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Three WhatsApp engines, plus SMS Live in minutes, no approval queue Opt-outs handled for you Works with Claude & ChatGPT

Reach customers on WhatsApp without waiting for permission.

Link the phone you already use, run Meta's official Cloud API, or send SMS from your own SIM. Every route lands in one shared inbox, with the same flows, automations and API behind it.

Start free → See how it connects

Free plan, no card · Scan a QR code to go live · Cancel whenever

3 Ways to connect a number Run them side by side
48 API endpoints Across 19 resources, all scoped
0 Per-seat charges Bring the whole team on any plan

How it connects

Three WhatsApp engines. Pick the one that suits you today.

Most platforms give you Meta's official API and nothing else, so you wait on approval before you can send a word. Flash Chat gives you three engines for WhatsApp — and SMS besides — and you can run them together on one account. None of them asks you for a server: we host the engines, including the one that drives a full WhatsApp client.

FlashQR

The simplest way to get a number working. Scan a QR code with the phone you already use and start sending. Nothing to install, nothing to run.

Live in
Minutes
Does
Text, media, delivery reports
Trade-off
The essentials only

OpenWA

Also linked by QR, but driving a full WhatsApp client. Groups, chat history, editing a message you already sent — the things a business API simply cannot do.

Live in
Minutes
Does
47 operations
Trade-off
Heavier than FlashQR

Cloud API

Meta's own channel. Approved templates, tappable buttons, and the only engine that keeps sending while your phone is switched off.

Live in
Once Meta verifies you
Does
Templates, buttons, ad tracking
Trade-off
Needs a Business Account

And SMS, from your own SIM

Not a WhatsApp engine, so it sits outside the comparison below. Install the Android app on a handset with your SIM and it reaches the people none of the three above can — the ones who are not on WhatsApp. Carrier rates apply, and the phone stays online.

  FlashQR OpenWA Cloud API
Getting started
Live in Minutes Minutes Once Meta verifies you
Needs Meta approval No No Yes
Keeps the number you already use Yes Yes Migrates it
Messaging
Send text ● ● ●
Photos, video and files ● ● ●
Delivery receipts ● ● ●
Reactions — ● ●
Only a real WhatsApp client can do these
Group chats — ● —
Add, remove and invite group members — ● —
Bring your existing chats across — ● —
Edit or delete a message you sent — ● —
Forward, star and pin — ● —
Contact profile pictures — ● —
Typing indicators and presence — ● —
Incoming call events — ● —
Only the official API can do these
Approved templates — — ●
Buttons and list menus — — ●
See which ad a lead came from — — ●
Keeps working with your phone off — — ●
Size of the engine
Operations available 7 47 16
What you pay to send Nothing per message Nothing per message Meta's per-conversation fee

You are not choosing once. Run all three on one account — and SMS alongside them — and the same inbox, contacts and automations sit behind every one.

Features

Everything after the message arrives.

One inbox for every channel, and the machinery to answer the questions your team shouldn't have to.

Keep what you already have

Your number, your phone, your history.

Linking by QR works the way WhatsApp Web does. Your phone carries on exactly as before, and Flash Chat sits alongside it as another linked device. Nobody has to change the number they have been giving customers for years.

  • Same number, no new SIM, no migration downtime
  • Keep replying from WhatsApp on the phone as normal
  • Import your existing chats so the inbox starts full
  • Unlink whenever you like — the number was always yours
One number, two ways to answer Linked
📱
WhatsApp on your phoneReplying by hand, as you always have
Active
⚡
Flash ChatFlows, automations and the team inbox
Linked device
+966 55 ··· 41 88SAME NUMBER

Shared team inbox

Your whole team, one set of numbers.

Conversations arrive in one place whichever number they came to, with the customer's history beside them. Assign, leave a note, and see who else is in the thread.

