What is the difference between a WhatsApp broadcast and a group?
A broadcast sends the same message to many people as separate one-to-one chats: nobody sees the other recipients, and replies come back privately to you. A group puts everyone into one shared conversation where all members see each other’s numbers and every reply. For messaging customers, a broadcast is almost always what you want and a group almost never is.
What each one exposes
In a group, every member can see every other member’s phone number. Putting unrelated customers in a group discloses their numbers to each other, which in most places is a data protection problem before it is a marketing one.
In a broadcast, recipients cannot see each other at all. Each person receives what looks like an ordinary message from you.
What happens when someone replies
A reply to a broadcast arrives as a normal private message. Nobody else sees it.
A reply in a group goes to everyone. One annoyed customer is visible to every other customer in that group, and so is every "please remove me".
The limits are different too
Groups have a hard member cap, and someone must be added to the group before they receive anything.
Broadcasts on the consumer app only reach people who have your number saved in their contacts — the restriction most businesses discover after sending to a list and reaching a fraction of it.
On the WhatsApp Business Platform there is no saved-contact requirement, but you can only start a conversation with an approved template, and your messaging limit applies.
When a group is the right answer
When the members genuinely belong together and are meant to talk to each other: a project team, a class, a delivery crew.
Not for customers who happen to have bought the same thing. That is a broadcast, and treating it as a group makes every customer visible to every other one.
PingPlug sends broadcasts through the official API, so the saved-contact restriction does not apply and each recipient gets a genuine one-to-one conversation. Replies land in a shared inbox rather than on one person’s phone, which is the practical difference once more than one person is answering.