Before we talk about differences, let’s first understand how the WhatsApp Broadcast list works compared to a community.
What Is WhatsApp Broadcast List
As the name suggests, WhatsApp Broadcast List allows you to send important announcements and messages to team members, friends, and family at once. If you want to share the upcoming potluck information with friends, send birthday invitations to family members, or keep your employees informed about office hours, create a broadcast list and send messages. The broadcast list members won’t get a notification when you add them to a list. The broadcast message will appear to be an individual message from you with a speaker icon.
What Is WhatsApp Community
WhatsApp community relies on your existing groups. The function is designed to bring your related groups to a single place. Let’s say you are the head of the society committee; you can combine all the neighborhood WhatsApp groups and manage them efficiently in a community. You can always invite individuals to the WhatsApp community, but you need to use WhatsApp groups to create a community in the first place.
WhatsApp Broadcast Lists vs Community Announcement Group: Requirements
As you can see, both WhatsApp Broadcast lists and Community announcement groups are different on fundamental levels. Broadcast lists are all about managing individuals, while the Community is all about communicating smoothly with similar groups on the platform.
Broadcast Message Requirements
The members must have saved your cell number in their address book. Otherwise, your broadcast message won’t appear on their WhatsApp account. You can select up to 256 contacts in each Broadcast list. You can create unlimited Broadcast lists for your WhatsApp account. WhatsApp advises not to broadcast large amounts of messages simultaneously to combat misinformation.
WhatsApp Group Requirements
You need to be an admin of a group to add it to a community. You can’t add individuals while creating a community. You can add up to 50 groups and 5000 members to a community announcement group as of now.
Managing Members and Admins
It’s easier to manage members and admins in a WhatsApp community versus the broadcast list. First of all, you can only add 256 contacts to a WhatsApp broadcast list. You can’t create a link or invite others to join the broadcast group. You are the only admin for your WhatsApp broadcast list. The function won’t allow you to share admin duties with others to send broadcast messages. A WhatsApp Community is much better in terms of member management. You can create an invitation link or use the QR code to let others join the announcement group. You can also make another contact as an admin and allow them to share messages, manage groups, and other info in the community.
WhatsApp Broadcast Lists vs Community Announcement Group: Features
Both the WhatsApp broadcast lists and community announcements groups are feature-packed. You can send messages, images, videos, documents, location, and stickers in broadcast lists and community announcement groups. Interestingly, you can send a payment to any community member from the announcement group. You can’t do the same from a broadcast list. You must open the recipient chat thread to send or receive payments. WhatsApp polls, a new feature on the platform, isn’t available for broadcast lists or communities. It’s strictly limited to personal chats and groups only.
Understand Your Use Case
WhatsApp community isn’t a direct rival to a broadcast list. Before you pick between a broadcast list and a community, you should understand your use case first. If you simply want to share a message with up to 256 contacts, create a broadcast list. A WhatsApp community is basically a neat combination of groups and broadcast lists. You can better manage similar groups and individuals and send announcements with up to 5000 members at once.
