This morning, before anything else went out, I opened one web page and read it slowly. It was Meta's own pricing page for the WhatsApp Business Platform, and today is the day it said replies would stop being free.
I had planned this day since the end of September. The plan had a note on it in capital letters: verify on Meta's page that morning, never a reseller's blog.
Why I would not write it until today
In the run-up, companies that resell WhatsApp access had been publishing their own summaries of the change. Some of them mentioned a free monthly allowance of replies per number. Some mentioned a deadline. They might well have been right. But when I planned October, I could not find either claim in Meta's own words, so both went into the plan marked unverified.
That felt slow at the time. It is tempting to repeat what several other pages say, especially when they agree with each other. But several pages agreeing can be one page copied several times.
What the page said this morning
The page had been updated on 28 September. The change is real: from today, Meta charges per message for the normal replies a business sends inside the 24 hour window after a customer writes in.
The free allowance turned out to be real too, and now it is in Meta's words: one shared free tier of 1,000 delivered service messages per business phone number, per month, with no roll-over. The resellers were right about that part. I just would not have known it until today.
There was also a line I had not seen in any of the summaries I read, and it is the one I would most want an owner to read. Without a payment method on the account, replies are delivered inside the free tier and then stop being delivered. No dramatic error. The customer just hears nothing.
I wrote up what changes inside a business inbox in WhatsApp Business Platform: replies are billable from 1 October 2026.
What I took from it
Two things.
The first is about sources. A fact is only as good as the place you read it. Waiting for the primary source meant not being first. It also meant not publishing something I could not stand behind.
The second is about inboxes. The free allowance belongs to the phone number, not to the person. Every reply from every team member on that number draws from the same pool. A business that answers WhatsApp from four different phones has no way of knowing how much of that pool it has used, or how many of those replies were two people answering the same customer.
That is the problem NexBrand exists to solve: every conversation in one inbox, one owner per chat, and the whole history on the customer's record. It mattered before today because customers were waiting. From today it also shows up on the bill.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why wait for Meta's own page instead of trusting reseller summaries?
Because summaries copy each other. Several pages agreeing can still be one source repeated. Meta's pricing page is where the rule actually lives, so that is the only place I quote it from.
Did the reseller claims about a free allowance turn out to be true?
The free tier did. Meta's page now confirms 1,000 delivered service messages per business phone number per month, shared by everyone sending from that number, with no roll-over into the next month.
What is the one thing an owner should check today?
Whether the WhatsApp Business account has a payment method. Meta's page says replies are delivered within the free tier but not after it is used, so a busy number could stop reaching customers quietly.