Built on Meta’s official Cloud API
Your whole team on one WhatsApp number
Chatline puts the number your customers already write to into a shared inbox, so messages get assigned, answered and counted instead of sitting on one person’s phone.
No card to start. You connect your own WhatsApp Business account and keep it.
Replies inside the 24-hour window are free. Chatline tells you when it closes.
WhatsApp works, until there are four of you
Every business that grows on WhatsApp hits the same wall at about the same size. The tool did not change; the number of people using it did.
- The number lives on one phone.
- When that person is on leave, so is the number.
- Nobody knows who replied.
- Or whether anyone did. There is no record to check.
- Broadcasts are a guess.
- You send to a list and find out how it went by asking around.
- The Meta bill is a surprise.
- It arrives monthly and nothing in your tools explains it.
The inbox
One number, everyone who answers it
Conversations arrive in a shared queue. Assign them, tag them, hand them over, close them. Every action is written into the thread, so months later you can still see who did what.
- Views for Unassigned, Awaiting reply and your own chats, with live counts
- Saved views — your own filter combination, kept as a tab
- Collaborators, so a second person can follow a thread without taking it over
- Quick replies behind a slash, with the customer's name filled in
- Scheduled messages, notes, pinning, and search inside one conversation
- Round-robin or least-busy assignment that respects shifts and who is actually online
- 09:14Priya wrote in
- 09:14Assigned to Meera — this number's default
- 09:16Meera replied
- 09:31Tagged “Interested”
- 11:02Meera added Rohit to follow this
- 17:40Closed by Meera
| Sent | 4,812 |
|---|---|
| Delivered | 4,655 |
| Read | 3,120 |
| Replied | 418 |
| Tapped “Interested” | 266 |
| Opted out | 31 |
Button taps are counted because Meta sends a webhook for them. Link clicks are not, because Meta sends nothing — so Chatline shows no number rather than a zero.
Campaigns
Broadcasts that tell you what happened
Pick an audience from a list or a segment, map the template’s variables to contact fields, and see what will actually go out before it does — including who is excluded and why.
- A preview that counts the sendable, not the total: opt-outs, invalid numbers and duplicates are shown and subtracted
- Send now, schedule, or repeat weekly or monthly with a proper timezone and DST handling
- Retry only the failures from a finished campaign
- Segments from campaign engagement — “opened but did not reply”, “tapped Interested”
- Per-campaign report, downloadable as CSV
Automation
Three things answer for you, in a fixed order
The order is the point. A rule you wrote is more specific than a bot, and a bot is more specific than a model — so each one only speaks if the one before it did not. Two answers to one question is worse than no automation at all.
Runs first
Rules
A keyword, a first message, or a message outside business hours triggers a reply, an assignment or a tag.
Runs next
Flows
A bot that holds a conversation: ask, wait for an answer, branch on it, hand over to a human when it is out of its depth.
Runs last
Assistant
Answers from your own knowledge base, on your own OpenAI or Anthropic key, and only when nothing else has already replied.
The assistant runs on your API key, so you pay your model provider directly and we do not mark it up. If the key is missing, it says so in the thread rather than staying quiet.
Analytics and reports
Numbers you can hand to somebody else
Volume, response times, agent workload, campaign funnels and conversation outcomes — as a dashboard, as a CSV, or emailed on a schedule to people who never sign in.
- First-response and resolution times against targets you set, computed on read so changing a target re-colours history immediately
- Per-agent workload and availability, with shifts and presence
- Scheduled reports by email, daily, weekly or monthly
- An activity log covering every setting change, role change, template submission and export, filterable by who and when
- Under 5 min62%
- 5–30 min23%
- 30 min – 2 h9%
- Over 2 h6%
What Meta charges
We show you the bill we are not sending you
Meta bills you directly, per conversation, at rates that depend on the market and the category. Most tools hide that. Chatline reads the pricing Meta already attaches to every message and shows you the count, keyed on Meta’s own conversation id so you can reconcile it against their invoice.
