15 Differences Between Official Whatsapp Business/Cloud API And Unofficial Alternatives

Have you ever wished you could use WhatsApp to connect with your e-commerce solutions, Facebook Lead ads and more, to automatically send out notifications? Well, now you can! Thanks to the WhatsApp Business APIs, businesses can easily send and receive messages from their customers and clients using the messaging app and create productive automation. Not only is this a great way to keep in touch with your customers and improve the customer experience, but it’s also a great way to stay organized and manage your business with less effort. However, in the market, there are official and unofficial WhatsApp APIs. In this blog post, we’ll be explaining what the WhatsApp Business API does, how it works, why businesses should use it and what are the differences between official and unofficial APIs. If you’re wondering whether the Business API is free or not, or if there are any limitations to its use, read on!

What is the WhatsApp Business API?

WhatsApp is used for communication, meeting, and business purposes. With more users on WhatsApp, people are increasingly wanting to communicate with their favourite businesses conveniently while businesses also wish to reach a larger audience through the platform. This led to the opening of the WhatsApp business API, where businesses can now integrate and automate sending of messages with WhatsApp and their current chatbot, help desk, payment solutions, forms and more for customer support, notifications or marketing purposes.

What are unofficial WhatsApp API Gateway?

Due to the limitations of the official WhatsApp API which will we discuss further in this article, independent developers started to reverse engineer the WhatsApp Web API. This allows not just WhatsApp business accounts to make use of API but personal WhatsApp accounts as well. As WhatsApp Business or Cloud API requires you to use a new number, unofficial WhatsApp API do not, this allows business who do not wish to change their WhatsApp number to be able to make use of WhatsApp API. Without limitations from WhatsApp, this allows more use cases with unofficial WhatsApp API.

How does WhatsApp API work?

API stands for “Application Programming Interface” or ‘Interface. It’s basically a set of software functions and data that enables third party developers to connect things together without or with minimal coding as app developers use an API in order to control other apps with WhatsApp, share complex business logic between their employees and customers automatically. Automatically informing your customers when that you’re unavailable and that you will be replying them during your working hours, connecting to a chatbot for food ordering, qualifying a lead, have multiple support agents to reply to your WhatsApp customer service channel, all these become a reality with WhatsApp API.

Are WhatsApp APIs free?

The official WhatsApp Business API or Cloud API is free for the first 1,000 conversations per month. After these limits are reached, every conversation started by the business or user are both chargeable with different countries being charged differently. As for unofficial WhatsApp API, different providers have different pricing, with most charging a flat fee for a set number of messages a month. Here at WaRespond, our plans start at just $25/mth.

Why should businesses use WhatsApp API?

WhatsApp is a popular messaging app with over 1 billion active users. Its used for everything from staying in touch with friends and family to business communication. It is the most popular messaging platform with only SMS being much more popular than WhatsApp only in the US. WhatsApp API allows businesses to access user profiles, chat logs, and group chat data. This can be used for a variety of purposes, such as real-time customer notifications, lead tracking and customer profiling. Additionally, the API can be used for marketing purposes, such as tracking the effectiveness of messaging campaigns. Overall, the WhatsApp API is a powerful tool that businesses should consider using.

Are there any limitations to using the WhatsApp Business API?

WhatsApp is a messaging app that has gained immense popularity in recent years. It is used for a variety of purposes, including business messaging. The WhatsApp Business API lets you access the messaging features of the app from your app, letting you send messages to your customers and partners easily and quickly. However, there is a huge limitation to the usage of the official WhatsApp Business or Cloud API and that is the 24 hour session limitation. The 24 hour session only allows you to send out approved messages by WhatsApp to customers after the last message sent by them to you. Messages containing marketing content are most unlikely to be approved. Hence, you would not be able to use it for marketing purposes after the first interaction with your customer.

What are the pros and cons of using the official & unofficial API?

There are differences between official WhatsApp API and unofficial API mainly because the former is provided by Meta/WhatsApp directly, while the latter is a reverse engineered API from WhatsApp Web.

