WhatsApp and messaging inboxes: platform fee plus per-message, always
Every tool here has a second meter that is not on its pricing page: the messages.
Messaging platforms quote you a monthly fee and then hand you a second, larger bill from the channel itself. WhatsApp charges per conversation, SMS charges per segment and carries registration overhead, and in-app chat charges by users and connections. None of that appears in the number you compared.
So the meaningful comparison is the platform fee plus your own expected message volume, and the tools differ most in what the platform fee is attached to — seats in one case, monthly active contacts in another, message credits in a third. Those are not interchangeable.
How we picked
- Platform prices read on the vendor’s own page and dated; we say when billing is annual.
- We name what the fee is metered on, because contacts, credits and seats behave very differently as you grow.
- We flag the second meter — the per-message cost — since it is usually the larger half.
The picks
A focused WhatsApp platform with a shared inbox, broadcasts and automation. Straightforward if WhatsApp is genuinely where your customers are; poor value on a trickle, because the platform fee is fixed while your volume is not.
Skip it if your customers aren't on WhatsApp or your volume is tiny — the platform fee plus per-message costs aren't worth it for a trickle
Visit Wati →Read our full Wati review →Prices on the number of contacts you actually talk to in a month, which is a fairer meter than seats for a small team and a harsher one for a large audience. Right when you have genuinely outgrown a shared phone across several channels; overkill if you only need one.
Skip it if you only need one channel: a plain shared inbox or a helpdesk will cost less than an omnichannel platform you use a fifth of. Skip the Starter plan specifically if automation is the reason you are looking — you will be on Growth within a month. And if your monthly active contacts run into the tens of thousands, get the number in writing first, because that is the meter and the published ladder stops being informative
Visit respond.io →Read our full respond.io review →Two named plans metered in credits, aimed at teams doing two-way texting and calling from one CRM-linked inbox. Requires you to estimate a monthly credit burn, and carries the fixed 10DLC registration overhead that makes low-volume SMS poor value.
Skip it if your audience doesn't respond to SMS, or your volume is low enough that the fixed 10DLC overhead outweighs the sending. Also skip it if you need a lot of seats cheaply. And skip it if your real usage lands in the gap between the $25 and $329 plans, since the only bridge on offer is a bigger credit bundle on the small plan
Visit Salesmsg →Read our full Salesmsg review →A different animal: chat infrastructure you embed in your own product rather than an inbox your team works from. Free for development, and the thing to look at is the step from free to paid, which arrives mid-growth rather than at launch.
Skip it if your app is pre-revenue with growing users (the free-to-paid cliff will hit mid-growth), or chat is peripheral enough that a support widget covers it
Visit CometChat →Read our full CometChat review →Compared at a glance
| Tool | What it meters | Pricing, as we read it |
|---|---|---|
| Wati | monthly platform fee, annual billing | Growth €59/mo, Pro €119/mo and Business €279/mo billed annually, with a 7-day free trial and no setup fee. read 2026-08-14 |
| respond.io | monthly active contacts, not seats | Four tiers, billed on monthly active contacts rather than seats: Starter $79/month, Growth $159, Advanced $279, and Enterprise on quote. read 2026-08-29 |
| Salesmsg | message credits | Repackaged since our last check into two named plans plus Enterprise, metered in message credits. read 2026-08-08 |
| CometChat | users and concurrent connections | Build is free for development: all features, up to 100 users and 25 concurrent connections, no card. read 2026-08-17 |
Price the messages before the platform
Take a normal month, count the conversations by channel, and price those at the channel’s own rates before you look at any vendor’s tiers. For most teams that number is larger than the subscription, and it is the one that changes when a campaign goes well.
Then be honest about channel count. Omnichannel platforms are priced for several channels and are poor value used as a single-channel inbox — which is how a large share of them end up being used.
Frequently asked questions
Why does WhatsApp cost extra on top of the platform?
Because the channel bills separately per conversation window. The platform fee buys you the inbox, automation and reporting; the conversations themselves are a pass-through cost that scales with use.
Is SMS still worth it?
Where your audience answers it, yes — response rates remain high. The registration overhead makes it poor value at low volume, so it suits steady programmes rather than occasional sends.
Do I need embedded chat or a shared inbox?
A shared inbox is for your team answering customers. Embedded chat is for your users talking inside your product. They look similar on a feature list and solve completely different problems.
Other buying guides on this site
- Shopify helpdesk apps: four meters, and only one of them is agents
- Virtual phone systems: the seat price is not the bill
- Helpdesk platforms: the entry tier is never the product you saw
- Someone has to answer: live receptionists against an AI agent
- Calling at volume: dialer, call centre or just a good phone system
Some links on this page are affiliate links: if you sign up we may earn a commission, at no cost to you, and it never changes what we write. Every figure above was read on the vendor’s own page on the date shown.