WhatsApp Business API & Chatbot Setup

The free app runs on one phone with no automation and no CRM connection. The API is a cloud service: multiple agents on one number, chatbot flows, template broadcasts, and two-way sync with your systems. You cannot run the same number on both, so moving to the API means deleting the app account first. That migration is worth planning around. If the number printed on your signage and invoices is currently on the Business app, we schedule the switch so you are not offline during business hours, and export the existing chat history before it goes.

Usually a few working days once your documents are in order, though the timeline sits with Meta rather than with us. Number registration and display name review tend to move quickly. Business Manager verification is the slow step, and it stalls most often when the GST certificate, CIN, or utility bill does not match the registered entity name exactly. The green tick, or official business account status, is a separate application judged on brand notability. It can take considerably longer and is never guaranteed. Your API works fully without it.

There are two recurring costs plus a one-time build. Meta charges per message and prices by template category, so marketing messages cost meaningfully more than utility and authentication ones, while customer-initiated service conversations are the cheapest lever you have. On top of that sits a platform or provider subscription for the inbox and automation layer. Meta revises these rates periodically, so we model your expected monthly volume against current published rates before you commit to a plan. Our setup, chatbot build and integration work is quoted to scope, like every Convertrix engagement.

No, and any vendor selling you that is selling you a ban. Templates sent to numbers that never opted in push your block-and-report rate up, your quality rating drops toward red, and Meta responds by cutting your messaging limit or disabling the number outright. Opt-in has to be collected and logged. A list you can actually message gets built from click-to-WhatsApp ads, a website chat widget, QR codes at your counter, checkout consent, and IVR deflection. Slower to grow, and it survives.

No. DLT registration governs SMS and voice traffic through Indian telecom operators. WhatsApp does not touch that pipeline. Compliance here runs entirely through Meta's messaging and commerce policies: documented opt-in, approved template content, honest category selection, and a healthy quality rating. Businesses routinely delay launch waiting on a step that was never required. What does apply is consent hygiene under India's data protection rules, plus a working opt-out path. We wire both in from the start rather than retrofitting them after a complaint.

Yes. Templates can be submitted and approved in Hindi, Odia, Bengali and other languages, and the bot can branch on language from the first reply. In practice most Tier-2 and Tier-3 buyers type Hinglish in Roman script, which breaks naive keyword matching, so the flow design matters more than the translation. We keep menus button-driven rather than free-text wherever possible. Buttons remove spelling and script from the equation entirely, and they give you cleaner data on what people actually want.