# Invitations not working on Discourse free plan when site is invite-only
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/invitations-not-working-on-discourse-free-plan-when-site-is-invite-only/395719
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** invites, free-plan
**Created:** [February 10, 2026, 11:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/invitations-not-working-on-discourse-free-plan-when-site-is-invite-only/395719 "2026-02-10T23:39:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2026, 11:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/invitations-not-working-on-discourse-free-plan-when-site-is-invite-only/395719/1 "2026-02-10T23:39:53Z")
A friend created an invite-only community. He sent me an invite, I got this screen:
Upon log in, I got this:
I haven’t been able to get past this screen 🥲
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### Author:  [@rishabh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rishabh)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2026, 6:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/invitations-not-working-on-discourse-free-plan-when-site-is-invite-only/395719/3 "2026-02-11T06:55:51Z")
Thanks for the report @canapin, we are having a look 👀
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### Author:  [@rishabh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rishabh)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2026, 7:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/invitations-not-working-on-discourse-free-plan-when-site-is-invite-only/395719/4 "2026-02-11T07:41:00Z")
I’m not able to reproduce this on public/private invite-only sites yet, using an existing ID account. Here’s an example:
Were you creating an ID account in that flow? And do you still see this if you try to accept the invite again? I wonder what I’m doing differently here.
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2026, 11:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/invitations-not-working-on-discourse-free-plan-when-site-is-invite-only/395719/8 "2026-02-11T11:08:44Z")
He had **Must approve users** enabled. I could register after he disabled the setting.
The error message is quite unclear then.
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### Author:  [@ondrej](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ondrej)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2026, 5:18pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/invitations-not-working-on-discourse-free-plan-when-site-is-invite-only/395719/9 "2026-02-12T17:18:07Z")
I wanted to test inviting someone so i sent an invite link to my friend but something somewhere didn’t work.
Below are my current site settings and as you can see, I want my site to be invite only.
(Disallowing new registrations also stops invites working if a user wants to use an invite link.)
* * *
But if one navigates to my site they are presented with a Discourse ID login page that also shows a signup button so if my site is invite only, why does it show a ‘Signup’ button, does that button mean signup to my invite only site or to Discourse ID as a whole?
The person I invited never received an email from Discourse ID to verify their account apparently if that’s even part of the invitation login process I don’t know. They said they tried to signup via the invite link I sent them but got no email and then tried the signup button but from what he said, I think he’s ended up with two unverified Discourse ID accounts and since this is discourse ID I can’t see unverified user accounts in my admin user list to remove them etc.
Does signing up create them a Discourse ID account they can use to authenticate on other sites or is it just for my site?
* * *
✏ **Edit:**
I have tried to create a user myself with another email, signed into my (their) new Discourse ID account.
On my own account I created an invite link for my other user that has a working discourse ID account and they I want to use my own invite code on the other user I get this, exactly what Canapin is getting.
