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What Phone Number to use

In theory any phone number that can receive an SMS and has never been connected to WhatsApp can be used to get access to the API. When selecting a phone number, you have 3 options:

1) [Recommended] Buy a hosted number through a provider like Twilio

We recommend using a hosted phone number because:

• You can’t “lose” the number like you can with a sim card (if you forget to do the minimum top up for your carrier it es extremely hard or impossible to get that number back).
• If at some point in the future you want to scalably accept calls on the same number (with an IVR & such) the only way to do this is with a hosted number.

<aside> ⏩ To buy a hosted number through Twilio, skip to the following section

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2) Connect any number (buy a sim card or use any existing number)

If you are unable to get a hosted number or don’t want to, you can use any SIM card with a phone that can receive an SMS.

This number cannot be previously connected to any WhatsApp Service. If you already have a connected WhatsApp account, you can follow these steps to delete your account. Be aware that you will lose all your messages and everything related to that account if you chose this option!

3) Move a number that you already have registered with a BSP to 360 Dialog.

If you already have a number on the API with a provider that is not 360 Dialog, please reach out to us and we can help you migrate the number.

Buying a Phone Number

To buy a phone number with Twilio that you can use with Hilos and 360 Dialog as your WhatsApp API provider, follow the next steps.

You will need: