The WhatsApp Business app: advantages, disadvantages, risks and who it is for

The WhatsApp Business app is free, installs like any other, and is the right option for the overwhelming majority of businesses. It is not the API, it charges nothing per message, and it has no conversation cap.

For

What it brings What that is worth
A business profile Address, hours, category and website, visible to anyone opening the conversation. It is credibility for free.
Greeting and away messages The feature that pays most. It answers out of hours and avoids the impression of abandonment.
Quick replies Shortcuts for price, address and hours. It saves hours a week for whoever answers.
Labels New, awaiting payment, delivered. It is the minimum organisation that stops orders being lost.
A catalogue Products with photo and price inside the app, with a link per product.

Against

1 It is an app, with one main phone. It still depends on a device, and on that device having battery.
2 It was not built for several people answering at once. You can link devices, but with a real team the limit shows.
3 It does not connect to your system. No automatic order confirmation comes out of here.
4 No real reporting. You know how many messages you exchanged, not how much they sold.

Risks

1 The usual ones: writing to people who did not ask blocks the account, whichever version you use — see the risks and the practices that avoid them.
2 Broadcast lists mislead. They are this app's sending tool and carry a limitation that changes everything — see broadcast lists, groups and channels.
3 The catalogue is not found on Google. It lives inside WhatsApp; people who do not know you never reach it — see being found on Google.
4 It is still a number, not a company. Lose it and you lose the history and the list.

Who for

For practically every small and medium business where one or two people serve customers. A shop, a restaurant, a clinic, a workshop, a consultant, a craftsperson. If you are torn between this and the API, it is almost certainly this.

Migrating loses nothing. Installing Business on the same phone lets you migrate the account and its history. Do it with the phone charged, without hurry, and confirm the backup before starting.

From here, the next step is not the API — it is getting WhatsApp to receive contacts from the site, see putting WhatsApp on your site. The API only pays off with a team or a system, and for that see the Cloud API: advantages, disadvantages and cost.

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