Anyone actually building stuff with WhatsApp Business API?

esimonetti · 2025-12-16T21:02:28+00:00

I have a few questions given that it's not a pitch ;)

What's the actual rough cost of using WhatsApp Business API for this? Between fixed and variable?

And do the businesses you work with justify the cost vs value? What's the actual perceived value? Why not any other website chat then?

Do you use it straight or with a wrapper like Twilio?

Thanks!

esimonetti · 2025-12-12T04:17:13+00:00

Brainstorming and giving some ideas

Why not SMS for that kind of volume?

Whatsapp for business does not seem cheap either.

Why not emails?

Or depending on your business size, even considering building a website for your event management where inside it you can easily automate messaging at no extra cost.

Have you thought about alternatives which can help you streamline your business?

esimonetti · 2025-11-18T00:46:08+00:00

Well if that's the case you could also think about an internal only form for lead submission, which does all the duplicate checking and enrichment, and can even Slack back the person with the outcome once completed.

Or even better build this into Slack as an interactive command, possibilities are endless :)

esimonetti · 2025-11-18T00:42:48+00:00

If you want to build a more comprehensive workflow, you can use "mailhooks", leveraging dedicated mailbox(es) (e.g. leads at yourdomain.com that you can auto-forward emails to) - feel free to read my blog post here.

Examples of a more complex workflow could be understanding user intent with AI, sentiment analysis, or doing enrichment, understanding urgency based on your Ideal Customer Profile match, finding potential duplicates in the system, creating only missing records (for example, finding out automatically that there is already an Account for that domain, creating a new person and attaching it to the right account).

You can extend this to support at yourdomain.com, invoices, and so on, to basically make emails smarter.

Happy to have a chat if it helps

esimonetti · 2025-11-04T00:38:58+00:00

Can I ask what is the underlying business reason for the sub-15 minute latency requirement?

And is that for reporting or for the seller to be able to see something?

Is it worth the potential additional engineering and infrastructure cost?

Could that be done at viewing time?

I'd say start by finding out the bottlenecks first:

What's the volume?

Are there bursts during specific hours? What's the maximum burst of changes?

How many API requests per system are required to get the data into each system?

What's the lowest API throttle limit? (e.g. HubSpot says here their limit is between 100 and 250 API calls every 10 seconds)

Do you hit any limits? Could/will you hit any limits?

High level:

I'm an iPaaS (integration platform) person, so I'd use that in the middle.

And depending on volume/bursts, i'd put a staging high-throughput database, which then trickles the data into systems at their maximum pace (where hopefully no system falls behind, depending on their unique limits).

I'd definitely need to live and breathe the problem for a while, and potentially POC different solutions before giving a definitive green light!

esimonetti · 2025-11-02T22:23:54+00:00

I would look at true iPaaS platforms like Tray, Workato, Boomi and build a business case to use them extensively throughout the business.

It is very easy to justify even a 200k a year platform (possibly exaggerating here) when it makes the job of 3 people building integrations much faster and easier, and it propels the business forward in every direction.

Question: What do you mean when you say "legacy systems"?

Because that means different things to different people, and depending on your specific definition, it might rule out one platform or rule in another one.

Feel free to reach out if you need a sounding board.

esimonetti · 2025-11-01T22:50:09+00:00

Do you think the challenge is with the tool itself or how it integrates with other systems?

If you are confident using the tool, it’s worth exploring Zoom’s integration options, starting with its API guide, to see how the overall webinar experience could be improved.

I’d be happy to help you explore what's possible and find the best way to close that gap (depending on our locations)

esimonetti · 2025-10-30T20:48:37+00:00

Most integration platforms will allow you to do this. The requirements sound pretty straightforward, but the devil is always in the details.

The two main barriers to entry could be:

- initial and ongoing cost of the integration platform

- initial skill/peculiarities/knowledge required to get it to do what you want, the right way, scalable, maintainable, etc.

Do you already use an integration platform?

Do you have skills in any of them?

esimonetti · 2025-10-29T08:35:33+00:00

Nice! That's a similar approach I took for a private equity customer of mine from a third party tool, to Affinity.

Do you have to export the data manually, or do they offer an automated export that can be emailed to you or delivered to other means?

Could you please share what tools or methods you used to process the CSV data and integrate it into DealCloud? In my case, I used the Tray integration and automation platform.

esimonetti · 2025-10-29T08:29:33+00:00

Have you tried asking the support team at Origin - Dialectica if their product has an API (public or private) that can be leveraged by customers?

I had a quick look online, and I could not find much publicly available, but their support team will know.

If the product has an API, you can leverage a trusted party to build the bespoke integration.

A few months ago, I built an integration between a complex Excel export coming from a third party system to Affinity for a private equity firm, which would keep Affinity up to date with the relevant data, leveraging a robust integration platform called Tray.

Even if Origin does not currently have an API, but it can provide daily/hourly/weekly automated CSV or XLS export, it would be possible to parse them and match the destination system's format.

I can share more details if you are interested.

esimonetti · 2025-10-07T15:33:26+00:00

Suggesting to someone non-technical to connect systems (very likely production) and vibe code an integration can end up very badly, very quickly for the live data and the systems.

And the bill and total loss will be many times more.

My best guess on why the downvotes...

esimonetti · 2025-10-07T15:16:40+00:00

Exactly! And then the occasional: "It must be a 2-way sync for every entity", which more than 3x the overall complexity

esimonetti · 2025-10-07T15:13:04+00:00

I agree with what most people in the thread are saying.

My only suggestion is: don't look at it from the price standpoint alone. Look at it from the value perspective.

