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Question

Contact based billing?

  • August 5, 2026
  • 2 comments
  • 17 views

jbstock0688

I must be missing something. 

I’ve set up a ManyChat automation about two years ago for a simple comment to dm automation. And that went fine.

But now I’m thinking about setting up something that sends new followers a message, it's looking likely that I will need to upgrade to a non-free plan, which is all well and good, BUT:

It seems like we are going to be billed based on an allowance of “active contacts,” which from what I understand is anyone who interacts with the profile in any way. This is based on a few answers I’ve seen here and the AI slopbot that runs the help chat, but I’m confused as to WHY this is the case. 

Why am I being billed based on engagement with my profile? If I was sending automations to all of them, sure, but I’m not. These are literally anyone who sends me a dm, comments on a post, literally anything, and ManyChat seems to see fit to bill my account based on that? In what universe does this make sense? I don’t have automations on all (most, really) of my posts, so a massive chunk of the engagement is organic

There must be a way to limit the active contacts that are saved on my account, right? The slopbot says there isn’t but this surely must be a mistake - I can’t imagine that ManyChat would think that billing someone based on account interaction they have nothing to do with makes sense?
 

2 replies

SumGenius
Forum|alt.badge.img
  • Smooth talker
  • August 5, 2026

You're not missing anything, and unfortunately the bot is right, there's no setting to limit it. On the new billing, an "active contact" is anyone who interacts with your profile in the month, whether or not an automation ever touches them. That's the model now, organic engagement counts against your allowance, and the overage billing kicks in automatically past your tier's limit.

One heads up on the upgrade reason: test the new-follower trigger before you pay for it. It's a beta feature and there's a currently open Meta-side bug affecting it on some accounts (there's an incident on ManyChat's status page). Make sure it fires for you before it becomes the reason you're on a paid plan.


niinacarita
  • Up-and-comer
  • August 6, 2026

I started using ManyChat just a day ago and I’m running to this same problem. I get lots of DM’s etc and I got 200 contacts already in one day.  I deleted all of them but they are still on the analytics page. The limit for the lowest payment plan for a month includes 250 contacts. I upgraded to the next plan but that is not going to last a long time either. That is 2500 contacts. I don’t know if I should just give up with this platform.