The WhatsApp Business Platform has its own vocabulary, and most confusion about it is vocabulary. This guide explains the terms in plain language, how access works, how templates and conversations are priced, what verification and the green tick are, and where a platform such as Waki fits.
Read alongside this guide: WhatsApp Business API and Meta Business Verification guide.
Key takeaways
- WABA, phone number, Cloud API, templates, conversations, quality rating: learn the terms and the rest follows.
- Access through embedded signup or directly in Meta; complete Business Verification either way.
- Templates start conversations; the 24-hour window after a customer writes allows free-form replies.
- Verification raises limits; the green tick is a separate, non-guaranteed application.
The vocabulary
The pieces, in the order you meet them.
- Meta Business Manager (business portfolio): the account that owns your business assets on Meta.
- WhatsApp Business Account (WABA): the container for your WhatsApp numbers, templates and settings.
- Phone number: a number registered to the WABA; it cannot be on the app at the same time.
- Cloud API: the API hosted by Meta through which messages are sent and received; it is what Waki uses.
- Templates: Meta-approved messages for starting conversations, in marketing, utility and authentication categories.
- Conversation: the unit Meta prices, opened by a template or by a customer’s message.
- Quality rating and messaging limits: Meta’s measure of how recipients react and the resulting cap on new conversations.
Getting access
You can create a WABA directly in Meta Business Manager and connect your own software to the Cloud API, or sign up through a platform that uses Meta’s embedded signup, which creates and connects the WABA in a few screens. Waki offers embedded signup and, alternatively, managed numbers. Either way, complete Business Verification so your limits can grow.
Templates and the 24-hour window
Any message your business starts must be a template approved by Meta. When a customer messages you, a 24-hour customer-service window opens in which you can reply with free-form text, media and interactive messages. Outside that window, only templates. This one rule shapes most of what a platform does.
Pricing
Meta prices conversations, not messages, by category and country, and publishes a rate card it changes from time to time. The platform you use charges its own plan separately. Together they are the cost of the channel; neither includes the other.
Limits and quality
A new account starts with a limit on how many conversations it can open with customers, and the limit grows with volume while quality stays good. Business Verification is needed for the higher limits. Blocks and reports lower the quality rating; a low rating lowers the limit. Consent and relevance are the only reliable way up.
Verification and the green tick
Business Verification is Meta checking that your business is real, through documents in Meta Business Manager; it is required for higher messaging limits. The green tick, or Official Business Account, is a separate application made after verification, judged on how well known the business is, and it changes how your name appears, not what you can send. No provider can guarantee it.
Where Waki fits
Waki is the software around the platform: embedded signup or managed numbers, template management, campaigns, a shared inbox, a flow builder, AI replies with your own key, contacts and reports, a REST API with webhooks, Pabbly Connect and Google Sheets triggers. Meta remains the network; Waki is how a team uses it.
Next steps
Conclusion
Once the vocabulary is clear the platform is simple: a verified account, approved templates, conversations that Meta prices, and a quality rating that rewards consent. Everything else is software, and that is where a platform earns its fee.