Comparing 11 WhatsApp marketing tools - Analyzing the most relevant tools for WhatsApp [Update 2024!]

WhatsApp marketing tools - 11 tools WhatsApp in comparison

You want to get started with WhatsApp marketing, but don't know how yet? You can't find your way through the endless sea of multi-messenger and CRM solutions? You can't find any meaningful and serious information about WhatsApp marketing anywhere? And you just want to find the right WhatsApp marketing tools for your needs? Look no further, but read this blog post on the topic "tools for WhatsApp marketing" - 11 WhatsApp tools in comparison.

Approach to the blog post "WhatsApp Marketing Providers - 11 WhatsApp Marketing Tools in Comparison".

The chatarmin.com is not unbiased in its approach to this blogpost, of course. We would place ourselves at number one and of course, want to present ourselves from the best side. Therefore, this blog on the topic of the best tools for WhatsApp marketing does not reflect a ranking, but merely a listing and an attempt at a holistic, transparent and honest comparison.

We will succeed more or less.

All WhatsApp marketing tools have their advantages and disadvantages. No tool is the best for everyone. That's why we've taken a look at the most common and popular WhatsApp marketing providers and put them under the microscope for you.

Here is a quick overview for you, which analyses and compares all relevant tools for WhatsApp marketing in various categories. Time is gold - In case you don't want to read the whole blog post:

Comparing every relevant WhatsApp Marketing tool, sources: die WhatsApp marketing tools. Criteria: Preis, API-Anbindungen, Support Use Case, Marketing, Multi-Messenger, deutscher Kundensupport, Premium Customer Support

Please bear in mind that we are trying to gather all the information. However, you can already see from the table that transparency in the WhatsApp marketing market is not desired by all participants. The fact that chatarmin.com is the only WhatsApp marketing provider that does not charge a surcharge on the already expensive costs of the WhatsApp Business API is certainly a big plus point for our solution.

What speaks against our solution from chatarmin.com is that - in contrast to most other tools - we do not offer a multi-messenger solution. The reason for this is that over 90% of customer inquiries, support tickets, and outbound campaigns are played out via WhatsApp anyway in the DACH region as well as relevant WhatsApp marketing markets.

We call on all WhatsApp marketing tools to send us all the information they have so that we can provide a super holistic overview of the WhatsApp marketing tools market. May our call be heard!

Even a Klaviyo integration that meets the eCommerce demands of advanced D2C brands is, unfortunately, missing on the WhatsApp marketing tools market apart from chatarmin.com.

If you're looking for a holistic, all-in-one, multi-messenger solution that doesn't have a lot of extra features, you'll quickly find what you're looking for in the sea of options.

Contact us to understand which WhatsApp marketing tool is right for your business. Book your 25-minute WhatsApp sparring session here:

Tools for WhatsApp marketing such as Brevo, Sendinblue or MessageBird do not make it into the best WhatsApp marketing tools, why is that?

We have left out WhatsApp marketing providers that, in our opinion, do not offer a serious and mature WhatsApp solution from the ranking. Nevertheless, we want to list them here. These include:

• Brevo (formerly "SendinBlue")
• Messagebird
• Manychat
• Hellomateo
• Twilio
• websms
• userlike
• linkmobility
• chatlyn

...and I'm sure you can find a few more. The problem with the above tools is that they are not only "All-in-one CRM Solutions" but also very immature WhatsApp marketing providers. We cannot recommend these alleged WhatsApp marketing providers to any company profile that wants to scale their WhatsApp communication or WhatsApp marketing in a serious way.

To get started and validate your WhatsApp marketing efforts, the above solutions may be sufficient. As soon as you need advanced flows or interoperable integrations with the rest of your MarTech stack, you won't be happy with any of the WhatsApp marketing providers listed above.

So, unfinished "dummy MVP's" or non-integratable WhatsApp marketing solutions have no place in this ranking, nor do WhatsApp providers that we didn't test, or couldn't at least get an expert opinion or actual customer testimonial on.

The team of chatarmin.com has intensively studied the WhatsApp marketing provider landscape of Europe, Asia and North America, especially in the year 2022, and thus on the one hand did "secret shopping", and on the other hand discovered the clear need in the market to develop a fair, cool and smart solution in the first place.

