WhatsApp from 1 October: what a salon should change
Since 1 October 2026 WhatsApp has had no free lane for businesses. The reminder you send tomorrow is not the problem; the channel you send it on is.
Since 1 October 2026 Meta has charged for the messages a business sends inside the 24-hour customer service window — the replies after a client writes first — which had been free since November 2024. Utility templates sent inside that window are charged too. What stays free is 1,000 such messages per business phone number per month; beyond that, a per-message rate Meta sets for each country.
A confirmation and two reminders are three messages a visit, so a thousand messages covers about 330 visits. For a salon with more than a couple of chairs, that is less than a month.
What it means in practice
- A reminder was already a paid message. Most go out when the client has not written, and those were charged templates before. Now the replies inside the window are charged as well, so WhatsApp no longer has a cheaper lane.
- The free thousand is per number, not per salon. A second number doubles it — and brings a second account, a second verification and clients writing to the wrong one.
- Telegram did not change. A bot’s message to a client costs nothing, as it always has. What changed is that WhatsApp stopped matching it.
What to do
Ask your clients where they are. Many are on Telegram already, and a reminder there arrives the same way and costs nothing. The question takes a second at the desk.
Let the system pick the channel. Setvos chooses for each client: Telegram if the client has linked it, then WhatsApp if you connected it, then SMS. It is the same reminder, and there is no decision to make. A Telegram message does not use your SMS allowance.
Make linking Telegram easy. A client who signs in to your booking page finds “Reminders in Telegram” on their profile, one tap per salon. A client who books inside your salon’s own Telegram bot is linked by the booking itself. From then on, their reminders cost nothing.
Save on the channel, not on the number of reminders.
Do not switch off the second reminder to save money. The one two hours ahead is the one that recovers the slot somebody was about to skip — the post “The message that stops most no-shows is the second one” explains why.
What we do not promise
We do not know your WhatsApp rate: Meta publishes it per country and changes it. Check the current price in your Meta business account before you do the sums. And we do not make WhatsApp free — we make sure a paid message goes out only when a free one cannot.