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Are you looking to switch from WATI or just searching for better WATI alternatives before finalising?
Here we’ll tell you the top 6 WATI alternatives for a Shopify store's different use cases so that you can pick the right one for you.
In our detailed review of WATI, we found that even though it offers a ton of functionalities & features on top of WhatsApp Business API, it may not be the right platform, especially for D2C brands for their conversational marketing & multi-channel support needs.
In this post, we’ll cover WATI alternatives for 2 different use cases-
1. WATI’s alternatives for multi-channel support & WhatsApp marketing
We’ve picked this use case because Shopify D2C brands prefer multi-channel support & marketing across WhatsApp, Instagram, Email, and Facebook to ensure the effectiveness of all their campaigns.
In this use case, we’ve picked the top WATI alternatives:
- BiteSpeed
- DelightChat
- LimeChat
And we’ll go through the advantages & disadvantages of each solution.
2. WATI’s alternatives for WhatsApp Business communication
Though multi-channel solutions should be the priority of all D2C brands because they help generate more revenue & sales, still if you’re interested in learning more about WhatsApp-only WATI alternatives, we’ll cover them here.
We’ve picked Interakt, BusinessOnBot & Zoko for this use case.
Let’s now see each platform's potential and why they’re a worthy WATI alternative.
And if you don’t already know WATI’s pros & cons, here’s a quick refresher.
A bit about WATI & its pros & cons for a Shopify D2C brand
WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox) is a WhatsApp Business API-based solution that offers WhatsApp API access to all businesses. WATI provides features including a support dashboard, marketing campaigns & no-code WhatsApp chatbot builder to engage with customers on WhatsApp 24*7.
WATI does offer a Shopify Integration & it is available as a separate purchase. But, because WATI tries to do everything for every business, the D2C-specific features are limited.
Their plugin focuses on abandoned cart recovery for D2C brands, broadcast campaigns and COD to prepaid campaigns. However, you’ll end up being disappointed if you’re a seasoned marketer who wants advanced marketing capabilities like pre-checkout retargeting, segmented broadcast campaigns to get more bang for your buck, upselling, cross-selling, and the ability to track customer journeys with UTM parameters.
Pros
Self-serve onboarding & minimal setup: You can directly buy a plan according to your requirements and set up everything on your own.
No-Code chatbot builder: WATI offers a drag-and-drop chatbot builder that can be used to build WhatsApp chatbots & conversation flows for sales & support.
Support dashboard for agents: WATI has a good support agent dashboard that comes with agent management & ticket assignment features. It offers 5 Live Chat Agents support in the base Plan.
Cons
'WhatsApp only' platform (huge bummer): As of today, WATI is available only for WhatsApp business. If you’re looking for a multi-channel marketing & support product, you will have to buy an additional CRM tool.
WATI Lacks opt-in tools to build & grow a subscribers list: Opt-in tools are like a VIP pass to the inside scoop of your D2C brand. They allow you to cultivate a dedicated group of followers who are interested in hearing from you and staying updated on what's happening in your world.
Not only does this help you build brand loyalty and establish a more personal connection with your audience, but it also gives you a targeted group of potential customers to market to. Plus, it's a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of what your audience is interested in and tailor your messaging accordingly.
In short, a subscriber list and opt-in tools are a must-have for any savvy D2C business looking to grow and engage with its audience.
Pre-checkout retargeting is not available: WATI doesn’t allow you to retarget visitors before checkout. That means you miss out on 90% of the potential sales. Similarly, you can not retarget people who only viewed a product but did not even add to the cart.
Free trial is an incomplete experience: WATI offers a pre-made sandbox account during the trial that can be used to test the platform only on a single number.
Getting the 'Verified Business' tick is not free: It costs $50 (one time) in each country.
Customer Support: There's no way to contact the support team via phone to raise an issue. For 24*7 support & dedicated account manager, you need to buy an additional plan by emailing their support.
Let’s now look at the top WATI alternatives.
WATI’s alternatives for multi-channel support & WhatsApp marketing
1. BiteSpeed
So, why do we place ourselves as the best alternative to WATI for Shopify D2C stores?
Simply because BiteSpeed is made for Shopify Stores & offers all the necessary features that D2C brands need to drive additional revenue via WhatsApp and reduce customer acquisition costs.
Pros
Features offered by BiteSpeed:
WhatsApp chatbot flow builder: BiteSpeed offers you a complete flow builder that helps you customise your WhatsApp chatbot in real time & based on your requirements.
