How to use both Manychat & Make.com on one Whatsapp Number?

How To
1

Am dealing with an annoying issue:

  • The goal: I want to have an interactive menu & onboarding for users via Whatsapp. And afterwards, I want to send them a custom audio file every day

  • Make.com seems to work perfectly for sending the custom audio files dynamically to each user, but is not a good fit for setting up the complex menus and user flows

  • Manychat seems perfect for the menu part, but can’t handle the individual numbers

So naive me, was thinking I could simply do the onboarding via Manychat (as well as the broadcast to all users on the list) - and then hand over the data to Make.com, to get and transmit the file (via Post request from Manychat to a Make.com webhook).

And, in theory, I even got it to work… by using two separate numbers. (which is not a viable option unfortunately, due to the Meta 24h time window - the user needs to react to a broadcast template message first → only then can they get the audio file)

So far, my number always gets rejected by the second tool:

  • if I go through Make.com’s setup steps as described in the documentation (via the Meta Developers Center App setup), I can’t connect the number to Manychat (Error: "This WhatsApp Business Account is not available to use. "(

  • if I go through Manychat’s setup first, I’m not able to connect it via the Meta Developers App settings (Error: “This number is registered to an existing WhatsApp account. To use this number, disconnect it from the existing account. Then, return to this page and re-enter the number. Note: It may take up to 3 minutes for the number to become available.”)

So my question is:
Has anyone managed to connect a number to both applications (or an equivalent alternative to Manychat - I’m not married to that tool at all)?
If not, has anyone found a workaround for a similar situation?

Thanks!

2

Seems as if my issue is too niche and/or unsolvable. I found a workaround: I use two separate numbers, one connected to Manychat, passing final user data to a Google Sheet (this is where users “register”). And one connected to Make.com, which sends out the individual messages - assembled by the Google Sheet that has the data from Manychat.

Down the line this might be leading to user confusion (they might be unsure where to write if they have issues etc), but for my MVP its the fastest approach.

If someone found a smarter strategy, please do let me know!

3 Likes
3

ManyChat only supports Cloud API/WABA (WhatsApp Business API) numbers. Both come with the reply time window restriction.

If you want to use WhatsApp without those restrictions, and assuming that you send these audio files to less than 5000 people per month, then I can recommend you try 2Chat [1], an app we developed.

Even if you want to be able to continue using ManyChat, you can still use 2Chat via an API request originating on ManyChat. It’s a win-win.

[1] https://www.make.com/en/integrations/two-chat