You set up a broadcast list in WhatsApp Business by opening Chats, tapping the menu icon, selecting New broadcast, then choosing up to 256 contacts who’ve saved your number. It costs nothing extra since it uses the same free app you already have. Messages send individually so contacts don’t see each other, and each person must reply directly to you. I built mine by tagging customers first, which made picking recipients much quicker.
The short version: Broadcast lists are built into the free WhatsApp Business app, so setting one up costs nothing, no upgrade, no hidden tier, no API fee. The catch nobody puts in the headline is that a broadcast only reaches people who already have your business number saved in their phone, which is why so many broadcasts land with a thud.
Next step on this topic: How Do You Check WhatsApp Business Broadcast Message Charges.
Next step on this topic: How Do You Download and Share Your WhatsApp Business Status?.
Next step on this topic: How Many WhatsApp Business Accounts Can You Have? The Real Numbers.
Broadcast lists are free, full stop
I want to clear this up first because I get asked it constantly by clients who assume WhatsApp is quietly charging them for something. It is not. If you are using the standard WhatsApp Business app (the free one you download on your phone, not the paid API version companies use for automation), broadcast lists cost nothing. You are not paying per message, per contact, or per list. There is no premium tier that unlocks bigger broadcasts.
The confusion usually comes from mixing up two very different products:
- WhatsApp Business App: free, phone-based, what most small businesses use, broadcast lists included at no cost.
- WhatsApp Business Platform (the API): built for companies sending thousands of messages through tools like Twilio or 360dialog, priced per conversation, and this is where actual charges show up.
If you are a hairdresser, a copywriter, a boutique owner, or a consultant working out of a home office, you almost certainly only need the free app. I have written before about how the pricing splits between these two setups if you want the fuller breakdown of how to price your WhatsApp Business account for growth, but for broadcast lists specifically: free app, free feature, no invoice waiting to surprise you.
Step by step: setting up your first broadcast list
Here is exactly how to do it, on the app, with no shortcuts skipped:
- Open WhatsApp Business on your phone and tap the three dots (Android) or the pencil icon (iPhone) in the top corner.
- Select “New broadcast.”
- Choose the contacts you want to add. You can select up to 256 people per list.
- Tap the checkmark or “Create” to confirm.
- Your list now appears in your chats, usually with a small megaphone icon next to it so you can tell it apart from a normal chat or group.
- Type your message and send it exactly as you would to any individual contact.
That is the whole process. Two minutes, no forms, no billing screen. You can create as many separate lists as you want, so you could have one for “Local clients,” one for “Newsletter subscribers who opted in,” and one for “Past customers who bought in the last 90 days.” I’d recommend keeping lists under 256 because that is the hard cap WhatsApp sets, not a suggestion.
The rule that catches almost everyone out
Here is the part most guides on this topic gloss over, and it is the single biggest reason broadcast lists disappoint people. A broadcast message only arrives for a recipient if that person has your business phone number saved in their own contacts. If they have not saved you, your message never shows up in their WhatsApp at all, not even as a missed notification. It simply does not deliver.
This is different from email, where you send to an address and it lands regardless of whether they have you in their address book. WhatsApp broadcasts behave more like a filtered group chat where only “friends” see the post.
A real example: the spa client whose broadcast fell flat
I worked with a beauty salon owner in Tunbridge Wells a couple of years back who was convinced WhatsApp broadcasts would replace her Mailchimp newsletter. She built a list of 180 past clients, typed up a lovely offer for a midweek facial discount, hit send, and waited.
Three days later she had exactly 11 bookings. She was furious with WhatsApp, assuming the platform had “hidden” her message or throttled it somehow. When we went through her list together, the real problem was obvious: fewer than 40 of those 180 people had saved her salon’s number as a contact. Most of them had messaged her once through a Facebook enquiry or a Google Business Profile chat, gotten their answer, and never added her to their phone. WhatsApp did not hide anything. It simply could not deliver to people who had never saved the number in the first place.
Once she understood this, she changed her intake process: every new client who messaged got a friendly reply asking them to save her number “so future offers land in your WhatsApp instead of getting lost.” Six months later her broadcast delivery on a list of 210 contacts jumped to roughly 160 actual opens. Same free feature, completely different result, purely because the underlying contact behaviour changed.
Why this uncomfortable bit matters more than the setup steps
Most articles on broadcast lists spend all their words on the how-to and skip past the fact that broadcast reach is quietly capped by human behaviour, not by WhatsApp’s generosity. I think that is a disservice, because business owners then blame the platform, or worse, assume something is broken with their account when open rates sit low. Nothing is broken. The list is working exactly as designed. The problem sits upstream, in whether people ever saved you in the first place.