The potential is still great, strong WhatsApp marketing tools are needed to drive the market forward. In our opinion, "the thing is also decided by the verticals", i.e. tools for WhatsApp cannot avoid positioning themselves in niches and specializing in certain industries and their use cases.

Otherwise, WhatsApp marketing vendors will present immature and unfinished solutions that the CRM teams of the world are unhappy with. Working "more bad than good" seems to be a concern for many "Customer Support Suites" or "Multi Messenger Engagement Platforms".

But our claim is to recommend only the best and most specialized tools. Unfortunately, there are generally not that many of these at the moment. As a result, Klaviyo even offers our solution to its LATAM and EMEA customers.

There are simply no other ready-made WhatsApp marketing tools that have completely and satisfactorily integrated Klaviyo. With this article, we hope to give you an overview of the market of WhatsApp marketing providers. So that you can make the right decision for your business.

WhatsApp marketing providers in comparison: Your overview of all 11 relevant WhatsApp marketing tools

chatarmin.com - your WhatsApp marketing provider for D2C brands with Shopify & Klaviyo Techstack

chatarmin.com is your perfect WhatsApp CRM if you need an affordable "lightly managed" SaaS solution that doesn't leave you alone with WhatsApp marketing, but delivers everything you need already, or can deliver it to you quickly on demand. We have focused on marketing applications for D2C brands in eCommerce with Shopify & Klaviyo Techstack, and are bold to claim that we can offer the best product on the market for this targeted company profile.

Even Klaviyo itself now recommends our tool to its customers across the board, which means we are only sharpening and deepening our focus to avoid being knocked off our throne here.

100% reflection of your customers' WhatsApp activity in Klaviyo creates unlimited segmentation possibilities and prevents you from continuing to grope in the dark due to unintegrated "silo solutions". Especially due to the (expensive) pricing of the WhatsApp Business API, the integration of email with WhatsApp - and vice versa - is indispensable for professional CRM teams. We quickly identified this need in eCommerce and created a solution that lets you segment on any Shopify and Klaviyo activity you can think of.

Furthermore, we are "bootstrapped" at chatarmin.com and can therefore act 100% in the interests of the customer. We offer maximum flexibility, full support and an attractive price/performance ratio. We stand as founders with our names and faces in front of and behind the company and cannot afford any dissatisfied customers. You can read more about how Chatarmin works in tandem with Klaviyo here.

Individual customer requests are sometimes "crunched overnight" with us, which makes us the most flexible WhatsApp CRM solution you can imagine.

Our franchise and trade applications are unique and create decentralisable marketing structures that allow for central governance and compliance.

The mix of all these aspects makes chatarmin.com your perfect tool if you are an eCommerce, retail, or franchise entrepreneur who wants to run GDRPR compliant and scalable WhatsApp marketing.

Our prices start at €99,00 monthly, you can cancel at any time, and we are available from 08:00 to 19:00 on weekdays in the shared Slack Connect channel, or via email.

Source: chatarmin.com(https://www.chatarmin.com/)

The advantages of the WhatsApp tool chatarmin.com:

• flexible delivery of your personal customer requests and feature requests
• only WhatsApp marketing provider with Klaviyo integration
• clear focus on the eCommerce, retail and franchise verticals
• small, close-knit team
• bootstrapped startup that has to act in the best interest of its customers
• No extra charge on top of the already high cost of the WhatsApp Business API.
• Integration possibilities with your customer support suite, allowing the use of one WABA with one number for support, sales and marketing

The disadvantages of WhatsApp tool chatarmin.com:

• No ready-made multi-messenger customer support suite, i.e. no native offering of a multi-messenger customer support suite including Instagram DM's, Facebook DM's, Telegram, SMS, Email and Co.
• Lack of integration of rarely used API's such as Prestashop or Oxid.
• Extreme product focus on e-commerce, retail and franchising, resulting in low flexibility for product updates for corporations and large companies from other industries.

If you need a holistic multi-channel customer support suite, we can only provide the WhatsApp contribution and offer personalised integrations with tools like Gorgias, Freshdesk, Zendesk or Kustomer. However, you cannot directly manage tickets in communication channels like Instagram DM's, Facebook DM's and co. in the Chatarmin interface.

However, since over 95% of support tickets for multi-messenger solutions in the DACH region are handled via WhatsApp anyway, our WhatsApp focus is hopefully totally understandable and obvious.

