Wazapi vs Zenvia: which platform makes WhatsApp sell more without surprise costs?

Platform overview

What is Wazapi?

Wazapi is a customer-service, automation and sales platform for the official WhatsApp Business API (Meta Cloud API), Instagram Direct and Facebook Messenger, built for Brazilian companies. One dashboard holds the team inbox, the visual flow editor, the kanban CRM, the WhatsApp Store and the AI tools. Data is hosted in São Paulo and a DPA is available.

Launched in 2024, Wazapi has three publicly priced plans: Starter at R$ 149, Pro at R$ 259 and Business at R$ 699 per month. There is no lock-in, no penalty and no setup fee, and the 14-day free trial needs no credit card. Meta's messaging cost is passed through with no mark-up and shown by category in the dashboard. Weekly releases are listed in the public changelog.

What is Zenvia?

Zenvia is a Nasdaq-listed Brazilian company with more than 10,000 customers across Latin America, according to its SEC filings. It started as an SMS and communications-API provider and now centers its offer on Zenvia Customer Cloud, a suite split into four stages: attract (bulk messaging and segmentation), convert (sales inbox and chatbots), serve (tickets with SLAs) and nurture (AI agents).

Its website highlights customers such as Casas Bahia, Mercado Livre, Petlove and MAPFRE, and the stated focus is mid-size and large operations. Pricing has two parts: the software plan and a separately billed channel package for SMS, WhatsApp, email and RCS.

Feature comparison

Chatbot and automation

In Wazapi, flows are built in a drag-and-drop visual editor: text, media, buttons, lists, data collection, conditions, HTTP request, assignment, tags, fields, CRM stage, template and the AI Agent block. Variables use {{vars.field}}, and the simulator runs the flow in the browser before you publish. The business-hours block understands holidays and named schedules, so the bot knows on its own that Saturday afternoon is a skeleton shift and that nobody is in on a public holiday.

What moves conversion most is what happens when the customer goes off script. Wazapi accepts the option number, an approximate text match or the tap, re-asks a limited number of times and handles taps on old cards. Phrases such as "talk to an agent" reach a human at any point. A lead stuck in a menu is a lost lead.

Zenvia offers two routes: a chatbot generated by generative AI from a short description and your documents, and a flow-based chatbot with a creation assistant and a template library. The website mentions handoff to a human and integrations with other systems. It is a good proposition for getting a bot live quickly. The free plan only includes the flow bot; generative AI starts at Specialist, R$ 600/month.

On the public pages we opened in September 2026 there is no description of a native business-hours block with holidays, nor detail on HTTP request blocks, which is why the table marks those items as not documented. If they are critical for you, ask for a demo of the builder.

AI in service and sales

On the Business plan, Wazapi shows the sentiment of every message in real time: the agent sees the customer is upset before typing. The co-pilot suggests a reply in the context of the conversation and, after closing, the quality analysis produces a score, dimensions and a coaching report per agent. Inbound audio arrives transcribed in the inbox and over webhooks on any plan, with your own OpenAI key. In practice: faster replies, no ignored voice notes and training based on data. Pro does not include this native AI: it focuses on the official API, the three channels, the kanban CRM, the Store and the MCP server.

Business also has the autonomous AI Agent. It answers from a knowledge base with hybrid search (RAG) fed by text, FAQs, files, URLs and your store catalog, which re-syncs by itself. It performs actions from an allowlist (apply a tag, fill a field, move a CRM stage), understands images, batches bursts of messages, hands off with context and stops by itself when a human takes over. Details at /ia.

Cost follows a different logic: the features come with the Business plan and model usage runs on your own OpenAI key (BYOK), with no mark-up and a monthly budget cap that blocks or alerts. That requires an OpenAI account, which is a limitation if you want everything on a single invoice. In exchange you pay the model's list price and you can see the spend. On price, the fair AI comparison is Business at R$ 699 (10+ agents) against Zenvia Specialist at R$ 600 (10 users), which already includes model usage: within the 500-conversation monthly allowance Zenvia ties or comes out cheaper, and above it each extra conversation costs R$ 1.32.

