WhatsApp Flows are Meta's native in-chat form experience on the WhatsApp Business Platform. A Flow is a set of structured screens — text inputs, dropdowns, date pickers, checkboxes, opt-ins — defined in a JSON schema and rendered inside the WhatsApp chat window. Customers complete bookings, sign-ups, surveys and lead forms without being redirected to a website.
A Flow is not a chatbot script and it is not a template message. It is a proper form UI that WhatsApp renders natively on the device. When a customer taps your Flow button, a sheet slides up inside WhatsApp containing your screens. They move forward, back, and submit — and WhatsApp sends your business a structured response payload tied to a flow token you defined, so you know exactly which customer, which campaign and which conversation it belongs to. Flows are a capability of the Official WhatsApp Business API.
You get defined values — appointment date, service, branch — instead of a free-text message you have to guess at with keyword matching.
No browser tab, no page load, no cookie banner, no re-typing a phone number. Identity is already established by the conversation itself.
These three get confused constantly, and picking the wrong one is why a lot of WhatsApp automation projects underperform.
A pre-approved, mostly static message with variables and buttons. Required to start a conversation outside the 24-hour window.
Best for: Delivery updates, reminders, promotional sends — and the invitation that opens a Flow.
A conversational back-and-forth that interprets free text and replies.
Best for: Open-ended questions, FAQs, qualification by conversation, deflecting support tickets.
A structured, multi-screen form rendered natively inside the chat window.
Best for: Anything with defined fields: booking a slot, capturing a lead, collecting a document, running a survey.
The three work best stacked. A message template delivers the invite. The Flow collects the structured data. The AI chatbot handles whatever the customer types afterwards — and interactive messages cover the lighter-weight cases where a full form is overkill.
Service → branch → date → time slot → confirm, all in one sheet inside the chat.
Name, budget, city, requirement type and preferred contact time as defined values.
Account creation, KYC-lite detail collection and document upload without a portal.
Rating scales, multi-select reasons and an open comment box, answered in seconds.
Issue category, order ID, description and a screenshot upload — pre-categorised.
Preference centres, opt-in collection and renewal confirmations with clean consent.
The lead did not get less interested between the message and the form. Your funnel just added four points of friction at the exact moment they were most willing to convert.
You paid for the click-to-WhatsApp ad, the lead messaged you — and then you sent a link. In-app browser, slow load on patchy 4G, cookie banner, and a form asking for the phone number they just messaged from. Half close it. A third mean to come back and never do.
Which service? Which branch? Which Saturday? That is fourteen messages spread over three hours to collect four fields — multiplied by sixty enquiries a day. Your team is doing data entry at conversational speed, with a typo rate to match.
Flows are defined in a declarative JSON schema. Dynamic screens need a public HTTPS endpoint, an RSA key pair registered to your WABA, AES decryption, signature validation and responses inside Meta’s timeout. For a five-person sales team, that is a project with a budget.
The webhook fires, someone wires it into a Google Sheet, and it stops there. The rep still cannot see the submitted budget. The follow-up sequence has no idea whether they asked for a 2BHK or a 4BHK. Nobody gets assigned. The reminder is scheduled by hand.
👇 BetaXLab fixes every one of these — and your first Flow can be published the same day.
From the first tap to the follow-up automation that fires after submission.
BetaXLab Flows run on the Official WhatsApp Business API, so WhatsApp renders your form natively on the device. No browser, no page load, no re-authentication. Known contact fields are pre-filled from the CRM, and the submission is stitched onto the contact timeline automatically.
Pick a service from your real service list. Pick a branch and a date from a calendar that only shows days you are open. Pick a slot, review, confirm. The customer does it at 11pm without an agent awake — and every field is a defined value you can report on.
Drag headings, dropdowns, date pickers and opt-ins onto a canvas, connect the screens, add a condition on the arrow. BetaXLab compiles it into version-correct Flow JSON, validates it against Meta’s schema before publish, and runs the encrypted endpoint for dynamic screens on your behalf.
Map each Flow field once — budget to the Budget field, property type to a tag, preferred date to the appointment date. From then on every submission updates the contact, moves the lead stage, assigns the right agent and fires whatever should happen next.
That “what happens next” is the part teams underestimate. A completed booking Flow can schedule a reminder 24 hours before the slot. A completed lead Flow can start a drip campaign tailored to the budget band selected, and move the record forward in lead management. A survey Flow with a low score can create a priority ticket in the shared team inbox and ping a manager.
Twelve capabilities that take a Flow from a blank canvas to a published, tracked, CRM-connected form.
