General
Can I use Utio to send marketing messages?
As you may know, WhatsApp has strict policies about sending unsolicited marketing messages, illigit content or spam.
Sending marketing or any unsolicited messages to users is not allowed and you would put you WhatsApp number in a high risk of getting banned.
WhatsApp communication is not suitable for all business cases, so we recommend to design a legit and user-approved communication strategy in order to avoid any problems.
Please read our guidelines with communication best practices and how to prevent getting banned.
Can I use Utio for chatbots?
Yes, you can build your own chatbot with our API and webhooks. In order to do so, you need to subscribe to any Platform plan that would allow you to implement chatbots on top of the API.
Please be aware that we don't provide chatbots as a service and that we can't provide technical assistance on this subject.
About data security and privacy
All the information is encrypted and safely transferred across the network using enterprise-grade standard HTTPS TLS v1.2+ and subsequently stored, with no exception, in encrypted datastores hosted in one of the most reputable cloud providers: Google Cloud.
All cloud infrastructure and servers are running in Europe and US, within private networks with layered perimetral security and isolated access from remote sources.
All cloud providers and datastores are compliant with the most demanding security certifications such as ISO/IEC 27001:2013.
In terms of privacy and terms of service, all processed information is strictly processed within the required service offering scope and never used for any other purpose. We take very seriously the privacy and confidentiality of our clients and users.
API & Webhooks
Is there any SDK or dependency required to use the API?
Absolutely not, the API is very simple to use with no SDK requirements or external dependencies.
This makes the API easy to integrate with any existing software, CMS, CRM, ERP, etc.
Please check out the API documentation for more details and ready-to-use code examples.
From where can I obtain the API code examples?
Please check out the API documentation and select the ready-to-use code example in the desired language.
We provide code examples for most common languages and CLI tools, such as JavaScript, Node.js, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, C#, Swift, Go and more.
How to validate if a phone number can receive WhatsApp messages?
You can validate if a given phone number is linked to a WhatsApp account and there can receive messages.
The API provides an endpoint that can validate whether a given phone number does exists in WhatsApp or not.
The only requirement is to have at least one WhatsApp number connected to the platform in your current account.
For more details, please check out the API endpoint documentation here.
WhatsApp number checks are limits per plan
WhatsApp number check validations are limited per month based on your subscription plan.
Please check out the pricing table for more details about the limits.
Before you check if phone number does exists on WhatsApp, you can also validate and normalize the format of a list of phone numbers by using the numbers validator API endpoint. This endpoint only validates the correct E164 format, but it does not check whether if the phone number effectivly exists on WhatsApp or not.
How can I validate phone numbers?
We provide the Number validator API endpoint that allows you to validate the E164 format up to 500 phone numbers per API request. This API endpoint has no limit and can be called with no additional cost.
Please note this validation only does validate of the given phone number format is valid or not, but it will not validate whether it's linked or not to an existing WhatsApp account.
For WhatsApp numbers existing validation please check the article below.
How can I validate if a phone number exists in WhatsApp?
You can validate whether a given phone number exists in WhatsApp or not, and therefore can receive messages in WhatsApp, by using the Number exists API endpoint.
Please note you must have at least one WhatsApp number connected to the platform in order to perform the validation.
Billing
Do price include taxes?
Prices don't include taxes by default.
Countries outside European Union are tax free. If you operate in some European Union country and do not have a registered VAT number, we would have to add on top of the given price the proper tax applicable to your home country in the invoice. This tipically represents from 17% to 27% of additional cost due to taxes, depending on each country.
If I upgrade or downgrade my plan, is the change immediate?
Yes, the change from one plan to another is immediate. The price difference between one plan and another would be automatically prorated over time by Stripe. In other words, Stripe autonomously and automatically calculates the days in which one plan and another have been used and would balance the total credits on the following invoice.
What happens when I hit a limit for my plan?
If you hit the maximum number of text/media messages or the size of your media message is bigger than the one permitted by your plan, the system won't let you send the message(s) that exceed the limit and you will receive a notification by email. You won't be charged anything unless you proactively upgrade your plan.