Zenvia describes on its website request summaries, reply suggestions, satisfaction and intent indicators, intelligent ticket classification, writing assistance, a chatbot with a knowledge base and AI agents, mentioning a partnership with Meta. The model is built in, and neither the provider nor a bring-your-own-key option is publicly documented. For AI agents, the site says the investment varies with volume and complexity, meaning a custom quote; its help center notes that each automated send by an agent consumes one Interactionz.

Sales, CRM and conversion

This is the biggest difference in approach. Wazapi has a native kanban CRM with pipelines per group, stages, opportunities and metrics. The closing policy can require a CRM stage when a conversation is closed, so no conversation ends without a recorded outcome. Custom fields and tags round out the contact record.

The WhatsApp Store gives you your own public storefront, a catalog with variants and stock, shipping, and a checkout that closes on WhatsApp. The order becomes a card inside the conversation, triggers the post-purchase flow, the payment reminder and the status notice, and creates the CRM opportunity automatically. Orders from WhatsApp's native catalog land in the same place, and a Shopify catalog can be imported by CSV.

Marketing attribution records UTMs, gclid, fbclid and Click-to-WhatsApp ads on the contact, the conversation and the order. You learn which campaign produced the sale, not just which one produced the chat.

Zenvia describes a centralized sales inbox with categorization, assignment, distribution rules and closure logging, plus segmentation and a management dashboard. We did not find a native kanban pipeline or an own storefront with orders on its public pages. Its route is integration: Salesforce, Zoho CRM, RD Station, Shopify, WooCommerce, Nuvemshop, Mercado Livre, Omie and Bling, among others. If your company already lives in one of those systems, that is a Zenvia advantage: Wazapi has no ready-made connectors for third-party ERPs and CRMs and integrates through its API, webhooks, HTTP request and MCP.

Team management

In Wazapi, round-robin routing looks at real availability: the agent's status plus presence in the dashboard. Someone who closed the tab gets no conversations, and the lead does not wait for a person who already left. If an agent stops replying, the conversation is transferred for inactivity. Groups can be private and access profiles grant module by module.

Each agent has a performance page with first response (mean and median), resolution time, closing rate, volume and, on Business, the AI-computed quality score. The inbox has eight views, including unanswered, overdue and mentions, plus internal notes with @mentions and canned replies with media.

Zenvia offers distribution rules, custom access profiles, SLA contracts to prioritize requests and reports on tickets, SLAs, channels and agent performance. It also has an iOS and Android app, which Wazapi does not: our interface is responsive web. Zenvia plans include more users too (10 on Specialist versus 5 agents on Wazapi Pro). For an after-sales operation with ticket queues and formal SLAs, Zenvia's service module is more mature; Wazapi has no ticket helpdesk with contractual SLAs.

Costs, reports and channel health

Wazapi passes Meta's fee through with no mark-up and shows spend by category (marketing, utility, authentication and service) in the dashboard, before the invoice. The subscription does not change with the number of conversations handled. At Zenvia, according to its pricing page, the software plan includes an allowance of Interactionz: one is consumed when the company starts a conversation or when the customer reaches out on any channel, and it lasts 24 hours. Specialist includes 500 a month and each extra one costs R$ 1.32. Bulk sends with no reply do not consume any.

Zenvia's WhatsApp messages come out of a separate channel package, from R$ 100 to R$ 2,000 a month. The R$ 100 package covers up to 182 WhatsApp sends and the R$ 2,000 one up to 4,256. Dividing those gives roughly R$ 0.55 and R$ 0.47 per send. This is our own estimate from the public table: the page does not split Meta's fee from the service fee, and the amount may vary by message type. Zenvia states that the first 1,000 service messages each month are free.

Predictable cost also depends on the number staying healthy. Wazapi monitors the number's status at Meta (quality, tier and restrictions, with the cause and fix given by Meta itself) and protects sending with automatic opt-out on STOP-style keywords, a marketing frequency cap per contact, deduplication and send pacing. Before you send a template, the inbox shows whether the send is blocked, why and until when.

