What people use Text Agents for
Six things teams actually use Text Agents for on WhatsApp, what each one needs, and which pages to follow to build it.
Every agent starts from a purpose you pick when you create it. This page takes the six most common ones and shows what a working setup looks like: what the agent does, what you have to configure, and what to watch once it is live.
Pick the one closest to your business and build that first. You can always add the rest later — one agent can do several of these.
1. Sell on WhatsApp
For: ecommerce and retail teams whose customers ask "do you have this in blue?" before they buy.
Your customer messages the store number. The agent answers from your real catalogue — sizes, stock, prices, shipping times — recommends alternatives when something is out, and passes the ones who are ready to buy to a person.
What you set up
Purpose Ecommerces Sales Agent, with your tone in the instructions.
A Brain holding your catalogue or product sheets.
An Action that checks stock or creates the order in your system.
A human transfer for anything about payment or a complaint.
What it might cost. A store taking 800 conversations a month, about 8 agent replies each:
6,400 agent replies × 40 credits
$256.00
Meta delivery: 5,400 chargeable service messages × $0.0008
$4.32
Monthly total
≈ $260
Watch: whether the agent is inventing availability. If it is, the Brain is missing the data — add it there, not in the prompt.
2. Qualify the leads your ads bring in
For: marketing teams running click-to-WhatsApp ads, where most of the budget is wasted on people who were never going to buy.
Every click lands as a WhatsApp conversation. The agent asks the three or four questions your sales team would ask, writes the answers into your CRM, and only books time with a human for the leads that pass.
What you set up
Purpose Qualify Inbound Leads, with your qualifying questions in the instructions.
Post-conversation analysis with a variable per thing you need to know — budget, timeline, company size, product.
CRM Pipeline Sync so a qualified lead lands in the right HubSpot or GoHighLevel stage on its own.
The Meta Ad Conversions credential, so Meta learns which conversations became customers and optimises your ads on real outcomes.
What it might cost. 500 ad conversations a month, about 6 agent replies each:
3,000 agent replies × 40 credits
$120.00
Meta delivery: 2,000 chargeable service messages × $0.0008
$1.60
Monthly total
≈ $122
Conversations opened by a Click-to-WhatsApp ad carry a 72-hour free delivery window, so in practice your delivery cost here is usually lower than shown.
Watch: your cost per qualified lead, not per conversation. That is the number this setup moves.
3. Handle support without a night shift
For: any team whose customers ask the same forty questions, at every hour.
The agent answers from your help material, and the moment a question is genuinely new — or the customer is upset — it hands the conversation to a person in Inbox, with the whole history already there.
What you set up
Purpose Customer Services And Support.
Brains built from your help centre, policies and FAQ.
An Agent Transfer action pointing at the team that should pick those chats up.
Post-conversation analysis to record the reason for each contact.
What it might cost. 1,200 conversations a month, about 5 agent replies each, with 15% handed to a person:
6,000 agent replies × 40 credits
$240.00
900 replies typed by your team × 10 credits
$9.00
Meta delivery: 5,900 chargeable service messages × $0.0008
$4.72
Monthly total
≈ $254
Watch: the reasons for escalation. The ones that repeat are missing pages in your Brain, and each one you add is a shift your team gets back.
4. Fill the calendar
For: clinics, services and sales teams that lose bookings to phone tag.
The agent proposes times, books the appointment, and sends the reminder the day before — all inside the same WhatsApp thread the customer already opened.
What you set up
Purpose Schedule Meetings, or Confirmations and Reminders for an agent that only confirms.
An Action against your scheduling system.
What it might cost. 400 bookings a month, about 6 agent replies each, plus one reminder per booking:
2,400 agent replies × 40 credits
$96.00
400 utility reminder templates × $0.0008
$0.32
Meta delivery: 1,400 chargeable service messages × $0.0008
$1.12
Monthly total
≈ $97
Watch: no-show rate before and after. It is the clearest number this one produces.
5. Bring quiet contacts back
For: teams sitting on a list — old leads, lapsed customers, people who abandoned a cart.
A Sequence sends an approved opening message to your list on a schedule you set. Anyone who replies stops being a campaign and becomes a conversation: the agent picks it up and takes it as far as it can.
What you set up
A Marketing template, approved before you schedule anything.
Imported contacts, cleaned, with consent to be messaged.
Sending rules and limits — pacing, retries, suppression.
Optionally, a call fallback so a voice agent phones the ones who never read the message.
What it might cost. A 5,000-contact re-engagement campaign with a 12% reply rate, about 5 agent replies per reply:
5,000 marketing templates × $0.0125
$62.50
3,000 agent replies × 40 credits
$120.00
Meta delivery: 2,000 chargeable service messages × $0.0008
$1.60
Monthly total
≈ $184
This is the case where the connection route matters most. On a legacy line those same 5,000 marketing templates are charged at 26 credits each — $130 instead of $62.50.
Watch: your quality rating in the connection details. Sending marketing to people who did not ask for it is the fastest way to get a number restricted. Start small and grow the list.
6. Answer on your website too
For: teams who want one agent, not one per channel.
The same agent that answers on WhatsApp answers on your site through the widget. Both land in the same Inbox, and the Source filter tells you where each conversation came from.
What you set up
The widget, embedded on the pages where people hesitate — pricing, checkout, contact.
The same Brains and actions the WhatsApp agent uses.
What it might cost. 600 website conversations a month, about 5 agent replies each:
3,000 agent replies × 40 credits
$120.00
Meta delivery
$0.00
Monthly total
≈ $120
Widget conversations do not travel over WhatsApp, so Meta charges nothing for them.
Watch: which source converts better. It usually decides where your next effort goes.
Work out your own number
Three inputs decide almost all of it:
How many conversations a month, and roughly how many times the agent replies in each one. Multiply them: that is your agent replies.
How many messages you start yourself — campaign sends, reminders, codes. Those are templates, priced by category and country.
Who delivers them. On a direct line Meta bills delivery to your Meta account; on a legacy line it is all Dapta credits.
The number people usually get wrong is replies per conversation. Run twenty real conversations, count the replies, and use that instead of a guess.
Before you build any of them
Whatever you picked, the order is the same: create the agent, test it in the Playground until it answers the way you would, then connect WhatsApp. Testing costs you nothing, and it is much cheaper than letting a customer find the gap.
Dapta and WhatsApp BusinessLast updated