List with prices
The WhatsApp Business API is how Meta lets a business connect WhatsApp to software: a shared inbox for your team, broadcasts, chatbots, or an AI agent that answers customers by itself. A business reaches it through a provider, and the provider charges a monthly fee for its software.
For a business in Kenya, the currency matters as much as the number. A plan in shillings keeps the same figure on your bill; a plan in dollars costs more shillings every time the shilling weakens. So this list puts shilling prices first, then dollar prices, each with the address of the company's own pricing page and the date we checked it.
Two of the eleven are Kenyan companies. The rest sell to Kenya from abroad, in dollars. We say which is which in each entry, because it changes who you call when something breaks and which currency you pay in.
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Short answer
For a business in Kenya, the providers that publish Kenyan shilling prices are SmartBizSystems (KES 10,000 a month after a KES 50,000 build) and Celcom Africa (KES 15,000 a month plus KES 15,000 setup per number). In US dollars: Kommo ($25 per user, paid six months at a time), Go4whatsup ($39, with AI replies according to its page), AiSensy ($45), Wati ($49), Zoko ($49.99), YCloud ($52), Interakt ($55), respond.io ($99, or $79 paid yearly) and CertuAI ($120 on the official API, with the AI agent included).
Who wrote this list. CertuAI wrote it, and CertuAI is on it, at number 11. The order comes from the rule explained under "How we checked", not from a judge outside the company. Every other price comes from that company's own pricing page, with the address and the date we checked it right next to it. Check them and decide for yourself.
11 options, with the price each company publishes.
| # | Name | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SmartBizSystems | KES 10,000 + KES 50,000 build | A Kenyan business that wants a local team to build the whole thing, M-Pesa included, and would rather pay once up front than set it up alone. |
| 2 | Celcom Africa | KES 15,000 (Basic) | A business that sends large volumes, or also needs SMS and USSD, and wants a Kenyan bill in shillings. |
| 3 | Kommo | $25 per user | A sales team that wants every WhatsApp lead in a pipeline, with a clear stage for each deal. |
| 4 | Go4whatsup | $39 (Standard) | A small business that wants AI replies from its FAQ on the official API at the lowest dollar price on this list. |
| 5 | AiSensy | $45 (Basic) | A business that mainly sends broadcasts and order updates, and may add a bot later. |
| 6 | Wati | $49 (Growth) | A business that wants a proven shared inbox and broadcasts, paid month to month. |
| 7 | Zoko | $49.99 (Starter) | An online store that wants order updates and product questions answered on WhatsApp. |
| 8 | YCloud | $52 (Growth) | A business that sends many template messages and wants them passed through without a markup. |
| 9 | Interakt | $55 (Growth) | A shop that wants campaigns, a simple bot and a sales CRM on the official API. |
| 10 | respond.io | $99 (Starter) | A support or sales team of several people sharing one number, with rules for who answers what. |
| 11 | CertuAI | $120 (Pro, official API) | An owner in Kenya who wants customers answered by AI day and night on the official API, with a CRM that fills itself and no team to build bots. |
On a phone, swipe the table sideways. Prices change: each entry below has the address and the date we checked it.
Starter: a one-time build of KES 50,000, then KES 10,000 a month, with 3 conversational flows, custom AI lead qualification, a calendar and M-Pesa payment triggers. Growth: KES 100,000 once, then KES 20,000 a month, adding Swahili and English language understanding. Premium: from KES 200,000, with custom licensing and an AI persona built on your own knowledge base.
Price published at https://www.smartbizsystems.co.ke/seo-pages/whatsapp-automation, checked on 2026-09-11.
Basic KES 15,000 a month with 2 users, a scripted bot and 50,000 messages a month. Pro KES 30,000 a month with AI bots. Enterprise KES 60,000 a month. One-time setup of KES 15,000 per number, and KES 2,000 for each extra agent seat. The page says every plan includes 1,000 free conversations. Template messages are billed on top at Celcom's own rates: KES 3.525 per marketing message, KES 1.12 per utility or authentication message, service messages free.
Price published at https://www.celcomafrica.com/pricing, checked on 2026-09-11.
Base $25 per user a month, billed $150 per user for 6 months. The page says it bills in US dollars only. Base has AI reply suggestions, summaries and writing help; AI agents start at the Advanced plan, up to 3. 14-day free trial, no card.
Price published at https://www.kommo.com/pricing/, checked on 2026-09-11.
Standard $39 a month, which the page calls its price "globally". There is also a free plan with no card. The page lists AI auto-replies from your FAQ, AI-drafted replies for your team, AI campaign copy and automatic translation on Standard. No yearly price is stated. The same page shows prices in rupees, dirhams, riyals, pounds and euros, but none in shillings.
