AiSensy vs Gallabox: An Honest WhatsApp CRM Comparison for India

The short answer, before the next 2,000 words

Pick on shape, not on features. If your growth runs on outbound campaigns to a large contact list, lean broadcast-first. If it runs on inbound chats that need qualifying and closing, lean conversation-first. Both sit on the same Meta API.

AiSensy and Gallabox are both Indian WhatsApp Business API platforms with real customers and years of product behind them. Neither is the right answer in the abstract. They grew around different centres of gravity, and the buyer who regrets the choice later usually picked a shape that did not match how their revenue arrives.

A note on honesty first. This article is written by a company that also sells a WhatsApp CRM, and we say so plainly in a labelled section near the end. So we made two promises here: no prices for AiSensy or Gallabox, and no invented feature claims, seat limits or customer numbers. Pricing pages change monthly. Check current figures on each vendor's own pricing page on the day you buy.

What both tools have in common, which is more than most buyers expect

Both are built on the official WhatsApp Business Platform, the API Meta licenses through solution providers. The pipe is Meta's. The phone number, the message categories, the billing meter and the rules about who you may message and when are identical whichever logo sits on your dashboard.

This matters because plenty of comparison content implies one platform delivers better or gets more reach. On the official API it does not work that way. Deliverability follows your template quality, opt-in hygiene and account quality rating, all scored by Meta. A platform helps you avoid mistakes. It cannot buy privileged access.

What Meta controls, identically for both

• Per-message billing by template category. Since July 2025 Meta charges per template message, priced by category (marketing, utility, authentication), replacing the older conversation bundles.
• The 24-hour customer service window. When a customer messages you, you can reply freely in session. After it closes, you need an approved template to reopen the conversation.
• Template review. Every template goes to Meta for approval, and Meta can reject or pause it.
• Opt-in. You need permission to message a contact, and that obligation sits with you, not your vendor.
• Quality rating and messaging limits. Blocks and reports drag your rating down and can cap how many users you may message daily.
• The green tick. Official Business Account verification is a separate Meta application, not something any platform grants. Our guide on getting the WhatsApp green tick covers what actually moves it.
• One number, one platform at a time, which is why switching later is a migration and not a download.

What the platform layer actually controls

Everything above the pipe is where the two genuinely differ, and it is the only place worth spending evaluation time: the team inbox and chat assignment, the campaign builder, the flow builder and its no-code ceiling, contact fields and pipeline stages, integrations, reporting, API and webhooks, and the support you reach at 9pm on a Saturday.

How each one is positioned, and the business shape it suits

The clearest way to read these two is through their own marketing. Vendors position themselves around the customer they serve best, and that positioning is usually honest, because it reflects the workflow their product team has polished most.

The broadcast and campaign-led shape

AiSensy presents itself as a WhatsApp marketing and engagement platform, with campaigns, broadcasts and template-driven outreach at the front of the story. If you grow by pushing offers, launches and reminders to a list measured in tens of thousands, look hard at that shape. D2C brands with repeat buyers, ed-tech with batch launches, clinics and gyms with renewal cycles, real estate teams working a large enquiry database: all of them think campaigns first. What matters to them is how fast a broadcast is built, how segmentation works, and how clearly a report reads.

The conversational-commerce-led shape

Gallabox presents itself around conversational commerce and shared team inboxes, where value is created in the reply rather than the send. If most of your revenue arrives as an inbound enquiry that a human qualifies, prices and closes, test that shape. Think B2B services, travel, high-ticket retail, diagnostics, and anyone whose sale takes three to ten messages before money moves. The questions change: how chats are assigned, whether an agent sees full context on one screen, how a lead moves through stages, and how much a bot can qualify before a human steps in.

One caution, and it is the most important line here. Both companies have built for years and expanded well past where they started, so do not treat a positioning statement as a feature boundary. Treat it as a hypothesis about which product is more polished where you care, then prove it in a free trial with your own contacts and templates. Our WhatsApp CRM buyer's checklist sets out how to run that trial.

Agent seats: the line item that quietly sets your bill

Almost every WhatsApp platform in India, including both of these, sells tiered monthly subscriptions where the tier is driven by some mix of agent seats, contact volume and feature access, with Meta's per-message charges billed separately on top. That structure is standard. What catches buyers out is the definition of a seat. Ask both vendors the same questions:

• Is a seat a named login, or a concurrent session two shift workers can share?
• Do admins, owners or read-only managers consume a paid seat?
• What does adding one seat mid-month cost, and is it prorated?
• Can you remove a seat when a salesperson leaves, or are seats locked for the year?
• Does a second WhatsApp number need its own plan, or can numbers share one workspace and seat pool?

Model your bill at the team size you expect in twelve months, not today's. A plan that feels comfortable at three people often jumps a tier at six, and that jump is usually the biggest real cost difference between vendors whose headline plans looked similar.

Campaigns, broadcasts and template management

If you run campaigns, do not judge the campaign builder from a demo. Build one yourself in the trial, with a real segment and a real template, and time it. Differences show up in small places: how a CSV of messy Indian phone formats is handled, whether duplicates are merged, whether you can exclude everyone who bought last week, and how fast you clone last month's campaign.

Template management is the other half, and you will live in that screen, because Meta reviews everything and rejections are routine. Check whether you can submit and track template status inside the dashboard, whether the tool flags risky content before submission, and whether an approved template can be duplicated into another language. Also ask what happens to a scheduled campaign if Meta pauses its template mid-send.

Chatbots and no-code flow depth

Every vendor here says it has a no-code chatbot builder, and every vendor is telling the truth. The real question is where the no-code ceiling sits, because that decides whether your team adapts the bot next quarter or raises a ticket for every change.

