General

Can I use HaberChat to send marketing messages?

As you may know, WhatsApp has strict policies about sending unsolicited marketing messages, illigit content or spam.

Sending marketing or any unsolicited messages to users is not allowed and you would put you WhatsApp number in a high risk of getting banned.

WhatsApp communication is not suitable for all business cases, so we recommend to design a legit and user-approved communication strategy in order to avoid any problems.

Please read our guidelines with communication best practices and how to prevent getting banned.

Can I use HaberChat for chatbots?

Yes, you can build your own chatbot with our API and webhooks. In order to do so, you need to subscribe to any Platform plan that would allow you to implement chatbots on top of the API.

Please be aware that we don't provide chatbots as a service and that we can't provide technical assistance on this subject.

About data security and privacy

All the information is encrypted and safely transferred across the network using enterprise-grade standard HTTPS TLS v1.2+ and subsequently stored, with no exception, in encrypted datastores hosted in one of the most reputable cloud providers: Google Cloud.

All cloud infrastructure and servers are running in Europe and US, within private networks with layered perimetral security and isolated access from remote sources.

All cloud providers and datastores are compliant with the most demanding security certifications such as ISO/IEC 27001:2013.

In terms of privacy and terms of service, all processed information is strictly processed within the required service offering scope and never used for any other purpose. We take very seriously the privacy and confidentiality of our clients and users.

API & Webhooks

What programming languages can I use for the API integration?

You can essentially use any programming language that can perform HTTPS requests to remote servers.

This also includes command-line tools such as cURL, httpie, and graphical tools like Postman.

Is there any SDK or dependency required to use the API?

Absolutely not, the API is very simple to use with no SDK requirements or external dependencies.

This makes the API easy to integrate with any existing software, CMS, CRM, ERP, etc.

Please check out the API documentation for more details and ready-to-use code examples.

From where can I obtain the API code examples?

Please check out the API documentation and select the ready-to-use code example in the desired language.

We provide code examples for most common languages and CLI tools, such as JavaScript, Node.js, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, C#, Swift, Go and more.

Is the webhook device specific? Can I assign one device to one webhook or all devices share one webhook?

You can create webhooks and assign them to all devices or to one device only. If you have, for instance, 3 devices and you want it to affect only 2 of them, you can create 2 webhooks and link them to those 2 devices.

How to validate if a phone number can receive WhatsApp messages?

You can validate if a given phone number is linked to a WhatsApp account and there can receive messages.

The API provides an endpoint that can validate whether a given phone number does exists in WhatsApp or not.

The only requirement is to have at least one WhatsApp number connected to the platform in your current account.

For more details, please check out the API endpoint documentation here.

WhatsApp number checks are limits per plan

WhatsApp number check validations are limited per month based on your subscription plan.

Please check out the pricing table for more details about the limits.

Before you check if phone number does exists on WhatsApp, you can also validate and normalize the format of a list of phone numbers by using the numbers validator API endpoint. This endpoint only validates the correct E164 format, but it does not check whether if the phone number effectivly exists on WhatsApp or not.

How can I validate phone numbers?

We provide the Number validator API endpoint that allows you to validate the E164 format up to 500 phone numbers per API request. This API endpoint has no limit and can be called with no additional cost.

Please note this validation only does validate of the given phone number format is valid or not, but it will not validate whether it's linked or not to an existing WhatsApp account.

For WhatsApp numbers existing validation please check the article below.

How can I validate if a phone number exists in WhatsApp?

You can validate whether a given phone number exists in WhatsApp or not, and therefore can receive messages in WhatsApp, by using the Number exists API endpoint.

Please note you must have at least one WhatsApp number connected to the platform in order to perform the validation.

Billing

What payment methods do you accept?

You can pay via debit or credit card. We currently accept all major brands, including Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, etc. Once you insert your card details in your account, our payment partner Stripe will automatically charge the amount due every 30 days.

Are payments safe?

Absolutely. We use Stripe for payments, one of the most solid and secure payment solution in the industry.

Also, we DO NOT store any card information because of privary and law regulations. Everything is exclusively sent and store in Stripe.

Do price include taxes?

Prices don't include taxes by default.

Countries outside European Union are tax free. If you operate in some European Union country and do not have a registered VAT number, we would have to add on top of the given price the proper tax applicable to your home country in the invoice. This tipically represents from 17% to 27% of additional cost due to taxes, depending on each country.

