Marc Alemany
## Business Problem
Since October 1, 2026, the new WhatsApp Business Platform pricing model has significantly increased the cost of human-to-human conversations for businesses with a consultative sales model.
In our case, WhatsApp conversations often involve many individual messages exchanged between a sales agent and a customer. These are not automated or bulk conversations — they are genuine one-to-one sales consultations.
We already use respond.io as our central inbox and would like our agents to continue working there. However, when an agent replies through the existing WhatsApp API channel, the message is sent through the WhatsApp Business Platform and is therefore subject to API message charges.
With WhatsApp Coexistence, agents can avoid these API charges by replying directly from the WhatsApp Business App. The problem is that they then have to leave respond.io and work from the WhatsApp Business App, losing the benefits of having a centralized inbox.
## Desired Outcome
We would like respond.io to support a
WhatsApp Business App manual messaging channel or mode
that allows agents to send and receive human messages from the respond.io Inbox without those messages being sent through the WhatsApp Cloud API.
We fully understand and accept that this channel/mode could have important limitations:
  • No Workflows
  • No AI Agents or bots
  • No automated messages
  • No broadcasts or campaigns
  • No API-triggered outbound messages
  • No message templates
Its purpose would be exclusively
manual, human-to-human communication
.
Ideally, businesses using WhatsApp Coexistence could choose how a message is sent:
API mode:
for automation, bots, workflows and integrations.
Business App / Manual mode:
for messages manually written by an agent, without using the Cloud API messaging route.
## Use Case
A business could use the same WhatsApp number with Coexistence:
  • respond.io + WhatsApp API for automated conversations.
  • WhatsApp Business App for human conversations.
Today, when a conversation is transferred to a human agent, the agent must leave respond.io and open WhatsApp Business App to avoid API messaging costs.
The desired experience would be:
Customer → respond.io Inbox → Human Agent → WhatsApp Business App messaging route → Customer
The agent would remain inside respond.io, while the message would behave as if it had been manually sent from the WhatsApp Business App.
## Business Impact
This has become especially important for businesses with
consultative sales or customer service models
, where a single customer conversation may involve many short human messages.
The recent WhatsApp API pricing changes can make these conversations disproportionately expensive, despite requiring no automation.
Providing a manual Business App messaging option would allow companies to:
  • Keep respond.io as their central customer communication workspace.
  • Continue using automation where it adds value.
  • Switch to human-only messaging when an agent takes over.
  • Avoid forcing agents to work simultaneously in respond.io and WhatsApp Business App.
  • Make WhatsApp Coexistence much more valuable for businesses affected by per-message API pricing.
## Current Workaround
Use WhatsApp Coexistence and ask agents to reply directly from the WhatsApp Business App whenever a conversation becomes human-led.
This avoids API messaging costs, but forces the team to leave respond.io and manage conversations in two different interfaces.