> but that looks pretty close to pricing for SMS. Which makes market sense (imho) because it's a substitute good
People switched to whatsapp because:
1. It was free unlike SMS 2. It was ubiquitously available like SMS (unlike BBM) 3. It was genuinely a good product.
This feels like Whatsapp (Meta) is rug pulling the users once everyone has moved to Whatsapp, almost analogous to what Uber did. Drive Taxis out of business with predatory pricing, and then increase the prices.
As a whatsapp user, I am quite happy that marketing messages are expensive. Puts a price on spam, which means I get less of it. If they want to send me something actually useful that usually falls into one of the other much cheaper categories
Would be nice if there was an easier way to get an API to message a small number of people though, without the ceremony meant for businesses that want to message thousands or millions