COMPARISON
When you need Smarsh instead of us.
An honest routing page: if you are a regulated financial firm, we are going to tell you to buy somebody else.
Smarsh, LeapXpert and Global Relay are enterprise compliance archiving: SEC- and FINRA-grade supervision, eDiscovery integrations, procurement-cycle sales. If you are a regulated financial firm, buy one of them, not us. WAOversight is for sales teams of 8–60 reps who need a provable WhatsApp record without an enterprise contract.
WHERE THE CATEGORIES DIFFER
The rows that decide this comparison.
Both columns are meant as praise. These products are excellent at a job we do not do, and the reverse.
| WAOversight | Smarsh-class archiving | |
|---|---|---|
| Supervision and eDiscovery | Not our market. We do not claim regulator-facing compliance | SEC- and FINRA-grade supervision policies, chain of custody and eDiscovery integrations |
| Sales motion | Public pricing from $49 per month, per number, with a 30-day money-back guarantee | Enterprise procurement, pricing on request, per user, and per channel at LeapXpert |
| Deployment | Company-owned numbers linked as companion devices in minutes | WhatsApp Business API and corporate-device capture programs, deployed with IT and compliance |
What Smarsh-class archiving does well
Everything a regulator expects. Smarsh, which acquired TeleMessage in May 2022, captures WhatsApp Business traffic with full chain of custody into a native-format archive, with supervision policies on top. LeapXpert, with roughly $180M raised, governs messaging and exports into archives like Smarsh and Global Relay. These vendors survive audits, examinations and litigation at global financial firms; that is a different sport from anything we play, and they are good at it.
When you need them, not us
- A regulator, whether the SEC, FINRA or an equivalent, can ask for your communications records.
- You need supervision workflows: policies, flagging, review queues, attestations.
- Legal needs eDiscovery integrations, not an export.
- Your compliance function is a department with a procurement process, not a person with a card.
If that is you, stop reading and go talk to them. We would rather lose the deal than be discovered as the wrong product during an examination.
When you need us, not them
You run 8–60 reps who sell on WhatsApp, and nobody is examining you. A rep can still delete the message where the discount was promised, and a dispute can still surface eight months later. The Smarsh-class vendors are not built for you: no public pricing, no self-serve, and a deployment that assumes an IT and compliance function. We are: public pricing from $49 to $199 per month by number band, and one QR scan per number to start capture, with deletions and edits preserved with both timestamps and every manager view written to a log nobody can edit.
One vocabulary note: the words these vendors taught the market, capture, immutable and recordkeeping, are the right ones, and we use them precisely. Our archive is append-only and tamper-evident; what we do not offer is the regulator-facing layer above it. Say which one you are buying before comparing prices.
If you are neither
A team that mostly wants to send campaigns should be on the official API. Read oversight vs WhatsApp API inboxes. Everything else in the category, including the tools that actually compete with us, is on the compare hub.
ENTERPRISE QUESTIONS
What buyers ask about this comparison
Is WAOversight compliant with SEC and FINRA recordkeeping rules?
We do not sell into regulated finance and we do not claim SEC or FINRA recordkeeping compliance. Our archive is append-only and tamper-evident, which sales teams find sufficient for commercial disputes, but broker-dealer supervision, regulator-facing attestations and eDiscovery at legal scale are what Smarsh-class products exist for. If those rules apply to you, buy one of them.
How much does Smarsh or LeapXpert cost?
Neither publishes pricing. Both sell through enterprise procurement, per user, and at LeapXpert per user per channel, with the archive itself often a second product such as Smarsh or Global Relay. Our pricing is public: $49 to $199 per month by number band, priced per monitored number rather than per user, managers free.
Where is the line between WAOversight and enterprise archiving?
Regulation. If a regulator can ask for your records, you need supervision policies, attestations and eDiscovery integrations, which is their market. If your worry is a deleted message, a discount promised on WhatsApp, or a dispute eight months later, you need a provable record on company numbers without a procurement cycle, which is ours.
Not regulated? Then let's talk.
Fifteen minutes, live, with your data. If it turns out you do need Smarsh, we will say so on the call.
WAOversight is an independent product and is not affiliated with or endorsed by WhatsApp or Meta.