Pick your pill

Our app uses official WhatsApp integration. But some of you might wonder, why do we explicitly state everywhere about that?

Lets start from the end goals. Meta offers different types of features for business owners who uses WhatsApp for business, along with different target audiences and usage of those features. The usefulness depends on many aspects within the business type. The offerings include: templates, flows, catalog, commerce(for instagram), analytics, marketing, etc. And current main urge that our customers face - is a need of a non-blocking bulk campaigns. This leads to two choices: an official integration with all the benefits, or an unofficial one that claims to offer the same benefits at a lower price, but carries a high risk of getting banned. Additionally, some "providers" claim to offer official integrations when they actually don't.

Official VS non-official

In a reality there is no real benefit using unofficial providers. Here is a quick breakdown:

	Official	Non-official
Blocking rate	Might happen (Usually occurs if the business previously used an unofficial provider that hid traffic, or if they send bulk campaigns without respecting Meta's limits. Typically results in a 24h ban.)	Happens a lot
Templates/flows/catalogs/other api feats	Yes	No
Bulk campaigns	Yes	Yes

Many business owners picks unofficial providers primarily because of false advertisement of the goods, which still lead to high prices, high expectations with no real benefit. One of our clients spent 6 months figuring out how to verify business, paying each month to non-official provider (that has huge brand presence by the way), they were rotating 6 accounts with 50 bulk messages every week with block/unblock loop on each iteration.

On the other hand, another client chose us to get "their hands dirty." After running just three bulk campaigns reaching about 1,500 people overall, they received a blue tick on their WhatsApp Business account.

How to spot an imposter

Almost no non-official provider will proudly state about that. Some of them even offer both official and non-official way of doing things, and almost all of them are clients of official providers. Its like an onion. They offer to end customer price that is wrapped on top of official provider price they use.

I will write the ‘leaked’ spots that are common for non-officials:

Unofficials	reality check
Charge per message sent within active conversations, sometimes offering a milestone like 500 free messages.	Messages within active conversations are free. Meta does not limit the number of messages you can send within an ongoing 24-hour conversation window. However, some restrictions apply to "AI Providers"
Bulk message prices are heavily marked up.	Well, some of officials does that too. Here is the link for official pricing.
Claiming you can use app features on their web platform. (Voice/video calls, group chats, broadcast lists, etc., while keeping your WhatsApp Business mobile app working).	You cannot. Even in co-existence mode. Officialy there are 2 modes: 1. Co-existence: Keep your device and use the provider (but without the listed features). 2. Cloud API: Use all features on the provider, but lose access to the device.
No Instagram integration.	Meta owns both WhatsApp and Instagram. Why wouldn't they support Instagram? They can even share the same webhook to synchronize your marketing flows.
You don’t own your phone number. If you drop the unofficial provider, you lose all your contacts, leads, and communication.	They cannot force a business to give up ownership of its number. If a business opts out of one provider to move to another, they keep their data. Providers can pre-create numbers, but the business will always own that number.
You don’t own your business account. Hybrid providers often create accounts for clients, keep the credentials, and give nothing back.	Official providers have limited access to business accounts to help during onboarding, but the account completely belongs to the business owner, along with all its benefits.
Claiming "There are no limits."	There are limits to almost everything, depending on the company and brand presence on Meta. If you maintain good practices and work with official providers, your limits will grow fast AF.
Charging expensive fees for a blue badge.	Blue badges are fixed price. To get one, a business just needs to work properly with its provider and customers, maintaining high-quality messages and engagement. Then subscribe and you will get one.

We are Airi.chat, and we love doing things right. We also love writing docs that will eventually become "official."