Create WhatsApp Flows using WhatsApp Business APIs

How it works

The Challenge with Building Flows From Scratch

Agent Template

Building mobile apps takes time, effort, and distribution. Yet most users never make it past the app store. There is a better way to deliver an app-like experience, which is WhatsApp Flows. A native, in-chat user interface that allows businesses to create interactive, dynamic, guided journeys. Unlike plain text messages or basic chatbots, Flows bring rich UI elements like email and phone inputs, radio buttons, checkboxes, CTA buttons, dropdowns, product catalogs, even document uploads, directly into the chat window.

Here’s a screenshot of a simple flow journey:

Flows create guided mini-journeys that keep users engaged without leaving the conversation.

Guide users through loan applications step by step.

Collect data to instantly generate insurance quotes.

Help shoppers select products by size, color, or package and proceed to checkout.

Enable appointment scheduling without needing a separate booking app.

Run KYC onboarding flows with form inputs and document collection.

While WhatsApp Flows are powerful but they are not well-suited for real-time or highly interactive experiences like:

Sharing live locations in real-time.

A Better Way to Build Flows

Video games or interactive graphics-heavy experiences.

Live tracking of deliveries, vehicles, or events.

Think of WhatsApp Flows as a guided, in-chat mini-app—perfect for structured tasks, forms, and transactions—but not for anything requiring continuous real-time interaction or heavy graphics.

If you’ve ever tried building with Meta’s APIs, you know it feels less like building and more like wrestling with API plumbing.

As a developer used to building web or mobile UIs, you’re accustomed to visually structuring screens and wiring logic in code. But building WhatsApp flows with Meta’s APIs is a different beast.

It’s not just about UI, it’s about wrangling with webhooks, managing complex API calls, and keeping everything in sync.

Even a small changes like a label, a button order, or a new input field means editing nested JSON, redeploying, and testing the whole flow again.

Need to connect a CRM, payment gateway, or internal database? That’s another layer of boilerplate you must maintain, on top of everything else.

Yes, it works, but it’s brittle, time-consuming, and far from the kind of workflow you want when the business team is asking you to “just ship it fast.”

As a developer, you don’t want to spend hours hand-writing JSON or wiring the same middleware again and again. You want to focus on logic, not plumbing.

That’s what Peach Apps (Meta Tech Partner) give you. Instead of wrangling with Meta’s APIs, writing raw JSON and redeploys:

Pick Your Mode: No Code vs Low Code

You sketch flows visually, then drop into JSON only when you need precision.

APIs, CRMs, and webhooks plug in directly, face less boilerplate glue code.

Updates go live instantly, so you can iterate in minutes, not days.

Think of it as moving from raw sockets to a modern SDK: you still have full control, but you skip the grunt work and get to ship faster.

Here’s a side-by-side look at how the same flow is defined with Meta’s raw JSON vs Peach’s streamlined JSON.

Meta’s JSON

{

“version”: “3.0”, “action”: “data_exchange”, “screen”: “contact_form, “data”: { “name”: “John Doe”, “email”: “john@example.com” }, “flow_token”: “fe_1234abcd”}

{ “type”: “app_execution.in_progress”, “screen”: “contact_form”, “request”: { “id”: “fe_1234abcd”, “contact”: { “id”: 1, “account_id”: 1, “name”: “John Doe”, “phone_number”: “+919988776655”, “first_name”: “John”, “last_name”: “Doe”, “country_code”: “91”, “language”: “en”, “email”: “johndoe@example.com” }, “app”: { “id”: “flw_1234abcd”, “name”: “Contact Form”, “status”: “published”, “category”: “other”, “description”: “” }, “params”: { “name”: “John Doe”, “email”: “john@example.com” }, “context”: {} }

}

Lightweight and minimal, capturing only the essential information.

Build Native App-Like Experience

Offers limited context and requires extra setup or boilerplate to manage, track, and records.

Comprehensive and structured, including full details, metadata, and runtime context.

Production-ready, with built-in tracking and context separation that reduces boilerplate work.

No Code → Perfect for quick prototypes. Use the visual builder, drag-and-drop elements, and ship a working app in minutes.

Low Code → When you need power. Use your APIs, custom logic, and the messaging API to extend flows.

The beauty is, you don’t have to choose once. Start with no-code, scale to low-code when the app grows.

Criteria

No Code

Low Code (For Developers)

Flow Builder

Drag and drop

Final Thoughts

Drag and Drop + Coding interface

User Experience

Best for static, linear flows

Best for dynamic flows requiring API integrations

Customisation

You can use pre-configured components, such as text, email, mobile, pincode, date, images etc to build

linear journeys

Everything in No Code, along with the ability to validate data server-side, render dynamic data on the screen, and build branching journeys powered by your backend API

Developer’s Involvement

Little to no involvement

More than no code but less than manual

Some use-cases for WhatsApp Flows are:

Use Cases

Enroll users for classes or webinars

Quick Polls & Gather preferences instantly

Event Check-Ins – confirm attendance with a simple flow

Product Registration – capture product details & register

Eligibility Checker - fetch credit score via API & approval/rejection

Insurance Calculator - calculate from backend database.

Loyalty Rewards – fetch & redeem reward points via backend

Travel Booking - Pull Live flight/hotel details and do bookings.

User Friendly For

Learn more in the Low Code UI App guide.

What WhatsApp Flows Can’t Do

Instead of hand-coding a frontend and tying it to a backend service, developers can design the ticket booking flow visually and plug in APIs with minimal code. The app lets users:

Search routes by entering source and destination.

Select ticket pricing and make payments inside the chat.

Get instant confirmation without leaving WhatsApp.

What used to take weeks of frontend + backend work is reduced to a few flow screens and one API integration.

E-commerce checkout → add to cart, pay, and confirm orders.

Lead qualification → collect structured data step by step.

Service bookings → let users pick slots and confirm instantly.

Customer onboarding → run KYC flows with document uploads.

For businesses: WhatsApp Flows give you the ability to deliver app-like experiences without an app store. Combine that with Peach’s no-code builder and you can launch product discovery, checkout, bookings, and support journeys in days instead of months. Lower friction, faster go-to-market, and customers engaging where they already spend time.

For developers: Peach’s low-code solution saves you from writing raw JSON and plumbing APIs from scratch. You still get full control of APIs, webhooks, and integrations but without the boilerplate. That means you focus on business logic and user experience, not debugging payloads.