If I upgrade or downgrade my plan, is the change immediate?

Yes, the change from one plan to another is immediate. The price difference between one plan and another would be automatically prorated over time by Stripe. In other words, Stripe autonomously and automatically calculates the days in which one plan and another have been used and would balance the total credits on the following invoice.

What happens when I hit a limit for my plan?

If you hit the maximum number of text/media messages or the size of your media message is bigger than the one permitted by your plan, the system won't let you send the message(s) that exceed the limit and you will receive a notification by email. You won't be charged anything unless you proactively upgrade your plan.

WhatsApp

Do I need a WhatsApp Business account?

Our system works exactly the same whether you have a Personal or a Business WhatsApp account.

Can I customize the image, name and description of my WhatsApp profile?

Yes, you can do this via API.

Can I see when a WhatsApp contact is online on your platform?

This information is not available on HaberChat. If you need to know whether a contact in online you can check it directly on WhatsApp.

Numbers

Can I change my WhatsApp number in my existing device?

Sure thing, you can do it at any time in a few minutes. To do so, you don't need to delete your device and create a new one. All you need to do is to scan your new number. More info in this article.

If I change number do I lose my chats in HaberChat?

No, you won't lose your chats if you change the phone number of your device.

Messages

Can I send multimedia messages both via API and web chat?

Yes, you can send media messages, including images, videos, emojis, audios, gifs, geographic locations and file documents by API and web chat.

What type of media files can be sent?

You can send images (JPEG, PNG, WEBP), videos (MP4, 3GPP), audios (MP3, OGG, MP4, ACC), gifs (MP4) and documents (PDF, PPT, PPTX, DOCX, DOC, ZIP, RAR, other binary types).

Check out the API documentation for more details.

What's the maximum file size per media type?

These are the maximum sizes allowed per file type:

  • Image - 5MB
  • Audio - 16MB
  • Video - 30MB
  • Document - 30MB

Note that the maximum file size only applies to the Enterprise plan, Business and Professional plans have smaller file sizes.

Check out the plans table comparison for more details about the specific plan limits.

Is there a limit of characters in a message? What happens if I exceed it?

Yes, there's a limit of 6000 characters per message. If you exceed it, the system will not let you send the message and you'll receive an error.

Do failed messages increase the sent limit messages?

No, failed messages (ie: messages sent to non-existing numbers) don't count as sent so they won't raise your total number of sent messages.

Can I send buttons or list messages?

Yes you can 😀

For more information, please check out the following tutorials:

Additionally, you can easily send buttons message using the live API tester:

Note that sending buttons and list messages is currently only supported for messages sent via API.

Some restrictions apply to buttons and list messages:

  1. You cannot send special buttons with link URL or phone number call actions to group chats, only individual user chats.
  2. You cannot send button or list messages as the first message that initiates a new conversation with a third-party user.
  3. Instead, use a text message as first message, then following by a second message that might be a button or list message.

Can I send messages to broadcast lists created on WhatsApp?

Unfortunately sending messages to the broadcast list is not supported.

The alternatives are:

  1. Send messages 1-to-1 to individual user phone numbers.

  2. Send messages to group chats you belong to.

Note that when sending messages to group chats, all participants in the group will receive them.

You can also create read-only group chats on WhatsApp where only the administrators can send messages, whereas the rest of the participants can only receive and read the messages. Although, there is a limitation: this solution does not prevent participants to see each other's phone numbers, so if you want to enforce privacy, use 1-to-1 private messages.

What does the message priority refer to?

Message priority only affects messages that are sent via API or the console (not the web chat). If you send one or more messages from the API or from the console (s/messages/create), you can establish a priority that can be low, normal, high or urgent. This hierarchy will determine which messages will be sent first in case they are queued.

This feature is especially useful when sending several messages from the API. If you have, for instance, 30 messages in the queue and 10 of them have urgent priority, those will be the first ones to be sent.

Can I send messages across multiple connected WhatsApp numbers?

Yes, you can. When sending messages, you can specify the target WhatsApp number you want to use to deliver the messages.

From the API, this can be simply done by adding an additional field in the JSON body data called device with the WhatsApp number device ID connected to the platform. This ID is constant and does not change.

How to send messages to multiple phone numbers

You can do it by simply sending multiple API requests, one per target phone number and message.

