Official Meta Tech Provider
Meta charges per message. Your provider charges a platform fee. Most also add around 20% to Meta's rate and do not put it on the quote. Here is how to tell which kind you are talking to.
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In one paragraph
The WhatsApp Business API has two costs and most quotes only show you one. The first is Meta's, charged per message and priced by category — a utility message such as an appointment confirmation or a reminder is the cheapest tier, marketing messages cost several times more, and a reply you send inside a customer-service window is free. The second is your provider's, and it comes in two parts: a monthly platform fee for the software that actually sends the messages, and, with most providers, a markup added to Meta's per-message rate — commonly around 20%, and almost never itemised. FormAlert is an official Meta Tech Provider, which means we can register the WhatsApp Business API account in your clinic's own name rather than inside ours. Meta then bills your clinic directly at Meta's own rate, we add nothing per message, and you can see what Meta charged you without asking us. Our own price is the platform fee alone: ₹999 a month on Starter, where messages go from FormAlert's shared number at ₹1 each, or ₹1,999 a month on Business, where they go from your clinic's own number and Meta bills you.
The four things on the bill
Two of these are unavoidable, one is optional, and one should not be there at all.
Priced by conversation category. Utility — a booking confirmation, an appointment reminder — is the cheap tier, and in India it works out around ₹0.10 a message at the time of writing. Marketing costs several times that. Service replies, where you answer a patient inside the 24-hour window after she messages you, are free. Meta publishes these rates and changes them periodically, which is why no honest page pins an exact figure to a year.
Most providers buy Meta's messages and resell them to you at a margin, commonly around 20%. It rarely appears as a line on the quote — it is inside the per-message rate you were given, which is why two quotes at the same headline price can differ by a fifth over a year. The question that exposes it is simple: does Meta bill me, or do you?
The monthly cost of the software that decides which patient gets which message and when — the part that knows your calendar. This is the fee that should be the whole of what a provider charges, and it is the only thing FormAlert charges: ₹999 a month on Starter, ₹1,999 on Business.
Some providers charge a one-time onboarding fee to walk you through Meta's business verification. With embedded signup a new number is a few minutes in your browser, and an existing WhatsApp Business number is a short coexistence step from your own app. FormAlert charges nothing for it and runs the verification and the template approvals for you as a Tech Provider.
Before you sign anything
Comparing headline per-message rates is how clinics end up on the more expensive provider. These questions get at the structure instead.
If the answer is "we do, and we bill you", there is a margin between Meta's price and yours, and you cannot see it. If the answer is "Meta invoices you directly", there is not. This single question separates a Tech Provider arrangement from a reseller one faster than any price comparison.
If the WhatsApp Business API account sits inside the provider's Meta business portfolio, it is theirs and you are renting. If it sits inside yours, it is yours. This matters most on the day you leave: one of those outcomes hands you a verified account on your own number, and the other hands you a new number to tell every patient about.
Almost everything a clinic sends — confirmations, reminders, review requests — is a utility conversation, which is the cheapest tier. A quote that only gives you a blended per-message rate is hiding which mix it assumed.
Some providers bill a minimum message volume whether or not you use it. A clinic sending a few hundred messages a month should not be paying for ten thousand.
What we charge
Stated plainly, because the whole point of the page above is that most quotes are not.
Starter, ₹999 a month. Messages go out from FormAlert's shared WhatsApp number at ₹1 each, against the 1,000 credits included every month. Nothing to register with Meta and no verification to wait for — which is the point of the plan, not a limitation of it.
Business, ₹1,999 a month, or ₹17,999 a year (₹1,500 a month effective). We create a WhatsApp Business API account in your clinic's name, inside your own Meta business portfolio. Meta bills your clinic directly at Meta's own rate. FormAlert adds nothing per message, and you can read your Meta invoice without asking us what is on it.
No setup fee, no onboarding fee, no minimum message volume, and no per-booking charge. Your bill does not go up because you had a good month. See both plans in full →
Being straight about it
Meta sets its per-conversation prices, adjusts them periodically, and prices differently by market. Any figure on this page is what we believe to be true at the time of writing and is not a quote. Check Meta's own pricing page for the current number — and treat any vendor that presents Meta's rate as fixed with suspicion.
If what you want is to broadcast marketing messages to a large purchased list, this is the wrong product and the cheapest-per-message comparison you are running does not apply to us. FormAlert sends messages tied to real appointments at a real clinic, which is almost entirely the cheap utility tier, and that is what our pricing is shaped around.
