Comparison
Almost everyone searching this phrase is asking one question: do I have to pay a monthly fee to send WhatsApp campaigns? Here is what the main platforms charge as of August 2026, where a pay-per-message option genuinely wins, and the volume above which you should stay exactly where you are.
Every platform in this category except ours starts with a subscription. The figures below are published pricing as of August 2026; per-message rates are charged on top of the monthly fee in all three cases.
| Platform | Monthly fee | First-year minimum | Marketing | Utility |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AiSensy Basic | ₹1,500 | ₹18,000 | ₹1.09 | ₹0.14 |
| Wati Growth | ₹2,499 | ₹29,988 | ≈ ₹0.94–1.04 | ≈ ₹0.14 |
| DoubleTick Starter | ₹3,000 | ₹36,000 | ≈ ₹0.89 | — |
| WABAPI | ₹0 | ₹0 | from ₹1.00 | from ₹0.25 |
Read the last two columns honestly: our per-message rates are the highest in that table. What we remove is the first two columns — the money you owe before any message goes out, every month, whether you send or not. Extra agents and chatbot builders are further add-ons on the subscription platforms; there are no seats to buy here because there is no per-seat pricing.
AiSensy's Basic plan costs ₹18,000 a year before any message. Whether their per-message rates ever earn that back depends on which of our packs you buy. On our Growth pack a marketing message costs ₹1.00, below their ₹1.09 — so for marketing there is no crossover: we cost less at any volume. On Starter (₹1.40) and Standard (₹1.20) our marketing rate is higher than theirs, and the crossover is roughly 4,839 marketing messages a month on Starter and 13,636 marketing messages a month on Standard: below that the missing subscription outweighs our higher rate; above it, their subscription plus lower rate wins. On utility their ₹0.14 is below our rate on every pack (from ₹0.25), so a utility-heavy sender reaches a crossover too — near 14,286 utility messages a month on Growth.
Where a crossover exists and you are past it, they are the cheaper choice — genuinely, and we would rather you knew before signing up than after.
There are four situations where switching would be a mistake, and it is worth being direct about them:
You have a team answering customer chats all day. A shared inbox with agent assignment is the product you are buying, and we do not have one — replies land on your number and we show them read-only.
You rely on chatbots or automated flows. We do not build them and do not plan to.
Your store runs on Shopify or WooCommerce and you need abandoned-cart or order automation wired in. Those integrations are real work that we have not done.
You send high, steady volume every month in a category where their per-message rate is lower than ours on the pack you would buy. Past the crossover above, a subscription is simply cheaper arithmetic.
What is left — and it is a large share of Indian small businesses — is the company that sends a few hundred or a few thousand messages a month, in bursts, around a festival or an admission season or a new price list. For them a subscription is rent paid on the quiet months, and that is exactly the business this was built for.
The reasons that come up most often in public reviews are structural rather than personal: a monthly subscription that has to be earned back before the first message pays for itself, features priced as add-ons on top of the plan (their chatbot builder is ₹2,500 a month and extra agents ₹750 each), and per-message rates carrying a markup over what Meta charges. None of that makes it a bad product — it is a well-built platform with a large customer base. It makes it an expensive one for a business that sends irregularly.
It depends on volume and on which pack you buy, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. There is no monthly fee to recover first — their Basic plan is ₹18,000 a year before any message. On our Growth pack a marketing message costs ₹1.00, below their ₹1.09 — so for marketing there is no crossover: we cost less at any volume. On Starter (₹1.40) and Standard (₹1.20) our marketing rate is higher than theirs, and the crossover is roughly 4,839 marketing messages a month on Starter and 13,636 marketing messages a month on Standard: below that the missing subscription outweighs our higher rate; above it, their subscription plus lower rate wins. On utility their ₹0.14 is below our rate on every pack (from ₹0.25), so a utility-heavy sender reaches a crossover too — near 14,286 utility messages a month on Growth. Past a crossover that applies to you, their plan is the cheaper choice, and you should take it.
A shared team inbox with multiple agents, chatbot and flow builders, e-commerce integrations such as Shopify, catalogue and payment features, and mobile apps. WABAPI does one job: it sends template campaigns from your own number, reports on delivery per recipient, and refunds what did not arrive. If your team needs several people answering customer chats all day, a platform built around an inbox is the right purchase.
Yes. Your WhatsApp Business number and its Meta assets belong to your business, not to the platform sending through them, so a number can be migrated. The templates themselves are approved against your WhatsApp Business Account, so in most cases they survive the move too. Practically, expect the migration to take a day and to involve Meta Business Manager rather than either platform's dashboard.
Connect your number free and send 20 messages at no cost — pay only when you go live. The smallest purchase after that is ₹1,050 for 3,000 credits, and it is repeatable, not a once-off — buy it again, or any larger amount, whenever you need more. That first purchase alone is enough for 3,000 utility messages or 750 marketing messages: a real campaign to a real list, not a demo.
Put your real monthly volume into the cost calculator — it will tell you plainly which side of the crossover you are on, including when the answer is that a subscription suits you better.