In a paid Premium or Enterprise group, owners and moderators can add members to the group directly without going through the invitation process.

To add members directly to a group:

1. Desktop browser: In the left menu on the group’s website, select Admin > Membership > Direct Add.
   Mobile device: Tap the More icon at the bottom of a group’s page, then select Admin > Membership > Direct Add on the More menu.
2. Complete the Direct Add page:
   • The Message to be Sent panel at the top of the page shows the standard text that will be sent to the members who are added. You can use the Customize Message field to add personalized content, which will be added to the text in the Message to be Sent field after a statement that says “The Group moderators have included the following important message:”.
     Note: If you have set up a Direct Add notice for the group and it is set to Active Message, or you select a Direct Add notice from the Notices list, the content of that notice will be displayed in the Customize Message field, where you can edit it further if desired. Be aware that any changes you make will not be saved to that Direct Add notice.
   • If your group includes subgroups, in the Add to Subgroups panel on the page, you can select any subgroups you want to add the new member or members to.
   • In the Emails panel on the page, enter the email addresses of the members you want to add (one address per line). Alternatively, under Upload Addresses, you can navigate to a plain text file you created that contains a list of email addresses, and upload that file. Email addresses can be in either of these formats:
     email@example.com
     Display Name <email@example.com>
     Note:
     • If you include names with the email addresses (using the second format example above), they will become the members’ display names in the group.
     • You can include digest, summary, or nomail at the end of a line to set that email delivery option for that member. Be aware that members can change their email delivery options. 
     • If you upload a plain text file, it must contain one email address (or one display name and email address) per line; a delivery option can be included at the end of a line as well. The file must be UTF-8 encoded. It cannot be UTF-16LE encoded. Rich text format (RTF) files will not work.
3. Click or tap the Add Members button at the bottom of the page.

Note:

• If an email address being added is an email alias set up in an existing member’s Groups.io account, the system displays an error message stating that the address is already a member and including the email address the alias is associated with.
• If you add more than 20 people to your group in a 24-hour period, you probably will see a notice that says you have reached the limit for the number of members that can be added without approval. For this situation, Groups.io has a waiting period during which management reviews the list of added members to ensure that you are not a spammer. The remaining additions usually are processed within a few hours.