Price published at https://www.go4whatsup.com/pricing, checked on 2026-09-11.
Basic $45 a month, $128.25 a quarter or $486 a year. Pro $99 and Premium $299 a month. The AI Agent Builder is an add-on at $50 a month with 1,000 AI messages; the basic chatbot builder is $80 a month ($72 billed yearly). The page has a "Start for FREE" button but does not say how long the trial lasts.
Price published at https://aisensy.com/pricing/usd, checked on 2026-09-11.
For visitors from Kenya: Growth $49 a month, $147 a quarter or $468 a year ($39 a month). Pro $99 a month ($948 a year), Business $249 a month ($2,388 a year). The price list Wati's page loads for Kenya shows an "AI Operator" line at no charge on Growth, plus paid AI add-ons: AI Copilot from $20 a month for 1,000, and AI KnowBot Responses from $30 a month for 1,000. 7-day free trial.
Price published at https://www.wati.io/pricing/, checked on 2026-09-11.
Starter $49.99 a month, plus a markup of $0.015 per conversation. Plus $79.99 a month with 5,000 conversations and no markup. Each AI agent is an add-on from $24.99 a month. 7-day free trial, no card.
Price published at https://www.zoko.io/pricing, checked on 2026-09-11.
Growth $52 a month on monthly billing, or $39 a month billed $468 a year. Pro $118 a month, or $89 a month billed $1,068 a year. There is a free plan with no card. Growth lists 5 million "Generative AI credits"; the free plan lists 500,000.
Price published at https://www.ycloud.com/pricing, checked on 2026-09-11.
Growth $55 a month and Advanced $69 a month, plus taxes. Growth has basic straight-line chatbots only. The WhatsApp AI Agents add-on is $74.99 a month with 100 AI messages, then $0.011 each. There is also a free Starter plan for owner roles only.
Price published at https://www.interakt.shop/pricing-us/, checked on 2026-09-11.
Starter $99 a month on monthly billing, or $79 a month billed $948 a year. Starter has AI Assist, AI prompts and chat summaries; AI agents start at Growth. The page says WhatsApp fees are not included in any respond.io plan. The 7-day trial has Growth features with 5 users, 1,000 contacts and no broadcasts.
Price published at https://respond.io/pricing, checked on 2026-09-11.
Start $75 a month: the AI agent on one WhatsApp number connected by scanning a QR code (like WhatsApp Web), up to 800 AI replies a month, with the CRM included. Pro $120 a month: the official WhatsApp Business API from Meta, up to 2,500 AI replies, a landing page and room for 5 people on the team (Start has 3). Monthly plans start with a 7-day trial on a card. The annual plan costs 10 months and has no trial.
Price published at https://certu.com.br/en/planos, checked on 2026-09-11.
The rule for the order. Kenyan shilling prices first, cheapest first, because a shilling bill does not move with the exchange rate. Then US dollar prices, cheapest first. We compare the monthly fee of the cheapest paid plan that includes WhatsApp. Setup and build fees are in each entry but do not change the order. A price per person counts for one person, and a plan sold only for several months at a time counts at its monthly figure. On a tie, alphabetical order.
That rule puts CertuAI eleventh. This page is about official WhatsApp Business API providers, and CertuAI's $75 Start connects your number by QR code, not through the official API, so CertuAI is ranked at $120, the price of Pro, where the official API starts. CertuAI does not bill in shillings, so SmartBizSystems and Celcom Africa come first, and eight dollar providers start cheaper. What differs is what the price includes: CertuAI's $120 includes the AI agent and up to 2,500 AI replies a month. Go4whatsup lists AI replies on its $39 plan; on AiSensy, Zoko and Interakt the AI agent is an add-on; on Kommo and respond.io it starts at a higher plan; and on Wati and YCloud we could not confirm it.
This list has eleven entries, not ten: by this rule respond.io ($99) comes before CertuAI, and stopping at ten would have left one of them out. By the same rule, Gallabox ($150, billed quarterly) would be twelfth, so it is under "Other names" with its price.
We opened each company's own pricing page on 11 September 2026 and wrote down the price, the address of the page and the date. We did not use prices from review sites, from sales calls or from memory. We did not convert any currency: every price is shown in the currency the company shows it in, and $ always means US dollars.
Some pricing pages change with the country you visit from. Wati's page loads its price list from Wati's own servers by country; for Kenya it answers in US dollars, the same list as Nigeria and the Philippines, and that is the price shown here. Interakt sends visitors from outside India to a separate page in dollars, which is the one we used.
