How to migrate away from ProBot

ProBot is usually installed for its welcome image generator, and that shapes the migration: the thing you most need to capture before starting is the one thing that exists only as a picture.

Before you start: you need Manage Server and Manage Roles, and about an hour.

Screenshot the welcome card first

Do this before touching any setting.

The rendered card itself, as members see it. This is your reference for rebuilding, and once the configuration is gone the only record of what it looked like is in your channel history.

The settings screen that produced it — background, text placement, which variables are used, the avatar treatment.

The message text alongside it, exactly, including which channel it points members to.

Image configuration is visual and does not survive being remembered. Everyone thinks they will recall it; nobody does.

Inventory the rest

Levels and role rewards, with their levels.

Auto-roles on join — which roles, and whether any are conditional.

Moderation configuration you actually use, rather than everything that exists.

Any custom commands or auto-responses.

And the subscription state: what you pay, when it renews, where to cancel.

Move levels before anything else

Member XP is the only part that cannot be rebuilt by hand. Everything else here is configuration you can retype; XP is months of member activity, and losing it is visible to the whole server at once.

Confirm the destination’s import path works on your data before removing anything. If none exists, the honest choices are a clearly announced reset, or running both bots in parallel while new XP accumulates on the new one.

Announce a reset before it happens. Members treat levels as earned, and an unannounced reset is the part of a migration that costs people.

Rebuild the welcome flow

This is where ProBot migrations actually go wrong, and the failure is always the same one.

Rebuild the destination channel and its permissions first, then the message. A welcome message pointing at #roles that new members cannot see is worse than no welcome at all — and it is the most common breakage in a rushed migration, because the person testing it is staff and can see everything.

Check the placeholder syntax, because it differs between bots and a mismatched variable prints literally. Vetox’s welcomer uses square brackets specifically — [User], [ServerName], [Inviter], [Code], [CountUrl], [UsersCount] — while its other message features use curly braces. Copying a placeholder between features is the usual way a variable ends up rendered as text.

Then the auto-roles, and confirm the bot’s role sits above every role it assigns. See role hierarchy — a role-granting bot below its targets fails silently, and during a migration that looks like the import failed.

Vetox includes welcome messages on its free Starter tier with five greet channels, rising to fifteen at Basic, with auto-roles unlimited and ungated on every tier.

On the welcome image

Worth a decision rather than a default.

Generated cards look good and do not measurably change behaviour. What changes behaviour is the text: one clear next action, in a channel the member can actually open.

If you want a card, rebuild it. If the card was the only reason ProBot was installed, this is a reasonable moment to check whether the text underneath it was ever doing its job — most welcome messages point at three things and get none of them done.

One practical note: image generation adds a second or two of latency. Irrelevant normally, noticeable during a join wave.

Remove ProBot last

After the replacement has run for a few days and a test rejoin works end to end.

Roles ProBot already granted stay on members. Discord does not revoke roles when a bot leaves, so removal strips nobody — only future grants are affected, which is why parallel running is safe.

Cancel the subscription separately. Removing the bot from the server does not stop billing; that is a separate action on the vendor’s billing page, and it is the step most people miss.

Test properly

Leave and rejoin with an alt that holds no roles. A staff alt hides every permission mistake this checklist exists to catch.

Confirm four things:

1. The welcome posts in the right channel and the mention pings.
2. Every channel it references is visible to a brand-new member.
3. Auto-roles are assigned.
4. If Membership Screening is on, the welcome fires after the member accepts the rules rather than the instant they join — otherwise it greets somebody who cannot yet see anything.

That fourth one catches people who never had screening enabled on the old bot and turned it on during the rebuild.

What you gain

Welcomes free with five greet channels, auto-roles unlimited and ungated, and levelling with no cap on rank rewards — all on the free tier.

And the systems around the member flow on the same dashboard: self-role panels the welcome can point at, streaks and levelling that build on the arrival, and a 90-day record of who changed which module, free on every tier — genuinely useful in the fortnight after a migration when somebody asks why a setting is different from last week.

A running order that avoids a gap

Migrations go wrong when the old bot is removed before the new one is verified, so the sequence matters more than the speed.

Day one — capture and add. Screenshots, inventory, and the replacement invited alongside ProBot. Nothing is removed and nothing is switched off.

Day two — levels, then the welcome flow. Levels first because they are the irreplaceable part, then the destination channel and its permissions, then the message, then auto-roles.

Day three — test with an alt and leave both running. Two welcomers briefly sending two messages is a cosmetic problem for a day; a gap where arrivals are greeted by nothing is a real one.

Day four — disable ProBot’s welcomer, keeping the bot present. This is the reversible version of removal: if something is missing you re-enable one setting rather than re-inviting and reconfiguring.

A week later — remove the bot and cancel the subscription. By then a full week of arrivals has been through the new flow, which is the only test that covers the cases an alt account does not.

Frequently asked questions

What should I capture before starting? The rendered welcome card, its settings screen, and the exact message text. Image configuration cannot be reconstructed from memory.

Will members lose roles when I remove ProBot? No. Discord does not revoke roles a bot granted.

What breaks most often in this migration? A welcome message pointing at a channel new members cannot see — because whoever tested it was staff.

Does removing the bot cancel the subscription? No, that is a separate step on the vendor’s billing page.

Do welcome images improve retention? They do not measurably change behaviour. The text and the single next action do.