Multi-channel support inbox: BiteSpeed allows you to support customers across channels from a single support inbox. It also lets you assist buyers by quickly creating carts and collecting payments with a single click to help you generate more sales & revenue.
Auto upsell & cross-sell campaigns: BiteSpeed allows you to set up automatic upsell & cross-selling campaigns. With deep integration with your Shopify store, BiteSpeed makes it effortless for you to build a recommendation engine.
This way, with just a click of a few buttons, your store now has a recommendation engine that suggests your buyers buy new and relevant products that can boost your LTV & AOV.
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Photo review collection: You can automate the review collection via WhatsApp. Based on your set-up time interval, customers will receive a message on WhatsApp to share their experience with the product they bought. This campaign also allows you to collect photos & videos of the products from the customers.
Abandoned cart recovery campaigns: Almost all D2C brands regularly witness large numbers of abandoned carts, products and checkouts. Out of all your visitors, less than 10% reach the checkout stage. You can set up automated cart recovery messages on WhatsApp for users who’ve not completed the payment. The rest 90% can be retargeted on WhatsApp. You can also offer some additional discounts to make customers complete the purchase. These campaigns can help you increase revenue.
Preventing abandonment is crucial for any D2C business because no one wants to be left holding the bag (or, in this case, the abandoned cart and checkouts).
Explore: BiteSpeed vs WATI
Segmented WhatsApp broadcast: You can use WhatsApp broadcasts to send personalized marketing messages to specific groups of customers based on their behaviour, preferences, or interests. This allows you to provide a more relevant and personalized experience, build trust and loyalty, and increase conversions. Additionally, segmented broadcasts can be more efficient as they allow you to send messages to specific groups rather than your entire audience. You can also use these campaigns to offer targeted discounts and collect product reviews/feedback from specific segments of customers.
Here is an example of how a D2C business might use segmented WhatsApp broadcasts:
Let's say you own a clothing store and you want to launch a marketing campaign for a new line of summer dresses. You could segment your audience into two groups: those who have purchased dresses from your store in the past and those who have not.
For the group of customers who have purchased dresses from your store in the past, you could send a WhatsApp broadcast with a special discount code and a preview of the new summer dresses. This message would be personalized and relevant, as it targets customers who have shown an interest in dresses from your store in the past.
For the group of customers who have not purchased dresses from your store in the past, you could send a WhatsApp broadcast with information about the new summer dresses and a special offer to encourage them to make their first purchase.
Overall, using segmented WhatsApp broadcasts allows you to target your messaging to specific groups of customers and improve the customer experience, which can ultimately increase conversions for your business.
Convert COD to prepaid & COD confirmation: RTO (return to origin) is a huge problem for D2C brands. COD confirmation and COD to prepaid can help to reduce RTO (return to origin) rates for your store by reducing the risk of fraud and ensuring that orders are fulfilled as intended.
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COD confirmation involves verifying the customer's identity and address before the order is shipped, while COD to prepaid requires the customer to pay upfront before the order is shipped. Both of these processes help to reduce the risk of fraud and improve the overall customer experience by ensuring that orders are fulfilled as intended.
You can reduce RTO by just asking COD users to complete payment before the delivery date or time. This will not help you generate more revenue but it will reduce the operational cost that occurs for cancelled COD orders.
Opt-In tools: Subscriber growth is essential to marketing across industries. For D2C brands, subscribers are even more critical to driving repeat purchases. You can run campaigns to engage, retarget, upsell, and cross-sell, all of which can help you generate more sales & revenue.
BiteSpeed’s opt-in tools include
1. Persistent Discount Widget
2. Visual Pop-up
3. Spin The Wheel Pop-up
4. Checkout Widget.
Include discounts & coupon codes along with these opt-in tools to sales count for your store while simultaneously getting them subscribed for future communications.
With all these features, D2C stores are generating 20% more revenue with BiteSpeed. Talk to our team for a demo.
Cons
BiteSpeed is currently available only for Shopify stores. However, it will soon be available for other ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, and Magento.
Now, forward BiteSpeed’s offerings to 10 connections & get good news by the end of the day. ~forwarded
2. DelightChat
DelightChat is an omnichannel customer support platform that enables businesses to communicate with customers on channels including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Email, and Live Chat. It also offers some features for WhatsApp marketing such as broadcasts and automated cart recovery campaigns.
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Pros
Like BiteSpeed, DelightChat also provides businesses with multi-channel customer support on its platform. This gives the platform a competitive advantage over WhatsApp-only marketing solutions like WATI & Interakt.
