Sending a WhatsApp broadcast message to a few hundred contacts is not technically difficult. Sending it without getting the number limited is, and that is almost entirely a question of how fast the messages leave. A tool that fires four hundred identical messages in ninety seconds is not saving you time; it is spending your number.
Spun sends campaigns one conversation at a time, with a real gap between each, and it will not let you go faster than the line can safely take. This page explains the controls, the ones you set and the ones Spun applies whether you asked for them or not.
What happens to each WhatsApp broadcast message when you press send
When you build a campaign you choose a pace, and the pace is a range rather than a fixed interval. Conservative leaves fifteen to thirty seconds between messages, normal leaves eight to fifteen, and the fastest setting leaves three to eight and is explicitly flagged as one to use only on an established number in good standing. Spun picks a random value inside the range each time rather than sending on a metronome, because a perfectly regular interval is itself a signal.
Before you commit, the composer shows how long the whole run will take at the pace you picked. Four hundred recipients at a conservative pace is a couple of hours, and seeing that number before you press send is usually what stops someone reaching for the fastest option.
- Conservative, roughly fifteen to thirty seconds apart. The right default for a new number, for group sends, or for any line that has had a warning.
- Normal, roughly eight to fifteen seconds apart. Suitable for most established lines.
- Fastest, roughly three to eight seconds apart, marked as a risk and worth avoiding unless the line has a long clean history.
The pace you choose is a request, not a guarantee of speed. The server caps it to what the channel can safely take, adds extra random jitter on top, and holds sends entirely during the quiet-hours window rather than delivering marketing at three in the morning.
Why a new number sends more slowly than an old one
A freshly connected WhatsApp number is the most fragile thing in this whole system. It has no history, so any burst of outbound messages looks exactly like what a spammer would do on day one. Spun treats new lines differently on purpose: for the first stretch after a number is connected, its effective send rate is held well below the normal ceiling, and campaigns inherit that limit whatever pace the composer offered.
The rate a campaign actually runs at is the lowest of three things: the platform-wide ceiling, any limit set on that specific channel, and the reduced warm-up rate if the number is still new. You cannot opt out of the lowest of those by choosing a faster preset, which is the point.
Related: How Spun connects to your number
Choosing who actually receives it
A campaign is only as good as its list, and the fastest way to get a number restricted is to send to people who never asked. Spun builds audiences from what is already in the workspace rather than from an uploaded spreadsheet of strangers.
- By label: everyone tagged as a lead, a past customer, or whatever your labels mean.
- By segment: a saved, dynamic rule set built from labels, activity and custom fields, which stays current as contacts change rather than freezing at the moment you built it.
- By hand: pick specific conversations for a small, deliberate send.
Personalisation is per recipient, using contact variables in the message, so four hundred people receive four hundred slightly different messages rather than four hundred identical ones. That is better for the reader and better for the number.
Related: How WhatsApp broadcast lists work, and their limits
A quick broadcast and a campaign are two different tools
The Broadcast Panel is for a one-off: pick recipients, write the message, choose a pace, send. Nothing is saved as a reusable object, and that is the right shape for "the shop is closed on Monday".
The Campaign Hub is for anything you want to plan, schedule, repeat or report on properly. It keeps the campaign as a record, holds its audience definition, and tracks each recipient individually so you can come back afterwards and see what happened to whom.
Related: Scheduling a single message instead
What you can see afterwards
- Per-recipient status, so a failure is a specific contact you can look at rather than a number in a summary.
- Progress while it runs, which matters when a paced send takes an hour.
- The replies themselves, which land in the normal inbox as ordinary conversations, assigned and answerable by the team.
The replies are the actual output of a campaign. A broadcast that produces forty conversations nobody answers for two days is worse than not sending it, so plan for the inbox load before you plan the send.
Limits and cautions
- Consent is not optional. Messaging people who never opted in is the single fastest route to a restricted number, whatever pacing you use.
- A paced campaign takes real time. Hundreds of recipients is hours, not minutes, and that is deliberate.
- Spun can slow you down but cannot make an unwanted message wanted. Pacing reduces the operational signals, not the complaints.
- The line has to stay connected for the duration. A disconnect mid-campaign stops the run.
- This is not the WhatsApp Business API, so there are no pre-approved template messages and no per-message fee, and equally no official bulk-sending allowance.
Related: What Spun will not let you send