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In this tutorial you turn a HubSpot marketing form into a WhatsApp Flow, send it to your own phone, then send it from a HubSpot workflow. When you finish, a completed Flow appears in HubSpot as a submission of the original form. It takes about 50 minutes of hands-on time, based on the estimates in Flowella’s setup guide, plus up to 24 hours while Meta reviews your template.

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Before you begin

  • Read Before you start and have your Meta and HubSpot access ready.
  • Meta business verification must be complete before you can create a Flow in milestone 3. See Business verification.
  • Have your own phone with WhatsApp, on a personal number rather than the business number you connect.
  • Pick or create a short HubSpot marketing form for testing. Include an email field: HubSpot uses the email address to attach a form submission to a contact.
  • Milestone 6 needs HubSpot workflows, which come with HubSpot’s Professional and Enterprise plans. Without them, you finish at milestone 5.
If WhatsApp and HubSpot are already connected, skip to milestone 3.

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How the pieces fit together

The diagram shows the order in which a Flow is built, approved, sent and returned to HubSpot.

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Milestone 1: Connect WhatsApp and HubSpot

About 16 minutes.
1

Name your organisation

When you first sign in, Flowella asks you to Name your organisation. Enter the name and select Continue. You can’t connect WhatsApp until the organisation has a name.
2

Connect WhatsApp

Go to Settings → WhatsApp (Meta) and select Connect WhatsApp. In Meta’s sign-up flow, choose or create your WhatsApp Business Account (WABA), the account in Meta that holds your numbers and templates, then verify your phone number.
3

Connect HubSpot

Go to Settings → HubSpot and select Connect HubSpot. Choose your HubSpot account and approve the connection in HubSpot.
Check it worked: at the top of the app, the WhatsApp and HubSpot status chips both show Connected. On a small screen, check Settings → WhatsApp (Meta), where your number is listed under Connected WhatsApp numbers, and Settings → HubSpot, which shows Connected. For more detail on each step, see Set up Flowella.

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Milestone 2: Send your first message

About 2 minutes.
  1. From your phone, send any WhatsApp message to your business number. This opens the 24-hour window, Meta’s customer service window, in which you can reply without a template.
  2. In Flowella, open Inbox and select the new conversation.
  3. Type a reply in Type a message… and press Enter.
Check it worked: the reply arrives on your phone. See Inbox for more about conversations.

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Milestone 3: Build the Flow

About 15 minutes.
  1. In HubSpot, create or pick your test marketing form. Flowella converts single-line text, multi-line text, email, phone, number, dropdown, radio, checkbox and date fields, and turns file fields into a photo picker. It leaves out fields it can’t convert, and a required field it can’t convert stops the sync.
  2. In Flowella, open Flows. Flowella refreshes the list of HubSpot forms when you open the page. If your form isn’t listed, select the refresh button at the top of the page.
  3. Find your form and select Create WA Flow in the WhatsApp Flow column. The button shows Syncing… while Flowella builds the Flow and publishes it to your WABA.
Check it worked: the row shows Created, or Updated if your WABA already had a Flow with the same name, and the button changes to Sync WA Flow. Select Open in Meta to preview the Flow. The Flow has one screen with your form’s questions, titled with the form’s name, followed by a thank-you screen. Flowella has no Flow editor: to change the questions later, edit the form in HubSpot, then select Sync WA Flow. See Flows and Form design best practices.

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Milestone 4: Add the Flow to a template

About 5 minutes, then Meta’s review. Contacts open a Flow from a Flow button in a template message, so the Flow needs a template. Use either option, then submit the template.

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Option A: start from the Flows page

After your organisation’s first successful sync, Flowella shows Your form is now a WhatsApp Flow. Select Create template with this Flow. If you don’t see the dialog, select Create template on the form’s row instead. The template editor opens with a Flow button already connected to your Flow. Its button text is Continue, which you can change. Write the message, choose a Category and enter a Template name using lowercase letters, numbers and underscores.

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Option B: start from the Flowella starter

  1. In Templates, select New template, then View starters under Flowella Templates.
  2. Find flowella_start_flow and select Use this starter. Its message reads Hi {{1}}, tap below to complete a short form and we will get back to you. and its Flow button reads Open form.
  3. In the button’s WhatsApp Flow field, choose your Flow. Flows are listed under the name of the HubSpot form they came from.
  4. In Body variables, change the Fallback value for {{1}} from Alex to something that reads well for anyone, such as there. Flowella sends it when a contact has no first name.
The starter uses the Marketing category. Choose the category that fits your message before you submit. See Pricing and WhatsApp message categories.

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Submit the template to Meta

  1. Select Save draft.
  2. Select Publish Template, check the category, then select Publish Template again to submit it to Meta. If the message has variables such as {{1}}, give each one a Fallback value first. Meta reviews it as the variable’s sample. See Template variables.
  3. Wait for the status to change from Pending to Approved. Meta says a decision can take up to 24 hours.
Check it worked: the template’s status is Approved. If Meta rejects it, see Template rejected.

