Three private businesses sharing a signboard

A tile dealer’s most valuable customer list usually lives on one salesperson’s phone. When he leaves, it leaves with him — the enquiries, the follow-ups, the sir kal call karta hoon. Nobody at the company can see what was promised, to whom, or when.

This is not a discipline problem. It is what happens when a business runs on personal WhatsApp accounts. And if three people are answering enquiries on three different numbers, you do not have a sales process. You have three private businesses sharing a signboard.

Does the free Business app fix it?

No, and it is worth knowing exactly where it stops, because most dealers discover the limits after building a process around it.

One phone, four linked devices. That is the ceiling on how many people can work the account. For a showroom with a counter, a projects desk and two field staff, it runs out quickly.

Broadcast lists cap at 256 contacts. A dealer with eight hundred customers is managing four lists by hand and sending four times.

And this is the one that matters. A broadcast is delivered only to people who have saved your number in their phone. Everyone else is skipped silently — the app does not tell you who, or how many. A tile customer who bought once, two years ago, almost certainly never saved you. So the send completes, the report looks fine, and a large share of the list never received anything.

That is worse than a hard limit, because a hard limit is visible. This one lets you believe the campaign worked.

What does the API change?

Three things, in order of how much they matter to a distribution business.

The conversation can belong to the company. One number connects to a shared inbox or CRM, so several people work from a central record rather than each keeping their own. The API makes that possible; the record itself comes from whatever system you connect to it. When the salesperson leaves, the relationship stays — and that alone is why most dealers eventually move.

Messages can be sent by a system rather than a person. Dispatch updates from your order data, payment reminders from your ledger, scheme balances from wherever they live. Nobody is copying a vehicle number from one screen into WhatsApp.

The saved-number requirement is different. Unlike an app broadcast, messages sent through the Business Platform do not depend on the customer having saved your number. They do still depend on the customer having given permission to receive WhatsApp messages from you — having someone’s number is not the same as being allowed to message them.

What does it actually cost?

Two components, and it is worth understanding both before comparing quotes.

Meta charges per message, with the rate depending on the message category and the recipient’s country. Those rates change, so we do not reproduce them here — Meta publishes them, and that is the only source worth relying on. Your provider then charges a platform fee for the software your team actually uses.

One change to factor in if you are costing this now. Until 1 October 2026, replies and utility templates sent inside an open 24-hour customer service window were free. From that date both are charged, and service became a fourth billable message category. Meta sets this out in its pricing explainer, published alongside the platform pricing documentation.

Some providers additionally describe a monthly allowance of free service messages per phone number. That does not appear in Meta’s explainer, so we would not plan around it — if a provider quotes you a cost that depends on one, ask them to point at the Meta page that states it. We have covered the change in full here.

The reason it matters: if most of your intended use is support conversations rather than campaigns, a change to in-window pricing affects your running cost far more than the headline rates do. Worth establishing before you sign anything — we have set out what is confirmed and what is not in is WhatsApp about to start charging for support replies?

What limits still apply?

The API is not unlimited sending, and dealers who expect it to be are disappointed in the first week.

The portfolio row is the one that surprises people. Adding a second number does not give the business a second independent messaging allowance — the portfolio limit is shared across the phone numbers in that portfolio.

What would a dealer actually use it for?

The uses that pay for themselves are unglamorous and mostly inbound-reducing.

Dispatch updates. “Your order has left, vehicle number, expected tomorrow.” Removes the call your team answers all day.

Following up a showroom visit. The customer who took an estimate and left. A message three days later referencing the actual product, sent from a record rather than from someone’s memory.

Payment reminders. Neutral, automatic, and not attached to a relationship — which is exactly why they work better than the call nobody wants to make.

Sub-dealer and retailer communication. Stock availability, scheme balances, new collections. This audience will not install an app and will read a WhatsApp message.

Campaigns are the use everyone starts with and the one with the least reliable return. The channel earns its cost on the operational messages first.

Who should not bother?

A single counter with one salesperson answering everything. The free app does that job, at no cost, and adding message charges and a platform fee to solve a problem you do not have is a poor trade.

Also anyone whose real problem is that nothing is written down. If enquiries are not being recorded anywhere today, the API will record them faster and you will still not follow them up. That is a process to fix first, and it costs nothing.

The honest test is the one at the top of this article. Count the numbers your customers are messaging. If it is more than one, and the company cannot see any of those conversations, that is the problem worth solving — and it is not really a WhatsApp problem at all.

Common questions

Can we keep our existing WhatsApp number?

Often, yes — and this changed recently enough that older advice is misleading. Since 2025 Meta has supported an arrangement it calls Coexistence, which lets an eligible WhatsApp Business app number connect to the Business Platform while the app continues to be used, with eligible recent chat history able to sync during onboarding. Eligibility, the onboarding route and which features remain available all vary, so check the current options with your provider rather than assuming your number will migrate without restrictions.

How long does it take to get running?

Business verification through Meta is the variable and usually the longest part — it depends on your documentation. Start it first rather than last.

Will our dealers and customers object to automated messages?

Not to useful ones. A dispatch update is welcome; a third promotional message in a week is not, and repeated unwanted messages can lead to blocks or reports. That kind of recipient feedback can affect your messaging quality and your ability to scale.

Do we still need the salesperson’s personal number?

For their own relationships, they will keep using it whatever you decide. The point is not to stop that — it is that the company’s enquiries arrive somewhere the company can see, so nothing depends on one handset.

Information checked: September 2026. WhatsApp platform rules and pricing change regularly. Confirm current limits, pricing and onboarding options with Meta or your provider before making a decision on them.

More on this: Business App vs API and what businesses actually use the API for. See also WhatsApp Business API.