Things to remember for your message template to be approved
- Your template name and message should clearly convey to the recipients why they have received the message.
- You cannot use template placeholders in the beginning or in the end of the message. This will lead to automatic rejection of your template.
- The maximum size for a message template, including any placeholders that are replaced with text, is 1024 characters. If your template exceeds this limit, the message will not be delivered to the recipient.
- Do not keep the placeholder variables next to each other like {{1}} {{2}}.
- Do not use words instead of numbers within the curly braces.
- Keep the placeholder variables sequential throughout your message and do not miss out even a single number in the sequence.
- A Maximum of 10 placeholders are allowed.
- Ensure that you do not use multiple sequential line breaks in your message as they are not allowed by WhatsApp.
- Do not create a duplicate template message with a different template name.
- Do not make any spelling or grammatical mistakes.
- Use no more than 4 consecutive spaces.
By sticking to these guidelines, you can increase the likelihood that your message template will be approved.
Once you have finished configuring the above steps in your Control Panel, you can configure WhatsApp Notification settings for individual forms. You can configure the same without or with headers, based on the template selected.
To send WhatsApp Notifications using message text (without any headers),
- Go to the form builder of the form that you wish to send WhatsApp Notifications for.
- Navigate to the Settings tab > Email & Notifications > WhatsApp Notifications.
- Click Configure Now.

- Select the Channel and Template that you wish to use for sending WhatsApp notifications for this form.
- Enter the Recipient's phone number. You can either enter a number or select a Phone field from your form by clicking the phone icon. If you select a Phone field from your form, the message will be delivered to the phone number entered by the respondent in the selected Phone field.
You can either use US format or use International format with Country Code.
- Under Placeholder Mapping, you can select the form fields whose responses you want to replace for the placeholders in the double curly braces you specified when configuring the WhatsApp message template.
-
Click Save.
The mapped template above has no headers as you can see in the preview.
If your template includes a header (Text or Image), you can configure the notification based on whether the header is static or dynamic.
For a template with a static header,
1. Select the template for the WhatsApp Notification.
2. Map the placeholders in the message text, if any.
Header will be used from the selected template directly, as you can see in the preview.

For example: In the above order update form, the customer's name, product name, and order number are sent as a WhatsApp notification along with the order status shown as the
Header Text.
For a template with a dynamic header,
1. Select the template for the WhatsApp notification.
2. Click
Choose Field under
Header Mapping to display the available image upload fields in the form.
3. Select the
Image Upload Field that has to be mapped as the dynamic header. Add placeholders for message text if needed.
Preview the WhatsApp notification message with a placeholder image as the header and the message text.

For example: In the above order form, the customer's name and order number are sent along with the image uploaded by the customer (e.g., a sample cake design), which appears as the Header Image in the notification.
You can view the status of the WhatsApp notifications sent for each form entry in the
All Entries section of your form under the
WhatsApp Status column.
Pricing
WhatsApp provides a conversation-based pricing model which means instead of charging the customer for every message they send, businesses will now be charged per conversation. A conversation starts when the first business message in a conversation is delivered. Businesses and users can exchange any number of messages, within the 24 hour conversation session without incurring additional charges.
Businesses are charged per conversation, which will include all the messages in that 24-hour messaging window.
Charges for conversations are based on the country code of the customer that your business is communicating with. Rates for business-initiated conversations vary by country or region.
Note:
- Currently, there are no free credits available for using WhatsApp Notifications for any number of conversations.
- To ensure that your WhatsApp Notifications are successfully delivered, it is necessary to purchase the IM credits Add-On from the store in addition to your existing Zoho Forms subscription.
WhatsApp has updated its conversation pricing as follows which will be effective from June 1st, 2023.
- Every conversation will be charged per the new conversation-based pricing model.
- The charges for conversations will be determined by the template category. Unless the template is delivered during an open conversation of that category, delivering it opens a new conversation of that category and incurs the charge of that conversation category. For instance, if a utility conversation is open and a marketing template is delivered within it, a new, separate marketing conversation is opened, and a marketing conversation charge is initiated.
The phone number tier of your WhatsApp Business account will determine your messaging limits - the number of unique contacts (customers) an account can message in a 24-hour period.
If your business use-case requires switching between these tiers, you will have to raise your requests with Meta.