If you need a focused WhatsApp marketing solution or would like to use the same number for support, sales and marketing, contact us for a no-obligation initial consultation:

lupiter - the unknown challenger from Düsseldorf

Giuseppe Ruffo founded his "lupiter" in Düsseldorf in 2019. €200,000.00 pre-seed funding promised a great first product and fast path to product/market fit. Since then, unfortunately, not much has happened. The website contains spelling mistakes, case studies or serious customer testimonials are in vain. On LinkedIn, "Lupiter GmbH" shows no other employees and it may be doubted that the company is still active. Giuseppe's dream of building "eye-catching chat marketing software, for higher open rates and conversion rates than email" has probably come to nothing. We tried to reach Giuseppe for a statement, as he seems to have total WhatsApp focus. However, he was unavailable for comment. So, unfortunately, we cannot recommend or analyse Lupiter as a useful WhatsApp marketing provider.

Source: lupiter.com(https://www.lupiter.com/)

The advantages of the WhatsApp marketing tool lupiter:

• favourable pricing
• hands-on mentality and premium support from the founder due to fewer customers

The disadvantages of WhatsApp marketing tool lupiter:

• No in-house product development
• no case studies or success cases from customers
• No professional reviews
• low marketing or LinkedIn activity of the founder
• No follow-up investment after 2019

Despite a successful website and a great company vision, we can unfortunately only advise against working with the WhatsApp marketing tool lupiter. There is a lack of reviews, case studies, current testimonials and LinkedIn activity on the part of the founder. We do not think that lupiter is still actively participating in the WhatsApp marketing market at all.

whatsmojo - the underdog for small businesses

Somewhat, but not much better than lupiter is the situation with "whatsmojo". We checked with customer reviews. None of the companies listed on the website as example customers have built or scaled their WhatsApp marketing based on this WhatsApp marketing tool. It is therefore doubtful that whatsmojo is still in the race for the best "WhatsApp marketing provider" in the DACH region.

The founders can be reached on LinkedIn and seem to continue working on the product. However, the limitless slots available in the founder's Calendly do not promise a full sales pipeline. Without pressure on sales, product development will also not be sufficiently pressured to program bootstrapped a high-quality WhatsApp marketing solution. So we advise against using "whatsmojo" and now turn to WhatsApp tool providers, for which you already have to look internationally.

Source: whatsmojo.com(https://www.whatsmojo.com/)

The advantages of WhatsApp marketing tool whatsmojo:

• CTO as founder, in-house product development
• affordable pricing, suitable for first steps
• Basic Shopify integration
• Basic WhatsApp marketing applications like logics, campaigns and analytics

The disadvantages of WhatsApp marketing tool whatsmojo:

• no case studies or success cases from customers
• no professional reviews
• low marketing or LinkedIn activity of the founders
• Low awareness of the provider

Despite a successful website and a great company vision, we can unfortunately only advise working with the WhatsApp marketing tool whatsmojo if you are an extremely small company with the lowest turnover and would like to validate WhatsApp marketing in a first step. Please contact the founders beforehand to see if the product is also "live" and maintained.

If the limitations of the "WhatsApp Business App" do not offer you enough, and WhatsApp marketing tools such as "chatarmin.com" or "Sinch Engage" are too expensive for you, then whatsmojo can be a sensible and extremely inexpensive bridging solution. However, for the reasons mentioned above, unfortunately nothing more and nothing less.

Botsify - WhatsApp marketing tool with focus on B2B2B agency whitelabels

Botsify was one of the first WhatsApp marketing providers we ever looked at in early 2022. The SEO game is strong in English and one stumbles upon the colleagues of this WhatsApp marketing provider from India quite quickly. The pricing seems appealing at $49.00 per month in the basic variant, the tool seems rich in features and integrations. However, due to the fact that Botsify's product development focus is on multilingual applications for corporations, we don't think it is the right WhatsApp marketing application for German SMEs.

The time difference of 3.5 hours with the DACH region is not ideal in terms of communication with Botsify Sales and Support, but it is bearable. What was more difficult for us in the product demo was the barely understandable Indian accent in the English of the Customer Success Manager Usama.

