How to Send a WhatsApp Broadcast

Before any steps, establish which product you are in, because the method and the limits are different.

The WhatsApp Business app is the free app you install on a phone. It has the broadcast list feature described in this guide. It is the right tool if you are one or two people, sending occasionally, to customers who already know you.

The WhatsApp Business Platform (commonly called the API) has no broadcast lists. You send approved message templates to lists of recipients through a connected tool, and your ceiling is a messaging limit rather than a list size. It is the right tool once you need delivery reports, more than a handful of senders, or reach beyond people who have saved your number.

A WhatsApp group is neither. Everyone in a group sees everyone else's replies and phone numbers. Groups are for community; broadcasts are for announcements.

Interface details below reflect the WhatsApp Business app's broadcast feature.

Creating a list takes about a minute.

1. Save the recipients as contacts on your phone first. This is not optional — a broadcast list can only be built from your saved contacts. If a customer's number is not in your phonebook, they cannot be added.
2. Open the WhatsApp Business app and go to the chats screen.
3. Open the menu and choose the broadcast option. On Android this is the three-dot menu at the top right; on iPhone it is reached from the chats screen.
4. Select your recipients. You can add up to 256 contacts to one list.
5. Create the list. It now appears in your chats like any other conversation thread.
6. Rename it something you will recognise later — "Diwali offer — Andheri walk-ins" is more useful in three months than "Broadcast List 3".

If you have more than 256 people to reach, create several lists. There is no published cap on how many lists you may have; the effort is manual, not blocked.

Once the list exists, sending is identical to sending any chat message.

1. Open the broadcast list from your chats screen.
2. Type the message, or attach an image, PDF, or catalogue link.
3. Send.

Each person receives the message as a normal one-to-one chat from your business. They do not see that it was a broadcast, and they cannot see who else received it. When someone replies, the reply arrives as a private chat with you — not to the whole list. This is the main behavioural difference from a group, and it is the reason broadcasts are appropriate for customer announcements while groups are not.

A few things worth knowing before you press send:

• You cannot edit a list's message after sending. Proofread the offer, the date and the price.
• Replies land in separate chats. Fifty replies to a broadcast means fifty threads to work through by hand.
• There is no delivery report across the list. You see per-message ticks in each individual chat, not a campaign summary.

This is the single most important thing in this guide. A broadcast message is only delivered to a recipient who has your number saved in their contacts.

Nothing about this failure is visible. The app does not flag it, there is no bounce, and the list still shows 256 recipients. If most of your customers gave you their number at the counter but never saved yours, a large share of the list simply never sees the message — and you will conclude that the offer was weak rather than that it was never delivered.

If you intend to keep using broadcast lists, you have to solve this deliberately:

• Print a QR code at the billing counter and ask customers to save the number.
• Put "save this number to get your order updates" in the first message you ever send someone.
• Send from a number customers already have a reason to keep — the one on your invoices and packaging.

If solving it manually is not realistic at your volume, that is the honest trigger to move to the WhatsApp Business Platform, where delivery does not depend on the recipient's address book, and where you get per-message delivery status.

Reach is not the same as welcome. A few habits keep a broadcast list useful.

Send to people who expect you. Message quality on the Platform is judged by how recipients respond, and on the app your only enforcement is people blocking you. Both punish the same behaviour.

Segment before you scale. One list of 256 mixed contacts produces a generic message. Three lists of 80 — recent buyers, lapsed, high-value — produce three messages people actually read.

Give the message a job. Every broadcast should have one action: reply YES, click a link, walk in before Sunday. A broadcast with no ask generates no measurable response and teaches you nothing.

Keep a record of who you sent what. The app will not do this for you. Even a spreadsheet beats memory when someone asks why they got the same offer twice.