---
title: WhatsApp Account Types
slug: whatsapp-account-types
icon: 🔠
docTags: 
createdAt: 2023-02-15T12:00:22.000Z
---

There are 3 types of WhatsApp accounts.

- Personal WhatsApp account
- WhatsApp Business account and
- Official WhatsApp API account

Peach only works with the 3rd option - WhatsApp API account.

### Personal WhatsApp account

A personal WhatsApp account is the one that most of us make use of to communicate with friends and family on a day-to-day basis. 

1. This typically just requires a smartphone user to simply install the app and create an account with their phone number.
2. With this type of account, a WhatsApp user can send and receive messages from their contacts and create broadcast lists.

**This account is not great for businesses**.

### WhatsApp Business App

The account is meant for small businesses that’d like to keep their professional and personal messages separate. 

1. The WhatsApp Business app is free to use and the account can be leveraged to actively engage with customers.
2. This type of account lets you set up a Business profile, a greeting message, label conversations, and set up quick replies and away messages. 
3. You can also set up a catalog to promote your products, send broadcasts, and more.

**Great for small businesses that are just getting started.**

### WhatsApp Business Platform (or WhatsApp Business API)

An official WhatsApp Business account is meant for fast-growing, medium, and large businesses. 

1. Official API account help businesses leverage WhatsApp using their official APIs to scale interactions with a large number of your subscribers or customers.
2. This is great if you want to integrate WhatsApp with your apps, workflows or build and scale interactions at scale.
3. **You won't be able to use this account from a smartphone app. **Peach will provide a shared inbox to help you and your team respond to messages on this number.

Great for growing businesses and enterprises.

### Why you should use Business Platform?

- Build apps and set up automations to streamline your business processes on WhatsApp
- Reach out to large number of customers on WhatsApp
- Allow multiple team members to collaborate and interact with your customers

**Cons**

- Messages are charged (after the first 1000 inbound messages every month) from your users.
- You cannot use this phone number on WhatsApp app on your phone