I need to use whatsapp as an alternative to SMS. I only want to send via bot, not receive. Whats the quickest & easiest option - Meta / Twilil / TextMeBot or something else? I expect to send about 10-20 messages a day.
I’ve seen other people using "“https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=…” in actions but I’m confused how this works when you don’t specific a from number 
I’m not exactly sure what your question is, but:
I could only get the action to open WhatsApp from my computer using AppSheet. AppSheet will open the receiver messaging and place the text in the send window, but it will not automatically send. Not that I can find anyway. I couldn’t get everything to work automatically…for WhatsApp to send automatically. It always requires me to hit the send button in WhatsApp.
Yeah this need to be an automatic background thing via a bot.
Looks like Twillio is the route I would take if I were you: https://www.twilio.com/docs/whatsapp/api
@Simon_Robinson Texmebot, la opción mas rápida y económica ya que te da mensajes ilimitados por todo un mes solo por 6 dólares, yo al vengo usando hace meses y sin problemas y con appscript mejoras el envio de adjuntos como imágenes y documentos ingresados a la misma aplicación.
Do you have any video about it? I’d like to see it working.
Texmebot, the fastest and cheapest option since it gives you unlimited messages for a whole month only for 6 dollars, I have been using it for months and without problems and with appscript you improve the sending of attachments such as images and documents entered in the application . .
Do you have an article here, teaching how to do this. Or showing how it works?
https://textmebot.com/send-whatsapp-from-appsheet/
Maybe this article will help you. If you have questions, I can help you too.
I looked at this and initially dismissed it as you need a number which doesn’t already use Whatsapp. But also they have lost of caveats around not sending too many messages and risk the number getting banned from whatsapp.
But now I think i’ll try this with an old phone and a £10 SIM card and see if it works. The syntax and account setup seem far easier than Meta and Twilio.
@Simon_Robinson I was just looking at TextMeBot as well, and I would go this route - at least I would try, as it looks much lighter than anything else… and I like light, as it’s allows for easier agile development. But it’s pretty raw, which means it might not be robust enough for some edge cases, or when things start to go wrong it might be cumbersome to handle at that point.
Here I correct the configuration, if you need an active WhatsApp number since you must connect it to the texmebot website from the same configuration of the connected WhatsApp number, something like a connection to Whatsaap Web. This way you can even receive notifications by email or phone that your connection is stable or has been lost for some reason. My connection has never dropped but the option exists. Now the number blocking option is only for Span shipments that are recurring or massively repetitive. This same block is maintained by the official WhatsApp API, preventing Span from being sent en masse. What I do is send information to specific WhatsApp groups where the bot number is added to make it more optimal, but I also send information from AppSheet as alerts to my staff directly and I have not had any blocks so far and the Messages that are sent . They are daily and at different numbers.
https://www.postman.com/security-geoscientist-48739493/textmebot/request/mi13h86/send-pdf-document
Quick update with special thanks to @BMacheroOrtiz and @MultiTech
So it was actually quite easy. Got a cheap phone and a £5 sim card just to be safe and a new Gmail account. Went to TextMeBot and got the API linked to that email. Installed Whatsapp on phone and linked this toTextMeBot via a website QRCode as shown on @BMacheroOrtiz post above. Then its done. Syntax for messages is
[http://api.textmebot.com/send.php?recipient=447123456789&apikey=************&text=helloworld](http://api.textmebot.com/send.php?recipient=447123456789&apikey=************&text=helloworld)
Obvs you’ll need to use ENCODEURL() in Appsheet as a wrapper.
Another quick note on TextMeBot pricing
All above is AFAIK
I recommend using integrations with Apps Script to make your messages personalized and more complete. I leave you an example and many successes in your future tests.
Example of how to send an image by WhatsApp using Apps Script.
function enviarIMGWhatsApp(imagen,ticket,nombre) {
// Validación básica de datos
if (!imagen || !ticket || !tecnico) {
Logger.log('Faltan datos para enviar la imagen');
return 'Faltan datos';
}
var apiKey = 'APIKEY TEXMEBOT';
var mensaje = `Hola, ${(nombre)} envió esta IMG de cierre en el ticket ${(ticket)}.`;
var imageUrl = `https://www.appsheet.com/template/gettablefileurl?appName="NAMEAPP"&tableName="TABLENAME"&fileName=${encodeURIComponent(imagen)}`;
var url = `https://api.textmebot.com/send.php?recipient=684216846231386&apikey=${apiKey}&file=${encodeURIComponent(imageUrl)}&text=${encodeURIComponent(mensaje)}`;
try {
var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url);
var content = response.getContentText();
var code = response.getResponseCode();
Logger.log('Respuesta de TextMeBot:', content);
Logger.log('Código de estado HTTP:', code);
if (code === 200) {
return 'Imagen enviada correctamente';
} else {
return 'Error al enviar la imagen. Código: ' + code + '. Respuesta: ' + content;
}
} catch (error) {
Logger.log('Error inesperado:', error);
return 'Error al enviar la imagen. Por favor, verifica los datos y la conexión a internet.';
}
}