ManyChat Pricing 2026: Why Builders Are Switching (Real Costs Breakdown)

Let's talk about ManyChat.

For years, it's been one of the go-to tools for businesses wanting to automate their Instagram and Facebook messages. And for certain use cases - especially marketing funnels and comment automation - it's genuinely solid.

But lately, if you spend any time in builder forums or the ManyChat community itself, you'll notice a pattern.

People are frustrated. Really frustrated. And a growing number of them are technical teams who've outgrown a visual flow builder and want to own their logic in code.

"Did Everything to Fix It, Considering Cancelling"

That's an actual quote from a user in the ManyChat community forums.

Here's what's happening: automations that worked perfectly for months just... stop. Comment triggers fail. DMs don't send. Flows break without warning.

And when users ask for help? The response is often: "There's an ongoing incident on Meta's side."

Which might be true. But when "ongoing incident" becomes the default answer for weeks at a time, businesses start losing patience - especially the ones who can't even inspect what's happening because everything lives inside someone else's builder.

One user reported their account "suddenly stopped auto-replying to comments and sending DMs - completely stopped working." No explanation. No warning. Just broken, with no way to debug it themselves.

The Pricing Problem

Here's something that catches a lot of people off guard.

ManyChat charges per contact. That sounds reasonable until you realize how they define "contact."

Every person who DMs you counts as a contact. Even if they never interacted with your bot.

So if someone accidentally messages you, they're a contact. If a spam account hits your DMs, that's a contact. If someone messages asking if you're open and you manually reply - contact.

You're paying for people who never actually used your automation.

Then there's the threshold problem. Users have reported bills doubling overnight when crossing subscriber thresholds:

"Our bill doubled overnight when we crossed a 1k subscriber threshold."

For small teams watching every dollar, surprise pricing jumps hurt.

The Lock-In Problem

This is the one that drives technical teams away.

ManyChat is a closed builder. Your logic lives inside their drag-and-drop canvas. You can't version it in git, you can't write a unit test against it, you can't drop in a small piece of custom code without paying up a tier, and you can't run the same logic across channels without rebuilding it.

When your needs are simple, that trade is fine. The moment you want to do something the builder doesn't anticipate - call your own API, branch on data from your database, render a real form and store the result - you hit a wall. You're limited to what the product decided to expose.

The Support Situation

This one comes up a lot in reviews.

Users report that ManyChat support takes days to respond. And when it does respond, it's often an AI that loops through the same suggestions without actually solving the problem.

"The support is just AI that doesn't help you at all and keeps looping through the same suggestions."

When you own your own code, a lot of these issues become things you can simply read the logs for and fix.

The Meta Dependency Problem

Here's the uncomfortable truth: ManyChat is built entirely on Meta's platforms. When Meta's APIs go down, change, or glitch - and they do, regularly - ManyChat users are stuck.

The ManyChat team can't fix Meta's problems. They can only wait.

This isn't ManyChat's fault, exactly. But it does mean reliability is always somewhat out of their control - and out of yours, since you can't see or touch the integration layer.

One recent incident affected "around 80% of users" trying to connect ManyChat to Meta Ads. That's not a small hiccup.

When ManyChat Works Well

Let's be fair. ManyChat isn't all bad. It works well for:

• Marketing funnels - Comment-to-DM automation for lead generation
• Facebook comment automation - Auto-reply to comments with DMs
• Broadcast campaigns - Sending messages to subscriber lists
• No-code teams - People who specifically want to avoid touching code

If those are your primary needs and you don't want to build anything custom, ManyChat might still be worth the headaches.

But if you're a developer or technical team that wants to own your messaging logic, run it across channels, and ship custom behavior? A visual builder starts to feel like a ceiling - and an expensive one.

What to Look for in an Alternative

If you're considering a switch, here's what matters:

1. Transparent Pricing

Look for platforms that don't surprise you. Conversation-based or credit-based pricing (where you pay for actual interactions, not just contacts) tends to be far more predictable.

2. Real Programmability

Can you write your own logic? Hit your own APIs? Version-control your flows? An API you build on beats a builder you're boxed into the moment your needs get specific.

3. Visibility and Control

When things break - and things always break eventually - can you read logs, replay webhooks, and fix it yourself instead of waiting on a vendor?

4. The Right Primitives for What You're Building

You don't want someone else's idea of a "funnel." You want a unified channels API, event webhooks, native in-chat forms, and a way to wire it all into your own stack.

How Wabery Compares

Wabery isn't another closed bot builder. It's the messaging API you build on top of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Instead of dragging boxes around a canvas, you get primitives and write the solution yourself - fast. Here's how that maps to the problems above:

Pricing: Conversation/credit-based. One conversation session (a 24-hour window with a customer) = one credit. You don't pay for accidental DMs or spam, and there are no contact-threshold cliffs.

Programmability: A unified channels API, signed event webhooks, native WhatsApp Flows for in-chat forms, a CLI, and an MCP server. Your logic lives in your codebase, in git, where you can test it and run it everywhere.

wabery.on("message.received", async (event) => {
  // your logic, your stack, your rules
  const reply = await handle(event);
  await wabery.messages.send({
    channel: event.channel,
    to: event.from,
    text: reply,
  });
});

Control: You can read what happened, replay webhooks, and fix issues yourself instead of filing a ticket and waiting.

No lock-in to one channel or one flow shape: Write your messaging logic once and run it across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.

The Bottom Line

ManyChat is a capable tool for the right use case. If you're running comment-automation campaigns with no code, it might be worth the occasional frustration.

But if you're a builder who wants to own your messaging logic, pay for real conversations instead of every stray contact, and ship exactly the behavior you have in mind - you want an API you build on, not a builder you're boxed into.

The best tool isn't the one with the most pre-built blocks. It's the one that gives you the primitives to build precisely what you need, reliably, at a price that doesn't surprise you.