Building a WhatsApp API with 0 markup on Meta pricing
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Hey HN, I'm Pau. We've been building Zernio for the past 9 months and we just crossed $1M in ARR (bootstrapped).Zernio is a unified API for social platforms. One API for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, X, and 9 others. Today we're adding WhatsApp.We've spent 3 weeks just getting a test message to send. Meta requires a developer app, a WhatsApp Business Account inside Business Manager, business verification (2-14 days), phone number OTP, webhook configuration with a two-step subscription, and token management for tokens that die every 60 days. Miss one step and messages vanish with no error.So we built it so our users don't have to deal with any of that. Connect via Embedded Signup, get an API key, start sending. 37 endpoints covering messaging, broadcasts, templates, contacts, and phone number provisioning.The pricing model: zero markup on Meta's per-message rates. Most BSPs add 20%+ on top. We charge per account, not per usage.Docs: https://docs.zernio.com/platforms/whatsappHappy to answer questions about WhatsApp API integration or how we got to $1M ARR bootstrapped :)
HN · launched Mar 25, 2026 · 7 upvotes (top 59%) · 0 views
Niche: social media management software · 84 launches, 3 in the last 7 days ▼ -50% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Communication
- Developer
- Not AI
- Commercial product
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More like this: all 84 launches in social media management software →
Could you build this?
Partial Wrapping WhatsApp Business API and social endpoints into unified JSON schemas is vibe-codeable, but meeting enterprise SLAs, Meta Business Solution Provider verification, and webhook scale requires heavy operations.
What it would actually take: The architecture requires an API gateway (e.g., Go/Node), distributed worker queues (Temporal or RabbitMQ/Redis), and webhook processors designed to handle massive throughput and idempotency. The hard parts are navigating Meta's stringent Cloud API / WhatsApp BSP certification, webhook rate limiting, template registration workflows, and maintaining 99.99% uptime across brittle upstream social network APIs. It demands significant integration infrastructure engineering and formal partner compliance management.
Discussion
6 comments analyzed.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 240 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #99 of 241 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 131 days after the earliest competitor.
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- WhatsApp Pricing Calculator by Tadlo AI · ph · 2026-10-15 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- SendFromChat · ph · 2026-10-29 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Mikaka · ph · 2026-10-18 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Zernio · ph · 2026-10-09 · 295 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- WAButton · ph · 2026-11-02 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.48
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