WhatsApp's own broadcast lists cap at 256 contacts who must have saved your number. That is the ceiling most stores hit before they look for software.
WhatsApp broadcast software sends an approved message template to many opted-in customers at once through the WhatsApp Business API — each as an individual conversation, personalised per recipient, with replies landing in your team inbox rather than disappearing.
A broadcast is not a group. Every recipient gets a private, one-to-one message and can reply, and those replies come back into your shared inbox as normal conversations. That is the mechanic that makes WhatsApp campaigns worth running — and the reason they demand more care than email.
ConvoFly segments combine tags, custom attribute values and date filters. That makes real audiences possible: customers tagged wholesale, in a given city, whose last order was more than 90 days ago. You can also pull an audience straight from a Google Sheet, which is how most stores get started.
Personalisation pulls from the same data, so the template's variables fill from each contact's own record rather than a generic merge field.
Templates can carry media headers, and documents sent this way must carry a filename or the customer sees a nameless attachment — ConvoFly sets it for you on every send path.
ConvoFly ships the compliance side rather than leaving it to you: STOP/START opt-out handling, a per-contact marketing frequency cap so one customer cannot be hit by three campaigns in a week, and the template quality indicator so you can see a template degrading before Meta pauses it.
Two separate bills, and merchants routinely budget for only one. Your ConvoFly plan includes a monthly broadcast allowance — 500 messages on Starter at $12, rising with each tier. Meta charges separately per conversation, priced by the recipient's country and the message category, and bills you directly; see Meta's pricing documentation for current rates in your markets.
Category matters more than most people realise: utility messages such as order updates are generally cheaper than marketing messages, and sending a marketing-category template for something that could have been utility is a common, invisible overspend. Utility vs marketing template categories covers where the line falls, and how much a WhatsApp broadcast costs works a real campaign through end to end.
The campaigns that perform on WhatsApp are the ones a customer would have been glad to receive as a message from a person. In rough order of how well they tend to do:
What does not work is the email newsletter, re-sent. WhatsApp is someone's personal messaging app, sitting between their mother and their best friend, and the tolerance for broadcast marketing is far lower than in an inbox.
Meta assigns your number a quality rating driven largely by blocks and reports, and it governs your messaging tier — see Meta's messaging limits. A rating that drops can cut your daily reach or pause a template, and recovery takes time.
Three habits protect it. Segment rather than blast, so the message is relevant to whoever gets it. Cap frequency — ConvoFly's per-contact marketing cap enforces this so one customer cannot catch three campaigns in a week. Make opting out easy: a visible STOP instruction reduces blocks, and a block hurts you far more than an opt-out does.
Delivery reporting shows sent, delivered, read and failed per campaign. Treat delivered as your reliable denominator: read receipts under-count, because WhatsApp reports a read once and customers can switch receipts off entirely, so a low read rate is not necessarily a bad campaign.
The number that actually matters is replies, because a broadcast that starts conversations has done its job and one that only gets read has not. Broadcast delivery stats and reports covers reading the numbers honestly, and retargeting by delivery outcome covers following up with only the people who did not respond — which is both cheaper and less annoying than messaging everyone twice.
Broadcasts are on every plan: 500 broadcast messages a month on Starter ($12), rising with each tier. Meta's per-conversation charges are separate and billed by Meta. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial.
| WhatsApp broadcast list | ConvoFly | |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum recipients | ✕ 256 per list | ✓ Your messaging tier |
| Recipient must have saved your number | ✕ Yes | ✓ No |
| Personalised per recipient | ✕ No | ✓ Yes, from contact data |
| Segments by tag, attribute, date | ✕ Manual lists | ✓ Yes |
| Recurring and drip sequences | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Delivery and read reporting | ✕ No | ✓ Yes |
| Opt-out handling | ✕ Manual | ✓ Automatic, with frequency cap |
Figures checked August 2026. WhatsApp platform limits and charges are set by Meta and can change — always confirm against Meta's own documentation.
WhatsApp's built-in broadcast lists cap at 256 contacts, and only reach people who have saved your number. Through the Business API your ceiling is your messaging tier instead: 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 unique customers in a rolling 24 hours, then unlimited, based on quality and volume.
No. A broadcast sends an individual one-to-one conversation to each recipient. It is not a group, replies come only to you, and they arrive in your shared team inbox as normal chats.
No. WhatsApp requires opt-in for marketing messages, and messaging people who never agreed is the fastest way to get blocked, reported and quality-rated down to a lower messaging tier. Build opt-in through click-to-chat links, checkout and QR codes.
Two separate costs. Your ConvoFly plan includes a monthly broadcast allowance — 500 messages on the $12/month Starter plan, more on higher tiers. Meta charges separately per conversation, varying by country and message category, and bills you directly.
ConvoFly enforces a per-contact marketing frequency cap so one person cannot receive several campaigns in quick succession, handles STOP and START opt-outs automatically, and shows each template's quality indicator so you can spot one degrading before Meta pauses it.