How to move your WhatsApp group to Heartbeat

There’s no import for a WhatsApp group. WhatsApp knows your members by their phone numbers, and Heartbeat invites people by Sign Up Link or by email, so your group moves the way it started: with a link you post and a few personal messages. Build the community first, pick a move date, and get your most active members inside before you tell everyone else.

After the move date, set the group so only admins can send messages, and keep it as a signpost to the community. The files and guides you’ve shared come with you as Documents or a Course. Members who pay you today start paying through the Offer on your Sign Up Link, and if you bill them through your own Stripe account, those subscriptions move too. Un Autre Atelier ran its art school across WhatsApp, Google Classroom, Thinkific and Peerboard before moving everything into one Heartbeat community.

Moving a Facebook group as well? That walkthrough is here.

What moves

Before you start

Step by step

1. Create your Heartbeat community

   Start building, and leave your WhatsApp group running while you set up. If you charge members, or plan to, connect payments too. That sets up the Heartbeat Stripe account paying members move into.

2. Set up before anyone arrives

   Create a Channel for each topic your group talks about most. A chat Channel is the closest thing to WhatsApp, for quick back-and-forth, and a thread Channel keeps questions and wins easy to find later. If you run a WhatsApp Community, each of its groups can become a Channel, and its announcement group a read-only Channel where only admins post.

   Write a welcome post, and put your group rules in a Document you set as your Code of Conduct, which members agree to the first time they open the community. Add onboarding questions in Settings > People > Onboarding and turn on the Intros Channel toggle, so each member’s answers become their hello (onboarding). Hand Pulse the PDFs, guides and slides you’ve shared in the group and ask it to turn them into Documents or a Course. Upload videos or embed them (video embeds). Pulse can set up the Channels and onboarding questions too, from a description of your group.

3. Create your Sign Up Link

   Go to Settings > People > Sign Up Links and create the link your members will use. Attach a free Access Group, or an Offer if they pay to join. Everyone who signs up through it answers your onboarding questions and lands in the right place.

   WhatsApp shows a preview card under the link with your community’s name, the Description from Settings > Community > General and the Splash image from Settings > Community > Theme. Leave the Description empty and the card only says “Join [community name]”, so fill both in before you post the link (what your links show).

4. Pick a move date

   Choose the day the group stops being the place to talk, two to four weeks out, so members see the link more than once before then. Make the day an Event: a short live welcome call inside the community gives everyone a reason to join that week, and people arrive together instead of one by one (how to create an Event).

5. Invite your most active members first

   Before you post anything in the group, message your co-admins and your 10 to 20 most active members one by one. Send them the Sign Up Link and ask them to join and say hello this week, so the Channels already have conversations in them when everyone else arrives.

   You don’t need the whole group. 79% of communities on a paid Heartbeat plan have 100 members or fewer, and the median has 23 (Creator Economy Report). Bri Leever, community strategist and founder of Ember, told our office hours: “you will lose some people but they weren’t engaged anyway. The most engaged will follow you.”

6. Announce it in the group

   Post the Sign Up Link in the group with a short note on why you’re moving, what members get and the move date. Pin it so it stays at the top: tap and hold the message, choose Pin, then 30 days (WhatsApp’s guide). Post a reminder a week before the date and a last call the day before. The invite messages below are ready to copy.

7. If you already charge: move your paying members

   Skip this if your group is free, or if members pay you by bank transfer or PayPal. If you bill subscriptions through your own Stripe account, export them from Stripe (Subscriptions > Export), then run the subscription importer and choose Other.

   1. Platform and data. Go to Settings > Revenue > Import Subscriptions and press + New Migration. Pick the platform you are leaving (or Other, and type its name), then upload your subscription CSV.
   2. Column mapping. Match the columns in your file to Heartbeat’s fields. Check the preview for duplicate entries.
   3. Offer mapping. Match each old product or price to a Heartbeat offer. If an offer doesn’t exist yet, Pulse can create it for you here.
   4. Customer copy. Copy your members’ saved payment details to your Heartbeat Stripe account. In the old Stripe account, go to Customers > Copy and paste the Heartbeat account ID the importer gives you, then accept the request in your Heartbeat Stripe dashboard. Copy only current subscribers or your whole customer list.
   5. Review and migrate. Check every member, offer and next billing date, then run the migration. Each member is billed the price you mapped them to, starting on the date they would have renewed.

   The typical import takes under 15 minutes, from uploading your file to running the migration. Screenshots and the full walkthrough: Import and migrate existing Stripe subscriptions.

8. If you imported anyone: cancel the old subscriptions

   The importer doesn’t touch your old platform, so cancel the original subscriptions yourself. It gives you a CSV of exactly which ones to cancel, and it flags anyone who renews in the next 72 hours so you can cancel those first. Then tick the box confirming you have canceled them. This is what stops anyone being charged twice.

   Cancel them in your Stripe dashboard.

9. Turn the group into a signpost

   On the move date, open the group, tap the group name, then Group permissions, and turn off Send new messages, so only admins can post (WhatsApp’s guide). Turn off Edit group settings too, so only admins can change the description. Then tap the description and change it to one line with the link, like “We’ve moved to [community name]. Join us here: [Sign Up Link]”.

   The description is the better signpost because people see it when they’re invited to the group. A pin lasts 30 days at most, and anyone who joins after you pinned it never sees it. Keep the group up, so members who missed the move can still find their way in.

Invite messages

Four messages, in the order you send them. Swap the [brackets] for your own details and keep the rest short, since most people will read them on their phone.

A 1:1 note to your most active members

Send it three to five days before the announcement, one person at a time.

Hi [name], can I ask you a favor? On [move date], I'm moving our group to its own community on Heartbeat, and I'd love you in before I tell everyone else. You [always answer people's questions in here], so it means a lot to have you there from day one. Here's the link: [Sign Up Link]. Could you join this week and post a quick hello? That way the first people who arrive find a conversation already going.

The announcement

Post it in the group two to four weeks before the move date, and pin it.

Some news: on [move date], this group is moving to its own home, [community name], on Heartbeat.

Why: [one line, e.g. our best tips keep getting buried in the chat, and I want the calls, the replays and our conversations in one place].

What you get: [two or three things, e.g. a chat for quick questions, a space for wins, and every call replay in one place].

Join here: [Sign Up Link]

[It's free for everyone in this group.] OR [It's [price] a month, and [what members of this group get].]

[Name] and [name] are already inside, so come say hi. After [move date], only admins will post here, and I'll use this group to point people to the new community.

The reminder

Send it one week before the move date.

One week to go! On [move date], we move to [community name]. [Number] of you are already in, and [one thing happening there, e.g. this week's question thread has 20 answers]. If you haven't joined yet, here's the link: [Sign Up Link]

The last call

Send it the day before the move date.

Last call: from tomorrow, only admins can post in this group, and the conversation carries on in [community name]. Join here so you don't miss [next thing, e.g. Thursday's live call]: [Sign Up Link]

Stuck signing up? Message me and I'll help.