TL;DR
WhatsApp is excellent at what it does: connect more than three billion people across the world with a free, fast, end-to-end encrypted messenger. If your immediate need is “send a photo to a mate,” WhatsApp is fine. The places it falls short for families with children are the places Shoal was specifically designed for: kids without phone numbers, parents who can actually see their children’s chats, and a clean separation from a company whose business is mainly advertising.
What WhatsApp does well
WhatsApp’s reach is unmatched. Almost everyone you know already has it. Group chats, voice notes, video calls, status updates, document sharing — all of it works, on phones, tablets, computers and the web, for free. Personal messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted by default with the Signal Protocol, which is a genuine gold standard.
For most adult-to-adult communication, WhatsApp is good and we don’t have a problem with that.
Where Shoal is different
Designed around families, not against them. WhatsApp now lets a parent link to a child’s or teenager’s account, but beyond that it has no idea of a family: a family is just another group. Shoal does: families are first-class, with family admins (usually parents, but could be any adult you trust), members, devices, and roles. Multi-family memberships, Connections between families, and admin oversight are built in.
Kids without phone numbers. WhatsApp needs a mobile number for every account, including a child’s. That makes onboarding a young child awkward — you either give them a SIM they don’t otherwise need or put their account on a number that isn’t really theirs. In Shoal, a family admin adds a child by name, sets up the phone they’ll use as a family device, and the child taps their own name. No phone number, no email, no fictional identity.
Oversight that shows you the chats. WhatsApp has started adding parental controls: parent-managed accounts for under-13s (from March 2026) and optional controls for 13 to 17-year-olds (from September 2026), still rolling out. They let a parent choose who can contact their child and which groups they join, and lock settings with a PIN. What they don’t do is let a parent read their child’s chats, which stay end-to-end encrypted. In Shoal, family admins can read their children’s chats — that’s how the safety features work. It’s built in and visible, not bolted on.
Not part of Meta. WhatsApp is owned by Meta. It shows ads in its Updates tab (not in personal chats), and if you add WhatsApp to Meta’s Accounts Centre, information from your other Meta accounts is used to choose them. Shoal is an independent UK company, with no advertising business and no plans to introduce one.
Side by side
| Shoal | ||
|---|---|---|
| End-to-end encrypted | No — encrypted on the device, but Shoal holds the keys so parents can oversee children’s chats (see /security) | Yes, for messages and calls (Signal Protocol); end-to-end encrypted backups are optional |
| Designed for family use | Yes | No (general messenger, with some parental controls) |
| Kids without phone numbers | Yes (family device) | No |
| Parents can read children’s chats | Yes (family admins, read-only) | No. Parental controls cover contacts, groups and settings, not message content |
| Family structure | Yes, and one account can belong to several families | No (groups and Communities instead) |
| Cross-platform | Yes (iPhone, Android and web) | Yes (iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Windows and web) |
| Owner | Independent UK company | Meta Platforms |
| Ads | None, ever | In the Updates tab (Status and Channels), not in chats; adding WhatsApp to Meta’s Accounts Centre uses your Meta account information to choose them |
When to pick which
Pick WhatsApp if you want a general-purpose messenger that everyone you know already uses, and your communication is mostly between adults who all have phones.
Pick Shoal if your communication is specifically about your family — including children who can’t or shouldn’t have a phone number of their own — and you want to be able to read your child’s chats, not only control who they talk to.
You can use both. Many of our early users do.
WhatsApp is a trademark of WhatsApp LLC, part of Meta Platforms, Inc. We have no affiliation with WhatsApp or Meta. This page describes our understanding of WhatsApp’s publicly documented features when it was last reviewed; for current details, see whatsapp.com.