Bulk adding email addresses to group sends invitation emails even when “Notify users” is unchecked (latest branch)

Ethsim2
Sat, 28 Feb 2026 08:41:41 +0000
Bug

Summary

Bulk adding email addresses to a group appears to send invitation emails even when “Notify users” is unchecked.

Expected behaviour

When “Notify users” is unchecked, no emails should be sent.

Actual behaviour

Discourse sends invitation emails with subject:

“[Name] invited you to join [forum]”

Brevo transactional logs confirm delivery and classify them as invitation emails.

Environment

Discourse version: latest branch (self-hosted Docker, up to date via git pull and rebuild)

Hosting: self-hosted Docker

SMTP provider: Brevo

Action performed:
Admin → Groups → Add members → bulk add email addresses → “Notify users” unchecked

Question

Is this expected behaviour because the email addresses did not yet correspond to existing users (invite flow), or is this unintended?

Related older discussion

Configuring how users can create and send invites for others to join your community Site Management

This guide explains how to configure, create, and manage user invitations in Discourse. Required user level: Administrator Discourse allows users in permitted groups to invite new members to your community (default trust level 2). Invites can be configured to redirect the new user to a specific topic when they first join the site. Invites can also be configured to add the user to custom Discourse groups when they accept the invite. Configuring invite-rela…

My experience suggests invitation emails are still sent even when “Notify users” is unticked.

Evidence

Brevo transactional logs show:

Event: Delivered

Event: Opened by proxy

Subject: “[Name] invited you to join [forum]”

These emails were triggered immediately after the bulk add action.

Goal

Clarify whether this is expected design behaviour for staged / non-existing users, or a regression / UX ambiguity in newer Discourse versions.

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