This is also why I tell clients not to treat broadcast lists as a replacement for email marketing, but as a supplementary channel for people who have already opted in, ideally people who saved your number because you asked them to, in person or at checkout, with a clear reason why. “Save my number so you get first access to new stock” works far better than hoping people remember to do it unprompted.
Keeping your broadcast lists clean and worth using
A broadcast list is only as good as the contacts sitting inside it, so the ongoing maintenance matters more than the initial setup. A few things I do with clients:
- Segment by intent, not just by how you met them. “Bought in last 30 days” behaves very differently from “enquired but never bought.”
- Remove numbers that never engage after three or four broadcasts. A list full of dead weight drags down your sense of what is working.
- Keep lists under 200 rather than pushing to the full 256 cap, so you have room to add new contacts without rebuilding from scratch.
- Rename lists something you will recognise in six months. “List 3” tells you nothing; “VIP clients Jan 2026” does.
If your contact list has gotten messy over time, and most business owners’ lists do after a year or two of adding people ad hoc, I have gone through the practical fixes in a separate piece on how to organise and manage contacts in WhatsApp Business without losing your mind, which pairs well with cleaning up broadcast lists specifically.
Broadcast lists versus groups: pick the right tool
People sometimes ask why they should bother with a broadcast list rather than just making a WhatsApp group. The difference is important and it is not just about cost, since both are free on the standard app:
- In a broadcast list, each recipient gets your message as a private, one-to-one chat. They cannot see who else received it, and their replies come back to you privately, not to the whole list.
- In a group, everyone can see everyone else, replies are visible to the whole group, and it can turn into a chaotic thread you did not intend to moderate.
For promotions, updates, and announcements, a broadcast list is almost always the better choice because it protects your customers’ privacy and keeps your inbox from turning into a group chat you have to babysit.
What can quietly go wrong (and how to avoid it)
A few practical warnings worth knowing before you rely on broadcast lists for anything important:
- If you switch phones or reinstall the app without a proper backup, broadcast lists do not always transfer cleanly, and you may need to rebuild them.
- Sending very similar promotional content to large lists repeatedly can trigger WhatsApp’s spam detection, which has, in rare cases, led to accounts being restricted. If you have ever seen the message saying your account can no longer be used, it is worth reading through why that happens and why WhatsApp Business sometimes says your account can no longer be used before you scale up your broadcast frequency.
- Third-party modified apps that promise “bigger broadcast limits” or “no restrictions” are not official WhatsApp products and can get your number banned entirely. I have covered this specifically because so many people ask about it, in a piece comparing GBWhatsApp versus WhatsApp Business and what I tell clients who consider it.
If something does go wrong with your account or your messages stop sending altogether, it is far quicker to go through WhatsApp’s own support channel than to guess. I put together the exact routes for this in a guide on how to contact WhatsApp Business support for help, because the in-app help button is buried deeper than it should be.
The honest bottom line on cost
Setting up broadcast lists in WhatsApp Business costs you nothing beyond the time it takes to add contacts and write your message. There is no upgrade to buy, no subscription tied specifically to this feature, and no per-message charge on the free app. The real cost, if you want to call it that, is the effort of getting people to save your number in the first place, because that single step decides whether your broadcasts land or vanish into thin air. Spend your energy there, not on hunting for a paid version that unlocks something better. It does not exist for this feature.
Related reading: how to use whatsapp business web.
This is one of 43 WhatsApp guides; the full index is WhatsApp: every guide in one place.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a paid version of WhatsApp Business needed for broadcast lists?
No. Broadcast lists are a standard feature of the free WhatsApp Business app available on Android and iPhone. You do not need the paid API platform, which is a separate product built for large-scale automated messaging and priced differently.
How many contacts can I add to one broadcast list?
WhatsApp Business caps each broadcast list at 256 contacts. You can create as many separate lists as you like, so a business with 800 contacts might run three or four lists rather than one giant one.
Why didn’t some of my contacts receive my broadcast message?
The message only delivers to people who have saved your business number in their own phone contacts. If they messaged you once but never added your number, the broadcast will not reach them, and there is no notification telling you it failed.
Can recipients see who else is on my broadcast list?
No. Each person receives your message as a private chat and has no visibility into your other recipients. Their replies come back to you individually rather than into a shared thread, which is one of the main reasons broadcast lists work better than groups for promotions.
Official documentation
If a two-way group suits you better than a broadcast: create a shareable WhatsApp group link.
