WhatsApp Integration: Chat With Visitors From WhatsApp
Super Speedy Chat can bridge your website chat into WhatsApp, so visitors can talk to you on the app they already use every day, and you can answer from the WhatsApp inbox you already keep open. This is a feature overview: what the WhatsApp bridge does and why you would use it. For step-by-step connection instructions, see the WhatsApp Integration Setup Guide.
The integration is built on Meta’s WhatsApp Cloud API. Unlike the Discord bridge there is no companion bot to run: Meta calls a webhook on your site directly, so once you have entered your credentials everything runs inside WordPress.
There is no separate process to host for WhatsApp. The Discord bridge needs a companion bot running somewhere, but Meta pushes messages to a webhook on your own site, so the whole WhatsApp channel lives inside your WordPress install.
What it does
There are two things you can switch on, and you can use either one or both at the same time.
Visitors chat with you on WhatsApp
A visitor messages your WhatsApp business number and their message arrives in your admin Chats inbox as a normal conversation, exactly like a message typed into the website chat bubble. Nothing about the way you work has to change: the conversation shows up in the same list, with the same reply box, alongside your web and Discord chats.
When you reply, from wp-admin or from any other connected channel, the reply is delivered straight back to the visitor’s WhatsApp. The visitor never has to sit on your website with a tab open. They send a message, close WhatsApp, and get your answer as a normal WhatsApp notification whenever it lands. For handling and organising these conversations once they arrive, see the Managing Conversations guide.
The “Chat on WhatsApp” click-to-chat link
You can add an optional “Chat on WhatsApp” link to the front-end chat bubble. When it is enabled, visitors see a link inside the bubble that opens WhatsApp with your business number pre-filled, so a visitor who would rather talk on WhatsApp than type into a web widget can switch across in one tap. The link is injected cleanly through the widget’s JavaScript hooks, so it does not disturb the rest of the bubble, and it only appears when the integration is enabled and a business number is set.
Reply from your own phone: admin forwarding
The second mode turns your personal WhatsApp into a chat console. Switch on “Forward to Your Phone” and every incoming visitor message, from any channel, is forwarded to your own WhatsApp number as a phone notification. You do not have to watch wp-admin or keep a browser open: your phone buzzes the moment a visitor writes in.
Each forwarded message is tagged with the conversation it belongs to. To answer, you quote-reply (swipe right on the message on your phone) and type your response. Super Speedy Chat reads the quoted message, works out which conversation it came from, and routes your reply back to the right visitor, wherever that visitor is. If you would rather not use the swipe gesture, you can also start a message with the conversation number, for example #42 your reply here, and it will be routed the same way. If a reply cannot be matched to a conversation, you get a short message back on your phone explaining how to quote-reply, so nothing is silently lost.
This means you can run live chat for your whole site from WhatsApp alone: visitors write in, you get pinged, you swipe and reply, and the visitor gets your answer. It works whether the visitor is on the website, on Discord, or on WhatsApp themselves.
Every channel stays in sync
Super Speedy Chat treats WhatsApp as one channel among several, and it keeps them all in step. A reply you type in the WordPress inbox reaches a WhatsApp visitor. A reply you send from Discord reaches a WhatsApp visitor. A reply you send from your own phone reaches a visitor who started on the website. Whatever route a message takes, the full conversation is recorded in one place in WordPress, so the history stays complete no matter how many channels were involved.
That cross-channel behaviour pairs naturally with the LLM auto-reply feature. If you use automated first responses, described in the LLM Auto-Reply Setup Guide, they apply to WhatsApp conversations too, so a visitor can get an instant answer on WhatsApp and then be handed over to you.
What you see in the admin dashboard
WhatsApp conversations are labelled so you always know where a chat is coming from. The conversation list carries a channel badge marking WhatsApp chats, so you can tell at a glance which visitors are on the app and which are on the website.
Open a WhatsApp conversation and the sidebar shows a small WhatsApp panel with the visitor’s phone number (as a tap-through wa.me link), when they last messaged you, and the status of their reply window: whether it is currently open or has expired. That reply-window status is important, and it is worth understanding why.
Meta’s 24-hour reply window
Meta only lets a business send free-form messages to a person for 24 hours after that person’s most recent message. This is a WhatsApp platform rule, not a Super Speedy Chat limit, and it exists to stop businesses spamming people. Inside the 24-hour window you can reply freely and your messages go straight through. Once the window has closed, Meta rejects ordinary replies.
Super Speedy Chat handles this for you rather than letting a reply vanish. When you reply to a WhatsApp visitor whose window has closed, the reply is always saved in WordPress so your record stays complete. The conversation view warns you that the window has expired and the message will not be delivered by WhatsApp until the visitor writes again. If you have configured a re-engagement template, one of Meta’s pre-approved message templates that is allowed to be sent outside the window, Super Speedy Chat sends that template instead to invite the visitor back into an open window. The same protection applies to admin forwarding: if your own phone’s window to the business number has closed, the plugin can re-open it with the template rather than dropping the notification.
Because of this rule, if you use admin forwarding it is worth sending a WhatsApp message from your phone to your business number once a day, which keeps your own window open so forwarded notifications keep arriving. The setup guide covers this and the template configuration in detail.
If you rely on Forward to Your Phone, send one WhatsApp message from your phone to your business number each day. That resets your personal 24-hour window so forwarded visitor notifications keep landing, even during quiet spells when no visitor has messaged you.
Get started
- Read the WhatsApp Integration Setup Guide to create your Meta app, add your business number, generate an access token, and point Meta’s webhook at your site.
- Decide whether you want visitors chatting in on WhatsApp, replies forwarded to your own phone, or both, and switch on the relevant options.
- Optionally enable the “Chat on WhatsApp” bubble link and configure a re-engagement template.
If your team prefers Discord, the same conversations can be bridged there as well: see the Discord Integration: Chat With Visitors From Discord guide. The two channels coexist happily, and every reply keeps the whole conversation in sync.
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