Overview
What the Inbox is, what it handles for you, and which setup to choose.
The Inbox is a complete conversation layer on top of your 360dialog channel. It takes WhatsApp as a channel — conversation windows, templates, media, opt-ins, delivery states, a single webhook — and turns it into something you can just talk to, whether that is a person clicking reply, your own software, or an AI agent.
Whatever you build on top of it, you are not the one keeping track of which conversations are still open, where the media lives, or which of your services gets the next inbound message.
There are four ways to reach that layer, and they all run on the same backend and the same data: a hosted web inbox, an MCP server for AI agents, a REST API, and an open-source front end you can host yourself.
Choose your setup
You can combine them all for super-powered WhatsApp management, having humans, AI agents, and automations working together to properly attend your customers via WhatsApp.
have multiple humans (and maybe also AI agents) replying to customers
Business owners, front desks, sales teams
Minutes, no code
Put WhatsApp messaging inside my own product or service
Developers, agencies, software vendors
Hours
Let an AI agent send and receive WhatsApp without building conversation storage
Inbox MCP
Agent builders, automation-first teams
Minutes
Keep our own interface, on your backend
Open-source UI
Vendors who need full white-label control
Days
What the Inbox handles for you
Building on WhatsApp directly means solving the same set of problems every time. The Inbox solves them once:
Conversation storage — chats, contacts and full message history, searchable and persistent
Conversation windows — WhatsApp only lets you send free-form messages while a window is open, and how long it stays open depends on how the conversation started: 24 hours when a customer messages you, and 72 hours for free entry point conversations started from an Ad that Clicks to WhatsApp or a Message button on a Facebook or Instagram Page. The Inbox tracks which window applies to each conversation and when it expires, so you know when a free-form reply will go through and when you need a template
Templates — your approved templates are there to send when a window is closed, without a second integration
Media — upload, download and hosting for images, documents, audio and video
One webhook, many consumers — WhatsApp allows a single webhook per number. The Inbox receives it and fans it out to as many services as you need
Multi-user access — several people, or several systems, working the same number without stepping on each other
Conversation state — assignment, tags, quick replies and resolved status
Delivery and health — message status, instance health and error surfacing
Combining them
Most real setups use more than one:
Bot plus human — an agent or API integration answers automatically, while your team watches the same conversations in the hosted Inbox and takes over when needed.
Your product, our backend — your service talks to the Inbox API, and your support team still has the hosted Inbox as a fallback console.
Your interface, our backend — self-host the open-source front end and let the API handle storage, windows and delivery.
If you already send through the WhatsApp API, your Inbox is already recording every conversation. Open it and you have a searchable history and a human fallback, with nothing left to build.
Before you start
You need:
A 360dialog account with an active channel
The Premium plan
For the Inbox API and Inbox MCP: a user and token created in the Inbox admin panel — see Authentication
Get your 36dialog Inbox here.
Where to go next
Opening the Inbox from the Hub, inviting your team, working conversations
Quickstart, authentication and the full endpoint reference
Inbox MCP
Connecting your agent and the available tools
Self-hosted UI
Running, embedding and white-labelling the open-source front end
Concepts
Chats, contacts, windows, users and webhooks, explained once for all four setups
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