Membership tiers

Tiers are the heart of your membership. Each one is its own offer: a name, a price (or "free"), a list of benefits, and the content, spaces, and calls members get access to. You can run a single tier or stack three or four for different levels of support.

How to create a tier

1. Go to Membership then Membership Tiers in your dashboard.
2. Click Create New.
3. Fill in the tier details (covered below).
4. Click Create membership tier.

You can create as many tiers as you need, archive ones you've retired, and reorder them so your fans see them in the order you want.

Tier details

Tier name and description

Give your tier a clear, brand-fitting name ("Inner Circle", "Studio Pass", "All-Access") and a short description that tells fans what makes it special.

Pricing

You have two ways to charge:

• Custom Pricing sets a fixed monthly and/or yearly price. Leave one blank if you only want to offer the other cadence, and leave both blank for a no-cost tier.
• Pay What You Want sets a minimum monthly and/or yearly amount, and fans choose what they pay above it. Great for tip-jar style support.

Switch between the two using the tabs in the form. Each price field is labelled with your workspace's currency, so you will see Price Monthly (EUR) or Price Monthly (USD) depending on how you are set up.

Free trial

Give new subscribers a stretch of the tier before they pay anything. Free trial (days) sits under the pricing tabs and only appears once the tier has a price, because a free tier has nothing to trial. Enter anything from 1 to 90 days, or leave it empty for no trial.

The rules, which also sit behind the ? next to the field:

• A card is required to start a trial.
• Nothing is charged during the trial. The first charge lands on the day the trial ends.
• Each person gets one trial with you, across all your tiers. Somebody who has already trialled one tier joins the next one paying.
• Changing the trial affects new subscribers only. Anyone already subscribed keeps what they signed up with.

Fans see it before they commit: the tier shows a 14-day free trial badge, the button reads Start free trial, and the checkout spells out "Nothing is charged today" with the amount and the exact date of the first charge. In their own account area the membership reads Free trial until that date. If they cancel during the trial, the trial simply does not turn into a paid membership and nothing is charged.

Back on your dashboard, a tier offering one carries a 14-day trial badge on its card, and members currently inside a trial carry a Trial until badge on the members roster.

Member limit

If you want to cap how many people can join a tier, enter a Member Limit. Once the active member count hits that number, the tier closes to new sign-ups. Leave it blank for unlimited capacity. The tier card on your dashboard shows the current count against the limit and turns red when you are full.

On a capped tier, live invites and undecided applications each hold a seat too, so a tier can never be overfilled by approving somebody. See invite-only and apply-to-join tiers.

Who can join

Under the member limit, Who can join decides how somebody gets in. Three options:

• Open is the default and today's behaviour: anyone who finds the tier can join straight away.
• Invite only hides the tier from your site. Only people you invite by email can see it and join, using the link in their invite.
• Apply to join lets people apply. On a paid tier their card is saved but not charged. You approve or decline each application, and approving starts the membership and the first charge.

Any tier that is not Open carries a badge on its card so you can tell at a glance. Invites, applications, approvals and what the fan sees have their own page: invite-only and apply-to-join tiers.

Questions for new members

You can ask new members a few things before they get in. Questions for new members sits just under Who can join, in both the create form and the edit dialog.

1. Click Add Question.
2. Pick a Question Type: Text (Single line) for a short answer, Textarea (Multiple lines) for a longer one, or Select (Dropdown) to have them choose from a list you write.
3. Type the Question itself.
4. Tick Make this question optional if an answer is not essential. Otherwise nobody can join without answering it.
5. For a dropdown, fill in the Options. Click Add Option for each extra choice, and the X to remove one.
6. Drag questions by the grip handle to set the order fans see them in.
7. Save the tier.

You can add up to 20 questions. Fans answer them at the checkout, under the heading A few questions, before they pay, join or apply, and they are asked whatever the tier's join mode is: open, invite only, or apply to join. A required question left blank stops the join before any card is touched.

You read the answers back on the member's page under Questionnaire answers, and on their application card if they applied. See members.

Automatic space and chat channel

Two checkboxes at the bottom of the form decide what gets built alongside the tier:

• Automatically create a community space for this tier is ticked by default. Members of the tier get their own gated space in your community, ready to post in the moment somebody joins. See community spaces.
• Automatically create a private chat channel for this tier is off by default. It adds a real-time chat channel locked to this tier under Messages. See messages.

Both are just shortcuts. You can create, rename, or remove spaces and channels yourself at any time, and unticking these does not stop you adding them later.

Editing a tier

From the Membership Tiers page, every tier card has a menu in the top-right corner. Open it and choose Edit to change the name, description, pricing, free trial, member limit, who can join, or the questions at any time.

Existing members keep the price they signed up at. New sign-ups get whatever is currently set.

Adding benefits

Benefits are the bullet list of perks under each tier: "Monthly livestream", "Members-only call", "10% off merch". Fans see them when they are deciding whether to subscribe.

To add benefits to a tier:

1. On the tier card, click the + next to Benefits.
2. Either tick the boxes next to existing benefits to attach them, or click Add benefit to create a new one.
3. Enter a title for the new benefit and click Create benefit.
4. Drag and drop the selected benefits using the grip handle to set the order they appear.
5. Click Save.

Benefits live in a shared library across your tiers, so once you have created "Monthly livestream" you can attach it to multiple tiers without retyping it.

Members-only access

Any tier can be made a condition for buying an event, or for buying one of that event's ticket tiers. Open the tier card menu and click Members-only access.

This is a gate, not a discount: with enforcement on, anyone without the tier is refused at checkout. It has its own page, because turning enforcement on can only ever remove access that is currently open, and TribeNest shows you who is affected before you confirm. See members-only access.

Invites

Every live tier has Invites in its card menu. It opens a drawer where you set who can join, send invites by email, and manage the ones already sent. It is there on open tiers too, so you can line up invites before you flip a tier to invite only. See invite-only and apply-to-join tiers.

Welcome message

Every paid tier can have its own welcome email that goes out the moment a new member subscribes.

1. On the tier card menu, click Welcome message.
2. Enter a subject and write your content in the rich-text editor.
3. Click Save.

Make it personal: a quick thank-you, a link to the first post you want them to see, and what to expect next. Free tiers do not have this option, because members already get the join confirmation.

Cancellation message

You can also set a goodbye email for paid tiers. It is sent when a member cancels, which is a chance to thank them, share what they will miss, or leave the door open.

1. On the tier card menu, click Cancellation message.
2. Enter a subject and write your content in the editor.
3. Click Save.

Reordering tiers

Drag any tier card by the grip handle on its top-left corner and drop it where you want. The new order is saved automatically and is the order fans see on your public memberships page.

Archiving a tier

When you retire a tier, archive it rather than deleting it. Archiving hides it from new sign-ups while keeping existing members on the tier.

1. On the tier card menu, click Archive.
2. To bring it back later, open the menu and click Unarchive.

Archived tiers show up faded on the dashboard with an "Archived" pill so you can tell them apart at a glance.

Where to go next

• Hand-pick who gets in: invite-only and apply-to-join tiers.
• Make a tier a requirement for buying something: members-only access.
• Give the tier somewhere to talk: community spaces.
• Give it a date to turn up for: member calls.
• Fill it with content: posts and collections.