Overview
Overview
Community is a new instant messaging capability supported by ZEGO IM, designed to help developers build real-time interactive communities similar to Discord. It supports various use cases including gaming communities, interest groups, fan engagement, and online education, meeting the need for large-scale real-time interactive chat across different user groups.
The Community product typically features a three-tier social organizational structure of "Community-Channel-Thread" (corresponding to Discord's Server-Channel-Thread). All user interactions revolve around these three tiers, where a Community serves as an aggregation of user relationships, a Channel acts as the basic chat interaction carrier, and a Thread is a dedicated discussion group expanded from a message within a Channel.
- Community Server: In the community scenario, users need to create or join a Community before initiating chat or other interactions. To start chatting with other users, you need to invite them to join the Community at the Community server level, making them members of the community. Within the Community server, you can perform user management and channel management at the Community level.
- Channels within a Community: Channels are the carrier of chat interactions within a Community. When users need to interact with other users, they need to create or join a Channel within the Community. Channel functionality is similar to traditional groups, supporting text, image, voice, video, and other message types.
- Threads: When chatting in a Channel, users can expand an interested topic or content for discussion into a Thread based on a message, allowing multiple users to participate in replies.
The Thread feature will be supported in a future version.
Community Feature Overview
Community includes the following core features:
- Community Management
- Community Member Management
- Channel Management
- Channel Message Management
- Channel Conversation Management
- Community Mute
Feature Restrictions
Community is a premium feature. To use it, you need to contact ZEGOCLOUD Technical Support for activation. For details on activation and configuration, please refer to Service Activation and Billing.
- There is no limit on the number of Communities created under a single AppID.
- A single Community supports up to 100,000 users by default, expandable to unlimited. For details, please refer to service activation and billing.
- A single Community allows up to 100 Channels by default, expandable to 1,000. For details, please refer to service activation and billing.
- A single user can join up to 100 Communities by default, expandable to 500. For details, please refer to service activation and billing.
Usage Limits
| Limit Item | Limit Value |
|---|---|
| Maximum Communities a single user can join | 100 (default), expandable to 500 |
| Maximum Communities under the same AppID | Unlimited |
| Maximum Channels under the same Community | 100 (default), expandable to 1,000 |
| Maximum Community name length | 300 characters (configurable) |
| Maximum Community notice length | 500 characters (configurable) |
| Maximum Community attributes | 10 pairs (key 16 characters, value 1024 characters) |
| Maximum users per invitation | 100 |
| Maximum items per page in paginated queries | 100 |
Differences Between Community and Group
| Feature | Community | Group |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum members | 100,000 by default, expandable to unlimited | 2,000 (configurable) |
| Channels/Sub-groups | Supports multiple channels (public/private) | Does not support channels |
| Roles | Owner, Admin, Regular member | Owner, Admin, Regular member |
| Join method | Actively join or be invited | Invite, request, or search to join |
| Message model | Isolated by channel | Unified message stream |
| Use cases | Large-scale communities, forum-style | Small to medium team collaboration |
Service Activation and Billing
Service Activation
The Community feature requires activation by ZEGOCLOUD Technical Support. Before activation, please ensure the following steps are completed:
- The premium edition of ZIM has been activated.
- The specific features and pricing have been confirmed, as per the Overview page and the service billing description page.
Service Billing Description
The Community feature does not require additional payment; only ZIM premium edition activation is needed. However, certain features have limitations, and users can pay to upgrade the corresponding product specifications based on their needs.
| Billing Item | Domestic Data Center Fee | Overseas Data Center Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Number of Channels in a Community (default 100, expanded in increments of 100) | ¥3,000/month per additional 100 | ¥9,000/month per additional 100 |
| Number of users in a Community (default 100,000, expandable to unlimited) | ¥6,000/month to expand to unlimited | ¥18,000/month to expand to unlimited |
| Number of Communities a user can join (default 100, expanded in increments of 100) | ¥3,000/month per additional 100 | ¥9,000/month per additional 100 |
| Community downstream message limit (default 200 million/month, per additional 10 million) | ¥200/month per 10 million | ¥600/month per 10 million |
- If a product specification is downgraded, the existing data is not affected; it only restricts new data creation for the corresponding feature. For example, if a customer's channel limit was expanded to 500 and 300 channels were actually created, downgrading to the 200 channel configuration means the customer cannot create new channels, and the maximum channel limit for newly created communities is set to 200.
- If the technical specification is adjusted during a billing cycle (i.e., one calendar month), the fee for that month is calculated based on the maximum specification value.