Other support features like replying to FB comments, transactional reminders & product updates, and automated replies are available on DelightChat.
It also offers Shopify integration with a dedicated plugin that helps Shopify stores manage support, create orders and set up marketing communication quickly via DelightChat.
DelightChat does offer a mobile app that can help you support customers on the go.
Cons
It lacks an advanced chatbot flow builder: Unlike BiteSpeed, DelightChat doesn’t allow you to build & customize an intelligent WhatsApp chatbot on your own. This can be a huge deal breaker for your business if you receive a ton of queries that can be automated or if you want to collect information about your customers via quizzes that can be used in future marketing campaigns.
DelightChat remains behind in marketing capabilities: Though it does offer basic marketing features such as broadcasts & automated replies, advanced features such as re-targeting campaigns, growing a subscriber base, upselling, cross-selling, and the ability to adding segments before sending broadcast campaigns are absent.
In a world where attention spans are falling faster than a new cryptocurrency, these advanced capabilities are proving to be critical. Especially, if you want to stand out in a crowded market and delight your customers at every touch point.
It lacks D2C-specific features: DelightChat lacks a WhatsApp shop & catalogue, converting COD to prepaid, opt-in tools like spin the wheel, UTM-based tracking, upsell, and cross-sell campaigns.
It doesn’t offer pre-approved WhatsApp message templates: This can be a pain especially if you want to start today. You’d be doing a disservice to your customers if you’re telling them about that new offer you’ve got or the new set of collections that you launched.
3. LimeChat
LimeChat is an omnichannel ecommerce communication platform that enables stores to communicate with customers on channels including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. This communication includes both support & marketing.
LimeChat is geared towards live chat, chatbots & customer support across channels for Shopify stores.
Pros
LimeChat offers multichannel customer support on its platform. This gives the platform an edge over WATI.
Along with live chat support, it provides AI-based WhatsApp chatbots that are smarter than keywords-based chatbots processing complex queries.
Conversational marketing features like re-targeting and retention campaigns are available for eCommerce. It offers deep Integration with Shopify events.
For WhatsApp-based campaigns, LimeChat offers a comprehensive report on WhatsApp broadcasts, and cart recovery campaigns.
Cons
D2C-specific features including converting Cash On Delivery to prepaid, and user segmentation for marketing campaigns are yet to be available on the platform.
Similar to WATI, LimeChat does not offer opt-in tools & pre-checkout retargeting. This means you would not only miss out on growing a subscriber base but also the ability to retarget visitors who’ve already taken a few steps in their buying journeys.
LimeChat pricing also includes their team's installation time and effort to customize and implement the solution to suit your business goals. That makes LimeChat a bit overpriced compared to its competitors.
It also lacks pre-approved WhatsApp message templates to get started. Pre-approved WhatsApp templates save you time and resources when sending bulk messages to customers. Without pre-approved WhatsApp templates, your team will spend a big chunk of their time and resources creating and reviewing messages individually. Additionally, it can be difficult to ensure that messages are consistent and compliant with messaging guidelines. This can lead to a less cohesive messaging strategy and potentially result in a negative impact on the customer experience.
WATI’s alternatives for WhatsApp Business communication
1. Interakt
Interakt works as a WhatsApp-based CRM for businesses & allows e-commerce stores (including Shopify) to access a set of features essential for WhatsApp marketing.
These features include automated WhatsApp notifications, catalogues on WhatsApp, bulk promotional campaigns and analytics.
The USP of Interakt is WhatsApp CRM + team inbox. It offers a variety of features like automated replies, quick replies, bulk campaigns & notifications.
It can be utilised for both customer support & marketing purposes.
Pros
Automated notifications & auto-replies: You can set up welcome messages, action-based triggers & automated notifications.
Broadcast & marketing campaigns: You can set up marketing campaigns based on events & custom attributes.
Shared team inbox: Interakt allows you to use WhatsApp as a customer support channel. You can set up a multi-agent login on a single WhatsApp number and access the support team inbox.
Cons
Like WATI, the main disadvantage of Interakt is that it is available only for WhatsApp.
If your customers raise questions on other platforms such as email, Instagram, and Messenger, you will need to set up separate tools for each of these channels. This can hurt your efficiency and increase your costs.
Interakt doesn't offer pre-approved WhatsApp templates to get started. Pre-approved WhatsApp templates streamline the messaging process, saving you time and resources. Without them, crafting individual messages becomes a tedious task and maintaining consistent messaging becomes difficult.
