The WhatsApp Business app is a standalone application for small to medium sized business. It allows companies to engage with their customers as they would through the standard WhatsApp app. While it’s powerful in that small companies can communicate with customers with no-coding for simple questions, answers, and even orders, it lacks customization and scalability.
The WhatsApp Business API allows growing companies to send larger volumes of requests and opens up the possibility of integrating with other systems including customer relationship software, automating business processes (E.g. Flowbuilder) and requires some coding knowledge.
Once you have decided to switch to the WhatsApp Business API with a number that is already linked to WhatsApp Business Account there are a couple things you need to know.
- Once a phone number has been migrated (Please follow the Migration steps in this Phone Numbers Migration article. You can skip the 1,2 and 8 steps) from WhatsApp Business all chat history will be lost. If you would like to retain this history you will need to back up this data prior to the migration.
- Once a phone number has been linked to the WhatsApp API you will not be able to use this number again with WhatsApp Business even if you no longer want to use the API or Inbox.