You can't export a Facebook Group. Here's how people move one anyway.
Every other migration starts with a data export. This one can't β Facebook gives group admins no member list, no member emails, and no group archive. That single fact changes the whole playbook, and most guides never mention it.
What Facebook lets you take: almost nothing
This is the hardest migration of any platform we support, and it has nothing to do with technology. Facebook simply does not give group admins a way to take their community with them β and it closed the last remaining door in 2024.
Comes with you
- Your own posts β Facebook's "Download Your Information" exports the content you personally posted, in HTML or JSON
- Your knowledge of the community β who the regulars are, which topics land, what your members actually want. This sounds like a consolation prize; it is in fact the whole asset
- The members who choose to follow you β which, done right, is most of the ones who were ever really engaged
Facebook keeps
- Your member list β there is no export. Not on any plan, not for admins, not anywhere. Facebook's own help center documents how to view members, and nothing else
- Every member's email address β Facebook has never given group admins access to member emails, and no official mechanism exists to obtain them
- The Groups API β Meta removed groups_access_member_info and publish_to_groups on 22 April 2024. The programmatic route that migration tools once relied on is closed
- The group's posts and discussions β "Download Your Information" gives you your information, not the group's. There is no admin-level archive of everyone else's posts
- The reach you built β and it was never really yours. The algorithm decides which members see your posts, and that share has been falling for years. That's usually why people are reading this page
Every claim above was checked against Meta's public help center and Graph API changelog on 2026-07-11. If Meta reopens any of this, tell us and we'll update the page.
The only playbook that works: convert in place, don't extract
Because you can't email a list you never had, a Facebook migration is not a data transfer β it's a campaign, run inside the group while it's still active. Run it in this order.
- 1
Build the new home first, quietly
Your Mateflow site goes live before you announce anything: spaces set up, a few seeded discussions, your best content already there. A 30-day extended trial covers this. Members who click a link into an empty room don't come back β the room has to be worth walking into.
- 2
Give them a reason, not just a link
"We're moving" converts badly. What converts is something that exists only in the new place: a course, a live event, a members-only space, an archive of your best threads, early access. We help you pick the one your particular group will actually move for.
- 3
Announce inside the group, repeatedly
A pinned post, then announcement posts on a schedule while the group stays open β because organic reach means one post is seen by a fraction of your members. Repetition is not spam here; it's the only way most of them will ever see it. Avoid mass-DMing your members: Facebook's rules prohibit unsolicited bulk messages, and that is the fastest way to lose the account you're migrating from.
- 4
Capture emails on the way in β this time, keep them
Every member who signs up on Mateflow gives you an email address on your own platform. That is the entire point of the move. Six months from now, when you want to reach your community, you won't be asking an algorithm for permission. Then you decide whether the Facebook group stays open as a funnel or gets wound down.
We won't pretend otherwise: nobody can build a Facebook Group importer, including us. Meta closed the API and publishes no export. Any tool claiming to "migrate your Facebook Group" is either scraping β which risks your account β or quietly doing what we describe above. The difference is that we tell you up front, and we run the campaign with you.
The questions people ask before leaving Facebook
Straight answers, based on what Meta's own documentation says today.
No. There is no member export feature for group admins β Meta's help center documents how to view your members and provides no way to download them. This is the single most important fact about leaving Facebook Groups, and it is the reason a Facebook migration looks nothing like a Circle or Skool migration.
You can't, and it's worth being blunt about it: no official Meta mechanism has ever given group admins access to their members' emails. Not the product, not Group Insights, not the API. The only way you will ever have your members' email addresses is if they give them to you β which happens when they sign up on a platform you own. That's not a workaround; it's the actual reason to move.
Not anymore. Meta removed the Groups API β including the groups_access_member_info and publish_to_groups permissions β on 22 April 2024. Any tool that promises to pull your group's members or content out through the API is describing something that no longer exists. Be careful with tools that promise otherwise; scraping your own group can cost you the account.
No. Download Your Information exports your information: the posts you wrote, the photos you're tagged in, the groups you belong to. It does not give a group admin an archive of the group β not other members' posts, not comments, not the member roster. It is a personal data export, not a community backup.
You'll lose the ones who were never really there. A Facebook group's member count and its engaged core are wildly different numbers β most groups discover that the people who actually post, comment, and show up are a small fraction of the total. Those are the ones who follow you, and they're the ones your business runs on. The realistic expectation is that a minority of your member count moves, and a majority of your actual community does.
Usually yes, at least for a while. Facebook is still where new people find you, so the group works well as a top-of-funnel that points at your real home. What changes is where the work happens: the courses, the paid tiers, the events, and the discussions that matter move to a platform where you own the member relationship and the algorithm doesn't get a vote.
Plan for four to eight weeks, and understand what that time is for: it isn't setup, it's persuasion. The site takes days. Moving people takes a few announcement cycles, because organic reach means most members won't see any single post. The 30-day extended trial exists to cover exactly this stretch.
No β and neither can anything else, because Facebook provides no export and no API. What we do instead is run the conversion campaign with you: building the new home so it's worth arriving at, choosing the incentive that gets people to move, and setting up the announcement rhythm. On Growth and Business plans that help is hands-on and included.
Ready to own the community you built on rented land?
Tell us about your group β size, topic, how engaged it really is β and we'll tell you honestly how many of them will follow you, and how to get them there.