WhatsApp channel

WhatsApp shared inbox for the whole team

The channel many of your customers already prefer, answered from the same shared inbox as your email — not from one phone in one pocket.

Shipping soon
The short answer

inrelay’s WhatsApp shared inbox connects a WhatsApp Business account to the same inbox as email: each WhatsApp conversation gets one owner, carries internal notes, and gets an AI draft a human approves before sending. Outbound outside WhatsApp’s 24-hour service window uses pre-approved template messages, as the platform requires.

For shops selling internationally — and plenty selling locally — WhatsApp is where customers actually want to talk. The problem is how businesses usually run it: the WhatsApp Business app on a single phone, where whoever holds the phone is support. No assignment, no notes, no history for the next person, and a green tick of “seen” that somebody now has to answer.

A WhatsApp shared inbox moves those conversations onto the team’s turf. WhatsApp support in inrelay is in development; this page describes how the channel works, and is honest about what WhatsApp’s platform itself requires and restricts — because those rules shape the experience more than any vendor’s feature list does.

01 · From the inbox

What you can do from the inbox

A WhatsApp thread behaves like any conversation in inrelay — with the platform’s clock made visible.

  • Answer WhatsApp beside email, in one queue. Conversations arrive with a status and an owner — no separate phone, no separate person watching it.
  • Claim without colliding. The first reply claims the thread for that teammate; collision detection stops two people answering the same customer with two different answers.
  • Keep notes where the customer can’t see them. Internal notes and @mentions live inside the conversation and are structurally invisible on WhatsApp’s side — a note can never leave as a message.
  • Send AI drafts a human approved. The AI copilot drafts replies in your voice; nothing reaches the customer until a teammate chose to send it. The approval gate holds on every channel.
  • See the service window, always. The thread shows how long remains to reply freely, so nobody discovers the 24-hour window after it closed.
  • Reopen conversations the compliant way. When the window has closed, send a pre-approved template message from the same composer — the platform’s rules, handled without leaving the thread.
  • Route by intent, answer from anywhere. Triage tags and routes WhatsApp messages like everything else, and the mobile companion covers the evening shift.
02 · Setup

Setup & permissions

WhatsApp for teams runs on Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform, and Meta has requirements before any tool — ours included — can connect. Here they are, honestly.

Set up a WhatsApp Business account

Team access to WhatsApp goes through Meta’s business platform, which means a WhatsApp Business account tied to your company and, for full access, Meta’s business verification — a review that takes time and asks for real company details. It’s Meta’s gate, not ours, and there’s no shortcut worth taking.

Dedicate a phone number

The number you connect belongs to the platform side of WhatsApp — it can’t simultaneously run the consumer or small-business WhatsApp app on a phone. Most teams register a new business number and keep it forever; moving your existing number over is possible but one-way in practice, so decide deliberately.

Get your name approved, write your templates

Your display name goes through Meta’s review, and any template messages — the pre-written messages allowed outside the service window — are submitted for approval before you can send them. Write the two or three you’ll actually need early, so they’re approved before you need them.

Connect to inrelay

Link the WhatsApp Business account to your workspace and conversations start arriving in the shared inbox next to email. First reply claims the thread, as everywhere.

03 · The limits

Limits, stated plainly

Every WhatsApp rule below applies to every vendor on the Business Platform equally. Tools differ in whether they tell you before you’ve committed.

The 24-hour service window is real. You can reply freely for 24 hours after the customer’s last message. Once the window closes, WhatsApp only allows pre-approved template messages until the customer writes again. Practically: answer within a day, and treat templates as the fallback, not the plan.

Templates are reviewed, and reviews take time. Meta approves every template before first use and sorts them into categories with different rules. A template written during an incident won’t help with that incident — prepare them ahead.

WhatsApp costs money at the platform level. Meta charges businesses for certain conversations and template sends under its own pricing, which varies by country and changes over time — so we won’t quote numbers here that could be stale by the time you read them. What we commit to: those platform costs will be visible and passed through transparently, never buried in a plan price that quietly assumes you won’t use the channel.

One number, one platform. A number connected to the Business Platform stops working in the phone apps. If your whole business currently lives in the WhatsApp Business app on one phone, this is the trade: you give up the single-phone workflow and get a team one.

04 · The other channels

With your other channels.

WhatsApp is one lane of the same inbox. Email and live chat ship today; the messaging channels — this one included — are in development, and we won’t claim otherwise.

ALL CHANNELS

Every channel

The full list of what inrelay connects today, in one omnichannel inbox.

See all channels → EMAIL

Email

Gmail, Outlook or IMAP as one shared support@ — where most of your volume still arrives.

Email channel → LIVE CHAT

Live chat

A widget on your site with a human handoff that carries the whole story.

Live chat channel → MESSAGING

Messenger

Facebook Page messages owned like any other thread in the inbox.

Shipping soon MESSAGING

SMS

Text conversations in the shared inbox, metered honestly.

Shipping soon
SOCIAL

Instagram DM

DMs as owned conversations, same assignment and approval flow.

In development
Start today

Meet them where they message.

Start free with email today — WhatsApp lands in the same inbox when it ships. No card, never per seat.

Start freeSee pricing

Questions, answered.

Do I need the WhatsApp Business API?
Yes — that’s what makes a shared inbox possible at all. The WhatsApp apps are built around one phone; Meta’s Business Platform is the route that lets a team answer one number together, and it’s the route every serious WhatsApp shared inbox uses. inrelay handles the connection; Meta’s verification steps are yours to complete.
What exactly is a template message?
A message you write in advance and Meta approves, which is the only kind of outbound WhatsApp allows once a conversation’s 24-hour service window has closed. Think “your order has shipped” or “we have the answer you asked about” — a compliant way to reopen the thread, after which free-form conversation resumes.
Can I keep using WhatsApp on my phone?
Not with the connected number — a number on the Business Platform can’t also run the consumer or Business app. Your personal WhatsApp is untouched; the business number simply moves from one pocket to the shared inbox, which is rather the point. The mobile companion covers answering on the go.
When does this ship?
WhatsApp support is in development. We don’t publish dates we might have to walk back — launches are announced on the changelog the day they’re real. If WhatsApp is your main channel, tell us and we’ll invite you to early access.

Start running your DMs.

Give your customers faster answers and your team their evenings back.

Download formacOS Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

Desktop and mobile. Free for solo.