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.
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.
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
@mentionedand 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
@mentionedand 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:
| Feature | Participant | Guest |
|---|---|---|
| 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 @mentioned | ✓ | After 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 | ✓ | |
| Webhooks | ✓ | Except 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.
Participant or guest access are each great for different types of situations. In general we can recommend the following:
| User access type | Great for |
|---|---|
| Participants | Smaller, private group chats, EG:
|
| Guests | Larger, open chat rooms, EG:
|
| Combination of participants and guests | Larger chats where some but not all users need to be a listed, notifiable participant |
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:
| Basic | Growth | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Participants per conversation | 100 | 300 | Custom (300+) |
| Concurrent Guests per conversation | 300 | 1250 | Custom (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.
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.