What does Heyhannah actually do?

Hannah is an AI receptionist for your business. She answers every call and message 24/7, asks the right questions about the job, and sends you the lead on WhatsApp within seconds, so you never lose an enquiry because you couldn't pick up. If you need a website, we build and run one for you as part of the package.

R1,999 a month with 100 minutes of calls included, or R23,988 a year with 150 minutes a month. Extra minutes are R6 each and Hannah never stops answering. A website is included if you need one, and busier businesses can ask us for a package with more minutes.

How does call forwarding work?

You forward your existing mobile number to your Heyhannah number by dialling a few short codes on your phone. It takes about three minutes and works on all the major South African networks; rain is the one exception, so talk to us first if you're on it. When you're available, turn forwarding off and answer calls yourself. When you're busy, turn it on and Hannah handles everything.

Does it sound like a real person?

She holds a normal conversation rather than reading a script: she answers with your business name, listens, asks follow-up questions about the job, and reads the details back to check she got them right. If she mishears something she asks again instead of guessing.

What happens during load shedding?

Heyhannah runs in the cloud, so it keeps answering calls even when your office has no power. This is one of the biggest advantages: you never miss a call due to load shedding again. WhatsApp summaries are delivered over mobile data.

Can it handle Afrikaans callers?

Ja. Hannah can run entirely in Afrikaans: she greets your callers in Afrikaans and understands them in Afrikaans, not just English with an accent. We set your language when we set your account up, and each Hannah answers in one language, so tell us which one your customers actually phone in.

How is this different from a normal answering service?

An answering service takes a message, usually charged per call and often only during business hours. Hannah answers every hour of the day and actually qualifies leads: she asks what they need, when, and how to reach them, and you get a structured WhatsApp message, not a vague callback note. A full-time receptionist doing the same job averages R7,865 a month for office hours alone (Indeed, September 2026).

What about data privacy?

Heyhannah is fully POPIA compliant. We don't collect ID numbers, bank details, or other sensitive information. Call data is stored securely and you can request deletion at any time.

How does billing work?

Pay monthly or yearly. Monthly has no contract: you're billed when you sign up and then each month, and you can cancel anytime. Yearly is paid once for 12 months and renews each year, with an email reminder well before it does. Hannah can be answering your calls within 24 hours of you finishing setup, and if you're not happy in your first 30 days, tell us and we refund your first payment in full, monthly or yearly.

Is WhatsApp Business now costing you money?

By André Bergan, 2026-10-01

On 1 October 2026, Meta ended a free ride that WhatsApp Business has had since November 2024, and some of the messages South African businesses send on WhatsApp now cost money. If a headline about "WhatsApp Business fees" has you wondering whether your own WhatsApp is about to land you with a bill, the short answer for most trades businesses is no. But it's worth two minutes to check which camp you're in, because two different products both get called "WhatsApp Business" and they work very differently.

Two different things share one name

There's the WhatsApp Business app. It's the free app you download from the Play Store or App Store, put your business number into, and use to reply to customers yourself from your phone. There's no automation, no bots, no third party sitting in the middle. This is what most sole traders and small teams use, and this change does not touch it.

Then there's the WhatsApp Business Platform, also called the API. This is the paid infrastructure behind automated WhatsApp: order confirmations from a retailer, an appointment reminder from a booking system, a chatbot answering questions, a CRM sending you a WhatsApp instead of an email. It's built for volume and automation, not for one person typing replies. Banks, retailers, airlines and telecoms run on it, and so does any smaller business paying a supplier for a "WhatsApp integration."

The October change is about the second one, not the first.

What changed on 1 October

Since November 2024, businesses on the platform could reply to a customer for free, as long as the reply went out inside the 24-hour window that opens when the customer messages first. That free window has now ended. Meta's own documentation says it now charges per message for those replies, the same way it already charged for template messages.

In South Africa, MyBroadband reports that works out to about 12 cents for each customer service reply or transactional message, such as a payment receipt or an order confirmation. Marketing messages were never free, and cost about 62 cents each.

Twelve cents doesn't sound like much, and on its own it isn't. But it adds up fast for a business sending thousands of automated confirmations, receipts or reminders a month, which is exactly who this change targets. If your invoicing tool, booking system or CRM WhatsApps your customers on your behalf, that supplier now pays per message where they didn't before, and it's reasonable to expect some of that cost to eventually show up in what they charge you.

So does it affect you

Ask yourself one question: who actually presses send on the WhatsApp messages your customers get from your business?

If it's you, typing on your own phone in the ordinary WhatsApp Business app, nothing changes. Keep doing what you're doing.

If it's a system, a booking tool, an invoicing app or anything that sends a WhatsApp automatically without you typing it, that's running on the platform, and it's worth a two-line message to that supplier asking whether this affects your account or your pricing. Better to hear it from them directly than to guess from a headline.

If you're not sure which one you're on, this usually settles it: did you set it up yourself, on your own phone, with your own number, by downloading an app? That's the free one. Did a supplier configure it for you during onboarding, with a dashboard and automated messages you didn't personally type? That's the paid one, and it's the one this change applies to.

Where Hannah fits into this

This is exactly the kind of thing worth understanding rather than reacting to a scary headline about. It's also the sort of plumbing we deal with so you don't have to. When Hannah takes a call or a WhatsApp enquiry, the summary that lands on your phone a few seconds later is an automated WhatsApp message, running on the same platform this whole change is about. Keeping that reliable as the rules shift is our job, not yours. If you'd rather have someone else worry about how the message gets to you and just get the lead, that's what the AI receptionist does.