A WhatsApp CRM is the software that turns one business number into a shared inbox: several people answering, conversations assigned to someone, history kept by the company and contacts synced with whatever CRM you already run. The price question is harder than it looks, because the monthly plan is only one of three or four lines on the real bill. This guide walks through what you are paying for, the ten questions that separate a good fit from an expensive mistake, and a short decision path by team size.
If you are still deciding whether you need one at all, start with the WhatsApp team inbox guide and come back here for the money part.
What are you actually paying for?
Four things. Vendors tend to advertise the first and stay quiet about the other three.
The platform fee
This is the subscription. Two models exist: per seat (each person who logs in costs a fixed amount) and per plan (a monthly price that includes a number of seats and features). Per seat looks cheap for two people and gets expensive fast; per plan is easier to budget as long as you check what each tier actually includes.
HellouOne prices per plan, with AI included in every tier:
Starter, $49 a month: 1 human agent (the admin), WhatsApp plus web chat, 2,000 AI messages a month, one native AI agent, full reports, public API and webhooks. No setup fee.
Team, $190 a month plus a one-time $100 setup: up to 3 human agents, 5,000 AI messages a month, a custom AI agent trained on your knowledge base, macros and automations.
Growth, $490 a month plus a one-time $200 setup: 6 human agents included (+$12 each beyond that), 25,000 AI messages a month, two AI agents, AI classifications, Telegram and Messenger, the WhatsApp Flows builder and advanced routing.
Scale and above: 10+ agents, Instagram and email, outbound campaigns with a cost estimator, setup included.
Each tier includes everything in the one before it. The full breakdown, including the "without AI" prices, is on the pricing page.
Meta's WhatsApp fees
This is the part most buyers forget to budget. Whatever platform you pick, Meta charges for messages that leave your number through the WhatsApp Business API:
Template messages (anything you start, or send outside an open 24-hour window) are priced per message delivered, by the recipient's country and by the template's category: marketing, utility or authentication.
Free-form replies inside the 24-hour window used to be free. Since October 1, 2026 Meta bills them per message after the first 1,000 per phone number per month. The rule is in Meta's documentation on pricing for non-template messages.
The important question for your bill is not the rates themselves but whether the vendor adds a margin on top. HellouOne charges 0% markup: you pay Meta from your own account, and the plan price is the entire platform cost. Rates per country and a worked example are in our guide to WhatsApp Business API pricing in 2026, by country.
Setup and migration time
If your number lives in the WhatsApp Business app today, it has to move to the API. The number itself stays yours and customers keep writing to the same contact, but somebody has to connect it, build the first templates, invite the team and set the assignment rules. Count the hours. A one-time setup fee that includes a guided connection is often cheaper than two weeks of a sales lead doing it in the evenings.
Hidden costs to ask about
Before signing, ask these in writing:
Is there a markup on Meta's fees? Some platforms add a percentage to every message.
Is there a per-conversation or per-contact fee on top of the plan?
What does an extra WhatsApp number cost? And an extra channel?
Is the AI agent included, or a paid add-on billed separately?
Is there a minimum contract, or can you cancel monthly?
What happens to your data if you leave?
Which 10 questions should you ask before choosing?
Price is only useful once you know the tool does the job. These are the ten questions that matter for a team.
Do we keep our own number? The answer must be yes, and customers must notice nothing.
Does it support coexistence? That is, can the WhatsApp Business app and the shared inbox work on the same number while the team migrates gradually, instead of a hard cut-over?
How are conversations assigned, and who can see what? Look for round-robin or priority rules and for visibility levels, so a salesperson sees their own chats and the manager sees everything.
Are AI agents included, and how do they hand over to a person? An AI agent that answers at 11 pm is only useful if it can pass a hot lead to the right team with the context attached.
Which channels beyond WhatsApp? Web chat, Telegram, Messenger, Instagram, email. Ask which tier each one sits in.
Does it sync two-way with the CRM we already use? Contacts and conversation notes should flow both ways, not just push a lead once.
Can we run campaigns with consent built in, and see the cost before sending? Marketing templates are the most expensive category, so an estimator matters.
Which reports exist? Per agent, per team, per inbox, first-response and resolution times, customer satisfaction.
Can we export our data? Contacts, conversations and reports, in a format you can open elsewhere.
Is there a trial without a card? If you cannot test it with real conversations before paying, that tells you something.
The more of these a vendor answers with "available on request" or "in the roadmap", the higher the real price.
Which plan size fits your team?
A quick decision path:
One person answering (a workshop, a clinic, a solo seller): the cheapest tier with an AI agent included. The AI covers the hours you cannot, and you pay no per-seat premium.
Two to three people on one number: a small-team plan with assignment rules and visibility levels. This is where the phone-passing stops; see how it works in multiple users on one WhatsApp Business number.
Four to six people, more than one channel: a mid tier with routing by team, AI classifications and extra channels. Budget Meta fees seriously at this size, because volume is what triggers the per-message charges after the first 1,000 replies.
Ten or more, with campaigns: a plan with outbound campaigns, a cost estimator and the full channel set, and a conversation with the vendor about agent counts and setup.
Whatever the size, add Meta's fees to the plan price before you compare vendors, and compare total monthly cost, not the headline.
How this works in HellouOne
Here are the ten questions answered for HellouOne, as plainly as we can.
Own number: yes. It moves from the app to the API during setup and customers keep the same contact.
Coexistence: supported. The WhatsApp Business app and the HellouOne inbox work on the same number, so the team can migrate at its own pace.
Assignment and visibility: round-robin and priority assignment rules, five visibility levels, handover areas, private notes and @mentions. Advanced routing with teams, online-only assignment and tiered visibility is listed from Growth.
AI agents: included in every plan, from one native agent on Starter to three on Scale. Handover to a human team comes with the conversation context, and AI classifications on Growth route by intent and sentiment.
Channels: WhatsApp and web chat on every plan. Telegram and Messenger from Growth. Instagram and email from Scale. An extra channel is $20 a month.
CRM sync: two-way with HubSpot, Pipedrive, GoHighLevel and DataCRM, so contacts and conversation notes stay in step. The sixteen connectors are on the integrations page.
Campaigns: outbound WhatsApp campaigns with consent built in and a cost estimator that shows the Meta charge before you send, on the Scale plan.
Reports: agent, team, inbox, label, conversation, CSAT and sentiment reports in every account, with CSV download.
Data export: yes. Reports download as CSV, and the public API and webhooks that ship with every plan, Starter included, let you pull contacts and conversations into any system you choose. API docs are at one.hellou.ai/docs.
Trial: 7 days, no card. 2 agents, 2 inboxes, 100 conversations, AI agents, automations and reports. When it ends the account goes read-only; nothing is deleted.
And the three cost lines that are easy to miss: 0% markup on Meta's fees, no per-conversation charges, and monthly billing in USD with no lock-in. Team and Growth carry a one-time setup fee ($100 and $200); Starter has none and Scale includes it.
What should your total look like?
A realistic monthly figure for a WhatsApp CRM is the plan price plus Meta's fees for your volume, plus the one-time setup spread over the first year. For a three-person sales team on HellouOne that means $190 a month, $100 once, and whatever your country's template rates and reply volume add on Meta's side, with nothing added by the platform. Run the ten questions past any vendor you shortlist, put the answers next to each other, and the right choice is usually obvious by question six.
