Migrate to DMLY

Switching to DMLY is two jobs that run on different clocks. Your WhatsApp number is Meta’s business, not DMLY’s. A number lives on one WhatsApp Business Account and can be connected to one Cloud API provider at a time, so moving it means moving it at Meta and connecting it here. That part has waiting in it. Your data is DMLY’s business. Contacts, tags, custom fields, services and products all have CSV importers. Everything else (chat history, opt-outs, past invoices, the automations you built in your old tool) has no importer, and pretending otherwise is how people lose things. This page says plainly which is which.

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What moves, and what you rebuild

The honest summary: people and things you sell move; conversations and behaviour do not.

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Move your WhatsApp number

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Coming from another provider

Wati, AiSensy, Interakt, 360dialog, Twilio, Respond.io and the rest are all WhatsApp providers; Meta calls them Solution Providers or Tech Providers. Your number is registered for Cloud API through one of them today, and only one provider can hold it at a time. Moving it is a Meta action; DMLY picks it up at the end. Two things decide how much work is left over:

• Who owns the WhatsApp Business Account. If the account is yours, in your own Business Manager, it comes across with everything on it, including your approved templates. If your old provider owns it and the number ends up on a different account, the templates stay behind and you re-submit them. Check this before you do anything else; it is the difference between a same-day switch and a week of template reviews.
• Two-step verification. It has to be off on the number before you start. DMLY says so on the connect screen.

Full detail on each of these steps, including what the error messages mean: Connect WhatsApp.

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Coming from the WhatsApp Business phone app

This is the case where you may not have to give anything up. By default, connecting a number to the Cloud API takes it over exclusively and the WhatsApp Business phone app stops working on it. Co-existence mode is the alternative: the phone app and DMLY share the same number. On the connect screen, below the main button, there is a separate section (Already using the WhatsApp Business app?) with its own Connect in co-existence mode button. Use that one instead of the main button. The rest of Meta’s signup is the same. What co-existence actually gives you:

• You keep chatting from the phone. The app stays working on the number.
• Messages you send from the phone app appear in the DMLY inbox too, on the same contact, so the thread stays in one place. They are recorded as sent by you, and they are never routed to your bot; a human is clearly already handling that conversation.
• A contact record is created for anyone you message from the phone, so your list fills in as you work rather than all at once.
• Automation still runs on the number. If you would rather the bot stayed quiet on any conversation you have personally answered from the phone, turn on Pause the bot when I reply from the phone app; it pauses the bot for that one contact, and it is off by default.

Co-existence is a choice made once, at signup. Switching a number between modes means disconnecting and reconnecting it. See Delete a WhatsApp number.

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Coming from no WhatsApp at all

Moving off a CRM, a booking system or a spreadsheet with no WhatsApp Business number in the picture? Then there is nothing to migrate on the channel side. Connect a fresh number and read the 24-hour window before you import anyone, because it changes what you can say to an imported list on day one.

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Bring your contacts

The contacts CSV importer is the main road out of another CRM or a spreadsheet. Read Import contacts from CSV for the full behaviour; this is what matters when you are migrating. Connect your WhatsApp number first. The importer attaches every contact to the channel that is selected when you run it, and it refuses to run at all with no channel active (“Select a channel before importing.”). Importing before your number is live means importing onto the wrong channel.

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The columns

Take Download sample on the import page and match it. The header row is what the importer reads: order follows your header, capitalisation and stray spaces are ignored, and any column not in this list is thrown away. Three things bite migrators specifically:

• A CSV of email-only contacts imports nobody. Every row needs a phone number. If your old tool was email-first, expect to lose the rows that have no mobile number.
• Put the country code somewhere, once. If your export already has full international numbers in phone, leave country_code empty; otherwise you get the country code twice and the numbers are unreachable.
• Quote anything containing a comma. An unquoted comma inside a note shifts every later value one column right and pushes the last column off the end of the row.

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It won’t duplicate people, but it isn’t read-only

Before creating anything, the importer looks for an existing contact anywhere in the workspace with the same phone or the same email. On a match it adds the identity and fills blanks rather than making a second person. That makes a second pass safe, but not harmless:

• name, email, phone and stage are only filled in where they are empty.
• Tags are replaced, not added to. A file with an empty tags column strips every tag from everyone it matches.
• Custom fields are overwritten on the keys your file sets.
• The notes value is added again, on every run.

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Importing can set your automations off

This is the migration trap nobody expects, and it is worth two minutes of prevention. A CSV import starts automations, one run per row, with no batching:

• New contact fires for every row that creates a contact.
• Tag applied fires for every tag the file attaches; the tags column goes through the same path as tagging from the inbox.
• Field changed fires for every row that changes an existing contact’s custom fields.

Import three thousand people with a welcome flow switched on and you have queued three thousand welcome flows.

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One more thing that stops a migration dead

Your plan caps how many contacts a workspace can hold, and the whole file is checked before a single row is written, so an import that would take you over the cap imports nothing at all. The check is deliberately cautious: rows that would only have matched someone you already have still count toward the estimate. See Plans.

