With coexistence on, the WhatsApp Business app and the official API share the same number. They are not two independent inboxes. A one-to-one chat is a single thread, seen from two places: the phone and the panel.

What moves on both sides

  • A message the customer sends arrives in the app and on the API.
  • A message someone types in the app is mirrored to the platform.
  • A message the platform sends through the API shows up in the app.
  • Editing or deleting a message in the app is part of this mode.

That is why the team in GrowHub and the person holding the phone do not need two numbers to avoid stepping on each other. They are in the same chat. What still has to be agreed is the team’s split: who replies to what, in which department.

What stays only in the app

  • Groups. The person with the phone sees and replies. The API does not receive those messages, so the panel does not show the group.
  • Broadcast lists. New lists cannot be created. An old list becomes read-only and does not run through the API.
  • Calls, status, catalog and orders. They stay on WhatsApp Business. Cloud API does not take those over in coexistence.
  • Disappearing messages, view-once and live location. They stop existing in individual chats. Looking for them in the panel will not help.

Speed, the phone, and what drops the link

  • Meta fixes the number at 20 messages per second. A large campaign has to fit that cap, not the pace of a dedicated API number.
  • A primary device idle for about 14 days disconnects. A companion idle for about 30 days drops off too.
  • Uninstalling the app ends the link with the API.
  • Changing phones or registering the number again drops the API until it is reconnected. During that window the panel may neither send nor receive.
  • WhatsApp Web and other companions log out at connection and have to be linked again. Windows and Wear OS do not work as companions: a message viewed there can look incomplete, and a message sent from an unsupported companion may never reach the panel.

If that care for the phone does not fit the routine, the other path is dedicated Cloud API, with no app.

How the team uses this in GrowHub

The phone stays with whoever still needs the app — groups, calls, a quick chat after hours. GrowHub holds the queue: more than one agent, template campaigns, flows and reports, on the same number.

The panel does not ignore what was typed on the phone. Meta sends that mirror to the connected platform. The other way too: the customer sees, on their phone, the reply that left through the API, in the same thread, on the same number they already saved.

What was not allowed at the start — history, if the business declined — does not show up later on its own. That decision belongs to connection time, explained in connect without losing chats. The definition of the mode is in what WhatsApp coexistence is.

Source: Meta’s documentation on WhatsApp Business app coexistence with Cloud API, read in October 2026.