One WhatsApp inbox for your whole team, on the number you already have

What breaks when you outgrow the free WhatsApp Business app

The free app is built for one owner with one phone, and it does that job well. It starts to creak the day a second person needs to answer the same number. Here is what owners hit, roughly in the order they hit it.

• One account, one login. Linked devices let a few people open the same chat list, but everyone sees the same screen. Nobody owns a conversation, so two staff answer the same customer or neither does.
• No assignment. There is no way to mark a chat as Fathima's. The queue lives in somebody's head, or in a staff group full of forwarded screenshots.
• No notes. What a patient explained on Monday exists only in the memory of whoever read it.
• History sits on a handset. When the receptionist resigns, two years of customer conversations leave with the phone.
• Nothing connects. No API, no webhooks, no way to push an enquiry into your own software.

Sending is limited too. Broadcast lists stop at 256 contacts and reach only people who have saved your number. That cap, and what replaces it, is covered on broadcasts.

Assignment, tags, notes and a history that stays put

A shared inbox is a work queue with a memory. Four things do most of the work, and they are the four the free app does not have.

• Assignment. A conversation is handed to one person. The rest of the team can still see it, but one name is answerable for the reply.
• Tags. Label a chat "new enquiry", "awaiting payment" or "Malayalam", then filter the inbox to that label when you sit down to clear it.
• Internal notes. Comments on the conversation that your team can read and the customer never sees. "Wants the 6 p.m. slot, allergic to penicillin."
• Full conversation history. Every message the business has exchanged with that number stays in the workspace, whoever typed it and whenever they left.

History is the one that matters most. A customer who messaged in March is the same customer in September, and whoever answers in September can read March without asking anybody. The same inbox is where a chatbot hands a conversation over when it runs out of answers.

6 seats on Standard, 20 on Premium, nothing extra inside those

Seats are where WhatsApp platforms get expensive without looking expensive. The plan price is what you compare. The per-user fee is what you actually pay after the third hire.

Zappio Standard includes 6 seats and Premium includes 20, and nothing is charged per user inside those. The fourth login on Standard and the twentieth on Premium cost nothing. Past the included count an extra seat is ₹400/month, or you move up a plan, which is usually the cheaper move. Standard is ₹4,000/month on a yearly term, or ₹5,000/month billed quarterly, plus 18% GST.

The seat counts and per-user fees below are as displayed on each provider's public pricing page, checked on 12 September 2026. Names identify their products, and prices change, so please re-check before you buy.

Wati's Growth plan is $69/month billed monthly, or $59/month on a yearly term. This table is about seats rather than plan prices, so check Wati's own page for its Pro and Business rates. The full provider comparison, including what each one adds on top of Meta's message rate, is on pricing.

Work it through for a twelve-person team. On a plan with 5 seats and $39 per extra user, seven more logins add $273 a month before a single message is sent, and that repeats every month. On Zappio Premium those twelve people sit inside the 20 seats, at ₹8,000/month on a yearly term, or ₹10,000/month billed quarterly, plus 18% GST.

Meta's per-message charges sit on top of any plan; you pay them to Meta directly, and we add no markup. What each kind of message costs is on what WhatsApp messages cost.

Three channels, one screen

WhatsApp, Instagram direct messages and Facebook Messenger land in the same inbox on Standard and above. They are assigned, tagged and answered by the same people, in the same queue.

Somebody sends your Instagram account a direct message at 9 p.m., and it sits beside your WhatsApp chats instead of in an app nobody has opened since Friday.

One caveat is worth stating plainly. Instagram and Messenger are Meta channels with their own messaging windows and rules. They are not a second WhatsApp, and a template written for WhatsApp is not reusable there.

What a handover looks like on a Tuesday

Here is how a two-receptionist clinic in Kochi would run a Tuesday on it.

At 9 a.m. the morning receptionist opens the inbox and filters to unassigned. A dozen or so messages arrived overnight, and most were already answered by the automation with clinic timings and the fee for a cleaning. She takes the few that need a person, assigns one to herself, checks the slot a patient wants to move to, replies, and tags the chat "rescheduled".

At 2 p.m. she leaves. Before she goes she reassigns her open conversations to the afternoon receptionist and adds a note on each: "Waiting for the X-ray, do not book until it arrives." The afternoon shift opens the same inbox, sees those chats in her own name, and reads the note before typing a word. The patient sees one number and a reply that knows what they said in the morning.

The same structure is what protects you when somebody leaves. A Calicut coaching centre would keep its admissions conversations in the workspace rather than on the counsellor's phone, so the seat is a login and the history is not hers to take. Her replacement opens the same chats on day one and reads what each parent was promised about fees and batch timings.

How you move across

Moving takes a day, not a project. We create the workspace, connect the number your customers already have, sit with you through Meta's verification and send the logins on WhatsApp. There is no setup fee and no migration fee, and you keep the number, with no new SIM.

Two practical notes about the move itself. Message history in the free app sits on the handset and does not transfer into an API account, so export or keep the chats you need before you switch. And once the number is on the API it is answered in Zappio rather than in the WhatsApp Business app, which is the change you are paying for.

Every term, seat count and allowance sits side by side on pricing, and Enterprise is quoted for your business. Gulf businesses are invoiced in dirhams or US dollars from India as a zero-rated export, so no Indian GST is added, though tax in your own country still applies. Plans are priced per currency rather than converted at the till. Get set up free in 24 hours.

Questions people ask