  • Assign a chat, or leave a private note on it
  • Roles from owner down to read-only
  • Tags, custom fields and notes on the same screen
  • Several businesses under one login
Inbox 3 numbers
RA
Rana A.Track an order
Sales
MK
Mohammed K.Is the invoice ready?
You
SB
Sara B.STOP
Opted out
HN
Hind N.Do you deliver to Jeddah?
Flow

Flows

Build the conversation, not the code.

Drag nodes onto a canvas to build branching, button-driven conversations. Menus, FAQs and triage that answer instantly and hand over to a person at the right moment.

  • Visual builder, no developer needed
  • Buttons customers tap instead of typing
  • Starts on a keyword or a first message
  • Pauses the moment an agent steps in
Flow · Delivery FAQ Active
Message arrivesTRIGGER
Ask what they need2 buttons
Track an orderBRANCH A
Hand to an agentBRANCH B

Broadcasts

Send to a list, and keep the handbrake.

Filter your contacts, send, and watch it go out in real time. If something looks wrong, pause it mid-send. The delivery actually stops rather than reporting that it did.

  • Pause, resume or cancel while it runs
  • Audience filtered by tag or field
  • Delivered and read counts as they land
  • Opted-out contacts skipped automatically
Eid offer · sending Live
1,284 of 1,880 sent 68%
1,284Sent
1,102Delivered
31Skipped

AI replies

An assistant that cannot run up a bill.

Point it at your own documents and it answers from them. Set a monthly spend cap, and it warns you as you approach it, then switches itself off rather than quietly costing more.

  • Answers from your uploaded documents
  • A hard monthly cap you set yourself
  • Warns first, then stops automatically
  • Hands to a human whenever you say so
AI agent · spend this month Cap $40
What are your opening hours on Friday?
09:12
We open after Jumu'ah, from 14:00 until 23:00.
09:12✓✓
Spent$29.60 / $40.00

At 90% we email you. At the cap, AI replies switch off and conversations go to your team.

Product catalogue

Send the product, not a description of it.

Load the catalogue once — a Shopify export, a CSV, or a published Sheet — and point Flash Chat at the source so it stays current. In a chat, pick the item and send it: name, price and photo, without going off to find a link.

  • Import from a Shopify export, a CSV file, or a Sheet URL
  • Re-sync from the source instead of uploading the file again
  • Send a product straight into a conversation
  • Export the whole catalogue back out whenever you want it
Catalogue · 1 source Synced
🧴
Argan hair oil · 100mlSAR 85.00
Send
🕯️
Oud candle · largeSAR 140.00
Send
412Products
1Source
6hSince sync

Payment requests

Ask for the money in the thread.

Send an amount and a reference, and the customer gets a link showing exactly what they owe. Flash Chat does not take the payment. There is no card processing here — when a customer taps to say they have paid, that is stored as a claim, and nothing is marked paid until you confirm the money actually arrived.

  • An amount, a reference and a link, sent into the conversation
  • “I have paid” is recorded as a claim, with the time they said it
  • Only you can mark a request paid
  • Tapping the button twice keeps the first claim, not a second one
Request · INV-2291 Pending
Payment request · SAR 225.00
Reference INV-2291
13:48✓✓
I have paid
14:02
!
Customer says they have paidClaimed 14:02 · still unconfirmed
Your call

Pipelines

Know which conversations are worth chasing.

Put a deal on a conversation and move it through stages you name yourself. The board shows where everything stands, so the follow-up that matters does not sit buried under the ones that do not.

  • Stages you define, in the order your business actually works
  • Every deal keeps its contact and its conversation attached
  • Move a deal along as it progresses
  • See what is converting and what has gone quiet
Pipeline · Retail enquiries 18 open
7Enquiry
6Quoted
5Won
FA
Bulk order · 40 candlesQuoted · 3 days in stage
Quoted
NK
Wholesale enquiryWon · closed Tuesday
Won

Drip sequences

Follow up until they answer, then stop.

Enrol a contact and the steps go out on your schedule. The moment they reply, the sequence ends — a reply and a STOP keyword are the same thing to it, an inbound message, and neither queues the next step behind it. Chasing somebody who has already answered is the complaint that costs you the number.

