Replacing Channels and Groups

A channel or group in Subscriby is a resource: something a plan grants. When Telegram bans the chat behind it, the resource still exists, the plans still sell it, the members still hold it — only the chat is gone. The Channels and Groups recovery points the resource at a replacement chat and re-admits everyone who is entitled to be there.

The page

Choose the project (if you own several) and the step lists every channel and group of the project with:

• Health — the last probe's verdict: Healthy, or the reason it is degraded (Chat not found, Bot removed, Bot is not an administrator, Bot is missing rights, Telegram error). A resource switched off shows Switched Off; one already swapped in this recovery shows Replaced.
• Plans — how many plans grant it.
• Members Affected — how many members the swap moves: everyone with active access, plus every pass and season-ticket holder whose date is open or still to come. Those inside an open window are re-admitted at once; the rest receive their link to the new chat before their date opens, and their join request waits in the queue until the window opens, exactly as it would have in the original chat.
• Standby — on Growth, the standby chat linked to it and whether it is healthy.

At the top, a badge says where your allowance stands: 1 self-service recovery available, Recovery in progress — further swaps join it, or Used on date — contact support with a Contact Support button that opens the chat with the incident already attached.

Handing the bot a new chat

Create the replacement in Telegram first — a channel for a channel, a group for a group (a group may be replaced by a supergroup, since Telegram upgrades groups on its own; a channel can never become a group or the other way round). Then either:

On Growth with a healthy standby linked to the resource, the row also has Use Standby: one click, no Telegram round trip, and the standby becomes the resource's chat.

The bot refuses a chat that is already a resource of any project, and refuses a chat of the wrong type.

What happens in the swap

In one transaction the resource is re-pointed at the new chat, switched on, marked healthy, and the invite links minted into the old chat are forgotten. Then, from the queue:

1. Every member with active access to the resource — through a live subscription, or through a pass or pass-series date whose window is open right now — gets a fresh personal invite link into the new chat. Holders whose window is still ahead have their old, now-dead link forgotten and are picked up by the ordinary pre-window link sweep, so they are not messaged twice; see pass and pass-series holders.
2. Each member is told by the project bot: 🔁 Signals has moved with a Join button. Their join request is approved automatically when they tap it.
3. The old chat is left exactly as it is — nobody is evicted — and the links into it are revoked, best-effort.
4. project.resource.updated fires with changes.space_id, and the open incident resolves.

Members our bot cannot reach

Some members never started your project bot (they bought through the portal), and if the bot was banned in the same incident it cannot message anyone at all. Those members still hold their new link — it appears in the portal and the moment they start the bot — but they are not told. The step lets you choose, per project, how they are reached; the choice is remembered:

• Email them for me — Subscriby emails each unreachable member who has an email address, verified on the portal or used to pay, their new link, at $0.01 per email, added to your transaction fees. Members the bot could reach cost nothing.
• I will email them myself — nobody is emailed. Press Download Member List (CSV) for every member the swap moves, with the email they verified or paid with if any, and reach them your own way.

The re-admission roll call

Below the table, the roll call follows the queue: Re-admitted x / total (members holding a new link), Joined (members who actually came through it — stamped the moment Telegram approves their join request), Could not be messaged and Told by email. A badge summarises it: n still to join, or Everyone Has Joined.

Remind Members Still Outside re-sends the "has moved" message, with the same link, to everyone who has not joined yet — in the connector's chat only, nothing is minted or emailed again. It can be pressed once per hour (the page shows Next reminder in 43 minutes), through the same rate-limited queue as the swap, so a channel's worth of people is never messaged twice in a minute. The same button sits on the history row.

Several channels at once

A channel recovery absorbs every further swap you make within 24 hours of the first: three banned channels fixed in one sitting are one use of the allowance, not three, and the page says Recovery in progress — further swaps join it. The roll call covers all of them together.

Undo

Each swap can be undone for 24 hours from the Undo button on its row, or from the history page. The resource goes back to its previous chat, the links into the replacement are forgotten, and everyone is re-admitted to the old chat through the same queue. No allowance is spent by an undo — undoing a recovery is not another recovery.

Example: two channels, one incident

A crypto-signals creator sells a Signals channel and a Lounge group through one plan. At 21:40 Telegram bans the channel; the group is fine.

• The five-minute pass-window probe (a weekend pass is open) finds Chat not found and opens the incident; email and Telegram alert at 21:41.
• The creator creates Signals II on their phone, makes @SubscribyBot an administrator with both rights, and confirms the bot's Should it replace "Signals"? question at 21:47.
• 212 members hold live access. Within two minutes the roll call reads Re-admitted 212 / 212 · Joined 168. The creator had chosen Email them for me months ago, so the 19 members the bot could not reach are emailed at $0.19 total.
• At 22:50 they press Remind Members Still Outside; 31 more join by midnight. The report email at 22:02 already told them where things stood, and the history page keeps the counts.
• Ten days later Telegram also bans the Lounge group. The channel allowance was spent at 21:47, so the page shows Used on … — support review and the Contact Support button. Support looks at both bans, finds an over-zealous report campaign rather than a rules problem, and releases a grant; the group is swapped the same evening.