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Milestone 5: Test the Flow on your phone

About 3 minutes.
  1. Open your approved template and go to the Send tab.
  2. In Test Template, choose your Country, enter your WhatsApp Number and fill in any template variables.
  3. Select Send Test.
  4. On your phone, open the message and tap the Flow button. Fill in the form, using your own email address, and submit it.
Check it worked:
  • WhatsApp shows the thank-you screen with your HubSpot form’s thank-you message.
  • In the Flowella Inbox, the conversation shows a card with your answers, marked Response sent. The card’s title is the Flow button text, or Flow response.
  • In HubSpot, the form has a new submission from a page named after the form, for example WhatsApp Flow · Contact us. HubSpot updates the contact properties the form maps to.
  • The contact’s timeline shows a Form Completed event with a View submission link.
Flowella submits the answers to the original HubSpot form. The submission and the contact properties appear in HubSpot as they would for a form filled in on your website.
This test also ticks Send a Flow from HubSpot in the setup guide, because that step counts any completed Flow.

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Milestone 6: Send the Flow from a HubSpot workflow

About 10 minutes.
This milestone needs HubSpot workflow actions, which need a HubSpot plan that includes workflows (Professional or Enterprise). In Flowella, open Settings → HubSpot and check that Custom workflow actions is under Unlocked. If it isn’t, you have finished at milestone 5: send Flows from Flowella with a test send or a bulk send.
1

Prepare a test contact

In HubSpot, use a contact with your own WhatsApp number in international format, such as +447700900123, and your email address. The message you sent in milestone 2 may already have created or linked a contact for your number. See Phone number format.
2

Create a contact-based workflow

Flowella’s actions run on contacts only. Set an enrolment trigger that only your test contact meets for now, such as a property value or a list.
3

Add Send WhatsApp Template

Add Flowella’s Send WhatsApp Template action. In Template Name, choose your Flow template. Only approved templates appear in the list. In Contact Phone Number, select the contact property that holds the WhatsApp number. If your template has a variable, map a property such as first name to Template Variable 1. See Send WhatsApp Template.
4

Wait for the Flow

Add a Delay until event step on Flowella’s Form Completed event. Filter it by Form Name so it matches your HubSpot form’s name, and set how long to wait, for example one day.
5

Decide what happens next

For contacts who complete the Flow, branch on the contact properties the form wrote, or create a task. The Form Completed event records the form name and source, not the answers. For contacts who don’t complete it in time, send a reminder template or create a task.
6

Turn on the workflow

Turn the workflow on and enrol your test contact.
Check it worked:
  • The template arrives on your phone, and the contact’s workflow history shows the Send WhatsApp Template action as completed. Flowella completes the action when WhatsApp reports the first status for the message, usually sent.
  • After you complete the Flow, the contact moves on from the Delay until event step, and the submission appears on the HubSpot form as in milestone 5.
  • In the setup guide, Send a template from HubSpot is ticked.
Form Completed fires only when someone submits a WhatsApp Flow through Flowella, never for website submissions of the same form. For complete workflows built on this pattern, see the workflow guides.

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Troubleshooting

Hover over the button to see why. The most common message is “Meta business verification is required before publishing flows.” The button is also unavailable when WhatsApp isn’t connected, when the form has no fields that WhatsApp Flows support, or when your plan doesn’t allow syncing. See Flows and Onboarding issues.
The row shows a label such as Not ready. Hover over the information icon next to it to see why. If a required HubSpot field can’t be collected in a WhatsApp Flow, make the field optional or change its type in HubSpot, then select Try again. See Flows.
Select the refresh button at the top of Flows. Only HubSpot marketing forms appear. If the page shows Sample forms, Flowella can’t read your HubSpot forms yet: check the connection in Settings → HubSpot. See Flows.
Only templates with the status Approved appear. Wait for Meta’s decision, then reopen the action. See HubSpot workflow actions.
“Missing required field” usually means a required field was added to the HubSpot form after the last sync. Select Sync WA Flow on the Flows page, then send the Flow again. “Could not submit to HubSpot. Try again.” means HubSpot didn’t accept the submission: try again, and check that Settings → HubSpot shows Connected.
HubSpot attaches form submissions to contacts by email address. Add an email field to the form, or make sure the contact has an email address in HubSpot.
Open the contact’s workflow history to see Flowella’s reason. A missing or badly formatted number fails with CONTACT_PHONE_MISSING or CONTACT_PHONE_INVALID. See Phone number format and HubSpot workflow actions.

Flows

Sync status, field conversion and limits for WhatsApp Flows.

Templates

Create, test and submit WhatsApp templates.

HubSpot workflow actions

Every Flowella action and event available in HubSpot workflows.

Workflow guides

Ready-made HubSpot workflow recipes that use Flows.
Last modified on October 24, 2026