It was almost impossible to understand him and thus have a meaningful dialogue. Botsify also focuses on white-label solutions for marketing and chatbot agencies that want to offer and sell their own solution. So a lot of developer resources flow into this, too, which are of course lacking elsewhere. This is also noticeable in the UI/UX, which leaves much to be desired.

Source: botsify.com(https://botsify.com/)

The advantages of WhatsApp marketing tool Botsify:

• affordable and transparent pricing
• B2B focus and white label solution for chatbot and retention agencies
• support and service for every customer
• Extensive chatbot functions and logics

The disadvantages of WhatsApp marketing tool Botsify:

• Time difference to India so no real-time service and support
• Language barrier with customer support due to difficult-to-understand English with strong accent
• Very limited or non-existent API connections with standard DACH eCommerce tech stacks like Shopify, Shopware, Klaviyo or Omnisend
• Focus on the Asian region, no contact persons or teams for German customers

All in all, the WhatsApp tool Botsify is a useful multi-messenger solution for basic use cases. However, to call this tool a WhatsApp marketing provider is bordering on exaggeration. The difficult language exchange with the team virtually makes a personal and productive collaboration with Botsify impossible for companies from the DACH region.

Chatwerk - solid German multi messenger chat suite

"We also chatted with Chatwerk, but after their demo it was clear that they would not become our partners" - that was the summary of one of our customers who shared his "Chatwerk" experience with us. Another lead is, at the time of writing, considering whether to switch from hello-charles to Chatwerk, or to us. So the needs of businesses interested in WhatsApp are diverse, and no one provider can offer the right product to everyone.

Nica Gebauer, for example, is a testimonial who is totally satisfied with Chatwerk as a customer support suite. So far, we have not seen any successful WhatsApp marketing cases with Chatwerk.

The biggest problem for the company cited above was the lack of professionalism in the sales process and the lack of integrations with Shopify and Klaviyo. Chatwerk cannot be considered a serious solution for D2C brands with a Shopify & Klaviyo techstack, or eCommerce companies generally that are looking to professionally tackle the CLTV uplift of adding WhatsApp marketing to their communicational marketing mix.

According to the Chatwerk website, "Numbirds" and "Hubspot" are currently available as integrations. According to the website, there is also an own "Unified Messaging API", how far-reaching, extensive or useful this actually is for companies, we did not manage to find out. We are missing relevant D2C eCommerce WhatsApp integrations here all over the place, unfortunately.

As a multi-messaging solution that serves basic needs in customer support and is to be used for campaign mailings, Chatwerk is certainly sufficient as a solution. Building highly professional sales teams is a huge challenge for any start-up with structured sales, so in this single experience, absolutely no blame goes to the colleagues at Chatwerk.

Source: chatwerk.de(https://chatwerk.de/)

The advantages of the WhatsApp marketing provider Chatwerk:

• German team with close customer support and active founder
• in-house product development with programming based on customer requests and feedback
• established company with trustworthy case studies and reviews

The disadvantages of WhatsApp marketing provider Chatwerk:

• no eCommerce integrations with e.g. Shopify, Klaviyo, Omnisend or Shopware
• little in-house knowledge about eCommerce best practices
• no support and sparring for eCommerce use cases and KPIs
• non-transparent pricing and potential uncertainty about long contract terms, cross- or up-sales

Chatwerk is an established and trusted tool to unify and analyze your multi-messenger inboxes in one dashboard. For support use cases, Chatwerk is a well-established standard solution that is used by many different companies in a wide range of industries.

However, Chatwerk has not yet proven that it can also be your optimal WhatsApp marketing provider with integrations and inter-operational use cases for your D2C eCommerce company.

WATI - Multi Messenger Customer Suite as YCombinator22 Startup from Asia

Wati is a YCombinator22 startup from Hong Kong that is one of the fastest-growing business service providers. According to LinkedIn, the WhatsApp marketing provider currently has 89 employees and over 6,000 customers. We were in contact with Wati's support team and attended one or two sales seminars. The product focus was unclear to us until the very end. Although Wati claims to cover support, sales, marketing and other use cases, the native integrations are sobering. On the other hand, the pricing, which starts at $49.00, seems attractive. Here, too, we had language problems understanding Wati's - partly Indian - sales team.

Wati seems to have integrated two very common shop systems in the DACH region, Woocommerce and Shopify, but we were unable to find out how sophisticated these integrations are.

