Say you run a furniture showroom in Lucknow, and your Facebook ads are working almost too well. Forty-odd WhatsApp enquiries a day, two salesmen on WhatsApp Web, and the office phone on the counter for whoever was free.<\/p>\n
Sounds fine, right? Until one customer gets three different price quotes. And another never gets a reply at all, because each salesman assumed the other had handled it.<\/p>\n
That’s the funny thing about WhatsApp Business Web. It’s brilliant when it’s just you. It gets messy the moment a team starts sharing it.<\/p>\n
So in this post we’ll do two things. We’ll show you how to set it up properly (it takes about a minute). And we’ll be honest about when it stops being enough, and what we built TeamInbox to do about it.<\/p>\n
It’s your WhatsApp Business app, opened on a computer. Not a new account, not a separate number. Your phone is still the boss; the laptop just mirrors it.<\/p>\n
Reply from the laptop, and it shows up on the phone. Reply from the phone and the laptop catches up. Simple.<\/p>\n
A couple of things people usually don’t know. Your phone doesn’t have to stay switched on anymore, which was a real pain a few years ago. It just needs to come online roughly once every two weeks, otherwise the linked computers get logged out. And you can only link four devices to one account (Meta Verified businesses get a few more).<\/p>\n
Four sounds like a lot. It isn’t, once you have a sales team.<\/p>\n
Whichever computer you’re on, the trick is the same. The screen shows a QR code, and you scan it with your phone.<\/p>\n
In a browser:<\/strong> go to web.whatsapp.com<\/a>. On your phone, open WhatsApp Business, find Linked devices (it’s under Settings on iPhone, or the three-dot menu on Android), and tap Link a device. Scan the code. Done.<\/p>\n On Windows:<\/strong> grab WhatsApp from the Microsoft Store<\/a>, open it, and scan the code the same way. We’d pin it to the taskbar so it starts with your PC.<\/p>\n On a Mac:<\/strong> same story, but from the Mac App Store<\/a>. When macOS asks about notifications, say yes. You’ll thank us later.<\/p>\n To log out, you can either use the menu on the computer, or go to Linked devices on your phone and kick the computer off from there. The phone route is handy when you’ve left yourself logged in on the office PC.<\/p>\n One small habit worth building: check that Linked devices list now and then. You’d be surprised how often an old laptop or an ex-employee’s browser is still sitting there, quietly connected.<\/p>\n Most businesses we talk to use maybe half of what the free app offers. A few are worth ten minutes of your time.<\/p>\n Greeting and away messages are the obvious ones. Something like “Thanks for messaging! We usually reply within two hours, 10 to 7” stops people from feeling ignored at 11 pm.<\/p>\n Quick replies save a ridiculous amount of typing. Type a slash and a shortcut, and your bank details or delivery timeline pops in. If you answer the same five questions all day, set these up first.<\/p>\n Labels let you colour-code chats. Plenty of small shops use them as a rough pipeline: new lead, quoted, paid, delivered. The catch? You can’t see who added a label or who’s supposed to follow up.<\/p>\n The catalogue lets customers flip through products and prices before they even message you. And broadcast lists let you send one message to a bunch of people at once, though only to those who’ve saved your number, and never more than 256 per list.<\/p>\n Honestly, both show the same chats. The difference shows up after a full day of use.<\/p>\n The browser version needs no install, which is great on a borrowed computer. But browsers like to put idle tabs to sleep, and when that happens, notifications can arrive late. Or not at all.<\/p>\n The desktop app gives you proper system notifications, handles big files and drag-and-drop more smoothly, and can be locked with a password. Calling has historically been better on the desktop app too, though WhatsApp has been bringing more of it to the browser.<\/p>\n Our take: if you sell on WhatsApp, use the desktop app on your main machine. A missed notification is a missed lead, and the person who replies first usually gets the order.<\/p>\n WhatsApp Business Web was made for one owner with a bigger screen. Nobody designed it for five people sharing a number, and it shows.<\/p>\n The first thing teams notice is that nobody owns a chat. Everyone sees everything, so two people jump on the same customer while a third chat just sits there. There’s no “this one’s yours, Priya” button.<\/p>\n Then comes the blame game. Every message goes out as “the business”. If a customer says they were promised 15% off, good luck finding out who promised it.<\/p>\n Leads are the bigger problem, though. They live inside chats, not in any kind of pipeline. Leads from your Facebook forms or Google Ads sit in yet another place, usually a spreadsheet someone forgot to update. And follow-ups? They depend entirely on someone remembering. There’s no reminder, no scheduled message for Thursday.<\/p>\n Broadcasts hit the 256 wall pretty fast. Automation stops at a greeting message. And the four-device limit means somebody always ends up replying from their personal phone, which is its own security headache.