Retargeting campaigns are absent: Interakt doesn't allow you to re-target shoppers who browse a product but don't add it to the cart on WhatsApp. Similarly, you can’t retarget people who’ve added to the cart but did not checkout.
The lack of retargeting campaigns is a disadvantage for D2C brands because they miss out on the opportunity to reach potential customers who have previously shown interest in products. Without retargeting, you may struggle to effectively reach and convert these warm leads, which can result in missed sales opportunities and increased CAC.
Interakt has tedious manual work. You constantly juggle with the export/import of CSV files for different operations like contact management etc.
Hard to build & manage chatbot flows. Building chatbot flow is a complex process with multiple "AND" / "OR" rules.
2. BusinessOnBot (aka BoB)
BusinessOnBot is an end-to-end WhatsApp-based communication platform for businesses. It helps businesses run end-to-end marketing on WhatsApp via chatbots, automated sequences, & bulk messages.
Pros
Agent Support Dashboard: Business on Bot offers a live chat dashboard that can be used for offering customer support over WhatsApp. Businesses can check each agent’s performance, workload & resolution time.
Automated notifications & marketing campaigns On WhatsApp: BoB helps businesses set up automated messages such as transactional messages like payment reminders, abandon cart and shipping information etc.
For WhatsApp campaigns, Business on Bot offers a comprehensive report on WhatsApp broadcasts, and cart recovery campaigns.
Cons
Similar to WATI & Interakt, BusinessonBot is a WhatsApp-only solution.
Flow builder: Unlike WATI, BoB doesn’t allow you to build & customize a WhatsApp chatbot on your own. You’ve to rely on BoB’s team to make any big or small changes to your chatbot. This can be a huge deal breaker for your business if you’d like to tweak and iterate on your campaigns.
A free trial is not available. It doesn’t offer a free trial if you want to explore products & features before making a purchase.
D2C-specific features including converting Cash On Delivery to prepaid, and user segmentation for marketing campaigns are not yet available.
The Shopify plugin is missing. BoB doesn’t offer a dedicated plugin for Shopify & other e-commerce platforms. That means you can not integrate your store seamlessly into WhatsApp. You have to contact their team which may attract additional charges.
BoB’s base plan doesn’t offer all the essential marketing features including interest-based targeting and acquisition/opt-in tools. If you’re keen to launch personalised WhatsApp marketing campaigns that generate high ROI & revenue, you’ve to buy a high-tier plan that includes acquisition tools, dedicated CSM & onboarding.
As a WhatsApp-only solution, competitors like Interakt & WATI offer affordable plans compared to Business On Bot.
Unlike WATI & BiteSpeed, BoB doesn’t offer you 1000 free WhatsApp conversations each month.
3. Zoko
Zoko is a shared team inbox for WhatsApp. It allows businesses to set up their WhatsApp account and communicate over WhatsApp for either marketing or customer support.
It offers features like transactional reminders on WhatsApp notifications, broadcasts, multi-agent login on a single WhatsApp number, and shopping on WhatsApp.
Pros
Support ticket assignment: Support tickets can be assigned inside the team inbox making support operations more efficient.
Shopping assistance: Agents can send catalogues to customers and help them choose products for shopping.
WhatsApp chatbot: Keyword-based chatbot helps businesses set up 24*7 support on FAQ-based queries.
Cons
Basic functionalities: Team inbox lacks analytics, WhatsApp catalogue and pre-made templates for broadcasts. These features are fundamental to WhatsApp marketing campaigns and the lack of them makes Zoko fall behind as a complete WhatsApp marketing solution.
Available only for WhatsApp: Does not integrate with email for your support inbox. Your support agent will have to switch between tools which lower productivity.
Manual shopping assistance: Only live agents can assist customers with shopping on WhatsApp. There's no way to push an automated flow or catalogue in a chat.
Chatbot functionalities are limited: Zoko provides only a basic chatbot that’s triggered based on keywords. It might help with basic use cases like answering where the order is. However, it can’t automate more intricate queries or run interactive quizzes to collect zero-party data about your customers that you can use in future WhatsApp marketing campaigns.
BiteSpeed: Multi-Channel Support & WhatsApp marketing For Shopify Stores
BiteSpeed offers everything you’d expect from a WATI alternative to driving more revenue through WhatsApp as a channel and delighting customers with an omnichannel support inbox.
Book a no-strings-attached demo to see how BiteSpeed will drive up to 20% more revenue to your Shopify store.
