Group Chat for Communities
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Daniel Fundi Ndaya
Hey GHL team — I wanted to share an idea that could seriously level up the Communities feature.
Right now, Communities is great for structured posts and announcements, but what it’s really missing is a real-time group chat option, like WhatsApp or Telegram groups. Posts are awesome for updates, but people crave fast, casual, and personal conversations too — and that’s where chat shines.
To give you some context, over 70% of WhatsApp users open the app daily, and group chats usually get replies in under 2 minutes. Compare that to post-based platforms where comments often come in hours later, if at all. When you’ve got people in a community, having both options — posts for announcements and a chat for conversations — keeps everyone way more active and connected.
Use cases would be things like quick class coordination, real-time Q&As, live event chats, polls, or just letting members casually bond. I’ve seen this work wonders in education groups, coaching programs, and membership sites. Fun fact — communities with real-time chats see twice the daily active users compared to those with just posts
Adding chat inside Communities would give GHL users a full package — organized content through posts and instant, lively engagement through chats — making it super easy to build tight-knit, responsive, and profitable communities.
Would love to see this happen!
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Saif Al Azawi
we are using telegram but it is not something that i would recommend, hopefully GHL team create group chat for community
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Keith Besherse
I am not visualizing what this would look like. Do you have an image or example? How would this be different than the channels we currently have?
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Daniel Fundi Ndaya
Keith Besherse There are two options: Either we add a button up top or they give us the ability to create sub channels where we can choose the channel type, like Circle
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Keith Besherse
Daniel Fundi Ndaya, Thank you for the interface suggestions. And, what is different in a Channel Chat / Group Chat? Please expain it like I’m 50! I remember the chaos of “chat rooms.” I can imagine the value of the engagement in your description. I am concerned about the ability to moderate the discussion. Especially since the suggestions that we need a third tier group member (below community admin but higher than collaborator/contributor) don’t seem to be getting traction.
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Keith Besherse
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Keith Besherse
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Keith Besherse
I am convinced that until this issue with the Kollab app is resolved nothing else in Communities matters: https://ideas.gohighlevel.com/communities/p/switch-between-communities-and-courses-on-mobile-site
Shivam HighLevel Core Platform Sales & Marketing Nilasish Pal
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Daniel Ndaya
Keith Besherse Channel Chat and Group Chats are just suggestions. But the main diffrenece would be:
Channel Chat: A Group Chat for that particular channel. Everything that is spoken in that channel is about that channel
A Group chat (I assume you are reffering to the one under a channel, as a sub-channel) is just a type of sub-channel...There could be a post type sub-channel, or group chat type sub-channel or a poll sub-channel
Both are just suggested views
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Keith Besherse
Daniel Ndaya, I don’t understand your suggestion. I am not a WhatsApp user. So maybe I simply don’t have the frame of reference for what you are suggesting. If you are suggesting what I think you are suggesting, and if it would have the effect you expect, it is something I would agree to. You showed a couple ways to make the user interface. Can you show me what it would look like once someone opens that interface? What does it look like inside a “group chat”?
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Daniel Ndaya
Keith Besherse Here is an example of the whatsapp UI on dektop, green is you, white is everyone else
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Keith Besherse
Daniel Ndaya, okay. You are showing a one2one chat.
They already gave that to us! But only in Client Club & branded Communities, not in the public Kollab mode.
If it is multiple people in the same chat, would it have threaded comments? How many levels?
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Daniel Ndaya
Keith Besherse No the one above is a whatsapp group, not one on one...And yes it has a threaded comment, rather "reply"
Whatsapp's UI is the best chat platform UI there is out there, there is nothing that compares, not even slack can compare, that's why it's the world's most used chat platform
You should try downloading it
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Keith Besherse
Daniel Ndaya I am not giving people my real phone number!
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Daniel Ndaya
Keith Besherse You can use a GHL phone number. But even so, that's more the reason why we need communities Group chat, it just gets higher engagements than the current forum based chat