Free buyer's guide
The WhatsApp Automation Buyer's Guide: WATI vs Interakt vs AiSensy vs Custom
Every BSP comparison online is written by a reseller of one of them. We resell none of the three, so this guide can say plainly which one fits your stack, when a custom Cloud API build beats all of them, and which lock-in clauses to read before you sign.
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If you have shopped for WhatsApp automation in India, you have read a WATI vs Interakt vs AiSensy comparison before. Here is the problem with almost all of them: they are written by agencies that resell one of the three and earn a referral fee or revenue share when you sign.
We resell none of them. We build the automation layer that sits on top of whichever BSP you pick, and we bill for that build only. The BSP bills you directly. That means this guide has no thumb on the scale, and it can include the row the reseller comparisons always leave out: how hard it is to leave.
This guide covers who each BSP actually fits, what they really cost at Indian SMB volume, and the two situations where the honest answer is "none of the three."
Who this is for
Founders and growth leads at Indian D2C brands, real estate teams, and B2B companies who are either picking their first WhatsApp Business Solution Provider or wondering whether the one they have is quietly overcharging them. You do not need to know what a BSP is going in. You will know exactly what to ask each vendor coming out.
What a BSP actually is, in one paragraph
WhatsApp does not sell business messaging directly to most companies. Meta charges per conversation, and Business Solution Providers like WATI, Interakt, and AiSensy sit on top of Meta's API, adding a dashboard, a shared team inbox, template management, and integrations, and charging you a markup plus a platform fee for the convenience. The markup is where comparisons get interesting, because it is rarely quoted plainly.
The three criteria that actually matter
Most comparison pages rank BSPs on feature checklists. Features converge within quarters. These three things do not.
### 1. Total cost at your real volume
The number that matters is your total cost for a real month of sending, say 50,000 messages: marketing template fees, utility template fees, per-conversation Meta charges, and the BSP's platform surcharge. Not the headline rupee-per-message quote on the marketing page. In our experience the true monthly run-rate lands 40 to 60 percent above that headline number once utility templates and conversation fees are included.
On markup over Meta's own cost for marketing templates, the three sit roughly here:
- WATI: around 15 to 20 percent above Meta cost
- Interakt: around 10 to 15 percent above Meta cost
- AiSensy: around 20 to 25 percent above Meta cost at low volume, with volume discounts above 200K messages a month
### 2. Deliverability and template approval speed
Every broadcast you send runs through a Meta-approved template, so template approval speed is campaign speed. Median approval times we have observed in 2026, submitting at least one template per week per BSP for ongoing benchmarking:
- Interakt: 12 to 36 hours, the fastest of the three
- WATI: 24 to 48 hours
- AiSensy: 24 to 72 hours, slowest at low volume
Deliverability to clean Indian phone-number pools is close to a wash: 97.4 percent for WATI, 96.8 percent for Interakt, and 97.1 percent for AiSensy in our 2026 broadcast audit. The honest framing: phone-pool quality is a function of your opt-in hygiene more than BSP choice, but the BSPs' template-coaching layers do materially affect first-time approval rates.
### 3. Lock-in and data portability
The questions nobody asks at the demo, and the ones that decide whether you can leave in 2027 if you need to:
- Can you export your contact list, conversation history, and approved templates without waiting on support?
- Which of your CRMs are native integrations versus Zapier bridges?
- What happens to your number and your Meta Business Manager profile on cancellation?
On export: WATI offers self-serve CSV export of contacts and templates. Interakt and AiSensy both require an email request to support with a 7-day SLA. That difference sounds small until you are mid-migration with a launch date.
The side-by-side, in words
Integrations. WATI has Shopify, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho native, with LeadSquared via Zapier. Interakt has Shopify and Zoho native, with HubSpot and Salesforce via Zapier. AiSensy has Shopify and Zoho native, with LeadSquared and HubSpot via Zapier. If your CRM is on the Zapier side of that list for a given BSP, budget for the bridge to be flakier than the demo suggests.
Pricing model. All three charge per message plus a platform fee: WATI a monthly platform fee, Interakt a tiered platform fee, AiSensy a Pro or Enterprise platform fee with volume discounts above 200K messages a month.
Click tracking. WATI and AiSensy are strong here, with native UTM rewriting and native short-link tracking respectively. Interakt is moderate and needs manual template tagging, which in practice means attribution gaps whenever someone forgets.
Human handover. WATI has a built-in shared inbox with a strong mobile app. Interakt has a built-in inbox but weaker mobile UX. AiSensy offers multi-agent chat with role-based routing.
Trials. WATI gives a 7-day free trial with no permanent free tier. Interakt and AiSensy both give 14-day trials, and AiSensy adds an apply-for-free enterprise path.
Support. WATI and Interakt both run Mon to Sat, 09:00 to 21:00 IST chat, with Interakt adding email. AiSensy runs 24x5 chat with India phone support on Pro and above.
So which one, plainly
Start from your stack, not the BSP roadmap.
- If you are Shopify-native and selling primarily in INR: Interakt usually wins on integration depth and India-localised billing. It was acquired by Haptik, a Jio company, in 2021 and operates fully out of India: support is IST-aligned, billing is in INR with GST invoicing baked in, and the Shopify and Razorpay integrations were prioritised over Stripe.
- If you broadcast above 200K messages a month: AiSensy's volume discounts, multi-agent chat, and broadcast-template authoring win. Its scale claim of 210,000+ businesses matters less than you would think for deliverability, but the larger shared-template ecosystem does speed approvals.
- If you run a multi-agent retail or D2C team of five or more: WATI wins on shared-inbox mobile UX, especially since the WATI 2.0 rebuild improved mobile UX and role permissions.
When the answer is none of the three
Two cases where a BSP is the wrong purchase entirely:
1. Low-volume utility messaging. If you mostly send OTPs, order updates, and booking confirmations in small batches, Twilio direct or Meta Cloud API direct is usually cheaper and the BSP dashboard overhead is not worth paying for.
2. Regulated industries. Lending, insurance, and similar sectors needing dedicated dual-DLT plus WhatsApp compliance may need a specialist provider rather than any of the mainstream three.
There is also the custom path for teams with engineering capacity: build directly on WhatsApp Cloud API. You skip the BSP markup entirely and own everything, at the cost of building the inbox, template management, and integration plumbing yourself. For most SMBs the BSP is still worth it. For product companies already running engineering teams, direct is worth pricing out.
The migration question
If you pick wrong, it is not fatal. A BSP-to-BSP migration takes 10 to 14 days end-to-end if your contacts are clean and your templates are documented. The practical lesson: keep your own exported copy of contacts and template text from day one, so the 7-day export SLA at some providers never becomes your critical path.
The deeper lesson is architectural. If your automation logic, AI qualification, CRM sync, and dashboards live in a layer above the BSP rather than inside its walled garden, the BSP becomes a pipe you can swap without rebuilding the orchestration on top. That is how we build, and it is the single best insurance against every lock-in clause in this guide.
Before you sign anything: the checklist
That last box is the tell. If the answer is yes, read their comparison accordingly.
Want to go further
Want to see where you are losing customers before they ever reach you? Try our free tools:
- Automation Advisor at naavimlabs.com/tools/automation-advisor
- Conversion Autopsy at naavimlabs.com/tools/conversion-autopsy
Want a neutral read on your own BSP shortlist? Reach out. We resell none of them, so the recommendation is just the recommendation.
Get the playbook PDF
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No signup needed to read this. The email is just for a copy you can keep.
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