There are two bills, from two different companies, and it is worth being clear about which is which.
What we bill
Your ServiceHQ subscription covers the add-on: the integration, the hosting, the support, and the Chat Assistant if you have it. We bill it through Stripe, and you manage or cancel it yourself from the Account tab in WhatsApp Settings. No phone call, no notice period, no asking us. Managing your subscription.
The trial is seven days, everything switched on including the Chat Assistant, and your card is not charged until it ends.
The Chat Assistant is a separate line on the same subscription, not a different plan. Add it or remove it from the Account tab whenever you like; it is charged pro rata from the day you add it, and removing it leaves the rest of your subscription untouched.
If you stop paying, sending stops. Receiving does not: messages still arrive and are still there when you come back. We never lose a customer’s message because of a billing problem.
What Meta bills
WhatsApp messaging is billed separately by Meta, directly to your own WhatsApp Business account, on your own card, at their published rates. You can check the rates for your country and message type on Meta’s pricing page.
It does not come through us and we do not mark it up. We never see the money. That is deliberate: it means we have no reason to want you sending more messages than you need, and you never pay a middleman margin on top of Meta’s rates.
You will need to add a payment method to your WhatsApp Business account, or Meta will stop your messages going out. That is a common first-week surprise and it has nothing to do with your ServiceHQ subscription being fine.
What Meta charges for, since 1 October 2026
Messages from your customers to you are never charged.
Your replies inside the 24-hour window are free for the first 1,000 each month, for each WhatsApp number. Meta only starts charging at the 1,001st, at the same rate as a utility template. The 1,000 resets on the 1st of every month and unused ones do not carry over. Most trade businesses never get near it: 1,000 replies is about 45 every working day.
Templates are charged. That means anything you send once the window has closed, and, since 1 October, utility templates sent while it is still open (those used to be free). The free 1,000 covers ordinary replies only, not templates.
When a customer messages you from a WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page button, everything you send them for the next 72 hours is free, templates included.
On the “keep my app” route, replying from the WhatsApp Business app on your phone is not charged at all and does not count towards the 1,000.