There are 3 types of charges that you will be paying every month for Zoko

1. A platform subscription fee based on the plan you select.
2. A WhatsApp fee for each conversation
3. Features and Fair Usage fee

So, if you are on the Plus Plan, you will be charged a subscription fee of $59.99 with Zero Zoko makeup charge and WhatsApp’s usage fee which is based on your customer’s location. For example, for an Indian customer, WhatsApp’s usage fee will be $0.0099 for business initiated conversation and $0.0040 for user initiated conversation. ‍

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DEFINING CONVERSATIONS:‍

A conversation starts when the first business message is delivered, either initiated by the business or in reply to a user message.  Businesses and users can exchange any number of messages, including template messages, within a 24 hour conversation session without incurring additional charges. Each 24 hour conversation session results in a single charge. Remember WhatsApp’s charges are based on the location of the user you are chatting with and this location is determined by WhatsApp based on the country code.‍

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DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BUSINESS INITIATED AND USER INITIATED:‍

A conversation that initiates in response to a user message is an user initiated conversation. Whenever a business replies to a user within the 24 hour customer service window, that message will be associated with a user-initiated conversation. Businesses can send free-form messages within this 24 hour customer service window.

A conversation that initiates from a business sending a user a message outside the 24 hour customer service window is a business initiated conversation. A business initiated conversation can only start with a template message.‍

EXAMPLE‍

To understand this better, let us look at a few examples of business initiated and user initiated conversations.

In this scenario, customer messaged the business at 1:09PM and the business responded at 3:30PM. Hence, the 24hours conversation window starts from 3:30PM, that is when the message by the business was delivered. This conversation is considered as user initiated as the business’s message was in response to a user message received within 24hours.

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Now let’s have a look at a business initiated conversation.

As you can see here, the business initiated a conversation with the customer with a template message and hence this will be considered as a business initiated conversation. 

For a deeper understanding of conversation types, refer to our article What are Conversations and the 3 Types of Conversations?

This document has a few more scenarios mentioned to help you differentiate between a user initiated and a business initiated conversation. Hence we recommend you to go through this document using the link shown on top.

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Zoko’s Feature and Fair Usage Fee‍

Each plan come with varying features and Fair Usage Limits. For instance, you're on the $59.99 plan, you won't have access to Agent Analytics and API & Webhooks, which are available in higher plans.

In the $59.99 plan, you get 5 free agents. If you exceed this limit, there's a charge of $15 per additional agent per month. Similarly, you get 5 free rules, and any additional rule incurs a charge of $0.99 each per month. For segments, you get 5 free, and each extra segment is billed at $0.99 per segment per month.

On the Max Plan, you begin with 30 free agents. If you need more, it's $9 per additional agent per month. Beyond the initial 30 rules, each extra rule costs $0.99 per month. You also have 20 free segments, and any additional segment comes with a charge of $0.99 per month.

Remember to choose the right plan for your business needs. Check our Full Pricing for detailed information.

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SAMPLE BILLING

To understand Zoko’s billing correctly, let’s calculate the billing for a business on the plus Plan and having conversations with 1000 users in India. 

- The subscription fees will be $59.99

- First 1000 conversations free and then at Meta’s rate

- Let’s assume these 1000 conversations had an equal mix of business initiated and customer initiated conversations. In India fee for Marketing conversation is $0.0099 and for a user initiated conversation is $0.0040. Hence the WhatsApp fees will be $6.95 According to WhatsApp’s policies, the first 1,000 conversations each month are free and hence the WhatsApp fees of $6.95 gets waived off.

- To avoid interruptions after exceeding the initial 1000 conversations, keeping an extra $10 in the wallet is recommended.

- Hence the final billing amount will be $69.99

Similarly for a business chatting with customers in Germany, the only difference in billing would be WhatsApp’s per conversation fees which are $0.1365 for a business initiated and $0.0819 for a user initiated message.

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‍Keywords: Pricing, Fees, Charges, Business initiated, Customer initiated, Conversations charges.

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