Furthermore, there are no CRM integrations, which we expect for a serious WhatsApp marketing tool. Without being able to access email KPIs, segments, interactions and activities of the end customers, targeted segmentation and efficient use of your WhatsApp marketing budget becomes difficult.

In the demo with Customer Success Agent Ananya, we particularly liked the Support Dashboard and Support Analytics. However, the language exchange was also difficult and exhausting here. The UI/UX of the platform was okay, but not modern or outstanding. Point deductions here in our opinion, as more support staff and training are needed to provide a seamless onboarding process for the customer.

Source: wati.io(https://www.wati.io/)

The advantages of WhatsApp marketing toolWati:

• Sufficient funding and generous runway through investor millions.
• YCombinator startup, which testifies to a validated case
• Impressive product that can do many things
• Professional sales approach and customer support team
• Extensive multi-messenger Engage Suite for the standard needs of a mid-sized company
• Attractive pricing to start from $49.00

The disadvantages of WhatsApp software Wati:

• non-transparent pricing and fast up- and cross sales
• no German team and no German support
• No knowledge of the German ecommerce tech stack, best practices and the buying culture of German, Austrian and Swiss customers.
• Insufficient UI/UX in the handling of the tool
• Lack of coverage of WhatsApp marketing use cases
• No integrations with eCommerce CRM's like emarsys, Brevo, Klaviyo or Omnisend.

So the same is true for Wati as for Botsify, Verloop, Sinch Engage or Gupshup: without clear niche needs, a solid multi-messenger customer support suite that you can use without hesitation for your multi-messenger purposes.

Verloop - the Indian giant in the institutional multi-messenger game

The Indian company "Verloop" does not have a sector focus and therefore does not try to be a WhatsApp marketing provider in its product development, but rather an "all-in-on-stop shop for customer engagement".

The office openings in America and on the Arabian Peninsula also do not suggest that the European market is being targeted or that product development will take potential European customers into account. It should be noted here that the USA is generally "not a WhatsApp case". In the US, iMessage is the go-to messenger solution that everyone uses. Just like WhatsApp is in our latitudes.

We could hardly understand Customer Support Account Newton in demo calls, but he was very eager, asked questions and tried to find the right answers and solutions together with us. This customer focus and interest in the customer's wishes and needs cannot be taken for granted in B2B sales. This has remained totally positive in our memory.

Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to obtain a current pricing for Verloop, but we assume that it will be similar to low-tier solutions such as "Verloop" or "Botsify" and will cost around €100.00 per month. If you know the costs of Verloop, please write to us so that we can add them to this blog post.

Source: verloop.io(https://verloop.io/)

Advantages from WhatsApp marketing software Verloop:

• B2B focus and servicing sensitive industries like health, public and government bodies and institutions.
• support and service for every customer
• Extensive chatbot features and logic
• AI development and artificial intelligence for translation and speech recognition
• Many flagship customers, testimonials, reviews and case studies
• Annual bot report and extensive analysis of the chatbot market and its development
• Good chatbot features and support analytics

The disadvantages of WhatsApp software provider Verloop:

• Time difference to India and South East Asia so no real-time service and support
• Intransparency in pricing
• Language barrier with customer support due to difficult to understand English with strong accent
• Very limited or non-existent API connections with standard DACH eCommerce tech stacks such as Shopify, Shopware, Klaviyo or Omnisend
• Focus on the Asian region, no contact persons or teams for German customers
• No retail, franchise or eCommerce focus

We can only recommend Verloop to large or institutional companies that want to use the wide range of use cases from Verloop's testimonial landscape and do not want personal customer service in German and in handshake quality.

For all companies that are content with a professional solution that is very static and inflexible in product development, but very far-reaching and sophisticated in the provision of end solutions, Verloop is definitely a product and provider to consider.

The demands of a professional CRM team that needs specific requirements for its individual needs, such as a D2C brand with Shopify & Klaviyo techstack and related integrations, will not be happy with Verloop.

Gupshup - Another Indian Giant in Messaging

In the demo day with Gupshup, Gupshup's Sales Lead Urvashi Singh did a very productive job of introducing Gupshup to us. The UI/UX was pleasant and simple in the process. Verloop shines with very good English SEO and a variety of case studies on bot deflection and chatbot automations.

