Group chats

Group chats allow you to have a conversation with three or more users. Depending on your plan, you can have thousands of people chatting at the same time.

Use cases

Group chats are great for use cases such as:

  • Team chats inside a company-wide collaboration tool
  • Live video streaming events with real-time discussion
  • A general lobby or reception room for an online event

For more information on how to create a group chat, see: Create a group chat.

Participant access and guest access

A user can have one of two types of access to a group chat, namely either as a participant or as a guest:

  • Participant: A user who is a member of a conversation. Participants can read messages, send messages, and perform message actions. Among other things, participants can also be @mentioned and appear in the conversation’s participant list.

  • Guest: A user who is not a member of a conversation, but instead has lightweight guest access to that conversation. Guests can read all messages, send messages, and perform message actions in a conversation. Among other things, guests cannot be @mentioned and will not appear in conversation's participant list.

    Only the number of guests concurrently using each conversation is limited, not the total number of guests that are part of the conversation.

The following table gives a full overview of how participants differ from guests:

FeatureParticipantGuest
Basic plan limits
(per conversation)
100 Participants
100 Concurrent
Unlimited Guests
300 Concurrent
Growth plan limits
(per conversation)
300 Participants
300 Concurrent
Unlimited Guests
1250 Concurrent
Send and receive messages
Send files, voice messages, location
React with emojis
See when people are typing
Others see when they type
Can be @mentionedAfter sending a message
Unread messages tracked
Desktop notifications
Email/SMS notifications
Appears in participant list
Inbox UI
Chatbox UI
Popup UI
Conversation appears in inbox
WebhooksExcept notifications, message read

Some features in this table need to be enabled for a user's role for them to work. This table assumes that all features are enabled.

Whether a user is a participant or a guest is specific to a group chat. A user can have participant access to one conversation, and guest access to another conversation.

When to use participant access or guest access

Participant or guest access are each great for different types of situations. In general we can recommend the following:

User access typeGreat for
ParticipantsSmaller, private group chats, EG:
  • Buyer/Seller chat
  • Group chats between friends
  • Workplace discussions
GuestsLarger, open chat rooms, EG:
  • Livestream chat
  • Server-wide game chat
  • Comment sections
Combination of participants and guestsLarger chats where some but not all users need to be a listed, notifiable participant

User limits in group chats

The maximum number of users of the participant and the guest type that you can have in a single group chat depends on your plan.

We calculate the total number of users in a group chat based on how many users have that group chat open at the same time.

The following table gives an overview of the user limits per single group chat on each plan:

BasicGrowthEnterprise
Participants per conversation100300Custom (300+)
Concurrent Guests per conversation3001250Custom (1250+)

User limits on group chats apply per each single group chat. There is no limit on the number of group chats you can create.

Example: On the Growth plan, each individual group chat can have up to 300 users added as paticipants, and up to 1250 users simultaneously using the conversation as guests.

Users who attempt to join a conversation after it has reached the user limit will receive a message that informs them that the chat is full and asks them to try again later.

Group chat theme editor

In the theme editor, under Themes in your TalkJS dashboard, you can detect group chats with a large number of participants with the variable conversation.isGroupChat. conversation.isGroupChat is true when there are more than two participants in the chat, or when the chat has no participants and only guests.