Growth · 8 min read
WhatsApp Business readiness: what to fix before you apply
Meta's review asks whether your business is real, whether it matches the application and whether people asked to hear from you. Here is how to make your website answer yes, and how pricing works once you are live.
Most businesses meet the WhatsApp Business API on the day their phone stops coping. Three people are sharing one handset. A cheap broadcast tool has just got the number restricted. A customer asks, fairly, why their order update came from somebody’s personal account.
The answer is the official platform, and the first thing between you and it is a review. That review is not a test of your website’s design. Meta is trying to answer three plain questions: is this business real, is it the business named on the application, and will it message people who asked to hear from it? Your website is the most public witness to all three. It cannot win the approval for you. It can quietly lose it.
This is the readiness list we work through with clients at D&C Studios before anyone opens Meta’s onboarding screens, refreshed with what we have learned since it first appeared in July 2026.
First, decide whether you need the API at all
The free WhatsApp Business app is a good tool, and plenty of businesses should stay on it. The API, which Meta now calls the WhatsApp Business Platform, earns its setup effort when the volume, or the number of people replying, outgrows one phone.
| WhatsApp Business app | WhatsApp Business Platform (API) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who replies | One or two people, on a phone and linked devices | A team in a shared inbox, a chatbot, or both |
| Messaging first | Broadcasts to contacts who saved your number | Approved templates to opted-in customers, at volume |
| Cost | Free | Per delivered template message, plus a partner fee |
| Approval | None | Display name review; verification lifts starting limits |
If two of those rows describe your week, read on. If you also want a chatbot that answers from your own knowledge and hands over to a person at the right moment, that is the heart of our AI assistants and WhatsApp automation work.
Make the website tell one story
Reviewers do not meet your brand the way customers do. They see a legal name on a document, a display name on an application and a web address. Most of the work is making those three agree.
Name, entity and domain
If your brand and your registered company differ, say so once, in plain words, wherever people look: the footer, the about page and the privacy policy. Ours reads D&C Studios is the design and engineering studio of Desicode Infosolutions LLP, word for word, wherever it appears. Do not tidy your legal name on the website to match the brand. A reviewer comparing it with your incorporation certificate will notice.
Use an email address on your own domain at every contact point, and make sure somebody reads it. A free webmail address on a business asking to be verified looks like a borrowed shopfront.
The pages a reviewer will open
| Page | What it must show | The failure we see most |
|---|---|---|
| Home | What you sell, to whom, in plain words | A slogan with no product in sight |
| About | Who runs it, the legal entity, the city | A stock photo, no names, no place |
| Products or services | Real offers, with prices or a route to them | Empty pages written for keywords |
| Contact | Domain email, phone, WhatsApp number, address | A form and nothing else |
| Privacy policy | What you collect, and how WhatsApp is used | A copied policy naming another company |
| Terms | The basis on which you trade | Missing, or a 404 from the footer |
Then open the site in a private browser window and click every link in the menu and footer. A reviewer who meets two broken pages draws the same conclusion a buyer would.
Claims to leave out
Never describe yourself as an official WhatsApp partner, a Meta partner, verified or approved without current written confirmation. The same rule binds agencies: we help clients prepare accounts, draft templates and connect an official solution partner, and say exactly that. A proposal that promises approval should worry you. Nobody outside Meta controls that decision.
Consent is where most setups fail
WhatsApp’s own policies and India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act point the same way. People should choose to hear from you, know who you are and be able to stop.
Three permissions, kept apart
| Permission | What it covers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiry | Replying to the question someone just asked | A visitor asks about delivery on WhatsApp |
| Service | Messages needed to deliver what they bought | Order confirmation, dispatch update, invoice |
| Marketing | Offers and news, sent when you choose | Weekly price list, festive sale, new range |
The classic mistake is treating the first as the third. Someone who asked about a delivery date has not joined your broadcast list. When we rebuilt email and WhatsApp for a B2B trading house, most of its messages turned out to be operational rather than promotional. That changed how its templates were categorised and where consent was captured.
An opt-in that holds up
I keep a private collection of beautifully designed forms, and good opt-in boxes are its rarest entries. The ones worth keeping share four habits:
- They name the business and the channel.
- They say what is coming and roughly how often.
- They start unticked, and the form still works if the box stays empty.
- They say how to stop, usually by replying STOP.