It is important to note that Gupshup is not a specialized WhatsApp marketing software, but is focused on the customer support use case. Gupshup's multi-messenger features are nice, any number of support agents can be added.

Source: gupshup.io(https://gupshup.io/)

The advantages of WhatsApp marketing provider Gupshup:

• favorable and transparent pricing
• B2B focus and servicing of sensitive industries such as health, public and government bodies and institutions
• support and service for every customer
• Extensive chatbot features and logics
• AI development and artificial intelligence for translation and speech recognition
• Many flagship customers, testimonials, reviews and case studies
• Good chatbot features and support analytics

The cons of WhatsApp marketing tool Gupshup:

• Time difference to India and Southeast Asia so no real-time service and support.
• Language barrier with customer support due to difficult to understand English with heavy accent.
• Unprofessional or ignorant sales teams with low quality of consultation
• Very limited or non-existent API connections with standard DACH eCommerce tech stacks like Shopify, Shopware, Klaviyo or Omnisend
• Focus on Asian region, no contact persons or teams for German customers
• no focus on needs of companies from the DACH region, neither in support nor in product development

Gupshup is not suitable as a WhatsApp marketing tool, but it is very suitable as a customer support suite for companies that do not place great value on German-language customer support.

Messengerpeople / Sinch Engage - the German Multi Messenger Startup Dino

"Sinch Engage" - widely known as Messengerpeople - is one of the most arriviste (multi-messenger) startups of the DACH startup scene and is in any case serious WhatsApp marketing provider. The two problems that Messengerpeople has in our opinion, here right away:

The, in our opinion, outdated UI/UX and the high pricing.

Since the recent exit to Sinch and the associated rebranding to "Sinch Engage", product development and design of the product have apparently also been discontinued.

Furthermore, "Sinch Engage" starts at €199.00 monthly plus an additional €0.20 per conversation. This is extortionate, to say the least. Thus, we save ourselves any further discussion and treat the - by us in principle extremely appreciated - company from Munich as the Croesus of the industry, which is only affordable for medium-sized or large companies, that do not care about modern UI/UX, and who gladly pay a lot of money for an - admittedly rock solid and established - software solution for multi-channel engagement.

Source: Messengerpeople(https://www.messengerpeople.com/)

The advantages of WhatsApp marketing provider "Sinch Engage" / ex Messengerpeople:

• Operational flexibility of the tool
• Serving sensitive industries such as health, public and government bodies and institutions
• Support and service for every customer and that on a high level
• Extensive chatbot capabilities and logic
• AI development and artificial intelligence for translation and speech recognition, as well as automated campaign creation
• Many flagship customers, testimonials, reviews and case studies
• Annual bot report and far-reaching analysis of the chatbot market and its evolution
• API connections with Shopify and Shopware
• Multi-messenger solutions for all relevant messaging channels
• Well-established, tangible company from Bavaria
• Good chatbot features and support analytics
• Trustworthiness due to long existence of the startup as well as successful exit to tech giant "Sinch"

The disadvantages of WhatsApp marketing provider "Sinch Engage" / ex Messengerpeople:

• Expensive pricing that quickly becomes even more expensive.
• No specialization on a vertical, very flexible solution that wants to cater to all industries but will not focus on your niche case with your individual requirements.
• Very limited or non-existent API connections with standard techstacks of DACH eCommerce especially in CRMs like Klaviyo, emarsys, Activecampaign or Omnisend

We can only recommend Sinch Engage or Messengerpeople to large or institutional companies that want to align with the broad use cases from Messengerpeople's testimonial landscape, or just want to cover the customer support use case in a multi-Messenger manner.

D2C eCommerce companies we have talked to about Messengerpeople's solution confirm this impression across the board.

For all companies that are content with a professional solution that is very static and inflexible in product development, but very far-reaching and sophisticated in offering end solutions, Sinch Engage or Messengerpeople is definitely a product and provider to consider.

Hire are to consider the high cost of Messengerpeople. This applies to the basic membership license fee, as well as the high "conversation cost" for all multi-messenger channels.

Messengerpeople also does an excellent job in sales and many companies like to use it even beyond national borders.

The demands of a professional CRM team that needs specific requirements for their individual needs, like a D2C brand with Shopfiy & Klaviyo techstack and integrations to that effect, will not be happy with Messengerpeople.

