WhatsApp chatbot for business

How a WhatsApp chatbot works

Your business number is connected to the Business Platform. When a customer writes, WhatsApp passes the message to your chatbot platform, the bot decides on an answer, and the platform sends it back through WhatsApp. To the customer it is an ordinary chat with your business name, with buttons and lists where you use them.

Because the customer wrote first, the bot answers inside the 24-hour customer service window with ordinary messages. From 1 October 2026 Meta gives each phone number 1,000 of those a month free and charges the utility rate after that; a busy bot will pass that number. Templates, for example a reminder the next day, are always charged.

Rule-based or AI?

Most businesses end up with both: a flow for the predictable 80%, an AI step for open questions, and a person behind it.

What Meta allows

• Bots for your own customers are fine: support, sales, bookings, notifications.
• General-purpose AI assistants are not. Since 15 January 2026 the Business Platform terms bar AI providers from offering an assistant over WhatsApp when the AI is the main thing on offer rather than a help to a business's own service. The terms make an exception for users with European Economic Area or Brazilian phone numbers. Using an AI vendor to answer your own customers is explicitly allowed.
• Offer a way out. WhatsApp's policy expects a clear path to a human agent or another support channel.
• Opt-in and templates still apply to anything the bot sends first. See the marketing rules.

What it costs

1. The platform: from a free tier to a few hundred dollars a month, depending on contacts, agents and AI usage. Prices are in the cards below.

2. Meta's message fees: templates the bot sends outside the 24-hour window, and from 1 October 2026 also replies beyond the 1,000 free ones a month. Rates are on the API pricing section.

3. AI usage: many platforms charge AI replies separately. Meta's own Business Agent is billed per token, which Meta estimates at about 4 to 5 US cents per message.

4. Markups: some platforms add their own fee per message or per conversation on top of Meta's. It is the line to look for on a pricing page.

Build a first bot in a day

1. List the ten questions customers ask most. That list is the bot's scope; resist adding more.

2. Pick a platform with a free trial and connect a number. Use a new number for testing if your main one is busy in the Business app.

3. Build a welcome menu with three or four buttons, one flow per button, and an "agent" option in every flow.

4. Add your opening hours: outside them, the bot collects the question and promises a reply time.

5. Test from a private phone, read the transcripts after the first week, and fix the places where people got stuck.

A click-to-chat link with a pre-filled message on your website is the simplest way to send customers into the bot.

Platforms for building a WhatsApp chatbot