Numbers
Can I change my WhatsApp number in my existing device?
Sure thing, you can do it at any time in a few minutes. To do so, you don't need to delete your device and create a new one. All you need to do is to scan your new number. More info in this article.
Messages
What type of media files can be sent?
You can send images (JPEG, PNG, WEBP), videos (MP4, 3GPP), audios (MP3, OGG, MP4, ACC), gifs (MP4) and documents (PDF, PPT, PPTX, DOCX, DOC, ZIP, RAR, other binary types).
Check out the API documentation for more details.
What's the maximum file size per media type?
These are the maximum sizes allowed per file type:
- Image -
5MB
- Audio -
16MB
- Video -
30MB
- Document -
30MB
Note that the maximum file size only applies to the Enterprise plan, Business and Professional plans have smaller file sizes.
Check out the plans table comparison for more details about the specific plan limits.
I am trying to send a message with a link but it's not clickable. What is the problem?
If you send a message to a contact for the very first time and your contact doesn't have your number saved in their mobile phone book, any links or media content is by default not clickable.
This is one of WhatsApp security measures to prevent spam, unsolicited and fraudulent content. If your message is legitimate and it's not against WhatsApp rules and you still want to send a clickable link, here's what you can do:
- Send a text message before the link;
- Add a sentence like "Reply to see the link" in the message body so that, once the customer has replied, the link becomes clickable;
- Have the customer begin the conversation.
Can I send buttons or list messages?
Yes you can 😀
For more information, please check out the following tutorials:
Additionally, you can easily send buttons message using the live API tester:
Note that sending buttons and list messages is currently only supported for messages sent via API.
Some restrictions apply to buttons and list messages:
- You cannot send special buttons with link URL or phone number call actions to group chats, only individual user chats.
- You cannot send button or list messages as the first message that initiates a new conversation with a third-party user.
- Instead, use a text message as first message, then following by a second message that might be a button or list message.
Why links are not active in text messages sent to phone numbers?
Whenever a message is sent for the first time to someone who hasn't saved your WhatsaApp number on the agenda and has not exchange a message with you before, none of the URLs included in the message is clickable by default.
This is an intentional limitation by WhatsApp in an attempt to curb spam and scam messages on their platform.
A quick workaround for this is to ask the receiver for a reply back to activate the links.
Hence it has become a common practice to include a tip for the user asking for a reply at the end of the message.
For example, a message like this "Reply this message if you cannot click on the link" in the message footer has proven to be an intuitive call to action that users typically follow.
Can I send messages to broadcast lists created on WhatsApp?
Unfortunately sending messages to the broadcast list is not supported.
The alternatives are:
Send messages 1-to-1 to individual user phone numbers.
Send messages to group chats you belong to.
Note that when sending messages to group chats, all participants in the group will receive them.
You can also create read-only group chats on WhatsApp where only the administrators can send messages, whereas the rest of the participants can only receive and read the messages. Although, there is a limitation: this solution does not prevent participants to see each other's phone numbers, so if you want to enforce privacy, use 1-to-1 private messages.
What does the message priority refer to?
Message priority only affects messages that are sent via API or the console (not the web chat). If you send one or more messages from the API or from the console (s/messages/create), you can establish a priority that can be low, normal, high or urgent. This hierarchy will determine which messages will be sent first in case they are queued.
This feature is especially useful when sending several messages from the API. If you have, for instance, 30 messages in the queue and 10 of them have urgent priority, those will be the first ones to be sent.
Can I send messages across multiple connected WhatsApp numbers?
Yes, you can. When sending messages, you can specify the target WhatsApp number you want to use to deliver the messages.
From the API, this can be simply done by adding an additional field in the JSON body data called device
with the WhatsApp number device ID connected to the platform. This ID is constant and does not change.
How to send messages to multiple phone numbers
You can do it by simply sending multiple API requests, one per target phone number and message.
For instance, if you want to send a message to 10 phone numbers, you should send 10 independent HTTPS requests to the API.