The expensive pricing starting at €199,00, which quickly becomes €399,00 or €699,00 + hidden variable costs, is something you have to be willing to pay.

Hello-charles - cool hype from Berlin with expensive but great product

It was one of the most hyped startups in the DACH startup scene in 2021 and 2022. As before, the hype around WhatsApp marketing is big and directly associated with the name of a Berlin-based startup: hello-charles. Or, in its short version just "charles".

In the last three years, the founders have managed to build a real brand around which many myths and rumors have grown. The fact is, hello-charles is an expensive solution that initially left a lot of scorched earth in both the agency landscape and the D2C eCommerce scene due to many bugs and aggressive sales techniques.

So, especially in charles' early days, we were told by different sources about product features that were either technically not possible at all due to WhatsApp Business API limitations or were promised by Sales and not delivered product.

In the end, however, the Berlin team of now over 120 smart people delivered and, in our opinion, set up a respectable product.

This brings us to the most important and critical point of the matter:

hello-charles is expensive as hell. If you pay at least €349.00 per month with this WhatsApp marketing provider, you usually have to have negotiated very well according to customer statements in conversations and have accepted an extremely long contract commitment of at least 24 months including prepayment.

In addition to these high costs come two potential upsale products, as well as a rev-share participation of the WahtsApp revenue, which, as with all other tools and tracking methods, is of course "blended" and WhatsApp over-attributes additional revenue.

hello-charles charges a "conversational premium" of €0.07 - this makes the already far too expensive WhatsApp Business API even more expensive.

Very few brands manage to outperform these high costs in a scalable way, which is why customer churn at hello-charles is also above average according to customer and agency statements.

Furthermore, according to several hello-charles customers, hello-charles announces impossible features in sales calls, such as voice or video calls via WhatsApp Business API, or promises implementations such as the "In-Chat-Checkout" or a "Klaviyo Integration", for which customers have been waiting in vain for months and will continue to wait in vain for months to come.

Source: hello-charles(https://hello-charles.com)

The advantages of the WhatsApp marketing software hello-charles:

• Operational flexibility of the tool
• Concentration on the "Vertical" eCommerce, thereby high product focus on Lookalike customers and the clear "Ideal Customer Profile" D2C Brand with eight-digit annual turnover
• Support and service for every customer and that on a high level
• Extensive chatbot capabilities and logic
• Uniquely numerous and impressive showcase customers, testimonials, reviews and case studies from German showcase D2C brands
• API connections with Shopify and Shopware
• Multi-messenger solutions for all relevant messaging channels
• Berlin-based startup with high funding volume and thus at least 18 months runway since last funding round
• extremely smart founding team
• incredibly good branding, marketing and sales
• Good chatbot features and support analytics
• Trustworthiness due to the closeness of the (founding) team at all relevant events, fairs and networkings

The disadvantages of WhatsApp marketing software hello-charles:

• Expensive pricing that quickly becomes more and can only be amortized for the fewest D2C brands or customers, let alone turned into a profitable scalable case
• Perceived high churn of clientele, suggesting dissatisfaction or conflicts of interest
• Fluctuation and "burning" of WhatsApp's image as an eCommerce marketing channel due to the extremely high costs and thus dissatisfied customers
• High contract periods leading to "deadlock" situations and frustrated customers
• No action on behalf of the customer due to manipulative or false statements in the sales process
• Very limited or non-existent API connections with standard techstacks of DACH eCommerce especially in CRMs like Klaviyo, emarsys or Omnisend
• No CTO/technical co-founder, thus, as far as we can understand, static and slow product development

Anyway, it's cool to be in "Team hello-charles", to visit their networking events or to be amused on LinkedIn by the host of hello-charles employees.

We can really recommend the colleagues from Berlin if you are willing to pay extremely long terms or very high fees for all that.

As a D2C lovebrand with ideally eight-figure annual sales and extremely high margins, as well as transactional marketing with many drops and discount promotions, this may work well. For most online stores, however, this is unfortunately not a profitable scalable case. Many charles customers now use the tool as a "multi messenger one stop store" and according to their statements as a customer support tool. There are cheaper alternatives for this.

Long-promised features that have been months in coming, such as voice and video calls (which are already impossible to implement due to the limitations of the Whatsapp Business API as of August 2023) and the long-awaited Klaviyo integration sometimes create distrust and frustration among the charles customers.