Message charges are not in these prices. Several companies on this list say on their own pricing pages that WhatsApp message charges are billed apart from the plan, and some publish their own rate per message. Each entry quotes what the company writes. We did not add a message charge to any price here, and we do not describe how Meta bills businesses, because that is for Meta to say and it changes. Ask each provider what a message will cost you, who bills it and whether they add anything on top.
CertuAI's price comes from its plans page, which is the same price the checkout charges. There is no display price that differs from the price you pay.
Prices change. If you are reading this months from now, open the address under each entry before you decide anything.
Gallabox charges $150 a month billed quarterly, or $112 a month billed yearly, on Basic, with AI agents from Essential. It is left out only because it comes after CertuAI by the rule above, and it is on our Nigeria list.
Wingu SMS, based in Nairobi, sells bulk WhatsApp sending for KES 3,000 a month plus a one-time KES 15,000 setup (wingusms.com, checked on 2026-09-11). It is a broadcast tool, not an inbox or an AI agent, and its page does not say it uses the official API, so it is not on a list of API providers.
HelloDuty publishes plans from $199 a month for SMS, USSD, WhatsApp and voice across 54 African countries, Kenya included, but its pricing page does not say what the WhatsApp part includes. Botmara shows up in search as an AI chatbot platform for Kenya with WhatsApp and M-Pesa, but its site did not load when we tried it on 11 September 2026, so we have no price we could check.
A plan priced in dollars costs more shillings every time the shilling weakens, and your bank adds its own fee for a payment in foreign currency. A plan priced in shillings keeps the same number. For a small business planning a year, that difference can matter more than a few dollars on the price tag.
Only two companies on this list publish shilling prices: SmartBizSystems and Celcom Africa. Both are Kenyan, and both charge a one-time fee before you start. Every other company here bills in dollars, by card. Before you choose one, check that your card allows dollar payments and what your bank charges for them.
Going by each company's own pricing page on 11 September 2026: SmartBizSystems includes AI lead qualification in its Starter build; Go4whatsup lists AI replies on its $39 Standard plan; CertuAI includes the AI agent on every plan.
Sold separately or on a higher plan: Celcom Africa has AI bots from Pro (KES 30,000); Kommo has AI agents from Advanced; respond.io has AI agents from Growth; AiSensy's AI Agent Builder is $50 a month extra; Zoko charges from $24.99 a month per AI agent; Interakt's AI add-on is $74.99 a month.
Not clear from the page: Wati shows an "AI Operator" line at no charge for Kenya next to paid AI add-ons, and YCloud lists AI credits and an "AI Agent" row without saying which plan gets it. Ask both before you count on it.
SmartBizSystems charges KES 50,000 to build Starter, and Celcom Africa charges KES 15,000 per number to set up. Ask what the fee covers: connecting your number, verifying your business with Meta, building your first flows, or all three. Ask how long it takes.
Ask who owns the WhatsApp Business account after setup. If you leave the provider one day, you want to take your number and your approved message templates with you.
If your customers pay by M-Pesa, ask how the tool handles it. SmartBizSystems lists M-Pesa payment triggers on its Starter plan. The other pricing pages on this list do not mention M-Pesa next to the price.
There are two parts. The provider's monthly fee: on this list, from KES 10,000 a month at SmartBizSystems (after a KES 50,000 build) or KES 15,000 at Celcom Africa (plus KES 15,000 setup per number), or $25 to $120 a month at dollar-priced providers. And the message charges, which most providers bill on top; Celcom publishes its own rates, from KES 1.12 to KES 3.525 per template message.
Yes. SmartBizSystems and Celcom Africa, both Kenyan, publish prices in shillings. Wingu SMS also prices in shillings, but it sells bulk sending, not an inbox or an AI agent.
SmartBizSystems lists M-Pesa payment triggers on its Starter plan. None of the other pricing pages on this list mentions M-Pesa next to the price, so ask each provider directly. CertuAI's own plans are paid by card in US dollars.
Usually yes, but the steps depend on the provider. With CertuAI you connect the number your business already uses: by QR code on Start, through the official API on Pro. Ask any provider on this list before you pay a setup fee.
Not with the self-serve tools on this list: they give you a screen to answer customers, send broadcasts and set up bots. SmartBizSystems builds everything for you, so there you need no developer of your own either.
Usually not. Several companies on this list say on their own pages that message charges come on top of the plan, and each entry quotes what that company writes. We did not add message charges to any price. Before you sign, ask the provider what a message costs you, who sends you that bill and whether they add a markup.
No. Nobody paid to be on it, and no link on this page earns CertuAI a commission. CertuAI is on the list because CertuAI wrote the list, and the page says so right under the title.
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