There is no option to send multiple messages in a single API request.
Important: sending bulk messages is not encouraged
Is the message delivery speed included in my plan always guaranteed? Are there any factors that can influence it?
Message delivery speed depends on several factors that are not all under our control, therefore we cannot guarantee that such speed is always achieved. In addition to that, please take into consideration that the message delivery speed stated in our pricing section refers to text only messages.
Message delivery speed depend primarily on these factors:
- Your current plan
- Your internet speed
- The type of message (e.g.: text only, video, audio, ecc.)
- The number of messages that you're sending at the same time
- The message delivery speed that you have set in your device settings (e.g.: 15 messages per minute, etc.)
Chat
If I have multiple devices, will all appear on one chat page or do I have to switch multiple tabs?
If you have 2 or more devices and go to the web chat, you'll be asked what device (WhatsApp number) you want to use. If you need to have them all open at the same time, you can just open them in different tabs in your browser.
If you are subscribed to a Platform plan and, therefore, have several agents that have access to the chat, you can grant them access to more than one device by adding them to every device that you need them to use. When they log in with their credentials, they will see the same window described before where they will be asked to choose among all the devices to which they have access. Again, if they need to have them all open at the same time, they can open every device in a different tab of their browser.
I need more agents than the ones included in my plan, how can I add more?
If you have a Platform Professional or Business plan, you need to upgrade your plan in order to be able to add a higher number of agents.
On the other hand, if you have a Platform Enterprise plan and you need more than 10 agents, you can add individual additional agents for €16.8 EUR per agent per month.
For more details, please check the pricing table.
What are metadata and how are they different from labels?
Glad you asked :)
The metadata field is where you can add all the additional data that is related to your customer. An example is always the best way to explain it: does your customer have an alphanumeric ID in your CRM? You can put it there. Has your customer bought something and you have an order shipping number? You can add it to their metadata.
Metadata are, generally speaking, unique data related to one customer, whereas labels are there for you to create general categories that can apply to more than one contact. For instance: "sales", "high priority customer", "b2b", etc.
Can I use a direct URL to open a new chat?
Yes, sure you can!
In order to open a chat, whether it is an existing one, or a new one on WhatsApp, you can use the following URL:
https://https://whatsapp.utio.io/open/PHONE_NUMBER
Where PHONE_NUMBER
represents a target user phone number with international country prefix. E.g: +123456789
Troubleshooting
My device is not performing well. What are the typical causes for this?
There are several factors that could be detrimental to your device's performance. Here are a few ones:
- Speed / stability of your internet connection
- Hardware capacity of your physical device
- Low battery of your physical device
- High number of open chats or groups (1000+ and 50+ respectively)
- Sending a high number of heavy media files
If you're experiencing issues with the performance of your device, please check that all these parameters are looking good. If you still have problems, you can get in touch with us and we'll be more than happy to look into it.
Account
If I have more than one WhatsApp number, can I connect them all to Utio?
You can connect as many numbers as you want in one account, however, please remind that you need to create one device for each number and that each device has its own plan. So, if you have 2 numbers, you will need to create 2 devices and subscribe to 2 plans.
I chose the wrong plan while creating my trial device, so I need to delete it and create it again. Can I do it without having to pay?
Yes, you have 1 day to delete and create again a device with a new plan without having to pay for the subscription plan. Within this grace period of 24 hours you can create up to 3 devices, one at a time of course.
Is there a limit to the number of open chats that I can have on my WhatsApp account?
Having more than 1000 open chats may cause performance issues in your delivery speed and message processing. If you have more than 1000 open chats, please consider activating the Automatic chat clean up or remove them manually.
Important: it is fundamental that you actually delete the chats that are no longer needed. Please be aware that archiving chats is not the same and deleting them and it will not help your device performing better.
If you still want to retrieve your old chats at some point, we recommend doing a back up. Please find below the direct link to WhatsApp help pages to back up to Google Drive (for Android phones) and to iCloud (for iPhones):
You can find further information in this article