respond.io is a broad, workflow-automation-heavy messaging platform priced per seat in US dollars, built mainly for global support teams. 3650HQ is narrower and deeper for one job: African sellers running the whole sale (inbox, invoice, payment and delivery) inside WhatsApp and Instagram, priced in naira with no per-seat fee.
| Feature | 3650HQ | respond.io |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Prepaid credits, no per-seat fee | Per-agent, billed in USD |
| Currency | NGN, GHS, KES, ZAR, USD | USD |
| Built for | African sellers and support teams | Global support/marketing teams |
| Voice-note transcription | Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Swahili, Zulu, English | Not African-language focused |
| In-chat invoicing & payment | Yes, virtual bank account per invoice | Not built for this |
| Delivery booking | Automatic on payment | Not offered |
If you need deep, custom workflow automation across many channels and markets, or your team is already built around respond.io's automation builder, it's a genuinely powerful, more general-purpose tool. 3650HQ is the better fit if you're an African business that wants naira pricing and the actual sale (payment and delivery included) handled inside the chat, without configuring a workflow builder first.
respond.io is a capable multi-channel messaging platform with serious automation: workflow builders, routing rules, integrations, and a global customer base across a lot of industries. It is built to be configurable enough to fit many different businesses in many different markets.
That breadth is the trade. A platform that must fit a logistics firm in Malaysia and a clinic in Mexico is necessarily general, which means the specifics of any one market — how customers pay, who delivers, what language voice notes are in — sit outside it and get handled by integrations you assemble.
3650HQ is the opposite shape: narrower, and opinionated about one market. Competitor pricing and features change, and this page is a snapshot rather than a live feed. Check their current plans directly before deciding — we would rather you did than take our word for it.
A general platform gives you the pieces to build an order flow. 3650HQ ships the flow itself, because it assumes a specific kind of business.
Sending an invoice generates a dedicated virtual bank account for that order. The customer transfers into it from their normal banking app and the invoice marks itself paid after server-side verification. No checkout page, no card, no screenshot to squint at. That is built in, not integrated in.
Courier rates are quoted live across Kwik, GIG and Routely, and a booking is made against the paid invoice with the address already attached. Fees are only committed once payment has cleared.
Transcription in English, Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Swahili and Zulu, inline in the thread. This is not something a general platform tends to have, because the market that needs it is not the market it was designed around.
Prepaid credits from a shared wallet in your own currency, rather than tiered plans priced per user. The cost of putting one more person in the inbox is zero.
If your requirement is complex routing logic, conditional workflow branching, or deep integration into a CRM and ticketing stack you already run, respond.io is built for that and 3650HQ is not. There are no configurable workflow builders here, no SLA timers and no custom pipelines, deliberately.
The same applies if you operate across several regions. 3650HQ's payment and delivery integrations are African and specifically Nigeria-first. A business selling into Europe and Southeast Asia gets no benefit from a virtual bank account in Lagos, and should pick the platform that treats every market the same rather than one that treats one market well.
You reconnect your WhatsApp Business number through 3650HQ's onboarding and rebuild message templates, since approvals live with your Meta Business account and the submitting tool rather than transferring between vendors. Any automation you have built in respond.io's workflow builder does not have an equivalent to import into.
That last point is worth weighing honestly. If you have invested months in respond.io workflows that work, the cost of moving is that investment, not the setup time.
Not directly. 3650HQ offers AI auto-reply with a human kill-switch and WhatsApp Flows for structured order forms, but not a general-purpose visual automation builder. It focuses on the specific commerce workflow: inbox, invoice, payment, delivery.
3650HQ covers WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Gmail, IMAP/SMTP, and TikTok (DMs, comments and mentions). respond.io supports a wider range of channels aimed at global markets.
Naira pricing with no monthly per-seat fee, African-language voice transcription, and a built-in path from chat to invoice, payment and delivery, all things respond.io isn't built around.
No. There is no configurable workflow or routing builder, and that is a deliberate scope choice rather than something coming later. What it has instead is a fixed, built-in order flow: invoice, in-chat payment and courier booking.
Both cover the major messaging channels. 3650HQ runs WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, Gmail, any IMAP or SMTP mailbox and TikTok. The difference is not channel count, it is what happens after the conversation.
respond.io. 3650HQ's payment and delivery integrations are African and Nigeria-first, so a multi-region business gets no value from the parts that make it distinctive.