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WhatsApp Chat Review: Add WhatsApp Chat to WordPress

Last Updated on August 31st, 2023

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As part of the Facebook galactic empire, WhatsApp sports over 1.5 Billion active monthly users, which means about one-fifth of the entire earth’s population uses WhatsApp on a monthly basis.

WhatsApp Chat is a freemium plugin that helps you harness that popularity by letting your website’s visitors send WhatsApp chat messages straight to you (or to their choice of multiple agents, if you’re part of a larger organization).

In our WhatsApp Chat review, we’ll give you hands-on a look at how the premium version of this plugin lets you create a really slick-looking interface for visitors to connect with you on WhatsApp.

Overall, it’s super easy to use and the front-end designs look great. Beyond that, the premium version has some unique functionality that you won’t find in other WordPress WhatsApp plugins.

WhatsApp Chat Review: The Feature List

WhatsApp Chat comes in both a free and a premium version. In this WhatsApp Chat review, I’ll be looking at the premium version, but I will divide the feature list by price so that you know what each version can do.

Essentially, the free version lets you add a basic WhatsApp click to chat button to your site. You can customize the text and the colors, but when visitors click the button, it will just take them straight to WhatsApp with a pre-configured message (that you can control).

That is, there’s no “live chat” interface where customers can enter their own message (though the free version does let you mimic the design – more on that later).

The premium version changes that, and also adds some other neat features.

First off, clicking the button opens an interactive live chat interface, rather than sending people straight to WhatsApp. Additionally, visitors can select from one or more agents, and also customize their message (when the plugin sends them to WhatsApp, it will automatically fill-in this message for them). Here’s an example:

WhatsApp Chat review example

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Beyond that functionality, you can also:

  • Edit all the text
  • Change the button style
  • Edit all the colors
  • Control which devices see your chat (e.g. you can only show it to mobile visitors)
  • Control which content has a live chat button by targeting specific posts, pages, or categories

Let’s go hands-on and I’ll show you how it works!

Hands-On With WhatsApp Chat

Remember, I’m using the premium version for this WhatsApp Chat review.

When you first install and activate the plugin, it starts working right away. The default functionality is to add this chat button that takes visitors straight to WhatsApp with a pre-configured message:

default looks

To configure the functionality, you’ll use the new WhatsApp Chat area in your WordPress dashboard.

Let’s go through the settings…

Button Settings

In the Button area, you get lots of options to control your button’s:

  • Style
  • Position
  • Text
  • Icon

This is also where you can control the default WhatsApp phone number and message. However, if you activate the live chat functionality, these settings aren’t really important because visitors can choose their preferred phone number and enter their own message (more on that next):

button settings

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For example, you could change from a button to a bubble to get this look:

bubble WhatsApp click to chat

Box Settings

The Box area houses some important settings. Most notably, it lets you enable the contact box, which is what creates the real “live chat” feeling.

Here’s what happens if you enable the contact box…

Instead of sending visitors straight to WhatsApp with a pre-configured message, clicking the button will open a live chat-like interface like this:

chat box

Beyond that, visitors can click on the person they want to contact and enter their own message, rather than using the pre-configured message from the Button tab:

Customzie message

When they hit send, it will take them straight to WhatsApp with the message text already added (all they have to do is hit send in the WhatsApp app or web interface).

So that’s pretty handy!

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The free version also lets you enable the contact box functionality, but only for a single agent, and it doesn’t let visitors enter their own messages.

Beyond enabling this functionality, the Box area also lets you customize the header and footer text:

Edit chat box

And at the bottom, you can add more Contacts. If you add multiple contacts, visitors can choose which team member they want to send a message to on WhatsApp:

Add agents

Here’s what it looks like after having added myself as a contact:

multiple agents settings

This is probably the most helpful feature in the premium version.

Display Settings

The Display area lets you control when your WhatsApp chat box appears.

First, you can use the Devices drop-down to target:

  • All devices
  • Mobile devices
  • Desktop devices

This is helpful because I’m willing to bet a lot more people use the WhatsApp mobile app than have the web interface configured.

Beyond that, you can also target specific WordPress content, including posts, pages, and categories.

You can also use exclude rules here. For example, you can say “Display on everything except all pages”:

display options

Colors Settings

Finally, the Colors area lets you edit the colors for various parts of your chat box. Pretty simple!

colors

How Much Does WhatsApp Chat Cost?

As I mentioned, WhatsApp Chat does have a limited free version at WordPress.org.

However, if you’re serious about adding WhatsApp chat functionality to WordPress, I really recommend you go Pro.

Here’s why:

The Pro version only costs $10!

Yeah, that’s crazy cheap for a WordPress plugin.

For $10, you also get lifetime updates for one site, as well as 6 months of support. You can also pay:

  • $20 for use on five sites
  • $40 for use on unlimited sites

All the plans come with lifetime updates, which is quite generous.

Final Thoughts On WhatsApp Chat

WhatsApp Chat is a pretty simple plugin, so I don’t have a ton of detailed thoughts here.

Basically, the plugin delivers on exactly what it promises.

It’s super easy to use and set up – you can have it working in just a few minutes.

It also goes a lot further than most of the other solutions. Many of the other WhatsApp plugins that you’ll find basically just let you add a simple button that sends people to WhatsApp.

The Pro version of WhatsApp Chat, on the other hand, lets you create a much more user-friendly interface that feels more like a live chat solution.

Additionally, the ability to add multiple agents is great for teams. One way to improve this feature even further, though, would be to let you set some type of working hours availability for each agent to control what time of day they show up in the chat box.

Finally, the default designs look great, especially the chat box. It looks very slick and modern, which is another improvement over the free plugins that you’ll find.

All in all, when you consider the fact that the Pro version is just $10, I think this is definitely one to consider if you want to add WhatsApp click to chat functionality to your WordPress site.

Get WhatsApp Chat

A team of WordPress experts that love to test out new WordPress related software, WordPress plugins and WordPress themes.