The easiest way to invite friends, family or colleagues to join you on the Fediverse is to send them a link to JoinMastodon.org ⧉ or Fedi.Garden ⧉ or another Fediverse “on-boarding” website. Once they’ve signed up on a server, they can use their account to sign in on their server’s website or on a comptible app.

Once your friends are on the Fediverse, you can exchange addresses with them and follow each other. You don’t need to be on the same server as them, following and interacting with each other is the same experience even if you’re on different servers.

However, you can also send them an invitation to join your server, and optionally have them automatically follow you when they sign up. The instructions for doing this are below:

How do I invite people to join my server? Can I invite people if sign-ups are closed?

If you do want people to sign up on the same server as you, there’s an “invite” feature on Mastodon which lets you invite them directly to your server:

1. Log in on your server’s website or the web app
2. Click on ⚙️ Preferences
3. Click on Invite people at the left of the screen (if you’re on the mobile website click ☰ in the top right and then Invite people)
4. Choose the settings you want for your invitation link and then click Generate.

Some servers close themselves to new sign-ups if they get too full, but still allow existing members to generate invitations. If your friend is unable to sign up on your server directly due to it closing to new members, they may still be able to sign up if you send them an invitation.

I can’t see any “Invite people” link my server. Why is that?

Server admins can optionally switch off the invitation system. If they do this, the “Invite people” link will disappear.

I am a Mastodon server admin, how do I control the permissions for my members to invite people? How do I deactivate existing invitations?

Here’s how admins can adjust their members’ permission to send invitations:

1. Log into your server’s website with your admin account
2. Go to Preferences > Administration > Roles > Default Permissions, tick or untick the box marked Invite Users depending on whether you want to allow or prevent members sending invitations
3. Click Save Changes

Admins can also deactivate existing invitations using a separate setting:

1. If you’re not already, log into the website with your admin account
2. Go to Preferences > Moderation > Invites
3. Click Deactivate next to the invitation you want to deactivate, or if you want to deactivate them all click Deactivate All at the bottom of the page

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