Open vs Invite-Only Discord Community: Choose Your Way In and Write the Access Policy

Five lines to write before anything else

How people get into your community should fit on five lines.

ACCESS POLICY

1. Who this is for:
2. How people get in:
3. Who reviews, and how fast:
4. What a declined or removed person is told:
5. When this policy is reviewed:

Each line is a decision. If you cannot fill one in today, that decision was made by default, and the default is usually a public link that anyone can use.

The second line has three possible answers: open, invite-only or application. The test that picks between them is short. Would one wrong member cost the other members something? If not, stay open. If so, and you can name in advance who belongs, send invites. If so, and you can only tell by asking, take applications.

No single answer suits every community. Each has a gain and a weekly cost in staff time. The sections below go through the five lines in order so you can fill them in.

Four terms appear throughout.

Server is one community's space on Discord.

Channel is a room inside the server for one topic.

Role is a label on a member that decides which channels they see and what they may do.

Invite link is the web link a person clicks to join.

I served as Head Discord Moderator for Google Developers, and this is how I work through the decision.

Line one: who this is for

Purpose comes first, because it decides most of what follows. Write one sentence that names the people the community exists for.

Then test the sentence. Picture one person who does not match it joining tomorrow. Ask what their presence costs the people who do match. There are three costs to look for.

If none of the three applies, a wrong member is a small moderation job. Moderation is the work of removing messages and people that break the community's standards. If one of them applies, entry needs a gate, and line two says which kind.

Most teams skip this step. They copy the entry setup of a community they admire, or they keep the public link they began with. Nobody writes the choice down, and it goes on setting the workload anyway: who answers basic questions, who looks at newcomers, and how much moderation is needed.

Line two: how people get in

There are three models, described here in plain words.

1. Open. A public link sits on your website and in your product. Anyone who clicks it is in. Staff see nobody in advance.
2. Invite-only. No public link exists. Staff make links and send them to chosen people, for example at the moment of purchase. A link made in the app lasts 7 days by default and can carry a limit on its number of uses, according to Discord's help center (2023). Use both settings. A link with no use limit works for anyone it is forwarded to until it expires.
3. Application. A person asks to join, answers questions and waits. Discord's help center (2025) describes an Apply to Join option under Server Settings, Access, where staff holding the Kick Members permission approve, reject or interview each applicant. A permission is one specific power attached to a role. Discord states that the option is rolling out gradually, so this applies where it is available to your server. Without it, use a form plus a role given by hand: newcomers wait in one channel, complete the form, and a staff member adds the member role after approving the answers.

One more question belongs on this line. Do new people need to be able to find you? An open server is the easiest for a stranger to discover. An application can sit behind a public page, so strangers can still find the door. An invite-only server cannot be found by anyone you did not write to. That suits a customer benefit and works against a community that grows by word of mouth.

The trade, model by model

The table puts the three models next to each other. Read down a column to see one model whole.

Every column has a gain and a cost, and the purpose you wrote on line one decides which gain is worth which cost.

What the week costs in staff time

The two middle rows of that table deserve more detail, because they are where the staff hours go.

Open

• More basic questions. People arrive with no context and ask what is already answered somewhere in the server.
• More moderation. Nobody was looked at before joining, so removal happens after the fact.
• More members who never speak. They take little time, and they make the member count a weak guide to how many people take part.

Invite-only

• Slow intake. Each new member waits for a person to send a link.
• Dependence on whoever hands out links. When that person is away, nobody joins.
• Links that get passed around. According to Discord's help center (2024), the Members page lists how each member joined, including the invite code they used. Seeing the codes needs the Manage Server permission. Use the page to spot a link that brought in more people than you sent it to.

Application

• Reviewer hours. Someone reads and answers every application.
• Abandoned forms. Some people stop partway, and a few of them would have been good members.
• A decline decision made in advance. You need agreed wording before the first refusal, which is line four.

To measure this for your own server, have each staff member log their hours under five headings. I use two weeks. The headings are repeating answers that already exist, removing messages or people, sending invite links, reviewing applications, and helping members with something new. The fifth heading should be the biggest. For applications, time your first ten reviews and multiply by the number you expect each week.

Line three: who reviews, and how fast

This line only applies to a gate, and a gate fails without it. Before choosing the application model, ask who will review newcomers and how many hours a week that person truly has, with their other work counted. If the true answer is none, stay open until the hours exist.

These are the reviewer rules I set.

✅ One named reviewer owns the queue, with one named backup.

✅ A time-to-answer target is written down. I use one working day.

✅ Applicants see that target on the form.

✅ The form has three to five questions at most, and each one is something the reviewer needs in order to decide.

✅ A written line for declines exists before the first application arrives.

Which questions belong on the form is a separate subject. The access policy only needs the count and the person. The named reviewer matters most, since a queue that belongs to the whole team tends to be checked by nobody.

Line four: what a declined or removed person is told

Decide the words before you need them. A reviewer who has to invent a refusal on the spot will either put it off or explain too much.

Thank you for applying. This group is for people who currently work in the field. From your answers, it is not the right fit at the moment. You are welcome to apply again if that changes.

Three choices sit inside that message. It gives the purpose of the group and no list of faults, because each listed fault becomes something to dispute. It says whether the person may apply again. It goes out privately.

A removed member gets the same care. Send one private message that names the standard they broke and says whether they can return. Write that wording down as well, so two staff members do not give two different answers.

What the review work buys

The hours a gate takes are an exchange. In my experience, a vetted group, meaning one where every member was looked at before entering, gives three things back.

Members arrive with context, because they read what the group is for and explained why they wanted to join. Basics are asked less, because the people chosen tend to know the subject already. Events are easier to run, because the host knows who is in the room and can start further in.

The other side of the exchange is size. The group is smaller, and strangers cannot wander in. A help community loses reach that way. A peer group generally accepts the trade, since its members came for the other people in it.

Line five: when the policy is reviewed

Set two dates a year. Add one trigger: review the policy whenever the purpose of the community changes. Between those dates, these signals say the current model has stopped fitting.

A middle arrangement also exists: an open front door with gated rooms inside. Everyone can join the public channels, and staff give a role that opens the private ones.

When a signal holds for several weeks, change line two first. Then rewrite lines three and four to match, and pin the new version in a staff-only channel.

The layers around the access policy

These five lines answer how people get in and who decides. They are one piece of role and channel architecture together with onboarding: which rooms exist, who can see them, and what a new member is shown first. Moderation load and reporting sit beside that pair. Moderation load is how much removing the staff have to do. Reporting is the set of figures that shows whether the arrangement works.

The entry model touches each of those layers. Opening the door adds to moderation load, and adding a gate moves a newcomer's first impression onto the form. The access policy itself can be finished this week with one table and five lines, and the neighbouring layers each need their own written decision.

A community's entry rule is a staffing decision as much as a membership one, and five written lines are enough to make it on purpose. More at danieljeong.org.