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A comment on What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?. Parent comment

Re:What can you use instead of Google and Facebook? by warp on Friday January 24, 2020 @12:19PM (#22140304)
Facebook has an API for whatsapp, which I believe is a closed beta. In theory you could build an app to do this for you, twilio supports this and let's you use a development key even before you get into the beta.

[I expect that's too many hoops for your use case though ;]

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Re:What can you use instead of Google and Facebook? by rapnie on Friday January 24, 2020 @12:52PM (#22140671)
Thx! I found the Business API which is really for partners ( and for SMB's there is the Business app).

https://www.whatsapp.com/business/api

The Twilio API is in beta, and you can sign up. Don't know what pricing will be, but maybe for individual use a dev subscription may be sufficient

https://www.twilio.com/whatsapp

Here is the API reference:

https://www.twilio.com/docs/sms/whatsapp/api

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Re:What can you use instead of Google and Facebook? by ignoramous on Friday January 24, 2020 @01:35PM (#22141104)
Also see: https://www.messagebird.com/en/

Though, getting your own business-API would be cheaper, I've heard WhatsApp is very picky about granting those and instead prefer you work with a third-party partner instead [0].

Then, there's click-to-chat for simpler communication if the client's WA number is known [1].

[0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/26000239/?category=52452...

[1] https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/26000030/?category=52452...

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