WhatsApp broadcast vs group vs campaign: how to message many people, and which one to use

Pooja Shetty runs a yoga studio in Mangaluru with three instructors, about 140 paying members and a spreadsheet of roughly 2,600 people who took a trial class or asked about fees in the last four years. In one week she needs to tell the 6 am batch that Thursday’s class has moved, send the new monthly fee card to every member, and invite the old enquiries to a Navratri beginners’ batch.

Those are three different jobs, and the WhatsApp broadcast vs group question she started with only covers two of them. The third needs a campaign. Here is what each one is, where it stops working, and which we’d pick for what.

The short answer

A group is for people who should talk to each other. A broadcast list is for telling your regulars something privately, for free, as long as they’ve saved your number. A campaign is for reaching people who haven’t saved you but did agree to hear from you, and it costs money per message.

Most small businesses need two of the three. Very few need all of them on day one.

Groups: one room, everyone hears everything

WhatsApp’s help centre says a group can have up to 1,024 members. Every message and every reply goes to all of them, and everyone can open the member list. The help centre is plain about privacy: it isn’t possible to hide a group member’s phone number in a group.

That’s fine for Pooja’s 6 am batch. Twenty-two people who meet three mornings a week, know each other and need to hear “class moved to the terrace hall” at the same moment. Replies like “running 10 min late” are useful to the whole room.

It’s the wrong tool for customers who don’t know each other. Add 300 shoppers to a group and you’ve handed 300 phone numbers to strangers, and the first “what’s the price?” reply goes to all of them. People leave, and some report the group on the way out.

Use a group when the members would recognise each other in person. Otherwise don’t.

Communities and channels, briefly

Two newer features sit near groups and get confused with them.

A community bundles several groups under one roof, with an announcement group where only admins can post. WhatsApp’s help centre puts the limits at 100 groups and 2,000 members. A school with a group per class is the natural fit. For a business talking to customers, it has the same weakness as a group: people have to join, and they’re in a shared space.

A channel is a one-way feed that anyone can follow. WhatsApp says followers aren’t visible to each other, and that an admin sees a follower’s full number only if that follower is already in the admin’s contacts. Channels suit announcements nobody needs to answer, such as holiday timings or a new batch opening. You don’t choose who receives a channel update. Whoever follows, sees it, and you can’t tell which customers those are.

Broadcast lists: private messages to people who saved you

A broadcast list in WhatsApp or the WhatsApp Business app sends one message to many contacts at once. Each person gets it as an ordinary chat from you, and a reply comes only to you. Nobody on the list can see anybody else.

The help centre gives two rules. A list holds up to 256 contacts, and the message is delivered only to people who have your number saved in their phone’s address book. Everyone else on the list gets nothing, and the app doesn’t tell you who they were.

For Pooja’s fee card, this is the right tool. Her 140 members have nearly all saved the studio number because they message it every week. One list, one message, no cost, and “can I pay on the 5th?” arrives privately.

It falls apart on the 2,600 old enquiries. That’s eleven lists, and most of those people asked one question in 2023 and never saved the number. She’d send eleven broadcasts and reach a small fraction, with no way to know which.

Our guide to creating a broadcast list has the steps for Android and iPhone, and covers the monthly cap of 35 broadcasts that WhatsApp says is rolling out in some countries.

Can you send a WhatsApp broadcast without saving the number?

People ask this in two directions, and the answer differs.

If the customer hasn’t saved your number: an app broadcast list won’t reach them. There’s no setting that changes this. It’s how WhatsApp keeps broadcast lists from being used on strangers.

If you haven’t saved theirs: broadcast lists are built from your contacts, or in the Business app from a label, so in practice the numbers need to be on the phone first. Saving 2,600 numbers by hand to one handset is the point where a business has outgrown the feature.

There are two legitimate ways to reach people who haven’t saved you.

The first is a paid business broadcast inside the WhatsApp Business app. WhatsApp’s help centre says these reach contacts who haven’t saved your number, that Meta reviews each one, and that you pay per delivered message. It also says the feature is available in limited countries, so check whether it appears in your app before planning around it.

The second is the WhatsApp Business Platform, where a template goes to any number that opted in to hear from you. Nobody has to save anybody. This is what the rest of this article calls a campaign.