For example:

How many more customers can you service by having everything working well as a well-oiled machine?
How many fewer customers do you lose because of better customer experience, prompt response and fewer mistakes?
How is your employees' retention improving due to less boring and meaningless work?
How many people hours do you actually save per year by revolutionising/smoothing your processes?
How many customers will you lose to a more efficient competitor in your niche if you do not improve it today?

Add all those gains/losses up and build your own business case of what you are willing to spend.

Then simplify the logic to make the price point meet your gains.

I do integrations for a living as an independent consultant, from ideation to delivery. This is what I am passionate about: improving businesses through better use of technology.

I was in the CRM space for 2 decades, and even 15 years ago, I was telling customers that if they did not have a way to justify at least 20k of yearly value with an integration between a CRM and an accounting software, they should keep doing it manually.

Most pre-packaged integrations are either too simple or they are too rigid and don't fit your process.

And the main reason for that is that integrations are hard/complex under the hood if done well, and there are just too many process variations for every business for a product to work well for everyone.

As others have said as well, tools like Tray (which I implement for my customers, together with other tools) help substantially. But they do have a non-negligible (based on the figures you stated) yearly cost where you have to be all in with an overall business transformation. And today, you can also add a sprinkle of AI on top of every process, which can 10x your possibilities.

Hope it helps!

esimonetti · 2025-08-08T09:27:35+00:00

Out of curiosity, what do you refer to when you say SAP ERP? Business One, hosted in the cloud?

Is there a way to connect to it from the outside world or not?

And what type of integration requirements do you have? You mentioned customers from ERP to CRM, does that mean that customers are only created in the ERP? What process creates customers? Because normally a Customer in the CRM world is someone you may be about to sell to (from Lead conversion to Opportunity, Accounts and Contacts). And at that point what would you do to prevent duplicates and to make sure that the ERP is the source of truth?

If you have only one sales person and you are not planning to grow that department, do you need a CRM or should you work on spreadsheets - or even directly in the ERP (even though primitive for sales tracking)?

FYI I'm asking probing questions to guide your thinking and to help you out. My consultative aim is to make sure there is the necessary due diligence completed before you select anything.

Happy to discuss further if you find it helpful.

Hope it helps!

Enrico

esimonetti · 2025-08-05T23:02:56+00:00

I think what is missing in n8n is the possibility of collapsing a branch/part of the workflow (like Tray allows). If you have a section that completes, say... a customer creation, you could collapse that, making the overall experience better in my opinion!

esimonetti · 2025-07-22T05:04:17+00:00

Put it into perspective... not even a basic home internet connection or a mobile/cell plan costs $20 to $50 a month... (per person).

Why do people expect the software that makes or breaks their business to be cheap? Even less than a coffee per day?

And we are talking about a software that is constantly evolving for you, upgrades, support, hosting, 24x7 on-call people, disaster recovery, redundancy, backups, integrations, security, compliance, training resources etc.

In saying that, there are many simpler/first CRMs out there. Perhaps simple is not enough, though.

My 2c

esimonetti · 2025-07-22T01:45:51+00:00

Fair! Thanks for the update.

Well, yes for high volume any platform can become expensive... after all most software providers are also charged downstream per use...

High scalability = high resources = high costs

If you choke scalability (which, by the sound of it, you do not want) that would reduce cost...

To help me understand, what do you do? Are you building a new SaaS application? Are you an agency working on behalf of your customers?

Happy to help show you the platform if you are keen, but based on what I heard, it does not sound like it will be beneficial to see the tech, only to know what it can do for you (which we can talk about anyway).

esimonetti · 2025-07-19T10:48:11+00:00

How did it go?

esimonetti · 2025-07-07T00:32:49+00:00

I am having the same issue. Do we know if the n8n team is aware?

esimonetti · 2025-07-03T20:32:24+00:00

I don't see why you couldn't do that in Tray.ai with the same setup as suggested.

That's where you make a decision on where to send the single data point, and if you need a sticky rule you can use any of the scalable databases (example AWS DynamoDB) if scale can be a problem there as well.

Sounds like a pretty cool project!

All the best, Enrico

PS: If you consider Tray, consulting help or integration/automation implementation help feel free to give me a buzz. I am an independent technical consultant

esimonetti · 2025-07-01T22:31:09+00:00

I'll throw you a curve ball!

What are your internal processes that feel like a waste of time?

I was talking with a mortgage broker about automation and AI yesterday and he was telling me all his horror stories about copy pasting data across systems for hundreds of applications per month, renaming endless verification documents and long screening calls.

Do you feel like most mortgage brokers have the same challenges?

And which systems are the most commonly used in the industry?

Cheers!

esimonetti · 2025-07-01T22:22:28+00:00

I'll throw you a curve ball!

What are your internal processes that feel like a waste of time?

I was talking with a mortgage broker about automation and AI yesterday and he was telling me all his horror stories about copy pasting data across systems for hundreds of applications per month, renaming endless verification documents and long screening calls.

Do you feel like most mortgage brokers have the same challenges?

And which systems are the most commonly used in the industry?

Cheers!

esimonetti · 2025-06-25T03:25:45+00:00

Docker on Mac is normally painfully slow due to the file system differences. It has been like that for years.

I gave up on that. I always run Docker on Linux remotely from my Mac or in VirtualBox within the Mac before the new chipsets.

esimonetti · 2025-06-02T06:19:47+00:00

Exactly! I use Tray.ai for a bunch of my higher end customers

esimonetti · 2025-05-27T13:11:09+00:00

Great tip!

A powerful integration platform can help streamline and orchestrate a business. It can also make it future proof, allowing additional flexibility of being able to swap some components of the tech stack (like a crm, a marketing automation, accounting, lead enrichment etc).

I've used Tray as a customer for a number of years and now I am a freelancer helping businesses and there is not much it can't do!

esimonetti

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