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 1,000 conversations are free, and then subject to the fair usage limit. In this plan, you get 5,000 conversations at Zoko's zero rate after the initial 1,000 conversations. Beyond this, conversations are charged at $1.99 per additional 1,000. WhatsApp conversation charges are at WhatsApp’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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