👋 Hey DEV Community!

Have you ever tried setting up a WhatsApp CRM for your startup, agency, or side project?

If you have, you’ve probably hit the grim reality of the current WhatsApp SaaS ecosystem:

💸 Insane Seat-Based Pricing: Paying $50 to $150 per agent per month just to let a couple of teammates share one phone number.

🔒 Aggressive Vendor Lock-In: Your customer conversations, contacts, and custom fields trapped inside closed proprietary databases.

🤖 Restricted AI Gating: Rigid chatbots with heavy markups on tokens and zero ability to choose your own LLM.

🏋️ Bloated Self-Hosted Alternatives: Requiring a bulky 2GB+ RAM multi-container stack just to spin up basic webhook handlers.

I got tired of these artificial barriers. So I decided to build OpenWAB — a lightweight, 100% self-hostable WhatsApp CRM powered by a Universal Multi-Provider AI Engine .

And the best part? Zero software subscription fees. Zero seat pricing. No middlemen.…