Build multi-screen Flows on a visual canvas — headings, body text, text inputs, dropdowns, radio groups, checkbox groups, date and calendar pickers, opt-ins and footer buttons. Set validation per field: required, max length, email, phone or number.
Start from a ready-made Flow aligned to Meta’s categories — appointment booking, lead generation, sign-up, sign-in, contact us, customer support and survey. Each ships with sensible screens, validation and a confirmation state already wired.
Headings, subheadings, body and caption text, rich text, single and multi-line inputs, dropdowns, radio buttons, checkbox groups, chips, date and calendar pickers, image display, photo and document upload, opt-in toggles and embedded links.
“Buying” goes to the budget and locality screen; “Renting” goes to move-in date and duration. Skip screens that do not apply, and show or hide fields conditionally within a screen.
Dynamic Flows need an HTTPS endpoint with RSA key registration, AES payload decryption and request signature validation. BetaXLab runs that infrastructure and exposes it as a simple data-source configuration.
Launch a Flow from a template button, a broadcast, a drip step, an AI chatbot reply, a keyword, a QR code on a table tent, a click-to-WhatsApp ad, or manually from an agent in the inbox.
Map each Flow field to a contact property, tag, lead stage, owner or custom field. Mapping is set once per Flow and applies to every submission, including unsupported-device fallbacks.
See how many people opened the Flow, completed each screen and submitted. Identify the exact screen where completion falls off, split by campaign, entry point and time period.
Preview the Flow exactly as it renders on device before publishing. Meta locks published Flows, so BetaXLab clones, edits, validates, publishes the new version and repoints triggers cleanly.
Run language variants of the same Flow and serve the right one based on the contact’s language attribute or the campaign that triggered it.
A submitted Flow appears as a structured card in the shared team inbox, assigned by your routing rules, with the full response visible and the conversation ready to continue.
Chain what happens after submission: send a confirmation template, schedule a reminder, enrol the contact in a nurture sequence, notify a manager, update the deal stage, or trigger a second Flow.
Trigger the same Flow from a WhatsApp broadcast, a QR code on a table tent, or a click-to-WhatsApp ad — and see completion rates split by entry point.
Six outcomes teams report once the form lives inside the chat instead of behind a redirect.
A Flow captures qualification data at the moment of peak intent. Your rep’s first message stops being “Hi, how can I help?” and becomes a response to a stated budget, a chosen service and a preferred slot. Ad spend you already run starts returning sales-ready leads.
Every field a Flow collects is a message an agent did not have to send, read and transcribe. A booking that consumed four to six agent touches consumes zero. Support intake arrives pre-categorised with the order ID and a screenshot attached.
Removing the browser handoff removes page load, form re-entry and app-switching from the conversion path. Add conditional routing, CRM pre-fill and screen-level analytics, and each one is a measurable step up on the same traffic.
Flows work at 2am, during stand-up, on a holiday and at capacity. Out-of-hours enquiries enter the pipeline properly stage-tagged and assigned instead of sitting unread until someone else books them.
Pick, confirm, get a confirmation message, receive a reminder the day before. No account, no password reset, no wondering whether the form went through. For low-bandwidth and older users, that is the difference between completing and giving up.
Routing becomes automatic because the response contains the routing criteria. Reporting becomes real because every field is a defined value. New agents ramp faster because context lives on the contact record, not in a senior rep’s memory.
Pair Flows with follow-up automation so partial abandonments get a nudge instead of being written off, and with role-based access so the people who build Flows and the people who work the leads can be different people.
No JSON. No key pairs. No hosted endpoint. Just a canvas, a trigger and a field map.
Open the Flow builder, pick a starting template or a blank canvas, and lay out your screens. Drag in the fields you need, set which are required, and connect the screens with conditions where the path should branch. Preview it as it renders on a real device — BetaXLab validates the Flow JSON before you can move on.
Choose how customers reach the Flow: a template button, a broadcast, a chatbot reply, a keyword, a QR code or a click-to-WhatsApp ad. Then map each field to where it should land — contact property, tag, lead stage, owner — and set post-submission actions like a confirmation or a scheduled reminder.
Publish the Flow to your WhatsApp Business Account from inside BetaXLab. Submissions arrive on contact records in the CRM and as structured cards in the shared inbox. Open Flow analytics to see open rate, per-screen completion and submission rate — then iterate on the screen that is leaking.
The same builder, six very different forms — each replacing a conversation nobody enjoyed having.
Buying or renting, budget band, configuration, preferred localities as a multi-select, possession timeline — five qualifying questions answered before an agent touches the lead. Budget arrives as a defined value, so premium inventory routes to the senior closer automatically. A second Flow books site visits from a calendar showing only open slots.
