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Create WhatsApp Contact via Manychat API

Manychat now allows to create WhatsApp contacts using our API. This will help to import your existing WhatsApp contacts from other platforms in real time and start communicating with them using Manychat automation and Message Templates.

API is a universal method of pushing data from one app to another. For example, Zapier and Integromat are using other services APIs to enable data transfer between them

To use Manychat API, you need to generate a token. Go to Settings -> API and click the  "Generate Your API Key" button. After that please follow the instruction from this help article "Manychat API" to add your token to Swagger and authorise it. The URL to the website listing all the API commands can be found here.

The Import feature is available to WhatsApp accounts on PRO subscription.


Create a new WhatsApp contact via API

To create a new WhatsApp contact you are going to use the createSubscriber method.


When you pass WhatsApp phone value a new WhatsApp contact is created, other values are optional in this case.

NOTE! Even if you decide to also pass email and phone, a created contact will be associated with the WhatsApp Channel only and these values will be ignored. Also if a contact already exists an error will be returned.

From here you are also able to test this API method.

You can also create a new WhatsApp contact in Manychat using this method via Zapier to import contacts from other platforms. For that you'll need to create a new zap and use "Webhooks by Zapier" in Zapier Action.

After that use the "POST" Action Event.

Set up your action and provide the createSubscriber method in the required URL field.


How to start communicating with created WhatsApp contacts

To start communicating with recently created contacts you can always use WhatsApp Message Templates because they can be sent even outside the 24-hour window. You can try using this simple combo - "New Contact" Event as a Trigger that contains "Opted-in through API" and "Opted-in for WhatsApp" conditions and WhatsApp Message Template as a following message. Here is how it should look like: 

To find more information about creating WhatsApp Message Templates and using them in your automations please refer to this article - "WhatsApp Message Templates".