Messaging automation across the Middle East and North Africa

Meta prices each message by the recipient's country calling code. Within MENA, Egypt, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE each have their own line, other Middle East countries share a Rest of Middle East line, and Iraq, Kuwait, Oman and Morocco became separate markets on 1 October 2026. A broadcast to a regional list therefore has a mixed cost per message. Keeping each contact's country in a tag or custom field lets you split a campaign by market and estimate each part on its own.

Iran and Syria are on Meta's restricted list: businesses and users there cannot use or receive messages from the WhatsApp Business Platform, so those numbers cannot be reached through Slide or through any other tool built on that platform.

Templates, needed for anything sent outside the 24-hour window, can be submitted in Arabic and English, and Arabic is one of the 25 languages in Slide's template editor. Meta approves each template before it can be sent. Free-form replies inside the window can be in any language, and an AI agent replies in Arabic only when its instructions tell it to.

Slide includes WhatsApp business calling, but these pages do not promise it anywhere in the region: TDRA restricts unlicensed VoIP in the UAE, and how calls behave for consumers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar has not been verified. Market-by-market WhatsApp detail is on WhatsApp automation in MENA.

Instagram messaging works the same way in every MENA country. A business can reply only within 24 hours of the person's last message, each comment allows one private reply within 7 days, and Meta does not charge per message as it does on WhatsApp. No region-wide rule specific to Instagram direct messages was found, so there is no MENA Instagram page; the general Instagram automation page applies.

Country law can still reach a DM. Qatar's guideline names social media among the channels for electronic direct marketing, so treat a promotional Instagram DM to someone in Qatar as within Article 22: prior consent, a named sender and a way to unsubscribe (see Qatar). In Slide, Instagram is reply-only: no broadcasts and nothing after the 24-hour window, so every automation starts from a comment, DM, story reply or live comment the person sent.

Email has no regional rule either. Each country's data law covers the addresses you hold, and of the MENA markets on this site only Qatar has a verified written rule for electronic marketing that names email. The UAE's verified TDRA marketing rules are written for SMS, and Saudi email-marketing rules have not been verified here.

Whatever the country, send marketing email through Slide campaigns or sequences: they add an unsubscribe and skip unsubscribed, suppressed and bounced addresses. The automation "send email" step adds no unsubscribe link and does not check those lists, so keep it for transactional mail such as order and booking confirmations. The email automation page covers setup.

One workspace can hold customers from every country you sell in. Every channel writes to one contact record per person, matched on phone number first and email second, with tags, custom fields and a lifecycle stage on it. Use those fields for what varies by country: the market, the template language, and where and when consent was given.

Then plan the countries one by one inside that setup. Check each country's price line before a campaign, prepare Arabic and English versions of the templates you need, and confirm which consent rule applies to each segment. If you send one-time passwords to the UAE or Saudi Arabia from a business based elsewhere, at high volume, Meta charges a higher authentication-international rate for those countries.

The Slide plan does not change by country: a workspace created with a number outside India is billed in US dollars (in rupees with an Indian number), whichever MENA countries your customers are in. Plans are on the pricing page, paid plans start with a 14-day trial, and the payment method should be confirmed with the Slide team before you subscribe. There is no billing in AED, SAR, QAR or another regional currency.

WhatsApp usage is the part that varies. Meta charges per delivered template message by category and by each recipient's country, and Slide draws it from the prepaid wallet; since 1 October 2026 service replies are charged too, after the first 1,000 each month per business number. For a regional list the cost per message is a blend of the lines above, and the wallet shows the exact per-message price for your account.