Test it with one realistic flow instead of a toy one: greet the contact, ask three qualifying questions, branch on the answers, write those answers onto the contact record, and hand over to a human with a summary. Note the exact step where you need a developer. Then check what happens when someone types free text instead of tapping a button, and whether a human can take over mid-flow.

Lead capture and qualification

Look at both ends of this. On the way in, check which sources create a contact automatically: click-to-WhatsApp ads, website widgets, QR codes on packaging, landing page forms, missed call handoffs. On the way through, check what qualification does to the record. A bot that asks three questions and leaves the answers in chat history is barely useful. One that writes budget, city and requirement into structured fields, tags the contact and routes it to the right salesperson is what pays for the subscription.

CRM pipeline, integrations and developer access

"CRM" means different things here and the word alone tells you nothing. Some platforms give you a contact database with tags and custom fields. Some add a visual pipeline with stages, owners and deal values. Some assume you already run a CRM and focus on syncing with it. All three are legitimate, and the right one depends on whether WhatsApp is your main sales surface or one channel among several.

Before any demo, write down the five systems that must talk to WhatsApp for your business to work. That list usually holds your store or billing platform, your existing CRM, your ads account for click-to-WhatsApp lead sync, a sheet-based ops process, and a payment link provider. Then ask each vendor, system by system, whether that integration is native, available through a general automation connector, or something you build yourself. No answer is wrong. Assuming is.

API and webhook access on the lower tiers

This is the most common unpleasant surprise in WhatsApp CRM buying, across the whole market rather than these two in particular. Developer access is very often gated to higher tiers. If you plan to trigger messages from your own backend, push order updates, or receive incoming messages into your own system, get three things confirmed in writing before paying: that the outbound API is on the exact plan you are buying, that incoming message and delivery status webhooks are on that same plan, and what the rate limits are. Ask for the documentation link during the sales call.

Analytics, and support you can reach in India hours

Reporting is where platforms quietly differ most, because delivery numbers are easy and business numbers are hard. Everyone shows sent, delivered and read. Fewer show reply rate by template, conversation volume by agent and hour, or first response time. Ask to see the analytics screen on a populated account rather than an empty trial, and ask one question: can you export the raw data? A CSV or API export means you can answer anything later in a spreadsheet.

Support matters more on WhatsApp than on most software, because when it breaks your sales channel is down and customers are waiting. Both are India-based companies, which helps with time zones and context, but confirm specifics: support hours in IST, which channels your plan includes, the response commitment, and who you reach on a Sunday evening when a campaign stalls mid-send.

A support test you can run during the free trial

Do not take the sales team's word for support quality, and do not lean on reviews either. Run a controlled test. On day two of each trial, send both vendors the same genuine, moderately technical question, outside office hours, through the channel your plan would use. Record how long the first human reply takes and whether it answers or deflects to documentation. Repeat once mid-week at peak hours. Two data points per vendor predicts your next twelve months better than any feature grid.

The costs that are identical whichever you pick

Buyers compare subscription tiers and stop there, which is how budgets get blown. A meaningful share of monthly spend is not the subscription at all. Since July 2025 Meta charges per template message by category, so marketing costs more than utility, and authentication is priced separately. Service conversations, meaning replies you send inside the 24-hour window after a customer writes to you, are not charged by Meta. Those charges reach you through whichever platform you pick, so they cannot decide this comparison. Our explainer on WhatsApp Business API pricing in India breaks down the categories, and what a WhatsApp CRM actually costs covers the full monthly picture.

The one thing worth asking is markup. Some providers pass Meta's charges through at cost, some add a percentage, some bundle an allowance and charge overage. Any of those is a fair commercial choice, but you should know which one you are signing up for. Ask for a sample invoice showing subscription and message charges as separate lines.

Template approval, opt-in and the migration you will do either way

Three more costs are the same regardless of logo. First, template approval. Everything goes through Meta review, most clear quickly, some do not, and rejections are normal. Budget a few days to get your core templates approved. Second, opt-in work. Under India's DPDP Act consent should be specific, recorded and withdrawable, and cleaning your list, adding consent capture and storing proof is your job on either platform. Third, migration. Onboarding a number, verifying the business and moving contacts, templates and flows takes real hours from real people, which is the strongest argument for choosing carefully once. Our step-by-step API setup guide covers what onboarding involves.

Disclosure: we build a WhatsApp CRM too

Disclosure: we build ZupiChat. Factor that in when you read anything we write about competitors, which is exactly why this article carries no prices or feature claims for AiSensy or Gallabox. Here is our own product, described factually and judged on the same criteria used above.

ZupiChat is an Indian WhatsApp CRM on the same official WhatsApp Business API, with a shared team inbox, broadcasts and campaigns, a no-code flow builder, contact management and integrations. Published pricing is Starter at Rs. 999 per month for one WhatsApp number and three agents, and Growth at Rs. 2,499 per month for ten agents with full API access. There is a free 14-day trial, and Meta's per-message charges apply on top, as with every provider. Current details are on our pricing page.

We are not going to tell you this beats the other two, because that depends on your team size, channel mix and daily workflows. AiSensy and Gallabox are mature products with happy customers, and either could be the better fit for you. Run the same trial on all three and pick whichever handles your real workflow with the least friction.

What to ask each vendor before you sign

Print this or paste it into the demo call. Ask both vendors identical questions, write the answers in two columns, and get anything that matters in writing before payment. These questions will not go stale.

Work through that table with both vendors and the decision usually makes itself. It is rarely won on a feature nobody uses. It is won on how a seat is counted, whether the API sits on your tier, whether your must-have integration exists, and whether a human replies when something breaks.

Also read: our WhatsApp CRM buyer's checklist for India, the full breakdown of WhatsApp Business API pricing in India, and our guide to getting the WhatsApp green tick.