u/Equal-Disaster7514

I’m building a WhatsApp ordering automation system for restaurants using whatsapp-web.js.

Important context:

• customers message first
• we are NOT doing bulk messaging or marketing
• the bot only replies to incoming customer messages
• around ~50 orders/messages per day per restaurant
• restaurants still use the phone manually themselves
• WhatsApp calls are still handled by the human normally
• we support human takeover from dashboard anytime

Architecture:

• each restaurant has isolated deployment/database
• one WhatsApp session per restaurant
• LocalAuth persistence
• Railway hosting currently
• Puppeteer + Chromium

Main reason we chose this instead of Meta Cloud API:
restaurants want to keep using the same WhatsApp account normally on their phone while the bot handles ordering automatically in the background.

I’m mainly trying to understand:

• real-world ban rates for this type of usage
• operational issues people hit after months in production
• whether session invalidation or Puppeteer instability became bigger problems than bans
• if anyone migrated from whatsapp-web.js → Baileys later

Would appreciate real production experiences from people actually running systems like this.

I’m building a WhatsApp ordering automation system for restaurants using whatsapp-web.js.

Important context:

• customers message first
• we are NOT doing bulk messaging or marketing
• the bot only replies to incoming customer messages
• around ~50 orders/messages per day per restaurant
• restaurants still use the phone manually themselves
• WhatsApp calls are still handled by the human normally
• we support human takeover from dashboard anytime

Architecture:

• each restaurant has isolated deployment/database
• one WhatsApp session per restaurant
• LocalAuth persistence
• Railway hosting currently
• Puppeteer + Chromium

Main reason we chose this instead of Meta Cloud API:
restaurants want to keep using the same WhatsApp account normally on their phone while the bot handles ordering automatically in the background.

I’m mainly trying to understand:

• real-world ban rates for this type of usage ?
• operational issues people hit after months in production ?
• whether session invalidation or Puppeteer instability became bigger problems than bans ?
• Using Baileys instead ?

Would appreciate real production experiences from people actually running systems like this.

I’m building a WhatsApp ordering automation system for restaurants using whatsapp-web.js.

Important context:

• customers message first
• we are NOT doing bulk messaging or marketing
• the bot only replies to incoming customer messages
• around ~50 orders/messages per day per restaurant
• restaurants still use the phone manually themselves
• WhatsApp calls are still handled by the human normally
• we support human takeover from dashboard anytime

Architecture:

• each restaurant has isolated deployment/database
• one WhatsApp session per restaurant
• LocalAuth persistence
• Railway hosting currently
• Puppeteer + Chromium

Main reason we chose this instead of Meta Cloud API:
restaurants want to keep using the same WhatsApp account normally on their phone while the bot handles ordering automatically in the background.

I’m mainly trying to understand:

• real-world ban rates for this type of usage ?
• operational issues people hit after months in production ?
• whether session invalidation or Puppeteer instability became bigger problems than bans?
• What about using Baileys instead ?

Would appreciate real production experiences from people actually running systems like this.