- Counted per conversation, the way Meta bills — not per message, which is a larger number that answers a different question
- Free conversations kept and labelled, so you can see the ones that cost nothing
- Every figure labelled an estimate, because the invoice is Meta's and not ours
- A category with no published rate shows nothing, not zero — “we have no rate” and “this is free” are different answers
| Marketing | 1,204 |
|---|---|
| Utility | 876 |
| Service | 2,431 |
| From an ad — free | 310 |
Estimated from published rates for your market. Meta’s own billing is the authority; if the two disagree, theirs is right.
Build on it
Two doors, depending on what your system can do
If it can set an Authorization header, use the API. If it can only post a webhook — Shopify, WooCommerce, Zapier, Make, a Google Sheets script — paste a URL and map the fields.
The API
Scoped keys, per-key rate limits, an OpenAPI 3.1 document generated from the same schemas the API validates against, and signed outbound webhooks with retries and a delivery log.
Incoming webhooks
One URL per integration, with a mapping from whatever JSON the other system sends to a template message, signature checking that matches how they sign, and a log of every call with the body they sent — so “I connected it and nothing happened” has an answer.
What this cannot do
These are Meta’s rules, not ours, and they apply to every WhatsApp tool you could buy. We would rather you read them here than discover them in week two.
- You cannot message someone first without an approved template. Free-form replies only work within 24 hours of their last message.
- WhatsApp Groups are not available. The Cloud API does not expose them, so no tool has them.
- Link clicks in a template cannot be counted. Meta sends a webhook for button taps and nothing for URL taps.
- Templates are reviewed by Meta. Usually minutes, sometimes days, and they can be rejected.
- Your sending limit is Meta’s to set. It rises with your quality rating; Chatline shows the tier but cannot change it.
Setting it up is four things
An afternoon, most of which is waiting for Meta to approve a template.
01
Connect your WhatsApp account
Meta's own sign-up flow, in a popup. The account and the number stay yours.
02
Bring your contacts
A CSV with a phone column. Duplicates and invalid numbers are shown before anything is saved.
03
Get one template approved
Start from the library, or write your own. Chatline checks Meta's rules before you submit.
04
Invite the people who answer
Owner, admin or agent — or a role you define, which can only ever narrow one of those.
Pricing
A month at a time, in rupees, plus GST. The 14-day trial needs no card. What Meta charges for conversations is separate and goes to Meta — Chatline shows it to you but never bills it.
Starter
One number, a small team.
₹1,999/ month
- 1 WhatsApp number
- 3 team members
- 5,000 contacts
- 20 campaigns a month
- 10 automation rules
Growth
Several numbers, and the API.
₹4,999/ month
- 3 WhatsApp numbers
- 10 team members
- 50,000 contacts
- 100 campaigns a month
- 50 automations, flows and assistants
- API access and outgoing webhooks
Scale
Large teams, high volume.
₹9,999/ month
- 10 WhatsApp numbers
- 50 team members
- 500,000 contacts
- 1,000 campaigns a month
- 200 automations, flows and assistants
- API access and outgoing webhooks
Every plan includes the shared inbox, campaigns, automations, analytics and the reports. The limits above are the only difference.
Questions worth asking before you start
Do I need my own WhatsApp Business account?
Yes, and that is deliberate. You connect your own account through Meta’s sign-up flow and it stays yours — the number, the templates, the quality rating and the billing relationship. If you ever leave, you take all of it with you.
Can I use the number already on my phone?
Only if you stop using it in the WhatsApp app. A number lives either in the app or on the Cloud API, never both. Most businesses move a second number across and keep the personal one where it is.
What does Meta actually charge?
A per-conversation rate that depends on your market and the category — marketing, utility, authentication or service. Chatline records every billed conversation with Meta’s own id and estimates the cost from published rates. The invoice still comes from Meta.
How long does approval take?
Connecting the account is minutes. A message template is usually reviewed in minutes and occasionally takes days. Chatline checks your template against Meta’s rules before you submit, which removes most of the rejections.
Is my data on this server or Meta’s?
Both, unavoidably: messages pass through Meta because it is their network. Everything Chatline stores — conversations, contacts, media — is on the server this runs on, and there is a data-deletion page that removes it.
Can I move off it later?
Contacts and campaign reports export as CSV, and the API reads conversations and messages. Your WhatsApp account is yours already, so disconnecting it is a button.
Put the number somewhere your team can reach it
No card, no call, no setup fee.