Public reviews of Zenvia on Capterra (4.1 out of 5 across 359 reviews, checked in September 2026) cite ease of use and the WhatsApp integration as positives, and support response time, limited reporting and episodes of instability as negatives. Read the most recent ones before deciding. Wazapi, being from 2024, has a much smaller volume of public reviews.

Pricing and plans

Note: Zenvia prices checked in September 2026 at zenvia.com/precos. Wazapi's native AI (sentiment, co-pilot, quality analysis and agent) is on the Business plan, so the AI comparison is Business R$ 699 against Specialist R$ 600: within the 500-conversation monthly allowance Zenvia ties or comes out cheaper, because model usage is already included; above it, the R$ 1.32 extra conversation flips the math. The example uses only figures from that page and assumes the smallest channel package; your template volume may require a larger one. Prices change: confirm on Zenvia's website before deciding.

Support and migration

Wazapi provides chat support on every plan, with a priority queue on Business. Zenvia publishes an SLA agreement: Standard support runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, with tickets opened through the in-app virtual assistant, a first response within 2 business hours and resolution in 12 to 48 business hours depending on impact. The Premier tiers add 24/7 coverage, email and phone under a separate contract. If you need a support SLA written into a contract, that counts in Zenvia's favor.

To migrate to Wazapi, you import contacts by CSV with custom fields, transfer the templates Meta has already approved and get help configuring the number. Flows have to be rebuilt in the visual editor; the simulator helps you validate before switching over. Because Zenvia has no lock-in, you can run Wazapi's 14-day trial in parallel and only cancel there (with the 20 days' notice) once you have validated.

Who is Wazapi for?

• SMBs and sales teams that live on WhatsApp and want the official API, a CRM and a store for R$ 259/month with no setup fee
• High-conversation-volume operations, where paying per 24-hour window would make the bill grow along with success
• Anyone selling through chat who needs the order, the payment reminder and the pipeline stage inside the conversation
• Managers who want applied AI and fit the Business plan (R$ 699, 10+ agents): sentiment, co-pilot, per-agent coaching and the AI agent, with spend controlled on their own key
• Technical teams and agencies using the REST API, webhooks, the Node SDK and the MCP server to operate the workspace with Claude or ChatGPT

Who is Zenvia for?

• Companies that need SMS, RCS and bulk email alongside WhatsApp from a single vendor
• After-sales operations with tickets and formal SLAs that need a helpdesk and contractual 24/7 support
• Teams already on Salesforce, RD Station, Omie, Bling or Nuvemshop who want a native connector rather than an API integration
• Field teams that depend on a native iOS and Android app
• Corporate procurement that requires a large, publicly listed vendor with 10,000+ customers
• Small teams that want generative AI at low volume: up to 500 conversations a month, Specialist at R$ 600 with 10 users and model usage included ties with Wazapi Business or comes out cheaper

Verdict

Zenvia is a broad communications platform: nothing in Wazapi replaces SMS, RCS, bulk email, an SLA-backed helpdesk and a mobile app. If your operation needs those, or your procurement process requires a vendor of that size, it is the right choice and the price makes sense.

If your business happens on WhatsApp, the math changes. With five agents and 1,500 conversations a month, the example above comes to R$ 2,020 at Zenvia against R$ 259 on Wazapi Pro, without native AI, or R$ 699 on Business, with native AI and usage on your own OpenAI key, always with Meta's fee at cost. Pro already includes what turns a conversation into a sale: a kanban CRM, a store with the order inside the chat, campaign attribution and presence-based routing. The AI that shows the customer's mood and coaches the team comes with Business. The math only favors Zenvia for a small operation that wants AI: up to 500 conversations a month, Specialist R$ 600 + the R$ 100 package = R$ 700 with the model included, which ties with Business at R$ 699 or comes out cheaper.

Our limitations are clear: three channels, no native app, no ticket helpdesk, native AI and the autonomous agent only on Business, and a younger company. If none of those is a requirement, run the 14-day trial without a card, on the Pro plan, and compare against your real operation. Plans are at /precos.