This guide shows you how to set up a paid private community on Memberful. Once everything is up and running, members will receive immediate access to your PeerBoard discussion board after they register.
Table of contents
- Benefits of External Registration
- Why Use Memberful?
- Member Experience
Step-by-Step Guide:
- Create a community on PeerBoard
- Make your community private
- Sign up for Memberful
- Design a payment plan
- Redirect new members to PeerBoard
- Create a landing page
- Use our Zapier template
- Connect Memberful account
- Connect PeerBoard account
- Set up Zapier action
- Test, Continue and Turn it On
- What if I don't want to subscribe my members to email digests automatically?
- How do I deactivate unsubscribed members?
- Can I have a private subsection in my community?
Benefits of External Registration
Paid membership communities generate revenue while enabling you to build trust and loyalty with your audience. If you are offering a membership-based package, whether in the form of an online course, podcast, private newsletter, or gated content, your community adds extra value for your customers.
By combining paid membership plans created on Memberful with your private-access community on PeerBoard, you provide an additional layer of value on top of your premium content: users come for the content and stay for the community. Your community might even be the primary product you offer.
Why Use Memberful?
There are various tools designed to build paid membership communities - plugins, apps, site-builders, integrations, and so on. We chose Memberful as a "user login and payment" system because it provides the following benefits and features:
- Design your plan - Set the price, billing frequency, and subscription length of your membership package.
- Let members choose what to pay - This feature allows members to make donations.
- Set up a free trial - Set up a free trial so that potential customers can access your content for free for a specified period of time.
- Sell group subscriptions - Create multiple membership options and manage them in a single account. Members can switch between plans.
- Add coupons - Create coupons and run promotions quickly. Offer new members discounts for their first month.
- Create custom landing pages - If you’d like to sell memberships but don't have your own website, you can create a custom landing page hosted by Memberful.
- Custom branding - Upload a logo and choose custom colors so that Memberful pages fit with your existing branding.
- Intuitive payment and account management - Memberful's account management dashboard gives you access to user activity information, analytics and conversion tracking, and refund tools.
Member Experience
When new users sign up for a paid membership, they are automatically added to your community. As long as their subscription remains active, subscribers can access their community account and will receive an email digest.
Note: Your members don't need to log in every time they want to access your community. Once they've subscribed and logged in for the first time, they won't need to do so again.
Here is the typical customer journey for a subscriber purchasing a membership:
You share a link to a page with a sign-up form and a new user signs up and starts a membership. The membership renews at the end of a specified period and can be canceled at any time.
After they successfully register, the subscriber is redirected to your community's login page. They are prompted to enter their email.
The new member receives a magic link via email.
From their welcome email, they are directed to a confirmation page.
After confirming their email address, the new member is asked to enter profile information.
And that's it. The new member now has access to your community and is subscribed to the email digest.
Step-by-step guide
In this step-by-step guide, you'll learn how to set your PeerBoard community to private, create a payment plan on Memberful, and use the Zapier template to connect both platforms. Whenever a customer purchases a membership, they'll automatically be added to your community.
1. Create your community on PeerBoard.com
First, you'll need to set up your community on PeerBoard. Choose your subscription package and check out the "PeerBoard Essentials" guide.
Note: You can use this integration even on our Free plan since it supports Zapier and private community options. Paid plans provide extra functionality such as theme customization and search, but you can have a fully functioning community even on our free plan.
2. Make your community private
Navigate to PeerBoard > Settings > General > Access.
Select "Invite-only member registration" and click Save.
Your community is now private. Only approved members will be granted access.
3. Sign up for Memberful
Create an account on Memberful. From your dashboard, upgrade to the "Pro" plan: Memberful > Account > Plans and billing. The "Pro" plan, which is free while you're in test payment mode, is required for the integration to work.
4. Design your payment plan
Set up your subscription plans with your preferred price and renewal options. Navigate to Memberful > Settings > Admin > Plans > New Plan.
5. Redirect new members to PeerBoard
Specify a redirect URL in Redirect Settings so that new subscribers are directed to your community's login page.
6. Create a landing page
Navigate to Memberful > Admin > Customize > Landing page.
Add a title and description to your new landing page and select which plans and downloads will appear. Learn how to customize with your own branding by clicking here.
A basic page will look like this:
Quick Tip: If you have a website, you can integrate the payment form and community board into your website.
Quick Tip: You can customize the form and landing page by adding your own logo and brand colors.
7. Activate the Zapier template
You will connect PeerBoard and Memberful using Zapier.
You can create your own "recipe" (PeerBoard > Settings > Integrations > Zapier > Activate) or use our template. Our template provides all the necessary settings, so we recommend using it.
Note: Our Free plan supports all integrations now!
Click here to activate the subscribed members Zapier template and follow steps eight to eleven to set up the Zapier template.
8. Connect your Memberful account.
First, you need to allow Zapier to access your Memberful account by entering an API key and subdomain into the popup that appears after you click "Sign in to Memberful" in Zapier.
To find API information, navigate to Memberful > Settings > Integrate > Custom Apps and click Add a new custom application.
Enter an application name - for example, "Zapier" - and copy and paste the API key into the Zapier popup. Finding your "subdomain" is easy. If your URL is https://demo.memberful.com, your subdomain would be "demo."
9. Connect your PeerBoard account
Sign into your PeerBoard account. Navigate to PeerBoard > Settings > Hosting > Reveal API Token and copy the API token. Paste your API key into Zapier by clicking "Sign in to PeerBoard".
10. Configure the Zapier action
To configure the Zapier action, set Unblock if Blocked to Yes. Select Member Email from the Subscription Created in Memberful options. If you have groups in PeerBoard, you can also add members to specific groups.
11. Test & Continue
Click Test & Continue to test your Zap. You've now successfully connected Memberful and PeerBoard via Zapier!
Check your results and view activated members here by navigating to User management > Members in PeerBoard.
As soon as the members are activated, they receive a welcome letter and start receiving your community's email digest.
FAQ
Q: What if I don't want to automatically subscribe my members to email digests?
Use our "Send Invitation" template. Members receive an invite email and are asked to confirm their email address to access the community. If they don't confirm, they won't be given access to your discussion boards and won't receive email digests.
To set up the Zapier connection, take the following steps:
- Connect your Memberful account to Zapier using your API key and subdomain.
- Connect your PeerBoard account to Zapier using your API token.
- Configure, test and run the Zap.
Check your results by navigating to User management > Invited in PeerBoard.
Note: Invited members will appear in the Invited tab. When they confirm their email, they become active members and will be located in the Members tab.
Q: How do I deactivate unsubscribed users?
If you wish to disable community for users with suspended, expired, or inactive subscriptions, you can use our "Deactivation" template.
To set up the Zapier connection, take the following steps:
- Connect your Memberful account to Zapier using your API key and subdomain.
- Connect your PeerBoard account to Zapier using your API token.
- Choose how you would like to deactivate unsubscribed members by selecting either Block or Delete profile data.
- Select "subscription email deactivated" in Memberful by navigating to Email > Member Email.
- Test and run the Zap.
Check your results by navigating to Community > User management > Blocked in PeerBoard.
Q: Can I have a private subsection in my community?
Yes. You can use Zapier to register members to specific groups by specifying a user group in your Zap. Take a look at the guide on User Groups.
Need Help?
You're now all set. In this guide, you learned:
- How to create a paid private community in PeerBoard.
- How to automatically add users to your community when they sign up for membership in Memberful.
- How to send an invitation to new members immediately after sign-up via PeerBoard's Zapier template.
- How to deactivate members with failed subscriptions.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our support team at contact@peerboard.com.