WhatsApp, on the record.

Yes. Governed conversations and groups run on the official WhatsApp Business Platform – Meta's Cloud API – on a number and WhatsApp Business Account your organisation owns in its own Meta Business portfolio. Members know the channel is governed and are told so in wording we supply. That is fully within WhatsApp's terms and meets GDPR transparency requirements. We do not tap, scrape or covertly join anyone's existing personal groups, which is neither possible through the API nor permitted.

In a governed conversation, your organisation's Business API endpoint is a legitimate participant, so messages are delivered to it through Meta's official API rather than intercepted off anyone's device. From there each message is archived into your own Microsoft 365 tenant, under your retention, legal holds and access controls. We do not run a modified WhatsApp client and we do not claim "zero knowledge", because governance and zero knowledge are mutually exclusive. Any vendor promising both is misrepresenting how this works.

Fourteen days is typical from signed order to first captured conversation: number live, relay groups running, every message archived into your tenant. One thing takes longer, and we say so: native WhatsApp groups need Meta's Official Business badge on your account, which has its own waiting period – it typically clears around week five, and we run the application for you. Your side of the work is approving the wording and turning up to one 45-minute session.

You talk, mostly. Bring the scenario that worries you – the group nobody admits to, the leaver with two years of messages on their phone, the SAR you'd dread. We map your exposure against the rules that apply to you, show you the product only where it's relevant, and send you a one-page summary written for trustees. There is nothing to prepare and nothing to pass, and if we're not the fit we'll say so on the call.

There are two kinds, and we are straight about the difference. Native WhatsApp groups created through the official API are capped by Meta at eight members plus your organisation's number, and they need Meta's Official Business badge on your account – an application we run with you during onboarding. Relay groups have no size cap and work from day one: members message your organisation's number, and every message is passed on to everyone else, labelled with the sender's name. A board of fifteen runs as a relay group; a committee of six fits a native group. Anyone promising native fifty-person WhatsApp groups through the official API is describing something Meta does not offer.

Yes, and we provide the templates. Transparency is a GDPR requirement and an ethical one. We supply notification copy for staff, for relatives joining governed groups, and for your trustee board. In practice, almost everyone is reassured rather than alarmed.

No, and any tool that claims to is either misleading you or breaking WhatsApp's terms. The API can only govern groups created on your business number, so the model is to migrate activity into governed groups going forward and make that the way your charity uses WhatsApp. We give you the rollout plan, the member invites, and the staff and trustee policy templates to make the switch stick.

That is a policy and culture problem, and we treat it as one. Governed groups become the only approved channel, backed by a safeguarding-grounded policy your trustees can stand behind. On charity-issued devices, mobile device management can enforce it. The lever is making the governed channel the easy, expected default, not pretending we can secretly read private phones.

We onboard you directly to Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform: your own Meta Business portfolio, your own WhatsApp Business Account, your own verified number. You hold all of it – we automate around it. We run the onboarding for you, included on every annual plan. Because the traffic is conversation rather than marketing, most messages are free at Meta's end; the occasional re-opening template costs pennies and is itemised, never marked up.

Yes. Anywhere WhatsApp has become operationally important, governance becomes operationally important. Fundraising teams, volunteer coordinators, safeguarding leads and trustee chats are all in scope. Pricing is by staff seat and participants are always free, so widening the use case never widens the bill.

You take everything with you – and the archive itself already lives in your own Microsoft 365 tenant, so the records were never ours to withhold. Anything operational we do hold is exported in open formats within fourteen days, deletion is confirmed in writing, and there are no exit fees. Founding terms are exactly as the offer states: half price for two years, then today's list price locked for life – never the price we charge new customers later. On Governance that's £2,990 a year for two years, £5,990 a year from year three, while the list price for everyone else moves on without you. We intend to earn the renewal, not enforce it.