<\/p>\n If you nodded along to more than a couple of these, it’s not that your team is lazy. You’ve simply outgrown the tool.<\/p>\n TeamInbox plugs your WhatsApp number into the official WhatsApp Business API and gives your team one shared place to work. Your customers won’t notice a thing. Same number, same chat. Behind the scenes, though, everything changes.<\/p>\n Every person on your team gets their own login, so there’s no device limit and no passing the office phone around. Chats can be assigned to someone, handed over to someone else, or routed automatically. Agents can leave internal notes for each other (“customer wants delivery after the 20th”), and the whole history stays with the business even when an employee moves on. You can see it in action on our shared inbox page<\/a>.<\/p>\n The lead side is the bit we’re proudest of. A new WhatsApp message turns into a lead on its own, with an owner and a stage in your pipeline. Leads from Facebook, Google Ads, LinkedIn forms, and your website come into the same place, and you can bulk-upload old ones from a CSV. Follow-up reminders mean that “I’ll call them Thursday” actually happens on Thursday.<\/p>\n On the automation front, you get auto-replies and keyword triggers that run round the clock, plus a no-code WhatsApp chatbot<\/a> for the questions you’re tired of answering. Since we only use the official API, all of it stays within Meta’s rules. No grey-market tools, no risk of a banned number.<\/p>\n Need to reach more than 256 people? Bulk broadcasts<\/a> let you send approved templates to customers who’ve opted in, and broadcast sequences<\/a> let you follow up over several days. You’ll see what was delivered, read, or failed. How much you can send grows as your number builds a good quality rating with Meta.<\/p>\n And if your team is attached to the WhatsApp Business app, that’s fine. With number coexistence,<\/a> you can keep using the app on your phone while the same number runs through TeamInbox. Pop our website chat widget<\/a> on your site too, and those visitors land in the same inbox.<\/p>\n Ask yourself a few questions. Are more than two people replying from one number? Are you running ads that send people to WhatsApp? Is there a spreadsheet of leads open right next to WhatsApp Web? Has a customer ever been answered twice, or not at all?<\/p>\n If you said yes to two or more, it’s probably time.<\/p>\n If not, honestly, stick with the free app for now. Everything in the setup section above is all you need, and you can always come back to us later.<\/p>\n Is WhatsApp Business Web free?<\/strong> Yep, completely. You only start paying when you move to the API. At that point Meta charges per message, and a platform like ours charges a subscription on top.<\/p>\n Does my phone have to stay on?<\/strong> Not anymore. It just needs to connect about once every 14 days so your linked devices don’t log out.<\/p>\n Can my whole team use one number on WhatsApp Web?<\/strong> Up to four devices, plus your phone. Beyond that, or if you want to know who’s handling what, you’ll need a shared inbox on the API.<\/p>\n Will I lose my number if I move to TeamInbox?<\/strong> No. We connect the number you already have. Your customers keep messaging it like always, and with coexistence you can still use the Business app on your phone.<\/p>\n Is it safe to use WhatsApp Web at work?<\/strong> The messages themselves are end-to-end encrypted. The real risk is people staying logged in on shared computers. Log out of anything you don’t use, and give each person their own access instead of sharing one login.<\/p>\n We’d be happy to show you around. Start a free trial<\/a>, or just message us on WhatsApp<\/a> and we’ll walk you through a demo. Fittingly enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Say you run a furniture showroom in Lucknow, and your Facebook ads are working almost too well. Forty-odd WhatsApp enquiries a day, two salesmen on WhatsApp Web, and the office phone on the counter for whoever was free. Sounds fine, right? Until one customer gets three different price quotes. And another never gets a reply<\/p>\nThe free features we’d turn on today<\/h2>\n
Browser or desktop app?<\/h2>\n
Where it starts to hurt<\/h2>\n
What we built TeamInbox to fix<\/h2>\n
Side by side<\/h2>\n
\n
\n Aspect<\/th>\n WhatsApp Business Web<\/th>\n TeamInbox<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n \n How many people<\/td>\n 4 linked devices<\/td>\n A login for everyone<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Who owns a chat<\/td>\n Nobody, really<\/td>\n Assigned agent<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Leads<\/td>\n Coloured labels<\/td>\n Pipeline with owners and reminders<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Ads and form leads<\/td>\n Somewhere else<\/td>\n Same inbox<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Broadcasts<\/td>\n 256 per list<\/td>\n Template campaigns and sequences<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Automation<\/td>\n Greeting and away messages<\/td>\n Keyword triggers, chatbot, routing<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Price<\/td>\n Free<\/td>\n Subscription plus Meta’s message charges<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n Should you switch?<\/h2>\n
Questions we get asked a lot<\/h2>\n
Want to see it for yourself?<\/h2>\n