Site icon Jon Loomer Digital

Meta One Business Plans: What You Get at Each Tier

Jon Loomer
Meta One Business Plans: What You Get at Each Tier

Last week, Meta announced Meta One subscription plans for businesses. I have a lot of thoughts about this, and most of them are negative. But I want to spend most of this post explaining the differences in benefits by tier.

There are four subscription options:

Note that these prices are “per Facebook Page, Instagram profile or WhatsApp Business number.” So assuming I’m interpreting that language correctly, you may need to multiply that monthly cost by the number of connected accounts for a single business.

I find so much about the Meta One rollout to be confusing, unnecessary, and even repulsive. But the confusing part is that it’s so unfocused. These tiers are a collection of random features and benefits across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. It’s just a long list of mostly uninspiring bells and whistles.

The part that’s getting the most attention is the limits on link sharing. Meta took something that has forever been allowed at an unlimited volume, suddenly set a limit of two shares per month, and then tried to pass additional shares off as subscription benefits. And this after Meta spent years suppressing visibility of links and devaluing the impact of sharing them. That’s the repulsive part.

I’m not going to hyper-fixate on that unfortunate development here (I’ve done it elsewhere, and a podcast episode is coming). Instead, I want to take a more objective look at the differences in these tiers. Truthfully, some of these features may be valuable to specific categories of businesses.

Below, I list out the unique feature set of each subscription tier. Understand that Max includes all of the benefits in the tiers listed above it in this post. Each higher tier inherits the benefits of the cheaper tiers.

Essential

The Essential subscription level is essentially Meta Verified. While Meta hasn’t announced it officially, it would be easy to assume that it will ultimately replace the separate Meta Verified subscription product.

Here are a few of the primary benefits at this level…

Verified badge: You know all about this by now. It confirms that the business behind a Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp Business account has completed Meta’s verification process.

Impersonation protection: Once verified, businesses get access to monitoring for accounts that impersonate them. If you’re famous, this is a big one.

Instagram link page: You can’t really share links, but you can display up to 20 of them in your bio.

Meta Business Agent: Already available to all businesses, but there are apparent limits (or there will be). This provides access to AI-generated responses designed to help businesses manage customer conversations. At this tier, they get “more” access.

Facebook and Instagram Features:

WhatsApp Business Features:

Advanced

Advanced is $49.99 per month and inherits everything from Essential, plus everything below. This is where businesses begin to get some added support benefits. Meta’s played the long game of offering terrible support for years so that it becomes a valuable paid benefit.

Here are the main benefits that stand out…

Human support: ou get one case per month with a Meta support agent. Rejoice.

Clickable links in posts and Reels: After years of being able to share unlimited links, now there’s a very tight restriction. But sign up for the Advanced tier, and you can share an amazing 8 links to Facebook and 4 to Instagram. Rejoice X2.

Advanced content scheduling: I hope this doesn’t mean that native scheduling is going away in Business Suite. As far as I can tell, this is about scheduling posts and Reels up to a year in advance, bulk scheduling, and Instagram Story scheduling. It also includes tools such as suggested publishing times (which can be done manually in Business Suite now) and grid previews.

Audience-growth tools: This is a group of features that feels like it could be useful, depending on how Meta executes it. We lack details. It includes optimized search, automatic Facebook follow invitations (you can do this manually otherwise), a bold follow button on Facebook Reels, and an opportunity (whatever that means) to be featured in Facebook Feed.

Advanced insights: This group of benefits includes Facebook custom audience insights, which sounds an awful lot like the original Audience Insights that allowed you to get more “insight” into your custom audiences. It also includes Instagram competitive insights and extended Instagram insights history.

Instagram team access: This tier allows you to give other people access to publish content, reply to comments, and help manage the account without sharing a password.

WhatsApp Business broadcasts: If you’re a WhatsApp power user, this may matter to you. This tier provides credits for sending broadcast messages.

Facebook and Instagram Features:

WhatsApp Business Features:

Expert

At $149, Expert is a big jump from Advanced. The primary difference between the two is that you’ll get more of everything with Expert.

Here are the primary benefits…

Expanded clickable-link allowances: Pardon my cynicism, but this is so stupid. The Expert tier raises the number of Facebook and Instagram posts and Reels that can contain direct links. And the number isn’t all that huge (20 links to Facebook posts and Reels, and 8 links to Instagram).

More human support: Increases the number of support cases per month from one to five. If you run into a lot of problems, this could be worthwhile.

Larger Instagram team: Increases shared access from four people to eight.

Protected WhatsApp Business accounts: Adds protection for multiple business accounts while increasing broadcast, channel, and device allowances.

Facebook and Instagram Features:

WhatsApp Business Features:

Max

And now for the “kitchen sink.” At $499 per month, it better be good. Depending on your needs, maybe it’s worth it. This will appeal to the biggest businesses with big teams, big problems, and big money to burn.

Unlimited Facebook links: Well, there’s a caveat. Max removes the monthly limit for links in Facebook posts and Reels, but limits still exist on Instagram.

Unlimited human support: Removes the monthly limit on support cases, which may make the $499 worth it by itself for some businesses.

Personalized content strategy call: Max subscribers get a call with a Meta adviser once every six months to review content strategy.

Expanded Instagram team access: Allows up to 30 people to help manage the Instagram account.

Maximum WhatsApp Business capacity: Provides the highest allowances for broadcast credits, verified channels, linked devices, and protected business accounts.

Facebook and Instagram Features:

WhatsApp Business Features:

Is It Worth It?

Look, I’m still protesting the idea of paying for Meta Verified, so I don’t get over this stuff quickly. I firmly believe that Meta should want every person and business to get verified because it improves the experience for all users when they know they are engaging with real people. And it shouldn’t be tied to a subscription.

But that’s neither here nor there. The Essential tier may be worth it for you if all you want is verification. Beyond that, the main motivation for signing up for the higher tiers may be support or WhatsApp features.

Will someone pay $49 per month just to share up to 8 links to Facebook and 4 to Instagram? Keep in mind that Meta isn’t saying the distribution will be improved because you’ve subscribed. So you’ll get the same suppressed distribution, but at a fee.

I just don’t see anyone signing up for any of these tiers just for link sharing. Now, that will depend on the results you get from the links you share now. But otherwise, I see this as Meta’s way of further limiting the amount of clicking away from its apps. And if that’s the goal, it will be a success.

What’s crazy to me is how unreasonable this change to link sharing is. You can’t go from unlimited link sharing to charging at these rates for very limited link sharing overnight. It just doesn’t make sense. I’d actually consider the $14.99 per month option if it included unlimited link sharing. But anything more is crazy.

But the bigger the business you run, the more appetizing the higher tiers become. And if you sign up for them, I get it.

I doubt many small businesses will sign up for anything beyond Essential. We’ll see.

Here are a few links about Meta One to learn more:

Your Turn

What do you think about the new Meta One subscription tiers?

Let me know in the comments below!

Exit mobile version