WhatsApp Groups vs. Communities: Understand the Differences

WhatsApp aims to expand its social capabilities with a new feature called ‘Communities’ to bring related groups to a single place. Whether you use WhatsApp groups or Communities, the end goal is to establish smooth communication in the app. But which one is better? Let’s understand the differences.

The comparison will be based on member limits, features, requirements, admin controls, and overall use cases. Before we talk about them, let’s understand WhatsApp groups and communities in detail.

What Is a WhatsApp Group

As the name suggests, WhatsApp groups allow you to bring several contacts to a single place for conversations. You can add up to 1024 contacts in a group and start discussions with others. WhatsApp lets you create several groups for different purposes. You can read our dedicated WhatsApp group tips and tricks post to learn more.

What Is a WhatsApp Community

A WhatsApp community is completely different from a WhatsApp group. When you create a WhatsApp community, the app makes a default announcement group to share updates. Of course, it’s quite similar to the WhatsApp Broadcast list, but this announcement group only has the members the admin selects and not everyone in the phonebook.

The announcement group consists of all the group members sharing updates on the go. The Communities allow you to add 50 groups and 5,000 members to a community announcement group. Both features aim to have a distinction like the one exists between a Telegram Channel and Telegram Group.

WhatsApp Group vs. Communities: Requirements

While creating a WhatsApp group, you need to select contacts and add a relevant name, description, and profile picture. Based on privacy settings, the group admin can let everyone share messages and media in the group. The creator can limit the sharing features to admins too. In that case, only selected contacts can share messages in the WhatsApp group. For others, the group remains in the read-only mode.

WhatsApp used to limit group member capacity to 256 members only. The company increased the members limit to 1024 now. If anyone has disabled the permission to add him/her to the group, you can’t add them to your newly created group.

WhatsApp lets you choose relevant groups while creating a community. You can only pick groups in which you are an admin. If a specific member isn’t a group, you can generate an invite link and share it with the person to join the community.

WhatsApp Communities vs. Group: Features

Every contact in a group can check the entire members’ list. While a community member can’t check the other members’ list.

You can start a voice or video call in a WhatsApp group. The same isn’t available in a WhatsApp community announcement group. Similarly, you can add polls in a WhatsApp group, and the function is missing from communities.

WhatsApp group is designed for everyone to join the conversation and share their inputs. WhatsApp community is geared towards sharing updates and announcements in WhatsApp groups from a single channel.

You can check your WhatsApp groups right from the home feed. WhatsApp offers a dedicated section to check all the communities.

Manage Members and Admins

Managing members and admins is identical in a WhatsApp group and community. If you want to invite more members to a group or community, you can generate a shareable link or a QR code and invite others to join the conversation.

You can also make another member an admin and share your duties with others. An admin can send messages, change group or community info like picture, description, and manage members.

Which One Should You Use

A WhatsApp group is all about having conversations with related contacts in a single place. You can create a WhatsApp group for families, friends, colleagues, customers, and team members. You can also create a WhatsApp group to discuss topics like the latest Netflix shows, FIFA World Cup, or travel experiences. WhatsApp group features like voice/video calling, polls, and emoji reactions only improve the overall chat experience.

If you plan to manage your school, neighborhood, or marketing groups, you must create a community and keep everyone up-to-date with announcements and messages. Suppose you find the current WhatsApp group member limitation irritating. In that case, you can create a community and invite up to 5000 members to it (of course, non-admins won’t be able to share messages in the default community group).

Enjoy Flawless Communication on WhatsApp

As you can see from the comparison above, both groups and communities cater to different use cases. Once you understand the differences, you can make an educated guess on whether you should create a group or community on WhatsApp.