[jpc0]

WhatsApp is far from a monopoly and I wouldn’t call their api developer hostile, it’s actually reasonable to work with, what you can do with it though is quite restricted to what a business would want to do with WhatsApp and is billed accordingly.

[theshrike79]

A MASSIVE part of the world would like to disagree.

Whatsapp is to the rest of the world what iMessage is to Americans.

[jpc0]

I'm in the reat of the world. Trust me I understand how entrenched WhatsApp is but realistically point to the viable alternative.

And WhatsApp for "the rest of the world" is "free", about as free as Gmail and Facebook but monetarily free. It's hard to argue a monopoly when there is no money trading hands, and for business you are free to contact your customers via Email or SMS or whatever other form you would like, I can tell you there is benefits to using WhatsApp, our stats show much higher engagement and well we can actually get more information about message delivery than other platforms, you pay a premium for that and they gatekeep that because it has business benefit to do so.

If WhatsApp campaigns didn't get higher engagement than email or sms which is cheaper we wouldn't pay the premium for it, everyone who has WhatsApp can also receive SMS.

Does that help clarify why I'm arguing WhatsApp isn't a monopoly? It's kind of ranty, I apologise for that.