Search for a WhatsApp CRM in India and you will get the same five or six names on every list. What none of those lists tell you is that most of them are not CRMs. They are BSPs, Business Solution Providers, reselling Meta's WhatsApp Business API.
That is not an insult. A BSP does a real job. But it is a different job from a CRM, priced differently, and confusing the two is how businesses end up paying a per-message cut for software they thought was a flat monthly fee.
Here is the difference, and the three questions that tell you which one you are looking at.
What a BSP actually is
Meta does not sell WhatsApp messaging to businesses directly at retail. It provides the WhatsApp Business Platform, and an ecosystem of providers sits on top of it. A BSP handles onboarding your number, submitting your templates, and giving you an interface to send from.
The important part: Meta charges the same rate whoever you go through. A marketing conversation to an Indian number costs Meta's published rate regardless of which provider you buy from. What differs is whether the provider adds a cut on top.
So a BSP's revenue has two parts: a platform fee you can see, and often a per-message markup you cannot. Typically 10 to 30%.
What a CRM actually is
A CRM's job starts after the message and has nothing to do with delivery. It holds:
- the person, as a record with a phone number and a name
- a stage, so you can answer "who is waiting on me right now?"
- a next action with a date, so a follow-up happens on Thursday because Thursday is written down
- an outcome, so you eventually know which leads paid
None of that is messaging infrastructure. A BSP can deliver a message perfectly and still leave you with no idea who owes you a reply.
The three questions
1. Whose name is the WhatsApp account in?
The most expensive question, and it almost never comes up unprompted.
Your WhatsApp Business Account (WABA) has an owner. If the provider registers it under their Meta business rather than yours, you have bought a service you cannot take with you. Meta's documentation makes the consequence concrete:
Templates can only be migrated between WABAs owned by the same Meta business.
Read that carefully. If the provider owns your WABA, moving elsewhere does not mean a slow template migration. It means your approved templates cannot move at all, and every one is resubmitted from scratch and re-approved. Businesses discover this at the exact moment they want to leave.
Ask: "Will the WhatsApp Business Account be registered to my business or yours?" A good answer is "yours, we get admin access." Anything else needs a reason.
The full mechanics are in how to move your WhatsApp number to a different provider.
2. Is there a per-message markup?
Because Meta's rate is the same everywhere, this is pure margin on volume you generated.
At ten thousand messages a month, a 15% markup is roughly ₹1,100 monthly, ₹13,000 a year, for no additional service. That is usually larger than the difference between the platform fees you were comparing, which is why comparing monthly prices alone is misleading.
Ask: "Is there any per-message markup, and what is it?" Get the answer in writing. You can model your own volume in the pricing calculator, and there is a fuller breakdown in how to choose a WhatsApp marketing tool in India.
3. Can it tell you who is waiting on a reply right now?
This is the CRM test, and it is the one that separates the categories.
A messaging tool can tell you what was sent. Ask it who is waiting on you and there is no answer, because "waiting on a reply" is not a property of a message, it is a property of a person. It needs a record, a stage and an owner.
Ask: "Show me the screen that lists people waiting on a reply, sorted by how long they have waited." If that screen does not exist, you are buying a sender.
Which do you actually need?
| Your situation | What you need |
|---|---|
| You send broadcasts and campaigns, and replies are handled by whoever is free | A BSP is enough |
| Several people answer, and leads get forgotten between conversations | A CRM |
| You want both, and do not want two subscriptions | One product that is both |
| You are large enough to have a developer | Meta's API directly, plus a CRM |
That last row is real and rarely mentioned. If you have technical capacity, you can register your own WABA and talk to Meta's Cloud API yourself, paying Meta's rate with no markup at all. The BSP is buying you convenience, not access.
How to tell them apart in thirty seconds
Look at the pricing page.
Priced per message, or per conversation, with tiers usually means messaging infrastructure. Check whether Meta's own rate is shown separately from theirs. If the two are blended into one number, you cannot tell what the markup is, and that is a choice they made.
Priced per user or per seat usually means software that expects to hold your data over time.
Then search the site for four words: pipeline, stage, follow-up, assign. A product with none of them is not going to grow a memory later.
Where Kredoo sits, and how you can verify it
Kredoo is a CRM that sends WhatsApp directly, not a BSP.
Concretely: every send goes to graph.facebook.com using each organisation's own phone number ID and system user token. There is no reseller anywhere in the path, which means no per-message markup exists to charge, because we never handle Meta's billing relationship. You pay Meta, Meta bills you, we are not in the middle of it.
And every WhatsApp Business Account a Kredoo customer uses is registered to their business, not ours. That was a deliberate decision made from watching what the alternative costs when somebody wants to leave.
The trade, stated plainly: because we are not a BSP, we cannot do your Meta onboarding as a black box the way a reseller can. You own the account, which means you are involved in setting it up. Some businesses want that, some would rather hand it over. Worth knowing which you are before you choose.
The short version
Most "WhatsApp CRM" lists are lists of BSPs. A BSP moves your messages. A CRM remembers your customers. You might need one, the other, or both, but you should know which you are paying for.
Three questions, in this order: whose name is the account in, is there a markup, and can it tell you who is waiting on a reply. The first decides whether you can ever leave, the second decides what you actually pay, and the third decides whether it is a CRM at all.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between a WhatsApp CRM and a WhatsApp API provider?
A WhatsApp API provider, or BSP, resells Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform: it onboards your number, submits templates and gives you a sending interface. A CRM holds the customer record, the pipeline stage, the follow-up date and the outcome. Most tools marketed as WhatsApp CRMs in India are BSPs, which is a different product with a different job.
Is Wati, AiSensy or Interakt a CRM?
They are primarily Business Solution Providers, reselling Meta's WhatsApp Business API, and several have added CRM-like features on top. The practical test is whether the product can show you a list of people waiting on a reply, sorted by how long they have waited, because that requires a contact record with a stage rather than a message log.
Do WhatsApp providers add a markup on Meta's message price?
Many do, typically 10 to 30%. Meta charges the same rate whichever provider you buy through, so any markup is margin on volume you generated. At ten thousand messages a month a 15% markup is roughly ₹13,000 a year, which is usually larger than the difference between the platform fees being compared.
Why does it matter whose name my WhatsApp Business Account is in?
Because it determines whether you can leave. Meta's documentation states that templates can only be migrated between WhatsApp Business Accounts owned by the same Meta business. If your provider owns the account, your approved templates cannot transfer at all and must be resubmitted and re-approved from scratch.
Can I use Meta's WhatsApp API without a provider?
Yes, if you have technical capacity. You can register your own WhatsApp Business Account and use Meta's Cloud API directly, paying Meta's rate with no markup. A BSP sells convenience and onboarding, not access to the platform.
Do I need both a WhatsApp tool and a CRM?
Only if the two jobs are both real for you. If you broadcast and whoever is free answers, messaging alone is enough. If several people answer and leads get forgotten between conversations, you need something that holds a stage and a follow-up date, whether that is a separate CRM or one product doing both.
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