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Carry your opt-outs across

If someone told your old tool to stop messaging them, that instruction does not travel with a CSV. This is the one part of a migration with legal weight, so here is the plain truth. So decide deliberately, before you build the file: Read Data, privacy and consent before you send anything to an imported list. And remember the other half: importing a list is not consent. WhatsApp holds you to what the contact agreed to, not to what your spreadsheet says.

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Bring your catalogue

If you sell services or products, both have their own CSV importer and both only ever add. Services: columns name, type, category, duration_min, price, currency, capacity, description, active. name is the only required one; type is appointment, class or add_on and anything else imports as appointment. A row whose name matches an existing service is skipped rather than overwritten, so a re-run never damages what you have. Products: columns name, sku, price, cost_price, currency, tax_rate, tax_inclusive, track_stock, stock_quantity, low_stock_threshold, category, active, description. Every row with a name becomes a new product; nothing is matched against what you already have, so uploading the same file twice gives you two of every product. Import once, check, and make later changes in the app. Full detail: Products.

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Rebuild what can’t move

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Message templates

Templates belong to your WhatsApp Business Account at Meta, not to DMLY and not to your old provider’s software. That single fact decides your timeline:

• The account comes with you → your approved templates come with it. Open Templates, select Refresh templates, and they appear in DMLY with their current status pulled from Meta. Nothing to re-submit.
• The number lands on a different account → the templates do not follow. Every one you rely on has to be recreated and submitted to Meta for review again.

On top of your own templates, DMLY submits its own built-in dmly_ templates for review the moment a live number connects. Those cover appointment confirmations and reminders, invoices, receipts, review requests and more. Until Meta approves them, the notifications that depend on them are not sent at all to anyone whose 24-hour window is shut. See Message templates.

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Automations and chatbots

There is no importer for flows, and no format DMLY reads from another tool. Rebuild them in the flow builder, and treat it as a chance to drop the branches nobody used. Start from a ready-made template rather than a blank canvas where one fits.

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Conversation history

Nothing imports past messages, from any source. The inbox starts on the day you connect. Export transcripts from your old tool and keep the file somewhere you can search it. That is the whole answer today.

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Invoices, orders and past money

There is no CSV import for finance records. What exists is the REST API, which can create invoices, orders and contacts programmatically, so a large or complicated move can be scripted rather than typed. Two things to know if you go that way:

• POST /invoices creates a draft. Nothing reaches the customer until you make the separate POST /invoices/{invoice}/send call, so a backfill never emails or messages anyone an invoice from years ago.
• POST /appointments is different: booking through it sends the customer a confirmation and seeds their reminders, exactly as a real booking does. Do not use it to replay a back catalogue of past appointments.

For most businesses the pragmatic answer is: keep the old system read-only for a few months for lookups, and start DMLY clean from the switchover date.

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A cutover plan that keeps you trading

The order matters because template review is the only step that waits on someone else.

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When something goes wrong

The migration failed and the error mentions verification or 2FA

Two-step verification is still on for the number at Meta. Turn it off in your WhatsApp Business Manager and run the connect again. DMLY warns about this on the connect screen before you start, which is why it is the first thing to check.

Signup finished but DMLY says no WhatsApp Business Account was granted

The Facebook flow was not completed all the way through: closing the window early, or skipping a permission screen, returns you with nothing granted. Retry the signup and complete every screen. If it says the account has no phone number yet, finish verifying the number at Meta first, then retry.

The number connected but nothing arrives in the Inbox

Check two things on Bot Setup → WhatsApp → Configuration: the number must show Registered, and the WhatsApp Business Account must be subscribed. A number that is verified but not registered cannot send or receive anything, even though DMLY shows it as connected. Full walkthrough: No inbound messages.

Your templates aren't in DMLY after the move

Select Refresh templates first, to sync now rather than waiting for the next automatic pass. If they are still missing, the number is on a different WhatsApp Business Account from the one that held them. Templates belong to the account, so they cannot be pulled across from elsewhere; recreate and re-submit them. See Message templates.

Broadcasts have nothing to send

The broadcast picker lists Approved templates only. Draft, Pending and Rejected templates do not appear at all. If everything is Pending, you are waiting on Meta; there is no way to accelerate it from DMLY.

Fewer contacts imported than rows in your file

Almost always a blank name or a blank phone number. You don’t have to guess how many: the message you land back on says “N contacts imported. M row(s) skipped — missing a name or a phone number.” Read that count first. If it matches your own tally of empty cells, nothing else is wrong and you can fix those rows and re-run.If nothing imported, DMLY says so on the upload screen rather than reporting a green zero, and that almost always means the header row doesn’t contain name, country_code and phone spelled the way the importer expects. Take the sample file and copy its header exactly.

The whole import was blocked

Your plan’s contact cap. The file is checked in full before anything is written, so an import that would take you over the cap writes nothing; there is no half-finished state to clean up. See Plans and Choosing a plan.

Contacts arrived but you can't message them

Expected, and not an import problem. An imported contact has never messaged you, so they have no open 24-hour window; they can only be reached with an approved template until they reply. See WhatsApp rules and limits.

Your old tool still shows the number as connected

That is between you and them. DMLY cannot release, delete or change a number on another provider’s account, and disconnecting in DMLY does not touch anything at Meta. See Delete a WhatsApp number. Close the account down in the old tool once you are satisfied DMLY is receiving.

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