Lack of a direct message (member to member) feature and a general message feature (from any member to all members) is a key weakness. I belong to two other clubs with (I believe) free member apps - TeamReach and Spond - which include both options. Let's go guys -- this is essential.

@Mike - there are a number of options out there that can do 'direct messaging'.
many of these can be integrated with your WA database - really just a matter of what exactly you mean by 'direct messaging'.
In other words what are the options that you would be open to in order for your membership to receive these messages.
Text (SMS), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc etc
Also relevant would be how many of these direct messages would you be thinking of sending out per month - ie # of messages * # of members = total message count per month and how long would these messages be (number of characters)

I am using wildapricot to host livestreams on - I embed the livestream and slido. Then have members pay to access the livestreams. The members want direct messaging on the website - instead of emailing. Is there a website build that does that?

So just an additional thought.

There is a great product out there (and I have no connections with them other than being a user) - Slack. While there are various paid levels, they also offer a free version The main limitation of the free version is amount of history that you can have in a workspace and a few other less important restrictions.

Slack provides direct person to person messaging as well as group chats. Person to person is always private and groups can be private or public. Users can access their Slack workspace with any web browser and there are also Apps for Windows, Android, IOS etc. personally I prefer the Windows desktop app. A user can be singed on to Slack on multiple devices concurrently. Also if a user is already using Slack (say at work) - just add on the Slack workspace for the WA group as well.

Also Slack work spaces are by invitation only.

You can get a Slack workspace setup in less than 10 minutes and then it is just a matter of adding a few channels (if needed) and inviting your members to join (getting them to join is the hardest part - they often do not respond to the invitation email).

Hey folks - this was only posted as a suggestion about 12 years ago (and by a member of the WA team) - so just be patient ;-)

It has been another year, and still no internal messaging? Nextdoor is horrible in every way possible, but it at least has private messaging. WA is everything Nextdoor is not, but no private messaging! How hard can this be? Members clearly want this feature. Our Association would sign up today if WA had it!

We have a 250 member homeowners association that is fed up with Nextdoor and desperate to find an alternative. If WA had this feature, we would sign up in a New York minute!

No progress here, Karolina, and none planned so far

Hi, has there been any development in regards to the member to member chat or 'internal' messaging that does not require members to leave the site? This feature is needed!

Ho Donna, there have been no progress on this particular request and it's not in our radar so far and can make no promises on dates (as with any other feature).

Hello, I asked about this function nearly a year ago. Has there been any move to add this option to our websites? We had to start a FB group so our members can easily get in touch as a group. We would much rather have that function within our own website. Can you make this happen?

create an option to be able to add a chat room function to websites that is accessible by password

is there a chat feature that can be implemented? Like Google groups or messenger. That would be a great thing to add if it is not available.

Why not both? Some might prefer email, others member to member chat. No reason why there couldn't be both options. :)

Member to member chat instead of email

Vote for this. Our members are asking for it.

It is absolutely vital to our organisation that ordinary members can contact each other & be able to send emails to the group as a whole. Often conditions change quickly & an email needs to be pushed out to the whole group.

ability for members to send emails to groups without having admin privilege

This would be cool, although I sure hope that 'forwarding to member emails' is the default setting. My only concern would be members turning off the forward, rarely logging in, and missing important messages from other members. In any event, I have voted yes for this.

An alternative approach would be updating the existing "Send Message" functionality to include the option to mask the common field email address and send from a system generated sender address (like an alias). This would accomplish the same goal without the addition of an internal inbox, internal messaging interface, etc.

I agree with Anonymous's comment. I suggested to our President that chair members could email their committee members directly from Wild Apricot. Then I looked at the settings and 1) Realized that this would require more than 5 admins or a dummy admin and 2) When you mass email contacts, even though you set the reply-to email, that email address didn't show up in my tester email. It would be great if at a minimum, we could assign chairs to send emails to people in same group.