How do I move an existing community over from Facebook, WhatsApp or Discord?
Accept the one thing you cannot bring: your members' accounts. Everyone signs in with their own UIID, which they own and which stays with them if they ever leave. There is no bulk import of an audience you never controlled — which is precisely the problem you are solving by moving.
The good news: signing up takes your members about thirty seconds, works in a browser on any laptop or phone, and costs nothing. The barrier is smaller than you fear.
Step 1 — Finish the new place first. Branding, structure, rules. Never invite people into a half-configured network; the first impression is the only cheap one you get.
Step 2 — Write the rules before anyone arrives. Who belongs here, what good participation looks like, what is not welcome, what happens when a rule is broken. One page.
Step 3 — Move the twenty most active people, not everyone. An empty network with 500 invited strangers fails. Twenty engaged people who post on day one succeed. Ask them personally.
Step 4 — Give the new network something the old one cannot have. A resource, a channel, a recurring session that exists only here. Without a reason, people default to the group chat they already have open.
Step 5 — Run both for a while, then set an end date and say it out loud, repeatedly. Communities do not migrate on their own.
Step 6 — Bring your content across manually. Pinned posts, FAQs, guides. Reposting your best twenty threads is a weekend of work and makes the network feel inhabited from day one.
A realistic expectation: the platform removes the technical barrier, not the community-building work.