Creating your WhatsApp Business Account
The nine steps from a Meta Business Portfolio to a verified number, and what Meta asks for at each one.
Choosing a phone number
Why the number cannot already be on the consumer WhatsApp app, and when to use a new number instead of migrating.
Getting a display name approved
Display-name rejections are the most common activation delay. What Meta accepts, and what it does not.
How the 24-hour window affects your bill
Who spoke last decides whether you send a free reply or a charged template. The single rule behind most billing surprises.
Why a template was reclassified as marketing
One promotional sentence inside an order update moves the whole message to the marketing rate. How to keep utility templates utility.
What changes on 1 October 2026
Service messages and in-window utility templates become chargeable, with 1,000 free service messages per number per month.
How call permission requests work
You cannot call a customer without an approved permission request. How it is sent, what it costs, and how long approval lasts.
Six-second pulse billing explained
Outbound voice rounds up to the next six seconds. A 3:01 call bills as 3:06 — with a worked example.
Escalating a chat to a voice call
Moving a message thread to a WhatsApp voice call without a re-queue, and what the agent sees when it lands.
Connecting your own SIP trunk
Credentials, codecs, concurrency limits and the tests to run before you point production traffic at us.
Bringing your own SMS gateway
Connect an existing SMS account, keep your negotiated rates, and use WhatsApp-to-SMS fallback as one campaign.
DID ranges and per-country numbering
Renting DIDs per market, least-cost routing between them, and what local registration usually requires.
Collecting a valid opt-in
Consent must be collected outside WhatsApp, name your business, and say what the customer will receive.
Restricted and prohibited categories
Meta’s commerce policy limits several industries. What is restricted, and how it is assessed per market.
Data residency and retention
Choosing where interactions, recordings and transcripts are stored, and setting retention per queue.
Authenticating against the REST API
API keys per environment, request signing, rate limits and cursor-based pagination.
Subscribing to the event stream
Registering webhooks, verifying signatures, handling retries and the shape of each event type.
Embedding the agent workspace in your CRM
Mounting the thread, softphone and queue inside Salesforce, Dynamics, HubSpot or SAP with the embed SDK.
My template was rejected
The common rejection reasons — variables, formatting, category mismatch and prohibited content — and how to resubmit.
Messages are not being delivered
Working through delivery failures: window state, messaging limits, quality rating, blocks and invalid numbers.
My quality rating dropped
What lowers a rating, how the messaging tier responds, and how to recover it without pausing the operation.
