Today, WhatsApp has announced a pretty major shift in its business model. The popular chat client is going completely free. Facebook-owned WhatsApp used to run on a trial model: users could use the app for free for a year. Subsequent years would cost $0.99 cents each. The paid model notably made WhatsApp stand out from the crowd, as almost every other social networking is free to use from the customer perspective. Although WhatsApp will stop charging customers from today, it will take a few weeks for the payment UI in apps to go away as app updates roll out to the store.
WhatsApp says although a 0.99 cent charge is not onerous, it prevented growth as a lot of customers do not have access to credit cards. This is its major motivation for taking out the annual revenue model. Naturally, users of WhatsApp will wonder how the application plans to monetize going forward ….
Via Recode, WhatsApp says it plans to move to a model where businesses pay to target relevant communications with customers. For example, airlines would be able to contact users through WhatsApp to discuss flight cancellations or delayed schedules. Similarly, a bank could use WhatsApp to communicate important fraud warnings to customers. WhatsApp says the company does not want to include third-party traditional advertising like intrusive banner and interstitials, which can annoy people.
In summary, as is common nowadays, if you are not paying for it, you are the product with the new WhatsApp model. Some privacy-conscious individuals may fear data sharing with parent company Facebook, naturally. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming months.
Naturally, people might wonder how we plan to keep WhatsApp running without subscription fees and if today’s announcement means we’re introducing third-party ads. The answer is no. Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today – through text messages and phone calls – so we want to test new tools to make this easier to do on WhatsApp, while still giving you an experience without third-party ads and spam.
WhatsApp has over 900m active users, across its platforms, making it one of the largest chat apps on the Internet. No doubt its meteoric growth will only continue now that it is free. Download WhatsApp from the App Store here.
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I downloaded WhatsApp a long time ago but once I saw that I would have to pay after one year I deleted it. I don’t plan to re-download it though because I don’t see the point in using it over iMessage.
So how to contact you
Text message. Its free in the US (for almost every plan).
I don’t live in the United States
Yea, and bonus if you have Tmobile. You can text anyone in almost any country for free.
Don’t have T-Mobile in India
Pay 99c per year. That really isn’t much.
Only time I ever paid was on blackberry. Never had to pay on ios or android
“[A] lot of [WhatsApp] customers do not have access to credit cards” … “airlines would be able to contact users … to discuss flight cancellations” … “a bank could … communicate important fraud warnings”. It’s kind of hard to reconcile the first statement with the others.
In India, u can create an iCloud account without any credit card. Indians prefer debit cards but Apple doesn’t support debit type.
I use my debit card on the Itunes store.
I presume grow user base by accepting everyone, monetize those with credit cards / verifiable accounts. You aren’t losing anything if your aim is to grow the user base.
I think it’ll be interesting to see if they can get banks or airlines onboard for a paid communications channel which requires a specific app to be installed by customers. SMS is already available and close to universally accepted by customers and email is also readily available and free or close to it.
hmm…I’m still skeptical about 3rd party apps becoming walled gardens, replicating functions already baked into the OS. Are there that many people that spend all their time in WhatsApp?
I’m… Because i have lots of group chats and using WhatsApp for that. In my country, there are lots of Android users and even when they have iPhones or simply iOS devices, they don’t know what iMessage is. And another reason to use WhatsApp over iMessage is, it has much more stable connection. Sometimes i send my message through iMessage and it just never goes. It stays there and in the end it says not delivered. Even though as much as i love Apple’s own ecosystem, the server problem that happens almost once in a week makes me use iMessage much less than i want.
yep the whole of europe and south america
Mostly overseas, the US not so much.
Texting is free in the US (well for most carriers) so most people here in the US do not see the need to have another app for communications when texting works fine.
Never been charged, even when I was on Android in late 2010. Seems odd that it was still in the app
I think all software need to have a kind of payment method. Since all behind development need to be payed and I hate the fact that today everybody assume that SW id free while at the same time plumber, tire repairman, dentist etc etc will not do anything for free. I agree that Microsoft model which makes SW to costs way to much is not adequate but free SW on my opinion means that person behind it doesn’t have self-esteem, but on the other way these days it is normal free SW so there is no other option for developer but to work for free – which is stupid.
Never paid for it actually. Started using it on my Nokia E72 way back with the free trial for a year. Within the year I switched to my iPhone and the trial just started again. Been using my iPhone for three years now and the trial has always been magically reset.
That being said, 1 dollar per year is dirt cheap and I would’ve paid it.
Really interesting discussion. In Russia many iPhone users don’t know about iMessage. What’s app is really popular, some telecom companies even provide free whatsapp traffic to their users.