Scale your customer engagement with a reliable SMS API

Gupshup 's WhatsApp Business API serves as the main foundation for our business. Since Gupshup  is a business service provider of Meta for WhatsApp, we partnered with them to use their infrastructure of WhatsApp Business API for our SaaS product. This allows our customers to send and receive messages using their APIs and webhooks.

Meta has stopped onboarding Indian-based businesses as business solution providers for WhatsApp, so we have to rely on a company that can provide this service as a business solution provider. Gupshup has been one of the best companies for this specific purpose, as they are registered with Meta as a business solution provider and have access to the WhatsApp Business API. This was used as the baseline for the entire infrastructure we built for WhatsApp messaging for our customers, allowing them to directly use WhatsApp through our interface, which is powered by Gupshup's APIs internally.

Our SaaS product is proprietary and provides many features including messaging groups and individual one-on-one chats with support for multiple people working with the same WhatsApp Business API number. We also offer automations using bot actions and many forms of WhatsApp messaging types such as templates, media messages, text messages, interactive messages, and catalog messages. We also use the WhatsApp calling feature using the official Meta APIs exposed by Gupshup's infrastructure.

Gupshup is a business solution provider that provides us access to the WhatsApp Meta APIs; they are a wrapper over the WhatsApp Business API since the APIs are being provided by WhatsApp itself.

I believe Gupshup could improve in several areas. Since our partnership involves working at scale for multiple WhatsApp Business API numbers over their infrastructure, I noticed that Gupshup also provides WhatsApp Business API for single consumers, which I saw on their website and documentation.

They charge additionally per message or template message on top of the actual WhatsApp Business APIs messaging rate. For example, sending a WhatsApp marketing template costs around $1.50, and Gupshup adds their own service fee per message, around 20 to 30 cents. For a single consumer working at scale and sending thousands of messages daily, this can become concerning. They should implement a solution where it could be a one-off payment instead of per message payment, allowing single consumers to leverage their service better.

What would make it a 10? A better engineering team that solves problems and knows the ins and outs instead of just doing patch fixes would be ideal for me. Being a tech-focused person, I believe the system we rely on should be totally reliable and the people working on it should be reliable as well.

I have been working in my current field for around four years.

In the earlier days, the service was not stable, but now that the servers are managed by Meta and Gupshup acts as a wrapper, I can say it is stable and very reliable.

Since we onboarded with Gupshup specifically on the partnership side, the process has been straightforward. They assigned us a very good business development representative, Meet Nandu, who helped us onboard with Gupshup very quickly. There were many issues during the initial integration process, such as the lack of certain features via their APIs that were exposed earlier and were on the hosted WhatsApp Business API provided by Meta around three to four years ago. Meta then migrated to WhatsApp Cloud API, and Gupshup took some time to migrate to WhatsApp Cloud API; their infrastructure was not ready initially, but their engineers were prompt and completed it within several business days. They also helped us with all the things we needed. In the initial days, their template API was not very verbose and we needed many additional fields, such as what type of template it was, when it was approved, and the reasons for rejection. We went to their team and asked them for these fields and the complete template structure in the response, and they gladly implemented that. I believe that the reliability and onboarding process of their team has been a game changer for us.

The customer support might have been inconsistent in the earlier days, but with the business development representative involved in conversations, we were always able to connect with engineers and get things done as per our needs.

Before Gupshup, we were using 360dialog, which is also a business solution provider for WhatsApp by Meta, and they were very costly at around $10 per WhatsApp Business API number, while Gupshup has been much cheaper compared to 360dialog.

I evaluated some options, one being Twilio , and there was another option I don't remember, but it seemed questionable, so we didn't pursue it.

As I mentioned earlier, I used 360dialog before Gupshup and switched because 360dialog's pricing was around $10 per WhatsApp Business API number whereas Gupshup was around $4, so that represented a huge cost saving.

Since it was a Gupshup partner program, the pricing was straightforward at around $4 per WhatsApp Business API number onboarding to the platform and could go down to around $2.50 at scale. The licensing and contracting were clear, but initially, we learned they took a cut on media they stored from WhatsApp before the cloud API. After further discussions, that clause was removed from our partnership, making it straightforward thereafter.

When we started with Gupshup as a WhatsApp business solution provider, Meta had two types of setups: one was an on-premise setup and the second was the WhatsApp Cloud API. The on-premise setup is a software package or SDK given directly to business solution providers by Meta, which Gupshup would host and manage its own reliability while connecting with Meta servers. However, within months the on-premises setup was deprecated, and the cloud API became the standard, hosted directly by the WhatsApp server, meaning Gupshup merely serves as a wrapper over the Meta APIs, acting as a billing provider for the WhatsApp numbers bought through their platform.

The return on investment has been tremendous. The partner we used earlier, 360dialog, cost around $10 per WhatsApp Business API number, while Gupshup costs around $3.50, leading to huge cost savings.