Unofficial WhatsApp API

Pros

1. Unofficial WhatsApp API do not need to adhere to any rules or terms of use from WhatsApp Business or Cloud API. It just needs to adhere to the terms of service of WhatsApp
2. You can send out messages after 24 hour session
3. There is no need to submit messages for approval for messages sent out after 24 hour session
4. You do not need to register a new phone number to use unofficial WhatsApp API
5. You do not need to wait for approval from WhatsApp to use the API. You can use it instantly.
6. Unofficial WhatsApp API works with both WhatsApp Business and Personal accounts
7. Most unofficial WhatsApp API comes with other features such as chatbot, shared inbox or bulk sending features

Cons

1. Unofficial WhatsApp API uses one of your device slots as WhatsApp Web in WhatsApp multi-device
2. The stability of unofficial WhatsApp API depends on how the software is being written. Some unofficial WhatsApp API may log itself out due to inactivity.(WaRespond’s WhatsApp API gateway runs scheduled activity to constantly keep your WhatsApp connected)
3. Messaging limits via API is unclear. Some WhatsApp accounts run into trouble at around 500 unique business-initiated conversations(cold messages) per day, some at 5,000 messages per day.
4. API rate limits are also unclear. Generally it is recommended to have a 6 seconds interval between messages, but some up to 1-2mins interval.

Other things to note:

1. It will show your number as online consistently, as it makes use of your WhatsApp Web.

WhatsApp Official API

Pros

1. Official API has 4 different tiers for unique business-initiated conversations with the highest at unlimited initiated conversations. If your business has a high volume of conversations(multiple conversations in less than a minute), such as high volume of eCommerce orders or lead opt-ins then official WhatsApp API would be much suitable.
2. Stable API connection as servers are maintained by WhatsApp and they have plans to implement servers around the world.
3. No disconnection as WhatsApp Business or Cloud API is maintain by WhatsApp directly.

Cons

1. All business-initiated conversations requires WhatsApp approve the message templates before they are allowed to be sent(promotional messages are generally prohibited after 24 hours).
2. As most messages cannot be sent out after 24 hours, there are a lot of limitations on what the official API can achieve, such as not being able to send out appointment reminders, rating or review request messages after customer has receive their order, event reminders and promotional messages.
3. Requires a new phone number to use
4. Requires WhatsApp to approve before API access will be granted.
5. Official API does not work on its own. It does not come with any other features such as chatbot, shared inbox or bulk sending. You need to integrate it with your other solutions.

Other things to note:

1. WhatsApp official API only works with WhatsApp Business accounts.

For both APIs, there are no rate limiting for incoming messages.

Which WhatsApp API should I get?

Because of the limitations of official WhatsApp API, I would recommend all small business owners to large businesses to consider using unofficial API. And when your unique business-initiated conversations gets too large, you can consider using official WhatsApp API for notifications and unofficial API for marketing and customer support purposes.

How can I get access to Unofficial WhatsApp API?

Here at WaRespond, we provide unofficial WhatsApp API gateway along with chatbot, bulk sending and autoresponder features. We also support button and list messages through bulk messages, chatbot messages and API. Sign up for our free trial to get access today!

How can I get access to Official WhatsApp API?

You can access official WhatsApp API by getting in touch with any WhatsApp Business Solution Provider(BSP) such as Twilio, WATI or Dialog360 or directly with Meta through their Cloud API. Prices throughout all BSPs and Meta are the same.

Conclusion

Most of the countries around the world have WhatsApp as the most widely used messaging app. As a business owner, by not communicating with your customers via WhatsApp you are missing out on many revenue opportunities as well as enhancing the customer experience with your brand. By allowing customers to reach their favourite businesses through the comfort of their phone, makes the purchasing experience much more convenient and personal. However, managing your entire business just through messaging with humans is not possible. We need to make use of integrations and automations to reduce man hours and provide a better customer experience as well as achieving more sales through WhatsApp.

Start your free trial with WaRespond today.