Department → doctor → branch → date → available slot, done in under a minute at 10pm. A pre-consultation intake Flow collects symptoms, medications, allergies and insurance before arrival. A document upload screen replaces blurry photos in the thread, and a two-screen feedback Flow gives you real CSAT per doctor and branch.
Service sets the slot length, then stylist preference, branch, date and genuinely free slots. Bridal and party packages branch into extra screens for event date, headcount and trial sessions, because those enquiries are worth ten haircuts. A membership sign-up Flow builds a marketing list with clean consent.
Reservations: date, time, party size, indoor or outdoor, occasion. Feedback: rating and what went wrong as a multi-select, collected while the customer is still in the restaurant and the problem is fixable. Catering and private events get their own Flow capturing date, headcount, cuisine and budget.
One Flow captures course of interest, current class or qualification, preferred batch timing, city and source. Counsellors get a queue sorted by fit instead of a list of phone numbers. A demo-class booking Flow with a calendar picker fills trial sessions without the call-back-three-times cycle.
Order ID, item, reason from a defined list, photo upload of the damage, preferred resolution. A four-message support conversation becomes a submission that arrives ready to process — and your return reasons become a dataset merchandising can act on. Add COD confirmation, size preference and post-delivery review Flows.
Ecommerce teams pair Flows with the WhatsApp catalog and WhatsApp marketing so the entire browse-to-buy-to-support loop stays inside one chat thread.
A qualitative comparison of how each platform approaches WhatsApp Flows and the surrounding workflow. Platform capabilities and plan inclusions change frequently — verify current details on each vendor's site before purchasing.
| Criteria | BetaXLab | WATI | Gallabox | Interakt | AiSensy | Zoko |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core Features | Full no-code Flow builder, complete component set, conditional routing, dynamic data screens, multi-language variants — plus CRM, broadcast, drip, chatbot and inbox in one platform | Strong broadcast and template tooling; Flow support present, with builder depth varying by plan | Solid no-code bot builder with Flow support; strong on conversational journeys | Good template and catalog tooling; Flow capability positioned around commerce use cases | Broadcast-first platform; Flow support available, generally lighter on visual form design | Commerce-oriented feature set; Flows framed around Shopify-style ordering journeys |
| Ease of Use | Visual canvas that compiles to valid Flow JSON, live device preview, schema validation before publish — built for marketers, not developers | Approachable UI; more complex Flow configurations often need technical help | Builder is genuinely friendly; advanced branching takes setup time | Clean interface; deeper Flow work typically involves support or dev input | Simple to send, less depth for designing multi-screen forms | Straightforward for ecommerce flows, less flexible outside that pattern |
| Automation Depth | Flow triggers from template, broadcast, drip, chatbot, keyword, QR and ads; post-submission chaining into reminders, sequences, routing and stage updates | Good automation, generally rule-based rather than deeply chained off Flow responses | Capable journey automation, well suited to bot-led paths | Automation focused on campaigns and order lifecycle events | Automation centred on campaigns and broadcast follow-ups | Automation tied closely to the commerce and order lifecycle |
| Built-in CRM | Native CRM — Flow fields map directly to contact properties, tags, lead stages and owners with no integration layer | CRM features present; deeper pipeline work often via integrations | Contact management with CRM-style features; integrations common for full pipeline | Contact and order records; CRM depth varies by plan | Contact lists and segmentation; lighter on pipeline management | Customer records built around orders |
| Pricing Transparency | Flat, published plan pricing with Flows included — Meta conversation charges passed through at cost, no markup | Published tiers; add-ons and per-message elements can complicate forecasting | Published pricing with credit-style components on some plans | Published tiers; feature gating varies by plan | Published tiers with message-volume-linked costs | Published pricing with commerce-oriented tiering |
| Team Collaboration | Shared multi-agent inbox, role-based access, assignment rules, internal notes, number masking — Flow submissions route to the right agent automatically | Team inbox with agent seats; collaboration features by tier | Team inbox with assignment; solid for mid-size teams | Team inbox available; collaboration features by plan | Agent access available; team depth lighter | Team features oriented to support and order handling |
The short version: several platforms can send a Flow. BetaXLab is built so a non-technical person can design one, trigger it from any channel, and have the response drive the rest of the workflow — without an endpoint to host, a key pair to manage or an integration to maintain.
Build a booking, lead capture or sign-up Flow on a visual canvas, trigger it from any channel, and watch structured responses land on the right contact record with the right agent assigned. No Flow JSON. No encryption keys. No developer ticket.
Twenty things people ask before building their first Flow — cost, approval, devices, data and security.
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