For instance, if you want to send a message to 10 phone numbers, you should send 10 independent HTTPS requests to the API.

There is no option to send multiple messages in a single API request.

Important: sending bulk messages is not encouraged

Is the message delivery speed included in my plan always guaranteed? Are there any factors that can influence it?

Message delivery speed depends on several factors that are not all under our control, therefore we cannot guarantee that such speed is always achieved. In addition to that, please take into consideration that the message delivery speed stated in our pricing section refers to text only messages.

Message delivery speed depend primarily on these factors:

  • Your current plan
  • Your internet speed
  • The type of message (e.g.: text only, video, audio, ecc.)
  • The number of messages that you're sending at the same time
  • The message delivery speed that you have set in your device settings (e.g.: 15 messages per minute, etc.)

Chat

If I have multiple devices, will all appear on one chat page or do I have to switch multiple tabs?

If you have 2 or more devices and go to the web chat, you'll be asked what device (WhatsApp number) you want to use. If you need to have them all open at the same time, you can just open them in different tabs in your browser.

If you are subscribed to a Platform plan and, therefore, have several agents that have access to the chat, you can grant them access to more than one device by adding them to every device that you need them to use. When they log in with their credentials, they will see the same window described before where they will be asked to choose among all the devices to which they have access. Again, if they need to have them all open at the same time, they can open every device in a different tab of their browser.

I need more agents than the ones included in my plan, how can I add more?

If you have a Platform Professional or Business plan, you need to upgrade your plan in order to be able to add a higher number of agents.

On the other hand, if you have a Platform Enterprise plan and you need more than 10 agents, you can add individual additional agents for $18 USD per agent per month.

For more details, please check the pricing table.

What are metadata and how are they different from labels?

Glad you asked :)

The metadata field is where you can add all the additional data that is related to your customer. An example is always the best way to explain it: does your customer have an alphanumeric ID in your CRM? You can put it there. Has your customer bought something and you have an order shipping number? You can add it to their metadata.

Metadata are, generally speaking, unique data related to one customer, whereas labels are there for you to create general categories that can apply to more than one contact. For instance: "sales", "high priority customer", "b2b", etc.

Is there a maximum number of messages per chat that are stored in HaberChat?

HaberChat stores a maximum of 1000 messages per chat. Once this figure is reached, oldest messages will be deleted.

Can I use a direct URL to open a new chat?

Yes, sure you can!

In order to open a chat, whether it is an existing one, or a new one on WhatsApp, you can use the following URL:

https://https://app.haber.chat/open/PHONE_NUMBER

Where PHONE_NUMBER represents a target user phone number with international country prefix. E.g: +123456789

Troubleshooting

My device is not performing well. What are the typical causes for this?

There are several factors that could be detrimental to your device's performance. Here are a few ones:

  • Speed / stability of your internet connection
  • Hardware capacity of your physical device
  • Low battery of your physical device
  • High number of open chats or groups (1000+ and 50+ respectively)
  • Sending a high number of heavy media files

If you're experiencing issues with the performance of your device, please check that all these parameters are looking good. If you still have problems, you can get in touch with us and we'll be more than happy to look into it.

Will I get a notification in case my device is not operative?

Yes, as soon as your device gets in an non-operative status you will receive an automatic email.

Account

If I have more than one WhatsApp number, can I connect them all to HaberChat?

You can connect as many numbers as you want in one account, however, please remind that you need to create one device for each number and that each device has its own plan. So, if you have 2 numbers, you will need to create 2 devices and subscribe to 2 plans.

I chose the wrong plan while creating my trial device, so I need to delete it and create it again. Can I do it without having to pay?

Yes, you have 1 day to delete and create again a device with a new plan without having to pay for the subscription plan. Within this grace period of 24 hours you can create up to 3 devices, one at a time of course.

Is there a limit to the number of open chats that I can have on my WhatsApp account?

Having more than 1000 open chats may cause performance issues in your delivery speed and message processing. If you have more than 1000 open chats, please consider activating the Automatic chat clean up or remove them manually.

Important: it is fundamental that you actually delete the chats that are no longer needed. Please be aware that archiving chats is not the same and deleting them and it will not help your device performing better.

If you still want to retrieve your old chats at some point, we recommend doing a back up. Please find below the direct link to WhatsApp help pages to back up to Google Drive (for Android phones) and to iCloud (for iPhones):

You can find further information in this article