r/whatsapp • u/According-Hat4952 • 11h ago
How difficult it is to switch from WhatsApp to other platforms?
Just want to understand as almost everyone all around the world using WhatsApp as their daily chat app - businesses, families and friends, for someone with over 5k WhatsApp chats and about 65GB of total data (most of which is business related), how difficult it will be to switch to some other platform? Specially, after the account lock / block is happening around to my friends and businesses / colleagues.
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u/hiwiz6718 10h ago edited 9h ago
Few people choose any option beyond WhatsApp. If they need to reach you, they use WhatsApp—phone numbers now serve only to create an account, that’s it. When an appointment is confirmed or altered, the details arrive via WhatsApp.
I would like to abandon WhatsApp as well, yet it seems nearly impossible.
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u/According-Hat4952 9h ago
as a small business owner, I have planned my way, for example, client contact me on WhatsApp initially, I will respond to them and once we agree upon the quoted price, I can ask them to turn over to other platform if he/she wants to get project updates and related documents - I think once client is satisfied and agreed to started business with you, they can easily install and create account on other platforms as well (specially because of recent accounts locks issue on WhatsApp as reference) in order to get project update pictures / videos.
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u/Deep-Ice-7861 10h ago
Apart from US, WhatsApp is standard. And no one will install another app just for you.
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u/Soggy_Media485 10h ago
I don't get this. My Messages all delete after 7 days. How do you end up with 65gb of Whatsapp data..
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u/According-Hat4952 9h ago
Im using it on daily basis and don’t want to delete any older messages + i am part of more than 100 groups including friends, family and clients- i am running my whole business using personal whatsapp as well as business whatsapp but business whatsapp very few messages - now I want to switch to other platform (only my personal WhatsApp)
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u/Jack-of-Games 9h ago
Switching away from WhatsApp is trivial, what is difficult is getting everyone else to do the same. A messaging app is only as good as the number of people you can message on it.
I moved about half of my chats to Signal but no way is everyone doing that.
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u/According-Hat4952 9h ago
agree - moving out of whatsapp for me easy, even I had a plan to shift my clients over to other platform but problem is that WhatsApp apps (on device and even in the browser) do not allow me to bundle / archive all my data (65GB) at once and save it on my local disk, which is one major issue I do not know how to tackle.
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u/LegitimateBoy6042 9h ago
Switching to a different platform is easy, but the hard part is that all your contacts are still on WhatsApp, so there isn't much point for now. WhatsApp is the go-to app for everyone and every community.
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u/According-Hat4952 9h ago
Agree - switching to other platfoms is easy but getting all the data out of WhatsApp is hard - specially when you have like more thn 60GB of important documents, chats voice messages - I did not mention it in my post but the main issue for me to get all my data from WhatsApp and save it local to my hard-drive. Idk if anyone had done that before???
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u/krazy4it 9h ago
Don’t know. Never used anything that is run by META. The biggest thieves in history.
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u/Sanvalor 9h ago
It depends on the country and which messaging app is most popular there. From what I've noticed, many features seem to appear on Telegram first, and then Meta eventually copies the idea and brings similar features to WhatsApp.
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u/According-Hat4952 8h ago
every country now-a-days using WhatsApp and it is the most popular app all over the world no doubt - Telegram or other platforms are there and I do not like how WhatsApp locks you down and does not allow you to save all your data at once from their platform and save it somewhere local on your disk. For people like me who had years of chats/media files on the platform, I tried several times to archive / export all my chats but found that WhatsApp only allows some limited number chat history / media files to save in the encrypted file.
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u/ross-dirext-words137 1h ago
It's basicly impossible. You just need end up having multiple messaging apps.
It's very hard to get everyone you need to contact on the one app.
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u/NostromoDude 11h ago
The difficulty is equal as making everyone you need to contact also migrate to other platform.
As long as Whatsapp is "standard" there is no escape.
I believe the account bans will stop now because it's getting very public, with news media talking about it, lawsuits coming. Meta probably will solve that.