Keep the WhatsApp Business app, add the API

Coexistence is Meta’s name for a WhatsApp Business app number that is also connected to the Cloud API. Nothing moves and nothing is re-registered: the phone keeps the number, the chats and the business profile, and Meta starts delivering the same conversations to the software you authorised as well.

A message a customer sends reaches both. A reply you type on the phone appears in ChatBridge24, marked as sent from the phone, and a reply a colleague sends from ChatBridge24 appears on the phone. Your customers see the same number and the same name they always have.

It is the answer for the business that grew up on the app — the number is on every card, every sign and every customer’s phone — and now needs several people to answer it, or a system to send on it, without giving up the app.

• Your contacts. Every contact in the app that has a WhatsApp number is imported.
• Six months of chats, if you allow it. The most recent six months of one-to-one conversations are imported, so the history is there when a colleague opens a chat for the first time. Meta allows this request once, within 24 hours of connecting; ChatBridge24 makes it for you automatically.
• Photos and files from the last 14 days. Meta sends the files for recent media only. Anything older stays on the phone, and the imported message says so instead of showing an empty attachment.
• Everything from then on. Messages customers send, replies from ChatBridge24 and replies typed on the phone all arrive in the inbox as they happen.

The import runs in the background and does not disturb anyone: imported conversations are history, not new unread messages, and nothing is pushed into a CRM as new traffic.

What you type in the WhatsApp Business app stays free, as it always has been, and it is not bound by the 24-hour customer service window.

Messages sent from ChatBridge24 travel through the Cloud API and are charged by Meta like any other platform message: per message, by category and market. Free-text replies inside the 24-hour window are service messages, and each number gets 1,000 of those free a month. The details, with the dates that matter, are on WhatsApp Business API pricing.

On our side the number is billed like any other connected number: per number, with no seat charge — see ChatBridge24 pricing.

• 20 messages per second. Meta fixes the throughput of a coexistence number at 20 messages a second. A number on the platform alone starts at 80 and can grow.
• The history import happens once. If sharing was declined in the app, earlier chats are not imported later; new messages arrive normally.
• The phone is part of the setup. Re-registering the number on a new phone, or moving it to the ordinary WhatsApp app, disconnects it from the platform.
• A message only the phone can show. Now and then a customer sends something the Cloud API cannot carry. ChatBridge24 shows that it arrived and that it can be read on the phone, rather than hiding it.

Choose coexistence when the number is already known to your customers, the owner still answers some chats from the phone, and the volume of automated sending is modest. Nobody has to learn a new number and the app keeps working.

Choose a dedicated number on the platform alone when several people answer all day, campaigns and a WhatsApp chatbot send at volume, or nobody should depend on one phone being switched on. It has the higher throughput and no phone to keep active. The WhatsApp Business API page explains how a number gets onto it.