It's 2025 and you want a WhatsApp bot that greets customers, answers FAQs, collects details, routes to a human, and sends follow-ups. Twilio’s stack can do all of that. The question is at what cost and how quickly you can get it live. Below is a walkthrough of Twilio’s bot builder experience, what you get, how pricing really works, and a practical comparison with Heltar’s no-code bot builder that shows where you save serious money.
How to create bots on Twilio Studio?
Twilio’s visual builder is Twilio Studio. It is a drag-and-drop canvas with “widgets” that connect to Twilio Programmable Messaging for WhatsApp. A typical build looks like this:
Create a Flow in Studio and pick a template to start.
Trigger the flow on an incoming WhatsApp message or a specific keyword.
Send & Wait for Reply to ask a question such as “How can I help you today”.
Split Based On the user’s reply to branch into answers like Order Status, Returns, or Talk to a Human.
Make HTTP Request to your backend or a Google Sheet to fetch order info.
Run Function if you use Twilio Functions for custom code.
Set Variables to store customer inputs for later steps.
Send Message with buttons or a summary.
Studio ships with ready templates, versioning, and a visual debugger, so you can iterate quickly without wiring every step from scratch.
Key Studio building blocks for WhatsApp
Send Message and Send & Wait for Reply for conversational steps
Split Based On for decision logic
Gather Inputs style interactions for simple data capture
Make HTTP Request and Run Function for integrations
Error and timeout paths for graceful fallbacks
In short, if you have developer resources and want precise control, Studio is a capable canvas.
What Twilio charges for WhatsApp?
Twilio pricing has two moving parts:
Meta’s WhatsApp fee. Since July 1, 2025, Meta charges per template message delivered, with different rates for marketing, authentication, and utility categories. You always pay Meta’s fee through your provider.
Twilio’s platform fee. Twilio adds $0.005 per WhatsApp message, charged for sending and receiving messages through Twilio. This is on top of Meta’s fee.
Twilio’s own FAQ and pricing pages confirm that WhatsApp usage incurs Twilio’s per-message fee in addition to Meta’s charges.
What that means in practice
A short 10-message chat adds $0.05 in Twilio platform tolls, excluding Meta.
A busy support day with 20,000 business-sent messages adds $100 to the bill, excluding Meta.
At scale, these tolls compound every single month.
Twilio’s value is flexibility and developer depth. The trade-off is that this fee model punishes longer, highly engaging conversations.
Where teams stumble with Twilio?
Time to launch. You will connect numbers, webhooks, Functions or a server, and wire the logic. This is fine for engineering teams and heavy customization, but slows down marketing, CX, or sales teams that need self-serve speed.
Cost creep. The $0.005 platform toll looks tiny, until your bot succeeds and messages multiply.
Day-to-day ops. Studio is strong, yet business users still ask for no-code campaign tools, agent reports, and a shared inbox without extra wiring.
If your team is developer-led, Twilio’s power makes sense. If your team is business-led, you likely want faster setup, simpler pricing, and built-in ops features.
The Alternative: build faster, pay less with Heltar
Heltar is an official WhatsApp API provider with a no-code bot builder and AI prompt flows. You can literally type “Create a bot that greets new users, collects name and order ID, then shows order status or routes to an agent” and get a working flow you can tweak in a visual editor. You also get a shared team inbox, broadcasts, campaign analytics, and integrations in one place.
Heltar’s plan pricing
| Plan | Conversations per month | Platform subscription | WABA included | Extra WABA | Markup on Meta (Marketing) | Markup on Meta (Utility/Auth) | User-initiated messages | Extra automated sessions* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 2,000–10,000 | $50/mo | 1 | $25/mo | 10% | 10% | Free | $0.03 / session |
| Growth | 10,000–50,000 | $80/mo | 1 | $40/mo | 8% | 8% | Free | $0.02 / session |
| Pro | 50,000–100,000 | $150/mo | 2 | $75/mo | 5% | 5% | Free | $0.001 / session |
*after free credits, excluding Meta charges
There is no per-message platform toll. You pay Meta’s fee plus a small, transparent markup and, if you exceed the free automation credits, a tiny per-session amount based on plan.
Case Study: Twilio vs Heltar on a real month
Let us compare only the provider surcharge, not Meta’s own fee, since you pay Meta regardless of vendor.
Scenario
50,000 customer conversations in a month
On average, your bot or agents send 12 messages per conversation
Total business-sent messages: 600,000
Twilio surcharge
$0.005 per WhatsApp message
600,000 messages × $0.005 = $3,000 provider toll
Meta’s fee is extra
Heltar surcharge (Pro plan)
Platform subscription: $150
Automated session overage: assume 50,000 bot sessions beyond free credits × $0.001 = $50
Heltar provider total: $200
Meta’s fee is extra, with a 5% markup on the Meta rate
Result
$3,000 on Twilio versus $200 on Heltar for the same traffic pattern
That is 15 times cheaper on the provider component alone, before counting Heltar’s time savings from no-code building and built-in inbox
Even if your messages per conversation were half of this, Twilio’s fee would still be many multiples of Heltar’s subscription plus minimal overages. As volume grows, the gap widens.
Feature comparison at a glance
| Capability | Twilio Studio | Heltar Bot Builder |
|---|---|---|
| Visual flow builder | Yes, developer-oriented widgets | Yes, business-friendly and fast |
| Build by AI prompt | Not native | Yes, type your goal and get a flow |
| Team inbox | Custom or third-party | Built-in shared inbox with assignment and SLAs |
| Campaigns and broadcasts | Script or external tooling | Built-in campaigns with analytics |
| Integrations | Functions, webhooks, APIs | Click-connectors for CRM, ecommerce, payments, APIs |
| Go-live speed | Longer, needs engineering | Very fast, no-code |
| Pricing model | Per message toll + Meta | Flat plan + tiny session cost + small Meta markup |
When Twilio still makes sense?
You want a highly customized, multi-channel architecture managed by a team of developers.
You already use other Twilio channels and want a single programmable surface.
Why most WhatsApp-first teams pick Heltar?
Predictable bills. No message tax eating your margins.
Faster launches. No waiting on dev cycles for every tweak.
All-in-one workspace. Bot, inbox, campaigns, analytics, and approvals in one tool.
Friendly to non-tech teams. Anyone can ship flows, promotions, and automations.
If WhatsApp is a core channel, Twilio’s per-message toll quickly becomes a cash leak. Heltar gives you the same outcome, often better day-to-day tooling, and a fraction of the provider cost.
