WhatsApp inbox without the official Business API

You are in the right place if WhatsApp today is the app on one or more phones, and the pain is practical. Too many numbers. Too many WhatsApp Web tabs. A desk number that only one person can answer because they are holding the phone. A client line that should never be mixed with another client. You want to read and reply in a browser, invite a colleague to a specific number, and see which line is busy.

You are in the wrong place if a partner, a marketplace, or a compliance rule says the traffic must go through the official WhatsApp Business Platform. Chato will not register a WhatsApp Business Account, will not get a template approved, and will not give you a phone-free Cloud API endpoint that sends WhatsApp messages. Buying Chato does not unlock that. If that is the requirement, stop here and use a provider that is actually on the official API.

The teams that fit are usually small enough that a shared session is acceptable: everyone who can send on a number can see that number's chats. They are usually not trying to hide a customer's phone number from an agent, route chats into departments, or assign a single conversation to a single person. Those controls are not in the product.

You get a session per WhatsApp number, linked with a QR code from Linked devices, the same gesture as WhatsApp Web. Several sessions sit in one sidebar. You reply from the browser, including images, video, and PDFs up to 16MB. The phone that scanned stays online, or the link pauses, exactly as people already expect from WhatsApp Web.

You can share one session to a colleague's Google email. They get view-only or view-and-send. You revoke it when they should stop. Other sessions stay private unless you share those too. Reports show each number's volume, whether it is online, recent activity, and average reply time. Contacts from the numbers you connected are searchable in one list. An AI chatbot is included on the Standard plan and can be turned on per session, so one line can answer repetitive questions from your documents while another stays manual.

The External API lets another system drop text into its own thread inside the dashboard. Those threads are not WhatsApp messages and are not sent to a customer on WhatsApp. They are there so a form or an internal alert does not have to live in a different tool from the inbox. Price is €5 per connected number per month, or €48 per number per year. The trial is seven days, one session, no card. People you invite are not an extra seat fee.

You do not get the Meta Cloud API. There is no official send endpoint, no webhook of delivery events from Meta's business platform, and no template message you can submit for approval. You cannot reliably message someone who has never written to you, the way a business-initiated template can. If your plan depends on outbound campaigns, this is the wrong product.

You do not get a number that lives entirely in the cloud. The handset remains part of the session. A shop phone in a drawer with no battery is an offline session. Plan for that the way you already plan for WhatsApp Web.

You do not get chat assignment, departments, or a permission grid of admin, supervisor, and agent. You do not get a switch that hides the customer's phone number from the person answering. The share is the whole session: view, or view and send. If your security review requires the finer controls, the official stack is what that review is describing, and Chato will fail the review honestly.

You also do not get a promise that WhatsApp will treat a linked-device inbox as something it cannot restrict. You are using WhatsApp's own Linked devices flow. Read WhatsApp's terms for the kind of use you have in mind, especially if you are connecting many personal accounts rather than numbers your business already operates in the app.

Write down the job. If the job is 'answer the numbers we already have, from one browser, with a colleague on the busy line,' you can do that without the Business API. Connect a number, share it if someone else must reply, and add the next number after the trial. The features page describes that dashboard in full: sessions, shares, reports, and the limits.

If the job is 'send an approved template to a list, or integrate a backend that talks to Meta,' you need the official API and a provider built for it. Chato's how-it-works page will show you a QR code, not an application form for a business account. That difference is the product.

Plenty of companies eventually need both shapes and should not pretend they are one shape. A support desk on an official API number is a different project from an agency that must keep twelve client phones separate. Use the tool that matches the number you actually have. For the second project, the sidebar of QR-linked sessions is the point of Chato, and the price is per number rather than per seat.

Day one is intentionally small. Sign in with Google, scan the number you already answer, and reply to one real chat from the browser before you invite anyone. If that feels like WhatsApp Web with a cleaner list, you are in the product you meant to buy. If you find yourself looking for a template manager or a Meta business verification screen, you are not, and adding more sessions will not create one. The seven-day trial is there so you can notice that difference before a card is involved.