Questions we actually get
Short answers, with a link where a topic needs more room than a paragraph. If yours is not here, email works better than a form.
- What does Whaleal actually build?
- Two products. Whaleal Cart is a Shopify app that recovers abandoned checkouts. Whaleal Messaging is an orchestration layer that runs your messages over the CPaaS accounts you already hold — SMS, email and WhatsApp. They are separate products with separate pricing.
- What is a message orchestration layer?
- It is the software above a provider account that decides which provider carries a message, at what rate, and what happened to it afterwards. It is not a provider itself: it holds no carrier accreditation, sells no message volume and appears on no provider invoice.
- Do I have to move my Twilio (or Vonage, or Infobip) account to you?
- No, and you cannot. You keep your account where it is and connect it using credentials you generate. Your numbers, your quota, your negotiated rate and your invoice all stay with your provider.
- Do you charge per message?
- No. Message charges are between you and your provider. The platform charges a flat subscription, and what varies between tiers is how many connections you can run, how fast you may submit, and how long delivery logs are kept.
- Can I connect email or WhatsApp?
- Yes. Both connect the same way as SMS — you link a provider account you already hold and send from the console. Opt-out suppression, delivery receipts and automatic failover are provided on the SMS channel.
- Why does the same text sometimes cost two messages?
- SMS is billed per segment, and how much fits in a segment depends on the character set. GSM-7 fits 160 characters in a single segment; a message needing UCS-2 fits 70. Long messages are split into parts of 153 and 67 respectively, and each part is billed.
- If someone replies STOP, are they really suppressed?
- A recognised opt-out reply writes a suppression record for that address, and a check runs before each marketing send, so the address is not handed to the provider again. There is one caveat worth knowing: some providers handle opt-out at the carrier level, in which case the reply may never reach us as an inbound message at all.
- Can a recipient opt back in?
- Yes. Replying START, YES or UNSTOP deactivates the suppression record and sends a confirmation. Note that this is a change in our records — on some sender types the carrier may also have blocked the number on its own side, and that has to be released separately.
- Is an accepted message a delivered message?
- No. Acceptance means the provider took responsibility for the message. Delivery is a later, separate event that arrives as a receipt. Only the terminal outcome should be used to judge whether a message arrived.
- Do you store the content of my messages?
- No. A delivery record holds the recipient, the provider, the status, the error code, the encoding and the segment count, plus a retention deadline. Message bodies are not stored on any plan.
- How are my provider credentials protected?
- They are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM and are not sent back to the browser after saving, where the console shows a fingerprint instead. The details are on the security page.
- How many providers can I connect?
- Self-service connections to 6 SMS providers today, and a plan limit on how many connections you may run. Underneath sits an adapter library covering 33 providers; those outside the self-service set are unlocked on request rather than self-service.
- How do I get help?
- Email us. It goes to the people who build the products, and including the account or shop you are asking about lets us look at the real records rather than guessing.
Still have a question?
The guides go deeper on how the message channel behaves, and pricing details live with pricing. For anything else, email is the fastest route.