Onboarding — Keep Your App (Coexistence)
Connect WhatsApp Business without giving up the WhatsApp Business App — your chat history and contacts import automatically, and messages you send from your phone still show up in BillionBiz.
New with this release
Coexistence onboarding is part of the current release wave. If you don't see the behaviour described here yet, your account may not have it enabled.
If you already run your store's WhatsApp number through the WhatsApp Business App on your phone — replying to customers yourself, keeping your existing chat history — you don't have to give that up to connect BillionBiz. Meta calls this coexistence: your phone keeps working exactly as before, and BillionBiz gets API access to the same number alongside it. Your last 180 days of chats and your contact list import automatically, and anything you send from your phone keeps appearing in the BillionBiz inbox too.
What you get
- No need to migrate off the WhatsApp Business App — keep replying from your phone if you want to.
- Up to 180 days of chat history and your contact list import into BillionBiz automatically.
- Messages you send from your phone show up in the BillionBiz Conversations inbox, tagged Sent from phone.
- A progress card on the Setup tab shows exactly how much of the import is done.
How you get into coexistence mode
There's no separate button for this — it's the same Embedded Signup flow you'd use for any connection. When you connect a phone number that's still active in the WhatsApp Business App, Meta recognises that during the popup and coexistence mode turns on automatically once the connection finishes. You don't choose or configure anything extra on the BillionBiz side.
If you don't have a WhatsApp Business Account (WABA) yet
Don't try to create a new WABA directly on business.facebook.com and connect it manually — Meta currently doesn't support creating a WhatsApp Business Account that way for business portfolios with an India or Brazil address. Embedded Signup is the supported path for creating a new WABA; it can create one for you as part of the connect flow. See Connecting WhatsApp Business to start there.
The opt-in prompt on your phone
Right after Meta detects coexistence, it sends a prompt inside the WhatsApp Business App on your phone asking whether you want to share your existing chat history and contacts with the connected business. You have to accept this prompt on your phone — BillionBiz can't do it for you.
- If you accept, Meta starts sending your history and contacts to BillionBiz in the background. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on how much history you have.
- If you decline, no history or contacts import, but the connection itself still works — new messages after the connection date flow through normally either way.
Watching the import progress
Screen: Plugins → WhatsApp Business → Setup.
Once coexistence is active, an Import from WhatsApp card appears on the Setup tab, right below the connection status. It shows:
| Field | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Phase chip | The current import phase, or Complete once everything has arrived |
| Progress bar | How much of the history import Meta has delivered so far |
| Contacts imported | A running count of contacts added to your Customers list from your phone's contact book |
| Messages imported | A running count of historical messages that have landed in your inbox |
The card checks for updates automatically every 15 seconds while the import is in progress, and stops refreshing once it reaches 100% or you declined the history-sharing prompt on your phone.
Note
If you declined the prompt on your phone, the card shows that instead of a progress bar — this doesn't affect anything else about your connection, and you can still use every other WhatsApp feature normally.
Where imported and phone-sent messages show up
Once history starts arriving, open the Conversations tab — every imported conversation appears there alongside anything customers send you directly through BillionBiz. Two small badges under a message bubble tell you where it came from:
- Imported — a message from your 180-day history import, not sent live through either channel.
- Sent from phone — a message you sent from the WhatsApp Business App itself, after connecting, synced into BillionBiz automatically.
Messages without either badge were sent or received directly through BillionBiz.
Note
Imported and phone-sent conversations don't open a live 24-hour reply window the way a fresh customer message does — they're there for your record and for continuity, not treated as an open support conversation waiting on a reply.
What's different in coexistence mode
A handful of things work differently while you're keeping the app alongside BillionBiz — these are limits Meta places on coexistence numbers, not something BillionBiz can change:
- Message rate. Coexistence numbers are capped at roughly 20 messages per second, lower than a Cloud-API-only number. This rarely matters for day-to-day replies, but keep it in mind if you're planning a large broadcast.
- No groups, broadcast lists, or calls via the API. Anything you do in WhatsApp groups, broadcast lists, or voice/video calls on your phone stays on your phone — none of that syncs to or from BillionBiz.
- Media older than 14 days imports as a placeholder. Text history imports fully across the full 180-day window, but photos, videos, and documents older than 14 days show up as a placeholder in the imported thread rather than the original file — Meta doesn't deliver media that old through the coexistence history sync.
- Catalog messages may not behave the same as a Cloud-API-only number. If you rely heavily on sending product catalog messages from the automated bot or conversation flows, test that flow on your specific number before depending on it — Meta's coexistence numbers can behave differently here, and this is an area we're still validating.