The DPDP Act expects consent to be specific, informed and given by a clear action, which rules out pre-ticked boxes and consent buried in the terms. Record the date, the source and the wording shown, so you can answer “where did this number come from?” for every contact.
Click to chat without surprises
A WhatsApp link with a prefilled message is the simplest feature on any website, and the easiest to get wrong. Label it clearly, use the full international number, keep the prefilled text short and editable, and never put personal details into the link. Sending that message starts an enquiry, nothing more.
The technical groundwork
None of this is visible to customers, and all of it gets checked.
| Item | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| HTTPS everywhere, one canonical domain | Every link and preview resolves to the same address |
| Meta domain verification | Proves you own the domain, by DNS record or meta tag |
| SPF, DKIM and DMARC | Your mail arrives, and your domain is harder to spoof |
| A documented home for verification tags | The next token takes minutes, not a hunt |
Never ship empty verification tags. Write down where each one lives instead.
The number itself
Choose the number before you print it on anything. It must be able to receive a verification code by SMS or call. Moving a number that already lives in the Business app needs a plan: depending on your solution partner, it may move across entirely or run in both with some limits. New numbers also start with a cap on how many people you can message first in a day, which rises as verification completes and your quality rating holds.
How pricing works once you are live
We are deliberately not quoting rates. Meta changes them, prices them by the recipient’s country, and has signalled another revision from October 2026. The model matters more than the numbers, because it decides which messages are worth sending.
| Message | Who starts it | How it is charged |
|---|---|---|
| Service reply | The customer, then you reply within 24 hours | Free |
| Utility template | You, about an order or booking they made | Free inside the 24 hour window, charged outside it |
| Authentication template | You, with a one time passcode | Charged per delivered message |
| Marketing template | You, with an offer or news | Charged per delivered message, at the highest rate |
Since July 2025, Meta has charged per delivered template message rather than per conversation, and utility and authentication rates fall as volume rises. Your solution partner adds a fee, monthly or per message, GST applies on Indian invoices, and a chatbot adds model usage. We show each line separately in every automation estimate, because a blended figure hides the one line you can control.
A worked example
Take a food distributor in Ahmedabad selling to 1,400 retailers: a composite of several projects, numbers rounded, but every finding one we have met. A two day audit turned up five issues.
| Check | What we found | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Legal name | Brand on the site, company name only on invoices | Entity line in footer, about and privacy pages |
| Contact address on free webmail | Domain mailboxes, with SPF, DKIM and DMARC | |
| Privacy policy | A template naming another company | Rewritten to match real forms and WhatsApp use |
| Opt-in | Enquiry form pre-ticked for offers | Unticked box, wording and date recorded |
| Number | Sales number in the Business app on one phone | A new Platform number, announced to retailers first |
Of the 1,400 retailers, 900 opted in to a weekly price list. A typical month then looked like this.
| Message | Volume | Category | Charged? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly price list | 3,600 | Marketing | Yes, every delivered message |
| Order confirmations within minutes | 2,100 | Utility, in the window | No |
| Dispatch updates the next morning | 2,100 | Utility, out of the window | Yes, at the utility rate |
| Retailer questions, answered by the desk | 3,000 | Service | No |
Just over half the messages carry a charge, and the marketing line is most of the bill. Moving the 400 retailers who had not ordered in a month to a fortnightly list cut marketing messages by about a fifth, and orders did not dip. Put Meta’s current rates against each line and you have a budget you can defend. The free service line, meanwhile, is where the relationship lives, so it deserves your best people rather than a bot left on its own.
The short checklist
- One brand and one legal entity line, on every page that matters
- Domain email at every contact point
- Home, about, contact, privacy and terms live, with no broken links
- A privacy policy that matches your forms, analytics and WhatsApp use
- No partner, verified or approval claims
- Enquiry, service and marketing consent recorded separately
- Opt-in boxes unticked, with wording, date and source saved
- Click to chat labelled, with an editable message
- Meta domain verification and email authentication in place
- The number chosen, and a named person who owns the replies
Approval is theirs. Readiness is yours.
Meta runs its own checks and changes them without asking anyone. What you control is whether your business looks, from the outside, exactly like what it says it is. Get that right and the review has nothing to trip over. Get it wrong and no template wording will rescue it.
If WhatsApp is part of a larger plan, our AI and automation team can run this list with you. Or send us your current site and we will tell you what a reviewer is likely to notice first.