What is WhatsApp Cloud API?
In this document we’ll help you understand what WhatsApp Cloud API is and how to use it to reach out to your customers on WhatsApp.
Meta (the company that owns WhatsApp) provides two different WhatsApp solutions:
WhatsApp
WhatsApp Business Platform
WhatsApp is the standard messaging app that is used by billions of people across the globe using their mobile app to chat with friends and family. They also provide WhatsApp Web portal that you can use from your browser.
WhatsApp Business Platform on the other hand is a different vertical that focuses on providing solutions to small, medium and large scales business to send and receive WhatsApp messages from their customers.
WhatsApp Business mobile app is one such product that comes under their WhatsApp Business platform. This app is different from the standard WhatsApp app and provides businesses with extra set of features to communicate with their customers. Millions of small business use this mobile app to manage communication with their customers.
Now, apart from the mobile app they also provide programatic solution where you can use their APIs to send and receive messages for your business. These APIs are called WhatsApp Cloud APIs.
WhatsApp Business mobile app is best for small scale businesses that want a simple chat app to talk with their customers. But if you want anything advance like having ability to send thousands of messages at once, sending transactional messages for activities like order placement/form submission on your website, managing chats across your sales, marketing and support team and other advance usages then WhatsApp Cloud APIs is the way to go.
Note that when you want to use your phone number with WhatsApp Business Platform you can opt either for their mobile app or their Cloud API. But you can not use the same number on both the places.
There are 3 different ways you can use the WhatsApp Cloud APIs for sending and receiving WhatsApp messages.
Building a tool in-house – WhatsApp Cloud APIs are open to all businesses. You can hire some developers to integrate the APIs with your website or CRM tool by custom coding it.
Sign up with a Business Service Provider (or BSPs) – BSPs are official WhatsApp partners that provide software tools for you to consume these Cloud APIs. They provide you the software tool for sending and receiving WhatsApp messages so you do not need to build anything yourself. One big downside of working with BSPs is that they act as middle-man between you and WhatsApp APIs and charge you a fortune to use their tools. Not only they charge high monthly fees but they also charge 10 – 15% extra on top of WhatsApp’s standard per-conversation pricing.
Sign up with WANotifier – WANotifier is different as we are not a Business Service Provider. We provide you with a simple to use tool to consume these APIs but with your own API credentials. You full control over the setup, usage and billing of the APIs and we only charge you a small fees to use our tool. You get all the features that you get from a BSP but without the high costs or paying extra on top of WhatsApp’s standard per-conversation pricing.
Get started today by creating your free account.
Meta (the company that owns WhatsApp) provides two different WhatsApp solutions:
WhatsApp Business Platform
WhatsApp is the standard messaging app that is used by billions of people across the globe using their mobile app to chat with friends and family. They also provide WhatsApp Web portal that you can use from your browser.
WhatsApp Business Platform on the other hand is a different vertical that focuses on providing solutions to small, medium and large scales business to send and receive WhatsApp messages from their customers.
WhatsApp Business mobile app is one such product that comes under their WhatsApp Business platform. This app is different from the standard WhatsApp app and provides businesses with extra set of features to communicate with their customers. Millions of small business use this mobile app to manage communication with their customers.
Now, apart from the mobile app they also provide programatic solution where you can use their APIs to send and receive messages for your business. These APIs are called WhatsApp Cloud APIs.
WhatsApp Business mobile app is best for small scale businesses that want a simple chat app to talk with their customers. But if you want anything advance like having ability to send thousands of messages at once, sending transactional messages for activities like order placement/form submission on your website, managing chats across your sales, marketing and support team and other advance usages then WhatsApp Cloud APIs is the way to go.
Note that when you want to use your phone number with WhatsApp Business Platform you can opt either for their mobile app or their Cloud API. But you can not use the same number on both the places.
3 Different Ways to Use WhatsApp Cloud APIs
There are 3 different ways you can use the WhatsApp Cloud APIs for sending and receiving WhatsApp messages.
Building a tool in-house – WhatsApp Cloud APIs are open to all businesses. You can hire some developers to integrate the APIs with your website or CRM tool by custom coding it.
Sign up with a Business Service Provider (or BSPs) – BSPs are official WhatsApp partners that provide software tools for you to consume these Cloud APIs. They provide you the software tool for sending and receiving WhatsApp messages so you do not need to build anything yourself. One big downside of working with BSPs is that they act as middle-man between you and WhatsApp APIs and charge you a fortune to use their tools. Not only they charge high monthly fees but they also charge 10 – 15% extra on top of WhatsApp’s standard per-conversation pricing.
Sign up with WANotifier – WANotifier is different as we are not a Business Service Provider. We provide you with a simple to use tool to consume these APIs but with your own API credentials. You full control over the setup, usage and billing of the APIs and we only charge you a small fees to use our tool. You get all the features that you get from a BSP but without the high costs or paying extra on top of WhatsApp’s standard per-conversation pricing.
Get started today by creating your free account.
Updated on: 12/07/2023
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