What Cost per Chat Can Your Shop Afford? Work Out Your Break-Even

Say a shop sells T-shirts at THB 290. After the cost of the shirt and the box, THB 120 is left as profit. Out of every 100 new chats, 15 end in an order. That makes one chat worth about THB 18 in profit (120 × 0.15). Pay more than that per chat and each shirt sold loses money. THB 18 is this shop's break-even, and any other shop can find its own by multiplying two numbers.

How do you calculate break-even cost per chat?

The formula is short: profit per order × close rate = the most you can pay per chat. Close rate is the share of new chats that end in a purchase. 15 sales from 100 chats is 0.15. The reasoning behind it: ad cost per order equals cost per chat divided by close rate. When that figure matches your profit per order, you are at break-even.

Count profit per order fully, but do not subtract the ad cost, because ad cost is what you're comparing against. Subtract it first and you count it twice. What to take off:

• Cost of the product or materials
• Boxes and packing
• Shipping you pay yourself
• Discounts given in chat, plus payment fees

Example 1: a THB 290 product

Back to the T-shirt shop. The shirt costs THB 160 and the box THB 10, so THB 120 of the THB 290 is profit. Last month the ads produced 60 new chats and 9 orders, so the close rate is 9 ÷ 60 = 0.15. The ceiling is 120 × 0.15 = THB 18 per chat. The table shows what the month looks like at three different costs per chat.

THB 22 per chat can look cheap in Ads Manager. For this shop it still means a loss of THB 240 a month, because the profit per shirt is thin and a few baht per chat decides the result.

Example 2: a THB 4,500 service

Say a shop applies ceramic coating to cars and charges THB 4,500 a job. After materials and the technician's pay, THB 1,800 is profit. Last month there were 72 new chats and 6 finished jobs, which is 1 in 12 (about 0.083). The ceiling is 1,800 ÷ 12 = THB 150 per chat.

At THB 120 per chat the month costs 72 × 120 = THB 8,640 in ads against THB 10,800 profit from 6 jobs, leaving THB 2,160. At THB 180 per chat, ads cost THB 12,960 and the shop loses THB 2,160. THB 120 a chat gives this shop a good month. The T-shirt shop, with its THB 18 ceiling, would lose money on almost every chat at that price.

Where do you get your close rate if you have never counted it?

If you've never tracked it, a notebook or a basic sheet will give you the number within a month. Follow these steps.

1. Pick the last 30 days and leave out the most recent week, since some chats are still undecided.
2. In Ads Manager, read Messaging conversations started for the same period.
3. Count the orders that came from those chats, using your order book or your inbox.
4. Divide orders by chats. That is your close rate.
5. Repeat monthly, because the rate moves with the product, the promotion and who answers the chats.

If you can't tell which orders came from chats started by an ad, use the close rate from your whole inbox as a rough figure, and write down that it is rough. The ceiling will be blunter, but a blunt ceiling beats none.

The other route is to let Meta count. Meta's help page says the Meta purchases column typically fills in after you select Mark as paid in Meta Business Suite when a purchase happens. The column shows up in Customize columns only for certain campaign types, such as click-to-Messenger campaigns optimized for purchases. If you have it and already mark every paid order, put it next to your chat count. It is only as accurate as your habit of marking orders. This is from the help page as saved on 2026-10-31, and menu names can change.

How do you count repeat chats the way Meta does?

Meta counts a messaging conversation started when someone messages your business for the first time, or after at least 7 days of inactivity, and only when it is attributed to your ads. A customer who writes on Monday and again on Thursday is one chat. A customer who disappears for two weeks and then writes is a new one.

If you count chats by hand with a looser rule, say every first message of the day, your denominator grows, your close rate looks lower than it is, and the ceiling falls so far that you may switch off ads that still pay. Use the same 7-day rule when you count yourself.

How do you compare the ceiling in Ads Manager?

1. Open Ads Manager, choose the Ads level, and set the date range to the period you used for your close rate.
2. Click Columns, then Customize columns.
3. Tick Amount spent, Messaging conversations started and Cost per messaging conversation started (under the messaging part of Engagement).
4. Tick Save as a column preset and click Apply. Next time, pick it from Column presets.
5. Compare each ad's Cost per messaging conversation started with your ceiling.

Meta defines that column as total amount spent divided by messaging conversations started, so it sits directly against your ceiling. If the same text runs in several ads, see how to pool them in cost per chat explained. Kulshot lists every ad text in the account by cost per chat over a read-only connection, so you only have to draw your ceiling across that list. The cheapest text is where the next round of copy should start.

What if you want profit, not just break-even?

The ceiling is the line where profit hits zero. To keep one third of your profit, aim for two thirds of the ceiling. The T-shirt shop gets 18 × 2/3 = THB 12 per chat, and the coating shop gets 150 × 2/3 = THB 100. At THB 100, ads for 72 chats cost THB 7,200 out of THB 10,800, leaving THB 3,600. How much to keep is each shop's own call.

Where do repeat customers fit in?

This formula only counts the profit on the first order from a chat. A shop whose customers come back, such as one selling a product that runs out and gets rebought, can pay above the ceiling. That takes real numbers for how many customers return and what the second order earns. If you haven't counted those yet, treat the first-order ceiling as the red line for now and think of repeat sales as extra profit you haven't priced in.

Sources

• Meta Business Help Center: Leads, engagement and sales metrics for ads that click to Messenger | Meta Business Help Center
• Meta Business Help Center: Messaging conversations started | Meta Business Help Center
• Meta Business Help Center: Customize columns in Meta Ads Manager | Meta Business Help Center

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