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Balsio has launched Workspaces, a team-communication feature that expands the European messaging app beyond one-to-one professional messaging for small businesses.
The feature lets teams organise internal conversations in shared chats while continuing to communicate with external contacts through direct messages, including WhatsApp users in the European Economic Area who have enabled third-party chats. It is aimed at agencies, recruiters, consultancies and other small client-facing teams.
Balsio, formerly known as BirdyChat, is positioning the app between consumer messaging services and workplace tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. Workspaces offers a channel-style structure for conversations around projects, clients and business functions, while keeping external contacts outside those shared internal spaces.
The launch builds on Balsio's original pitch that work conversations should be separated from personal messaging without cutting users off from the people they already contact on WhatsApp. Users in the EEA can exchange one-to-one messages with WhatsApp users who have enabled third-party chats, while those contacts remain on WhatsApp.
Usage patterns
Balsio cited internal data showing that about 30% of messages sent by users go to WhatsApp contacts. It said that level of use suggests interoperability has become part of customers' everyday communication rather than a feature used only occasionally.
The company also pointed to academic research on the role of consumer messaging apps in workplace communication. A 2025 study by researchers at Ghent University and Boston University found that 65% of employees using consumer messaging apps for workplace group chats used WhatsApp, while nearly four in five checked their work-related chats every day.
That pattern has created an opening for products that aim to separate professional and personal exchanges without forcing external contacts to adopt a new system. Founded in Latvia, Balsio has focused on that use case since its earlier launch across Europe.
"Team communication software has traditionally been built around internal comms, but that is only one part of how many small businesses actually work," said Rolands Mesters, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Balsio.
"For an agency, recruiter or consultancy, some of the most important conversations are with people outside the company. Balsio brings those conversations together, so teams don't have to keep switching between apps and losing focus just to stay connected with the people they work with," Mesters said.
Small-team focus
Workspaces is designed for smaller teams rather than large corporate deployments. Within a workspace, staff can create shared chats for different parts of their work, while conversations with clients, candidates, freelancers and suppliers remain in direct threads.
Balsio said the product is intended for non-technical users and avoids the broader suite approach common in larger workplace collaboration platforms. That places it in a crowded business-communication market, though it is trying to differentiate itself through WhatsApp interoperability and its focus on smaller professional teams.
Alongside the Workspaces launch, Balsio has released a Windows desktop app. The service was already available on mobile, Mac and the web, and now supports nine European languages.
The business has raised €1.7 million from European investors and says it drew more than 50,000 waitlist sign-ups before its wider European launch.
Balsio has also highlighted its early move into interoperability under the EU's Digital Markets Act. It said it was the first third-party messaging service to implement WhatsApp interoperability, allowing eligible users in the EEA to send one-to-one messages without requiring their contacts to leave WhatsApp.
The latest product update suggests Balsio sees that connection to external messaging networks as central to its model rather than an add-on to internal chat. Around 30% of messages sent by its users now go to WhatsApp contacts.