  • Any inbound message ends the sequence — a reply counts as an answer
  • Opting out stops it too, and every step carries an unsubscribe link
  • Cancel an enrolment yourself whenever you want
  • Shortcodes fill in the name and the details per contact
Sequence · Quote follow-up Running
1
Day 0 · Thanks for your enquirySent to 46
Done
2
Day 2 · Still interested?Due tomorrow for 31
Queued
✕
15 stopped earlyThey replied — nothing further sent
Stopped

Claude and ChatGPT

Run the inbox by asking for it.

Connect your AI assistant to Flash Chat and it works the account with you: “what came in today”, “add this to the catalogue”, “send Ahmed the 50ml”. You tick the permissions it gets, one screen, at the moment you connect it — and it can only see the tools those permissions allow, so a read-only assistant has no send button to misuse.

  • Sign in and tick what it may do — no key to paste, no config file
  • Anything that messages a lot of people asks you first
  • Every action obeys opt-outs and the daily sending cap, exactly as a person does
  • Disconnect it whenever you like; it is a key you can revoke
Assistant · connected Live
?
“Anything urgent this morning?”You
✓
Four new enquiries, one repeat customerRead your inbox · no permission needed to look
Read
!
Send the price list to all 240?Waiting for you to confirm
Asks first

It never sends to a list without asking, however it is phrased.

Voice notes

Read the voice note instead of playing it.

Customers send voice notes. Your team has to stop, put a phone to their ear, and listen to forty seconds to find out it was a question about delivery. Flash Chat writes it out underneath the message as it arrives, so a thread can be triaged by eye — and your AI agent can answer it, which it could never do with audio.

  • Transcribed the moment it lands, in the thread
  • Your AI agent reads it and can reply like any other message
  • Uses your own provider key, billed by the second alongside everything else
  • Switch it off in one click if you would rather not
Inbox · voice note Transcribed
A
▶ Voice note · 0:38“Hi, I ordered on Tuesday and wanted to check if it ships today, also do you have it in black”
Read it
✓
Agent replied about stockAnswered the audio without anyone pressing play
Handled

SMS from your own SIM

You find out when the phone stops, not the customer.

An SMS gateway is a phone in a drawer, and a phone in a drawer runs out of battery. Flash Chat notices when yours stops checking in and tells you — before a day of one-time codes has quietly failed to send. It paces sends so the SIM does not look like a spam machine to the carrier, retries a failure, and gives up on a message that has gone stale rather than delivering it hours late.

  • An alert when the phone goes quiet, and another when it comes back
  • Set how many texts a minute the SIM may send
  • A code that missed its window fails instead of arriving late
  • Failed sends are retried before they are given up on
SMS device · Shop phone Watching
!
Offline — silent for 47 minutesCheck it is charged and the app can run in the background
Alerted
✓
Back onlineQueued texts went out
Recovered

Queued messages wait for the phone; expired ones do not go at all.

Lead scoring

Sort the list by who is actually interested.

Every contact carries a score out of 100, recalculated every hour. It is a published rubric, not a model. You can read exactly what earns the points, and each contact shows its own breakdown — so nobody has to trust a number they cannot check. Because it runs on a clock rather than on events, a lead who has gone quiet cools on its own.

  • How recently they last wrote to you — up to 40 points
  • How much they have written — up to 25, plus 15 for a real back-and-forth
  • An open deal in the pipeline adds 20
  • Opted out or blocked scores zero, whatever else they did
Contact · lead score Hourly
Score78 / 100
40Wrote today
187 messages
20Open deal

Opt out and the score drops to zero, however warm it looked.

How it works

From signing up to a live reply, in an afternoon.

No developer, no onboarding call, no waiting on an approval you cannot chase.

STEP 01

Connect a number

Scan a QR code with the phone in your pocket, or connect a Cloud API number if you already have one. Both take the same few minutes.

No approval needed on QR
STEP 02

Set what answers itself

Build a flow for the questions you answer every day, and let automations catch keywords and first-time messages.

