WhatsApp Brings Its Business API To The Cloud

WhatsApp will today begin beta testing a new, cloud-based version of its WhatsApp Business API, hosted on parent company Facebook’s infrastructure. With the shift to the cloud, the setup time for integrating with the API will drop from weeks to only minutes, the company claims, so businesses can more quickly transition to WhatsApp’s API platform to communicate with their customers who have opted in to receive their messages.

Businesses today pay WhatsApp on a per-message basis, with rates that vary based on the number of messages sent and region.

This older version of the API will continue to be supported and WhatsApp doesn’t have any current plans to force them to shift over to the new cloud-based version at this time. Both APIs are free to use. The Cloud API is arriving in a limited beta starting today with select partners who will be onboarding their first clients in the days ahead.