What isn’t legitimate is the software sold as a “WhatsApp multiple message sender” that pastes your text into hundreds of chats from the ordinary app. WhatsApp’s Terms of Service prohibit bulk and automated messaging, and numbers get banned for it. We covered that separately in sending bulk WhatsApp messages without a ban.

Campaigns: approved templates to people who opted in

The WhatsApp Business Platform (most people say “the API”) has no broadcast lists. To message someone who hasn’t written to you in the last 24 hours, you send a template that Meta has approved, and a campaign is that template sent to a chosen set of contacts. The glossary explains templates, windows and the other terms if they’re new.

Three rules replace the “saved your number” rule:

• Opt-in. WhatsApp’s Business Messaging Policy says you may contact people only if they gave you their number and agreed to receive messages from you. A trial-class register from 2023 doesn’t count on its own.
• A daily limit on new people. A new business can message 250 different people outside the 24-hour window in a rolling day. Business verification is the usual way to 2,000, and the limit rises automatically after that.
• A price per delivered message, set by the template’s category.

Like a broadcast list, each person gets the message in their own chat and replies privately. The difference a team notices is where the replies land: in an inbox several people can work from, instead of on one phone.

There’s also a ceiling you don’t control. WhatsApp limits how many marketing messages each person receives from all businesses combined, and publishes no number. Some of a campaign won’t deliver for that reason, and you aren’t charged for those.

Side by side

	Group	Broadcast list	Campaign (Platform)
Where it lives	WhatsApp or Business app	WhatsApp or Business app	WhatsApp Business Platform, through a provider
Size	Up to 1,024 members	Up to 256 contacts per list	250 new people a day at first, 2,000 after verification, then higher
Must they have saved your number?	No, but they must be added or join	Yes	No
Permission needed	They can leave at any time	They saved you	Recorded opt-in
Who sees replies	Everyone in the group	Only you	Only you and your team
Can members see each other’s numbers?	Yes	No	No
Meta’s charge to send	None	None	₹0.8631 marketing, ₹0.115 utility, per delivered message before GST
Good for	A batch, a society, a project team	Regulars who know you	Past customers and enquiries who agreed to hear from you

Rates are Meta’s for Indian numbers, on the card effective 1 July 2026 and unchanged on the 1 October 2026 card.

What each one costs

Groups, broadcast lists, communities and channels are free to send. Where WhatsApp’s monthly broadcast cap applies, the free allowance is 35 broadcasts a month.

A campaign has a bill. Say 900 of Pooja’s 2,600 old enquiries had ticked a box agreeing to offers on WhatsApp. One Navratri invitation to them is a marketing template:

	Maths	Meta’s charge, before GST
Invitation to 900 people	900 × ₹0.8631	₹776.79
One reminder to the same 900	900 × ₹0.8631	₹776.79

At a limit of 250, the first send takes four days. At 2,000 it goes in one.

Replies add a little. Since 1 October 2026, each business number gets 1,000 free service replies a month, and Meta charges ₹0.115 for each one after that. A studio answering 60 interested people won’t come near 1,000 from this campaign alone. Your provider’s plan is on top of all of this, and for a business Pooja’s size it’s the larger cost. The cost guide works through full monthly bills.

Comparing free with ₹777 misses what each one reaches. The free broadcast gets to the few old enquiries who saved her number. The paid message gets to most of the 900 who agreed. We’d skip the reminder and spend that money on a second batch announcement in January.

Which one we’d use

For Pooja’s week: the batch group for Thursday’s change, a broadcast list for the fee card, and a campaign for the Navratri invitation. She doesn’t need the Platform for the first two, and shouldn’t pay for it if those were her only jobs.

A rough rule for everyone else:

• If the people know each other and should talk, use a group.
• If they’re current customers who save your number, and one person handles the replies, use a broadcast list.
• If they’re past customers or enquiries, or the replies need more than one person, you want campaigns. That means opt-in first and the Platform second.

If you’re looking for a WhatsApp broadcast alternative because lists of 256 have become a chore, the limit usually isn’t the real problem. The saved-number rule is. Ask five customers who bought once last year whether they have you saved, and you’ll know how much of your list a broadcast actually reaches.

Before you pick, count two things: how many people on your list have your number saved, and how many agreed in writing to hear from you. The first number is your broadcast reach. The second is your campaign reach, and it’s the one worth growing.