We wanted to let you know that our WhatsApp integration has got a lot bigger and approval by Meta is in progress.
Charles and team have worked tirelessly on this. It is one of those classic cases of the devil being in the detail and the approval requirements demanding much wider scope than originally intended. The result is pretty awesome though!
Contrary to what we indicated before, we’ve fully implemented ‘embedded signup’, so you or your customers can fully manage your Meta business account and approved numbers from within Simwood properties. I say ‘properties’ as this has been built in the Carrier Services API but all UX capabilities are droppable into all of our portals – from Carrier Services, through Hosted, and to Nimvelo. It is now easy for you to extend this to your own properties too, with the integration to the Simwood ‘app’ linked behind the scenes.
We were also planning to leave messaging until later, but it has been done too. Not just messaging but the full ability to build and manage what Meta calls ‘templates’. To combat spam, any communication with a customer outside of the 24 hour window created when they contact a business, must be via a template. Templates require approval by Meta (via Simwood), so we’ve built the tools to manage this process.
The things you would expect us to have to build, such as number routing (for both calls and messages) are fully done so you can create all sorts of exotic flows. From simple but potent use cases like routing WhatsApp calls into a Teams or SIP environment, to adding in Conversational AI agents, for both voice and text. It’s really pretty awesome! And don’t forget, numbers don’t have to be on Simwood – you can enable numbers who are with DinoCarriers too, whether or not you bring their PSTN calls into us over BYoC. The only thing you can’t do is route calls from WhatsApp directly to the PSTN – that is deliberate because it is prohibited by Meta.
We can’t wait for you to see it as we’re really proud of what our awesome team have built and believe it is going to create huge opportunities for our customers in transforming communications. While this is relevant and powerful for every size of business, we’re really hoping you guys can deliver scale here – we know our customers reach all parts of Government, major banks and other huge enterprises in the UK and around the world. From a purely selfish point of view, as a consumer, I want to be able to speak to them in a more secure and assured way, free of spam.
To that end, we’re delighted to also announce draft pricing
| Simwood charge | Startup | Virtual Interconnect | Managed Interconnect |
| DDI enablement (per number per month) | GBP 1.50 | GBP 1.25 | GBP 1.00 |
| C2B voice call (GBP/min) | GBP 0.0000 | GBP 0.0000 | GBP 0.0000 |
| B2C voice call (GBP/min) | GBP 0.00254 | GBP 0.002400 | GBP 0.0013 |
| C2B message (GBP/message) | GBP 0.0000 | GBP 0.0000 | GBP 0.0000 |
| B2C message (GBP/message)Outside customer service window | GBP 0.00254 | GBP 0.002400 | GBP 0.0013 |
| B2C message (GBP/message)Inside customer service window | GBP 0.0000 | GBP 0.0000 | GBP 0.0000 |
We’ve priced this for volume and, as always, customers on our Managed Interconnect service level may have further reduced pricing in return for a given minimum spend commitment on their account. Meta charges apply over and above these, whether billed directly or via Simwood. Pricing intentions are correct at time of publication but if reading this in the future, it will be superseded by formal pricing documents.
Lastly, please see Charles’ brief demo video below for where we’re at. This will be in your hands as soon as Meta give us approval.