Since it was a Gupshup partner program, the pricing was straightforward at around $4 per WhatsApp Business API number onboarding to the platform and could go down to around $2.50 at scale. The licensing and contracting were clear, but initially, we learned they took a cut on media they stored from WhatsApp before the cloud API. After further discussions, that clause was removed from our partnership, making it straightforward thereafter.

Before Gupshup, we were using 360dialog, which is also a business solution provider for WhatsApp by Meta, and they were very costly at around $10 per WhatsApp Business API number, while Gupshup has been much cheaper compared to 360dialog.

360dialog was around $10 per WhatsApp Business API, and Gupshup was around $4. If we crossed a specific milestone, they were willing to reduce it to maybe $2.50 or $3. It has been a game changer for us, especially since it was a SaaS product where having a $20 subscription fee for ourselves and sending half of it as $10 to 360dialog was actually a very big expense per customer, which brought measurable improvements in our expenses.

I evaluated some options, one being Twilio , and there was another option I don't remember, but it seemed questionable, so we didn't pursue it.

Gupshup is handling the service pretty well.

If you're looking for a cheap WhatsApp Business API solution for at least 500 numbers, you can choose Gupshup as their partner program is good and saves a lot compared to others. There's no need to worry about why Gupshup and not others since they and other companies are simply business solution providers and wrappers over the WhatsApp APIs managed by Meta. However, individual organizations might consider setting it up themselves if it's worth the effort in the Facebook business settings. I would rate this service an 8 out of 10.

I typically use Gupshup  for the quick connect chatbot tool they have. I just have to drag and drop the conversations in order to make a whole flow of a conversation and depending on that I can take decisions on my end. So, it becomes a really neat helper for my application, which I can make with low-code or no-code using Gupshup .

While using Gupshup's drag and drop chatbot tool in a real project, we had KYC, and instead of making a user guess what their KYC is actually going to be, we gave them a chatbot to chat with so that they can explore the different pathways. There were different kinds of KYC standards: silver and gold. Users could select the options from the chatbot and it would tell them all the features they would get with the acceptance of any one of the KYC options, so the user may have greater insight into which type of KYC they should do for our application.

I have covered most of what I have used Gupshup for. There might be vastly more things which Gupshup could do but my use case was only related to the chatbot, and I did not have to vastly explore it. My use case was very easily solved by Gupshup, and that is what I have used it for.

In my experience, the best features Gupshup offers include the ability for a user with no prior knowledge of code to also use this platform if they are creative. The only thing that Gupshup's use case is limited to is the person's own creativity. It can be used in any way a person sees fit. It is a very versatile tool.

Gupshup has impacted my organization positively by bringing QA really closer to the developers because the one thing which kept us apart was the ability to affect the code and behavior of the application. Now the QA themselves can also affect the behavior of the application in the chatbot area. So they also feel ownership towards the product without actually writing the code. This has brought QA and the developer into a parallel mindset and it is not QA versus developer as it is in a typical situation. It has become QA and developer, so it has brought people closer.

Nothing directly comes to mind about how Gupshup can be improved because for my use case it was the perfect solution and not all of our apps have chatbots integrated into them. For the ones in which we have chatbots integrated we try to use Gupshup itself, but that is a very specific use case. I do not think that is the whole solution that Gupshup provides, so I am not the one to comment on how to improve it, but it really did fit very neatly into my requirement of application.

I have been using Gupshup for the past year and a half.

In my experience, Gupshup is stable since there has been no downtime or issues reported by the customers, and we also have not faced any downtime with it. There might be downtime in the off hours that might not affect the customer, so that is fine.

Gupshup's scalability has been good in my experience. However, I will not be able to comment on the scalability in detail because when we introduced the chatbot, our customer base was already mature and customers have not increased vastly so as to comment on its scalability. However, the amount of customers which we have, Gupshup is handling it pretty well.

I have not interacted with Gupshup customer support as of yet because we have not had any such problems.

Before using Gupshup, we tried making a chatbot on our own, but it was really static and clunky. During my college, I had used Gupshup for my personal project. So I suggested that to my BA and then we got to use it in our organization as well because it was a one-stop solution, and we did not look for any alternatives.

I have seen a return on investment with Gupshup because our business expanded with gold customers. All these metrics are being measured by the BA, so more details will be with them.

Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I am just the developer. I am not involved with all of these processes. Our BA might know that. So, I am not the right person to answer it.

Regarding evaluating other options before choosing Gupshup, there were different people with different tools. We just provided our inputs to the BA and the decision was taken by the BA.

My advice to others looking into using Gupshup is to dive right in, get your hands dirty, and you will find yourself understanding why you are going to use Gupshup in your organization.

Gupshup is a pretty neat software for people who are looking for integrating a chatbot or other AI capabilities into their applications, and it is a pretty neat solution.

I found this interview to be a pretty neat kind of interview. It is really new, and I have not had any voice-assisted reviews for any products earlier, so it was really refreshing.

I would appreciate a short poem or haiku that summarizes my review. My review rating for Gupshup is nine out of ten.

My main use case for Gupshup  is for integration with WhatsApp.

