Threadwire by TriTech

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Official API or a linked number: which do you need?

There are two ways to connect a business system to WhatsApp. Threadwire is the second. This page is here so you can choose before you build.

The two ways

  • Meta's official WhatsApp Business Platform. You register a number with Meta, and Meta gives your system an API to it.
  • A linked number. You link the WhatsApp number you already use by QR code, as a linked device, the same way as WhatsApp Web. This is what Threadwire does. Threadwire is not made by, affiliated with or endorsed by WhatsApp or Meta.

What a linked number gives you

  • Your existing number and your app. The phone keeps working as usual, and messages typed on it show in your panel and your webhooks too.
  • No approval to wait for. You link the number in a minute and send the same day.
  • Groups, channels and statuses, as well as one-to-one chats.
  • What the app sends: text, files, voice notes, stickers, polls, locations, contact cards, reactions, edits and deletions.
  • No fee per message. A plan is priced by how many numbers you link.

Its limits here

  • Few new people a day. A newly linked instance may write first to 10 new people a day, rising to 50 over its first two weeks. Someone in another country counts as two. No plan lifts this. Replies to people who wrote to you are not limited this way.
  • First messages are slow and short. They go 30 to 60 seconds apart, never at night, and at most 600 characters. See How sending protects your number.
  • No templates, and no buttons. A message is what a person could type or attach in the app.
  • No verified badge. People see the WhatsApp account you linked, as it is.
  • The phone stays. Keep WhatsApp on it, and let it go online now and then.
  • The risk of a ban. WhatsApp's terms do not allow unofficial or automated access to WhatsApp. That is what any service that links a number as a device provides, Threadwire included. WhatsApp can restrict or ban a number at any time.

How we lower that risk. Every message is paced like a person would send it, with "typing…" first. A new instance warms up over two weeks. New people are limited each day. When WhatsApp warns an instance, its new chats slow down and then pause on their own. Anyone who writes "STOP" is not messaged again until they write to you again, and stays out of broadcasts until they send "START". These rules are enforced on every message, on every plan: you can make them stricter, never switch them off. We still cannot promise that a number will not be banned.

What Meta's official API gives instead

  • It is WhatsApp's own way in, so a number is not at risk for being connected to a system.
  • Message templates, approved by Meta, to write first to people who agreed to hear from you, in volume.
  • A verified badge you can apply for.

In return, Meta approves your business first, charges for messages you start, and decides what a message may hold. Threadwire does not offer the official API today.

The rule of thumb

Take the official route if any of these is true:

  • You need to write first to more than 50 new people a day from one number.
  • You plan advertising or campaigns that reach many people at once.
  • You need the verified badge.

A linked number fits when your customers write to you first: bookings, orders, support, reminders to people already in a chat with you, and OTP by link. That is what Threadwire is built for. Every instance has a chat_link to put on your site and receipts, so people can write first.