The manipulative and extremely transaction-oriented sales process was unpleasant for us ourselves and is increasingly reported by (ex-)customers of hello-charles. The product itself is now very good and initial teething troubles such as bugs in chats, flows and campaigns have been eliminated.

We recommend hello-charles as a solid and good solution for highly profitable lovebrands with eight-digit revenues who are looking for an all-in-one multi-messenger sales, support and marketing solution.

trengo - Klaviyo partner, but unfortunately not much behind it

When trengo announced its official partnership with Klaviyo in the spring of 2023 with media attention, we were worried about our positioning and our business. Would we have to fear for our core customers - D2C Brands with Shopify Shop and Klaviyo CRM and Source of Truth? Nothing of the sort has come to pass and any worry lines were for nothing.

To date, Trengo has failed to present a meaningful Klaviyo integration that adds significant value to D2C Brands with Klaviyo CRM.

The self-proclaimed "Customer Engagement Platform" was founded in 2017 in Utrecht in the Netherlands and has since raised over $36,000,000.00 in investment money.

In our opinion, the multi-messenger solution can't do much more, and not much less, than "multi-messenger all-in-one-stop stores" like Hellomateo, Botsify, Messengerpeople, Verloop or Gupshup.

What we like about trengo is the excellent branding, the professional external appearance, the excellent English of the team members and the seriousness of the sales staff. We were just as unenthusiastic about the interfaces or integrations offered as we were about the pricing, which starts at €80.00 per month and quickly becomes much more expensive.

Trengo seems mediocre to us in all areas and thus cannot serve any specific need in a concentrated way, and serves a "multi messenger solution for everyone and no one".

Source: trengo.com(https://trengo.com/de/)

The advantages of WhatsApp marketing tool trengo:

• Operational flexibility of the tool
• Serving sensitive industries such as health, public and governmental bodies and institutions
• Support and service for every customer and that at a high level
• far-reaching chatbot functions and logics
• easily connectable Klaviyo app in the Klaviyo marketplace
• AI development and artificial intelligence for translation and speech recognition as well as automated campaign creation
• Many flagship customers, testimonials, reviews and case studies
• Annual bot report and wide-ranging analysis of the chatbot market and its evolution
• API connections with Zapier and Shopify
• Multi-messenger solutions for all relevant messaging channels
• Established, tangible company from Scandinavia
• High investment volumes leading to rapid growth of trengo
• Good chatbot features and support analytics
• Professional support and sales team

The disadvantages of WhatsApp marketing provider trengo:

• Expensive pricing that quickly becomes even more expensive.
• No specialization on a vertical, so a very flexible solution that wants to cater to all industries, but will not focus on your niche case with your individual requirements.
• Very limited or non-existent API connections with standard techstacks of DACH eCommerce especially in CRMs like Klaviyo, emarsys or Omnisend
• No German sales or support team

We can recommend trengo, especially to large or institutional companies that want to align with the broad use cases from Messengerpeoples testimonial landscape, or just want to cover the customer support use case.

In conversations with leads, it has been confirmed that you cannot provide sufficient Klaviyo integration that would adequately satisfy D2C business owners with at least seven-figure revenues and/or their own CRM team.

If you are also looking for a WhatsApp marketing tool, and at the same time use Klaviyo, and topics like segmentation and cohort analysis are not super relevant for you, we can recommend you choose trengo as a solid WhatsApp or multi-messenger support and marketing suite with a clear conscience. If you have higher CRM needs or you have greater demands on your WhatsApp marketing tool, you'd better look further, and not stop at trengo.

The best WhatsApp marketing providers at a glance - the conclusion

None of the above tools is right for every business. Each WhatsApp marketing tool has its strengths and weaknesses, it's up to you to figure out what they are and what you need.

This blogpost tries to show you the pros and cons of each solution, so you can make your decision for the right WhatsApp marketing tool for you.

Please also keep in mind that we are trying to bring objective transparency to the still very young WhatsApp marketing market. However, as a B2B SaaS, we will never quite succeed in doing so. We are too much in love with our own product, our own value proposition, and our Klaviyo and Shopify integration.

Feel free to contact us to understand which WhatsApp marketing tool is right for your business. Feel free to book yourself in for your 25-minute WhatsApp sparring session here: