What WhatsApp costs a D2C brand each month

The three parts of the bill

Meta's rates for Indian numbers

Estimate your utility messages

1. Count your monthly orders.
2. Multiply by the number of updates per order: confirmation, shipped, out for delivery, delivered.
3. Add a COD confirmation for each COD order.
4. Multiply the total by ₹0.115.

Estimate your marketing messages

1. Count abandoned carts you will remind.
2. Add each campaign's recipients for the month.
3. Multiply the total by ₹0.8631.

A worked month

Add each tool's plan price. WATI and Gallabox do not publish per-message rates, so ask them for a quote and add a row.

Where brands overspend

• Order updates sent as marketing templates, at about seven times the utility price.
• Campaigns to the whole list instead of segments.
• Several cart follow-ups per cart.
• A markup they never checked.

Where brands save

• Replying inside the customer service window, where the first 1,000 service messages a month are free.
• Segmenting campaigns to buyers likely to act.
• Choosing a tool with no markup as volume grows.

Plan fees by volume

Tools price plans on different things: contacts reached, seats, or features. Tadlo AI's plans are priced on unique contacts engaged per month: ₹999 for 1,000 contacts on Starter, ₹2,499 for 10,000 on Growth, ₹5,999 for 40,000 on Pro. Pick the plan that covers your busiest month.

A quick estimate for a small store

Take a store with 1,000 orders a month, three utility updates per order and one cart reminder for each of 1,500 carts. That is 3,000 utility messages and 1,500 marketing messages, plus any campaigns. Multiply each by its rate, add your tool's plan, and you have a monthly budget you can check against the invoice.

Track it monthly

Each month, compare message counts by category with your orders. If marketing messages grow faster than orders, your campaigns are getting less efficient.