WhatsApp Groups
Talk to a handful of customers at once, in one thread — a delivery batch, a class, a project, a VIP list.
Overview
A group is a single WhatsApp thread with up to eight of your customers in it. You post once, everybody sees it, and their replies come back to the same place instead of eight separate chats. Groups live under Messaging → Groups.Warning
Groups need an Official Business Account.WhatsApp only offers the Groups API to numbers on an OBA. They are not available on WhatsApp Business app numbers, or on numbers onboarded to Multi-solution Conversations. There is no setting here that can turn that on — it is decided by Meta on your number. If your number is not eligible, creating a group fails and WhatsApp’s own reason is shown.
- Up to 8 customers per group, not counting your business.
- Up to 10,000 groups per WhatsApp number.
- Only one business can be in any given group.
- Customers join from an invite link — you cannot add them yourself.
- Groups must be included in your plan, and granted per team member.
Creating a group
1
Create it
Messaging → Groups → New group. Give it a name (up to 128 characters) and, optionally, a description (up to 2,048). Customers see both before they decide whether to join, so the description is worth writing.
2
Choose who can join
Anyone with the link joins straight away. You approve each person puts every request in a queue you approve or reject. Pick the second one if the link may be forwarded.
3
Invite people
Open the group and use Invite. Pick customers from your contact list and an approved invite template — WhatsApp sends each person a card with the group and a join link. You can also copy the invite link and share it yourself.
Note
Already have groups on your number? Import existing groups pulls in groups created elsewhere on the same number so you can manage them here.
Inviting people
WhatsApp does not let a business add a customer to a group. Every member arrives by tapping an invite link. That is a deliberate part of the design, not a limitation of this dashboard — it means nobody is ever put in a group without acting.- The invite is a message. Because it is a message, WhatsApp requires an approved template — that is why the invite dialog asks you to pick one. The template needs to be built for group invites; an ordinary template is refused, and WhatsApp’s reason is shown against the person it failed for.
- You get a line-by-line result. Some invites go and others do not — a number that is not on WhatsApp, someone who has asked not to be contacted. Every recipient gets its own line saying what happened.
- Blocked and opted-out customers are skipped. They are never invited, and you are told rather than left to wonder.
- The invite link is a key. Anyone holding it can join, and can pass it on. If it goes somewhere you did not intend, use Reset — that issues a new link and stops the old one working immediately, including for customers who were sent it and have not joined yet.
Messaging a group
Open a group and type, exactly like a normal chat. Attach a photo, video or document with the paperclip. Replies from anyone in the group appear in the thread, attributed to whoever wrote them, and arrive live without a refresh.| Works in a group | Does not work in a group |
|---|---|
| Text messages | Buttons and list messages |
| Photos, videos, audio, documents | Authentication (OTP) templates |
| Text and media templates | Catalogue and payment messages |
| Pinning a message | Disappearing and view-once messages |
| Replies from participants | Voice and video calls |
Tip
Pinning. Pin a message and it sits at the top of the group for everyone. WhatsApp allows three pinned messages at a time, and only a group admin can pin — if you were not the one who created the group, pinning may be refused.
Warning
A group message goes to everyone, always. WhatsApp provides no way to leave one person out of a single group message. If somebody in the group has blocked you or opted out of your marketing, MotherBot tells you before you post rather than quietly deciding for you — remove them from the group if you want to honour it.
Managing who is in a group
- Join requests. On an approval-required group, everyone waiting appears in the group screen. Approve or reject each one. WhatsApp reports these individually, so if one fails you are told which and why.
- Removing someone. Remove takes them out of the group on WhatsApp. They can join again with the same invite link, so reset the link too if you want them to stay out.
- People leaving. Participants can leave on their own, from their phone. The list updates when WhatsApp tells us, and always re-reads from WhatsApp when you open a group.
- Deleting a group. Deletes it on WhatsApp for everyone in it, and cannot be undone. The message history stays here as your record of what was said.
Permissions
Groups are granted separately from the rest of the inbox, under Team → Permissions, because they are a different job.| Permission | What it allows |
|---|---|
| View WhatsApp Groups | See groups, who is in them, and what has been said |
| Send Messages to Groups | Post to a group, and pin a message |
| Manage WhatsApp Groups | Create and delete groups, edit the name and description, see and reset the invite link, invite people, approve joiners, remove participants |
Note
Posting to a group is not covered by Live Chat. An agent can be allowed to answer private customer conversations without being able to broadcast to a group, and the other way round. The invite link is only ever shown to somebody with Manage, because holding it is enough to let anyone in.
- WhatsApp number scope applies. A group belongs to one of your numbers. A team member restricted to certain numbers only sees — and can only act on — groups on those numbers.
- Partners are granted Groups separately. If a partner manages your account, WhatsApp Groups is its own tick under Partner Access. Granting them Messages does not give them your groups.
What groups deliberately do not do
- Chatbots do not run in groups. A bot written for a private conversation would answer all eight people at once from a one-to-one script. Chatbots stay on individual chats.
- “STOP” in a group does not opt anyone out. Somebody typing that in a group chat has not asked to be removed from your marketing, so it is not treated as a consent instruction.
- A group message is not a reply to a broadcast. A remark in a group was never addressed to your campaign, so it does not count as a reply or end a drip sequence.
- Group messages are not in Sent History or the inbox. Those surfaces are about individual customers. A group’s messages live in the group’s own thread.
- Invites are the exception. An invite is a one-to-one message, so it does appear in that customer’s thread and in Sent History — because that is what it is.
Billing
Every group message counts once against your monthly message allowance, and WhatsApp charges for it under its usual per-message pricing. So does each invite, since an invite is a message sent to one person. Your plan also caps how many groups you can have open at once — Billing → Usage shows where you are against it.Note
Deleted groups do not count against your plan’s group limit. Performance metrics are not available for templates used in groups, so it is worth creating separate templates for group use rather than reusing ones whose numbers you track.