Questions
Two things, added together. Meta charges per message by category — utility messages such as appointment confirmations and reminders are the cheapest tier, around ₹0.10 each in India at the time of writing, and marketing messages cost several times more. Your provider charges a monthly platform fee for the software, and most also add a markup of around 20% onto Meta's per-message rate without itemising it. With FormAlert the platform fee is ₹999 or ₹1,999 a month and there is no markup: on Business, Meta bills your clinic directly at its own rate.
The API access itself is not something you buy from Meta — Meta charges for the messages, not for the connection. So the API is free in the sense that there is no licence fee, and not free in any sense that matters, because you pay per conversation. Anyone advertising a free WhatsApp Business API is charging you somewhere else, usually in the per-message rate.
The cheapest headline rate is usually not the cheapest annual bill, because the markup on Meta's messages is where the money actually is and it is rarely on the quote. Compare on two questions instead of on price: does Meta invoice me directly, and is the account in my name? A provider that answers yes to both cannot be marking up your messages, whatever its platform fee is.
In India, around ₹0.10 at the time of writing, though Meta adjusts its rates periodically and by market — check Meta's own pricing page for the current figure rather than trusting a number on any vendor's site, including this one. Utility is the category almost everything a clinic sends falls into: booking confirmations, appointment reminders, and the review request after a visit.
There should not be, from Meta. Meta does not charge a monthly account fee for the API — it charges per conversation. Anything else on your bill is your provider's platform fee, its markup, or a setup charge. FormAlert charges the platform fee and nothing else, and does not charge for setup or verification.
It depends on the number they go out from, which is what the plan choice really is. On Starter, messages go from FormAlert's shared WhatsApp number and cost ₹1 each, drawn from the 1,000 credits included every month. On Business, once your clinic's own number is live, Meta bills your clinic directly at its own rate and we add nothing — the 2,000 credits in a Business cycle only cover the days before Meta finishes verifying your number.
It is the status Meta grants a company that builds on the WhatsApp Business Platform, and it is what lets that company create a WhatsApp Business API account in your name rather than inside its own. The pricing consequence is direct: a Tech Provider can put you on Meta's own billing, so Meta charges you and the provider never touches the per-message money. A reseller cannot, which is where the markup comes from. FormAlert is an official Meta Tech Provider.
With FormAlert you keep it. The account is created inside your own Meta business portfolio, so it was never on loan — stop paying and you are left with a verified WhatsApp Business API account, on your own number, in your clinic's name, usable with any other software. That is not the norm: on a shared number or an account held in the vendor's portfolio, leaving means a new number and telling every patient.
No. Meta requires business verification, and it accepts a free MSME/Udyam certificate if your clinic is not GST-registered. That is the document most small practices in India end up using, and getting one costs nothing.
Meta invoices you, the account is in your clinic's name, utility messages are the cheap tier, and there is no minimum volume. Book a demo and check all four against whoever else you are talking to.
14 days free. No card. Cancel any time.
The demo call is 20 minutes, and you book it on a real FormAlert page — the way your patients will book you.
In short
FormAlert is a clinic management system for doctors in independent private practice and small clinics in India. It runs the appointment side of a practice — online, QR code and WhatsApp booking, walk-ins and phone bookings in the same queue, automated WhatsApp reminders and Google review requests — so that a practice can fill its book and build its local presence without anyone typing a message. FormAlert is an official Meta Tech Provider, which is what lets it create a WhatsApp Business API account in the clinic's own name rather than renting the clinic space on somebody else's. Patients book from a web page, by scanning a QR code at the clinic, or by messaging the clinic on WhatsApp, and the booking form can carry whatever questions the practice wants to ask, with photos and documents attached. The clinic confirms the appointment and marks the visit complete; FormAlert sends the confirmation, reminds the patient 24 hours and 2 hours before the visit, and asks for a Google review afterwards. There are two plans and both send all of those messages. Starter is ₹999/month, for a doctor practising alone — one login, one doctor on the booking page — sending from FormAlert's shared WhatsApp number at ₹1 a message. Business is ₹1,999/month or ₹17,999/year — the yearly price works out at ₹1,500 a month and saves ₹5,989 — and adds the clinic's own WhatsApp Business API number and templates, which Meta then bills the clinic for directly with no FormAlert markup, as many doctors as the clinic has with a calendar each, a login each for them and the front desk, a waiting-room queue display, a patient portal, and patients rescheduling or cancelling themselves inside WhatsApp. Because that WhatsApp account is created inside the clinic's own Meta business portfolio, a clinic that stops paying FormAlert keeps the number and the account and can use them with any other software. There is a 14-day free trial with no card and 50 credits included; trial messages go from FormAlert's shared WhatsApp number at ₹1 a message against that allowance, while Meta verifies the clinic's own number.