the cheap category

A visa expiring in 30 days, an invoice falling overdue, an approval waiting on a manager — these are utility messages: triggered by something that happened in your own account, sent to your own staff. Utility is the second-cheapest category and a third of the marketing rate.

Consaya never sends marketing messages on your account. There is no path in the product that puts a promotional template on your bill.

Replies are free for 24 hours

When a member of staff messages back, a 24-hour customer service window opens. Inside it, free-form messages and utility templates cost nothing. A colleague who replies "approved" and then gets three follow-up questions answered has generated one charge, not four.

This matters more than the rate card does. A team that engages with its alerts pays for the first message of each thread and nothing after it.

Volume brings the rate down

Meta applies volume tiers to utility and authentication messages, counted monthly across your whole business portfolio. The rates below are list rates — the first tier, and the most anyone pays.

Meta per-message rates, UAE

CategoryUSDAED ≈What goes in it
Utility0.01570.058Reminders, expiry alerts, approval requests, overdue invoices — effectively everything Consaya sends.
Authentication0.01780.065One-time codes. Only if you turn on WhatsApp as a login factor.
Marketing0.04990.183Promotional messages. Consaya sends none of these — listed so the rate card reads complete.
Service0.000.00Free. Any reply inside the 24-hour window a member of staff opened by messaging you.

Meta list rates for messages delivered to UAE numbers, from the rate card effective 1 July 2026. AED figures are our conversion at the pegged 3.6725. Volume tiers reduce the utility and authentication rates as your monthly count rises.

What that comes to for a real firm

Take a twelve-person PRO services firm carrying about 400 client documents. Expiry reminders at seven intervals, overdue-invoice chasers, approval requests and payroll alerts come to roughly 600 utility messages a month.

Straight from Meta that is about AED 35 a month. Through Twilio, about AED 46. For the whole firm — not per user.

The honest conclusion is that at the volumes a professional-services firm generates, the difference between the routes is around eleven dirhams a month. Choose on how much operational work you want to own, not on price.

Pros and cons, honestly

Meta Cloud API, direct

Your own WhatsApp Business account, connected to Consaya in a few minutes.

Meta's rate, and nothing else. About AED 35 a month at 600 utility messages.

Pros

  • The cheapest route — no intermediary takes a margin.
  • The number and the account are yours, and stay yours if you leave Consaya.
  • You are billed by Meta directly and see every message on their invoice.
  • Connected through Consaya's guided sign-up — no developer needed at your end.

Cons

  • Meta must verify your business first, which takes days to weeks.
  • A number already on the consumer WhatsApp app has to be freed up first.
  • Support is Meta's, which means documentation and forms rather than a person.
  • One channel. If you later want SMS and voice too, that is a separate arrangement.

Best if WhatsApp is the only channel you need and you want the lowest cost.

Through a provider, such as Twilio

A messaging company sits between you and Meta and handles the plumbing.

Meta's rate plus USD 0.005 per message. About AED 46 a month at 600 messages, with no monthly platform fee on pay-as-you-go.

Pros

  • Faster to get live — the provider carries much of the Meta paperwork.
  • Real support with a person on the other end and a response commitment.
  • SMS and voice on the same account, so one fallback path covers everything.
  • Useful if you already run Twilio for something else and want one invoice.

Cons

  • A mark-up on every message — roughly a third on top of the utility rate.
  • Another vendor relationship, another account, another thing to audit.
  • Moving away later means migrating the number, which is not instant.
  • Providers differ widely: some charge 10% over Meta, some more than double it. Compare before you sign.

Best if you want a single vendor across WhatsApp, SMS and voice, or want someone to call.

Consaya builds its own

We write our own messaging layer instead of using an established one.

Meta's rate anyway — plus our engineering time, passed on to you in the subscription.

Pros

  • Complete control over how sending, queuing and retries behave.
  • No third party between Consaya and the message.

Cons

  • It saves nothing. WhatsApp messages can only be sent through Meta, so Meta's rate is paid either way — building changes who writes the code, not what the message costs.
  • Delivery, retries, rate limits, template approvals and number reputation are a permanent operational burden, and the companies that already do this do it well.
  • It is engineering that does not go into accounting, tax and project delivery, which is what you actually pay Consaya for.

We do not recommend this, and we are not doing it. It is listed because you deserve to see the option we rejected and why.

What we would do

Connect Meta directly. It is the cheapest, the account stays yours, and Consaya's guided sign-up removes the part that would otherwise need a developer.

Go through a provider if you want one vendor across WhatsApp, SMS and voice, or if a support line you can phone is worth eleven dirhams a month to you. That is a reasonable thing to want and we will not argue with it.

Either way, Consaya bills you nothing for the channel and takes no share of what you spend. Your control is in the product: pick which alerts go to WhatsApp, set a monthly message budget, and Consaya falls back to email rather than dropping anything when the budget runs out.

Frequently asked questions

Does Consaya charge for WhatsApp?

No. You are billed by Meta or your provider, directly. Consaya adds no per-message fee and takes no share. The connection itself is part of your plan.

Can we cap what we spend?

Yes. Set a monthly message budget in Consaya with a warning threshold and a hard stop. When the stop is reached, alerts go out by email instead — nothing is ever silently dropped, because a visa expiry that went unsent would be the worst possible way to save a dirham.

Do staff have to accept WhatsApp alerts?

No. Each person chooses which alerts reach them and whether they want approvals on WhatsApp at all, separately. An administrator can switch whole categories off for the organisation, but cannot switch an individual on against their wishes.

Are these rates going to change?

Yes, periodically — Meta raised the UAE marketing rate on 1 October 2025. As at this review, Meta has announced utility and authentication increases for 1 October 2026 in Kuwait, Oman, Morocco, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, but not the UAE. We re-check every two weeks and update the date at the top of this page.

Can we keep our existing WhatsApp number?

Only if it is not currently in use on the consumer WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business app. A number can live in one place at a time, so most firms bring a spare line across rather than surrender the one their clients already message.

Disclaimer

Prices on this page are Meta's and Twilio's, not Consaya's, and they change them without consulting us. The figures were checked on the review date shown above and are given in good faith as general information — not as a quotation, and not as advice on which vendor to use. Rates vary by message category, destination country and monthly volume, and providers other than Twilio price differently again. Confirm the current rate against Meta's own rate card and your provider's pricing before you commit to anything.

Sources: Meta — WhatsApp Business Platform pricing · Twilio — WhatsApp pricing. Last reviewed 29 August 2026.