A quick and specific example of how I use this integration with WhatsApp in my day-to-day work is that we use the integration with OTEC call centers. OTEC is a national manufacturer from Florianópolis that has a PBX, and we use Gupshup 's broker to do this integration with OTEC's system and have customers communicating on WhatsApp through it.

I do not have anything else I would like to add about this use case or any detail I consider relevant.

In my experience, the best features that Gupshup offers are support in Portuguese, relatively fast support, and ease of integration. It is much easier to carry out the integration via Gupshup than to do it directly through Meta.

The ease of integration that I mentioned contributes to my team's day-to-day work because using their webhook makes the integration process fast. You create the account in a much more agile way. Regarding support, whenever we needed changes, alterations or even assistance in cases of blocking or banning, they were very quick in supporting us, even with calls and hands-on service. This was very positive.

I believe Gupshup has made the process of integrating WhatsApp for customers more agile.

I do not have anything else I would like to add about Gupshup's features.

I think Gupshup could be improved with online support or WhatsApp support so that we can talk directly with an agent, instead of working only by email.

I do not have anything else I would like to add about the necessary improvements.

I have been using Gupshup for approximately three years.

In my experience, Gupshup is stable.

I think Gupshup serves both small and large projects. We have customers that send thousands of messages per day and customers that send fewer, and it works stably in all scenarios. I think it is very good.

Today, Gupshup's support is essentially via email, so most of the requests we send are by email. In critical cases where we had a customer banned, we managed to schedule a call with the analyst. However, ninety-nine percent of the time requests are by email, and it takes twenty-four to forty-eight hours to get a response.

At UANET, I have not used a different solution; we have always used Gupshup from the beginning.

I was not involved in the cost part. The only part that I got involved in was the credit and balance part for sending messages for customers. It is relatively simple, as they have a wallet with the balance for sending messages and we can monitor the sending and how much the customer consumes. We do not have server, storage, cloud, or any costs with Gupshup.

I was not the one who made the decision to choose Gupshup. When I joined the company, Gupshup was already being used.

I do not have any specific metric or feedback that stood out about how this agility has impacted business results or customer satisfaction.

I do not have that metric available regarding return on investment using Gupshup.

I was not involved in the cost part. The only part that I got involved in was the credit and balance part for sending messages for customers. It is relatively simple, as they have a wallet with the balance for sending messages and we can monitor the sending and how much the customer consumes. We do not have server, storage, cloud, or any costs with Gupshup.

At UANET, I have not used a different solution; we have always used Gupshup from the beginning.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Gupshup an eight. I rate it eight because I imagine they could have improvements to get to ten. I understand ten as something that is perfect, and eight I understand as something that is very good. I really think it is very good, but I think it can still be improved.

I recommend that others who are thinking about using Gupshup consider that the ease of integration makes using Gupshup worthwhile. It is a stable platform and has good support.

My company has a solution that our clients use to talk with clients, and we use Gupshup  as a broker to send a message to Meta and receive a message from Meta because we thought that it was easier to use a broker than to develop our integration with Meta.

I don't have anything else to add about my use case because I've been using Gupshup  for just six months, and it's not every day that I use the integration with Gupshup, so I am learning a lot about Gupshup.

I think the best feature Gupshup offers is the very good documentation, and I appreciate how they provide assistance when we need it, as well as the architecture of the documentation.

The documentation is very easy to read and is very specific, and I don't have any trouble when developing our features using Gupshup, such as using webhooks.

Gupshup has improved a lot how our clients can talk to other users. When we implemented the integration with Gupshup, almost all our clients approved the integration and they appreciate it. Plus, we use almost all the features about Gupshup, which I think is the most important for our clients.

I don't know what could be better about Gupshup. Our solution uses almost everything, as we can send stickers, images, PDFs, and audios, and we receive almost any type of message.

I remember that I was trying to get the webhooks about account information, and I had trouble finding in the documentation how I could receive webhooks about the account, such as when we have an account that could be blocked or when the limit of messages might be erased.

I have been using Gupshup for maybe six months.

I have never experienced downtime or disruptions with Gupshup, except for the case where I received the same webhook three times.

I think that Gupshup is very good when it comes to accuracy. Sometimes I have trouble, such as when I was testing a new feature and received webhooks three times, which means we need to improve our code to prevent sending the same message to the user.

We have a WhatsApp group with some people from Gupshup Brazil, and when I have a question or need assistance, I send a message there and they respond quickly and accurately. I don't have any problems with the customer support, which is very good at Gupshup.

I think there isn't anything else I appreciate about Gupshup's features.

My advice for others looking into using Gupshup is to read the documentation very carefully and try to integrate using it because it's very good.

I don't remember anything else to add about Gupshup.

I think that I just don't give a ten because everything needs to improve—there's always something to enhance. I think Gupshup is very good, but I believe that if we think about the ten, it might lead to complacency, so I give it a nine because maybe they can surprise me in the future by adding a feature that would impress me. I would appreciate a short poem or haiku that summarizes my review.

I rate this review a nine out of ten.