How the messages go out (and what they cost)
There are two ways for messages to leave your club: by hand, with a button that leaves them written for you, or on their own, by connecting the club’s WhatsApp. Both are included on any plan and you switch between them whenever you like; on neither of them do we charge you for a single message. Here is what each one does, what you gain and what you give up, and — for whoever wants the detail — what sending ends up costing.
A gap at 8pm and six names to write to: thirty cents of messages to charge for a court.
The two ways to send
| By hand | On its own | |
|---|---|---|
| What sending costs you | €0 | Whatever Meta charges, on your account |
| You can start | Today | Once Meta verifies your number |
| Who hits send | You, one click | It does |
| The replies | You read them and log them | It reads and logs them |
| Closing the match | You close it | It closes it |
| Learns from what happened | No | Yes |
By hand is literally that: AI4Padel decides who should be written to and leaves the message drafted; you tap and your WhatsApp opens with the text already in it. The message leaves from the same WhatsApp you use today, so you pay nobody for transport.
On its own means connecting the club’s WhatsApp Business account. You are the account holder, the number is yours and Meta invoices you directly: we are never in the middle of that payment. In exchange, the assistant sends, reads what comes back, notes who said yes and closes the match without you stepping in.
What the by-hand mode is for
Three things, and all three matter:
- Starting today. Verifying a number with Meta takes a few days. By hand you are in this afternoon and you watch matches close from day one.
- Testing without paying transport. While you decide whether this is for you, sending costs you zero.
- Plan B. If the connection fails one day or stalls, the messages still go out.
And what you give up, said plainly: by hand it proposes and you execute. It does not read the replies, so you log the confirmations yourself; it does not close the match; and since it never sees how it ended, it does not learn from it either. Whichever mode you try it in, the first month is free.
Our honest recommendation: start by hand on day one and connect the club’s WhatsApp as soon as Meta verifies you. We set the connection up for you and it costs nothing.
Who charges whom
Most tools that send WhatsApp for you put a middleman in the way: they sell you message bundles with a margin on top of Meta’s price. It is convenient and it is expensive, but the margin is not the worst part. The incentive is. Whoever sells you messages earns more the more you send, so nothing inside that tool will ever nudge you towards writing to fewer people.
We charge a flat licence per club. We never touch the transport money. What suits us is the opposite: that you get it right first time and write to just the right people, because that is what makes the product show and makes you renew. It is the same idea as charging no commission per booking, applied to messages.
The price of a message
Meta charges per message sent, and not all messages cost the same: an operational notice about a match that already exists is not priced like a campaign message to somebody who has not shown up in a month. Rates vary by country and Meta updates them, so the exact figure lives in their official rate card, not on this page: we are not going to publish a number here that could be stale next month.
It does not matter, because for what follows the exact figure is irrelevant. Take five cents as a working assumption and follow the maths: the argument holds at three cents or at nine.
The number that does matter
It is not what a message costs. It is what filling a slot costs:
messages you send ÷ the ones that land × what Meta charges
A six-court club, one hundred and eighty members, one free spot for tomorrow at 20:00. Four ways to find the missing player:
| How you pick who to write to | Messages | Cost of the slot |
|---|---|---|
| Broadcast to the whole club | 180 | €9.00 |
| The ones at the right level | 40 | €2.00 |
| The ones at that level who play at that hour | 12 | €0.60 |
| The ones who fit on level, position, hour and history | 6 | €0.30 |
Same price per message. Thirty times the difference on the bill. And the court is about €24, so in the first row transport eats 37% of what you just recovered, and in the last one, 1.25%.
That is the whole product, put in euros: AI4Padel does not make the message cheaper, it cuts how many you need. It picks on level, position, the hours somebody actually plays and who they play well with, which is why the list of people to write to is short. The inside view is in how it picks players.
What the bill does not show
The €9 in the first row is the cheap part of the mistake. The expensive part is the other one: you wrote to 174 people that match was no use to. Next time fewer of them open, fewer reply and one or two opt out. A club’s broadcast list burns itself out, and by the time you really need it nobody reads it — which is exactly what happens to the WhatsApp group.
A normal month at a six-court club, eight matches saved at six messages a slot, is 48 messages: €2.40 of transport to recover about €192 of court time.
Quick questions
Do you charge me for messages? Not one, on any plan, with no cap. We do not resell messages.
What will Meta charge me? It depends on how many you send and what type they are; the rate is published by Meta and varies by country. With the maths above, a six-court club is looking at a few euros a month.
Can I switch modes? Yes, whenever you want: both modes are included on any plan, and the price does not move.
Whose WhatsApp account is it? The club’s. You are the account holder and Meta invoices you. If you ever leave, the number and the relationship with your players stay with you.
Do I need to be technical to connect the club’s WhatsApp? No. It is a Meta formality, we do it with you and it costs nothing: it is included on any plan.
Want the numbers with your courts, your members and your hours? Write to us and we will send them the same day. And if you would rather see how it works first, here is the demo in writing.