Coexistence vs migrating your number: what you gain and lose

You have your usual number in the WhatsApp Business app on your phone, and you want to automate or connect an assistant (the API). The question is: what happens to your number? There are two paths, and they trade very different things.

Path A: Coexistence

The number lives at the same time in the mobile app and on the API. You (or your team) keep replying from the phone whenever you want, and the assistant attends via API on the same number. Messages sync between both.

• You gain: you keep your number, your chats and the human touch from the phone. Warm UX: bot and human, same number.
• You lose / cost: enabling Coexistence is not self-serve — you have to go through a provider or become a tech provider (we cover it in another post). It’s more paperwork.

Path B: migrating the number to the API

The number moves entirely to the API and leaves the mobile app. It becomes purely programmatic.

• You gain: simpler to set up (standard registration), you keep the number.
• You lose: manual chat from the mobile app. You no longer attend “by hand” from the phone on that number; everything goes through the software.

How to decide (the key question)

You only have to answer one thing: do you need to keep attending by hand from the phone on that number?

• Yes → Coexistence. It’s the only one that lets you have bot + human on the same number.
• No (the number can live only on the API) → migrating is simpler.

For a service where the human touch matters — a shop that personalizes, answers questions, takes care of the customer — Coexistence is usually the answer, even if it’s more work to set up.

In short

It’s not “better or worse”: it’s what you prioritize. Coexistence = you keep the human chat (more paperwork). Migration = simpler (you lose the phone chat).

We chose Coexistence so the assistant and the human share a number. With Taituri, that part — the trickiest one — is already solved: you connect your number and keep your usual WhatsApp.

— The Taituri team