Visual builder
STEP 03

Put your team on it

Invite everybody, assign the threads that need a person, and watch the rest handle themselves.

No per-seat charge

For developers

An API that covers what the dashboard covers.

Scoped keys, predictable JSON, and signed webhooks so your server can trust what it receives. Name a channel and the same call sends over WhatsApp or SMS.

POST · send a message
# One endpoint, whichever route the channel uses.
curl -X POST https://app.flashchat.xyz/api/v1/messages \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FLASHCHAT_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "to": "+966500000000",
    "channel_id": "a1c9…",
    "type": "text",
    "text": "Your order is out for delivery."
  }'
POST/v1/messagesText, media, templates, buttons
GET/v1/conversationsThreads, filtered by channel
POST/v1/contactsCreate, tag, deduplicate
POST/v1/broadcastsLaunch, pause, resume, cancel
POST/v1/otp/sendPasscodes over WhatsApp or SMS
POST/v1/linksShort links with click counts
GET/v1/validateCheck a number is on WhatsApp
POST/v1/webhooksSubscribe to inbound and status events

Pricing

Priced on what you send, not per seat.

Bring the whole team on every plan. Each figure below is a limit the system enforces rather than a guideline, so you know where you stand before the bill does the telling.

Free
$0forever

Link one number and see whether it fits how you work.

Start free
Messages / month
100
Contacts
500
Connected numbers
1
API keys
1
Webhooks
1

Shared inbox, flows, automations and the API all included.

Growth Most teams start here
$29/ month

A support number, a notifications number, and room to automate properly.

Choose Growth
Messages / month
5,000
Contacts
10,000
Connected numbers
3
API keys
5
Webhooks
5

Everything in Free, plus AI replies with a spend cap you set.

Business
$99/ month

For teams running campaigns and integrations at real volume.

Choose Business
Messages / month
25,000
Contacts
Unlimited
Connected numbers
10
API keys
Unlimited
Webhooks
Unlimited

Everything in Growth, plus help with setup and migration.

Carrier charges on the SMS route are billed by your own operator, because those messages leave from your SIM rather than ours. Need more than Business allows? Ask and we will quote on your volume.

FAQ

Questions worth asking first.

01Do I need approval from Meta to start?

Not on the QR route. You scan a code with the phone you already use and you can send straight away. Approval only matters if you want the official Cloud API, with its templates and verified badge, and you can add that later without losing anything.

02What is the catch with linking a phone?

Two things, and we would rather say them here. You cannot send Meta's message templates, so you cannot start a conversation with somebody who has not written to you first, and you do not get the green verified badge. For support and sales replies neither matters. For bulk notifications, use the Cloud API.

03Do I lose WhatsApp on my phone once I connect it?

No. A QR link is a companion device, exactly like WhatsApp Web, so the phone carries on as normal and you can keep answering from it. Flash Chat simply sees the same conversations. You can also import the chats you already have, so the inbox does not start empty.

04Can I use WhatsApp and SMS from the same place?

Yes. An SMS channel is just another connected number, so the same inbox, the same contacts and the same API call reach it. Name the channel in the request and the message goes out over that route.

05How does the SMS route actually send?

An Android app on a handset holding your SIM. Your operator carries the message and bills you for it, so the sender is genuinely your own number rather than a shared shortcode.

06Is there a charge per team member?

No. Plans are limited by what you send and store, not by how many people are signed in. Invite everybody who needs access and give them a role that fits.

07What happens when I hit a plan limit?

The limit is enforced rather than warned about, so sends stop instead of quietly becoming an overage bill. You will see which limit you reached and can move up a plan straight away.

08Can I build on top of it?

That is what the API is for. Forty-eight endpoints across nineteen resources, keys with scopes so an integration only gets what it needs, and signed webhooks so your server can verify that an event really came from us.

Get started

Link a number and send your first message.

Start on the free plan. Scan the code with a phone you already own, and watch a conversation land in the inbox.

Create an account → Sign in