We run a WhatsApp community for a product management school in Brazil: two groups, one with about 1,000 members and one with about 400. Everyone joined voluntarily through an invite link we publish. Once a week we post announcements for a free live class and the link to the room. That is the entire use case. No cold outreach, no messaging people who did not ask, no 1:1 support on that number.

We are already a Cloud API customer, and all of our one to one support runs on an official number.

The problem is that there is no official product for what we do:

• The Groups API caps each group at 8 participants, and only works with groups created through the API, so existing community groups cannot be adopted
• Channels have no publishing API
• Communities have no API

So the only way to reach a real community group is an unofficial number. Ours was banned on 2026-09-09, with no prior warning and no indication of which rule was violated.

Volume over the 45 days before the ban: 267 messages, sent on 21 of 46 days, peaking at 28 in a single day. Over six months of operation: 1,225 messages. Meta's own business support assistant confirmed in writing that there is no official product for this and no commercial team to talk to about it.

Groups are an official WhatsApp feature. Businesses are being banned for using an official feature that has no official automation path.

My questions:

1. Is there anything on the roadmap for group or community messaging above 8 participants?
2. Is a Channels publishing API planned?
3. On the Groups API, is a message billed once per group or once per delivered recipient?

Happy to share full sending records.