Members-Only Webinars

Members Only limits a webinar's sessions to people with an active membership, for example a recurring class series you sell as a monthly subscription. The webinar stays visible on your public site as a teaser, but only members can enter its sessions, watch and take part in the chat.

Access: admins and marketers can turn Members Only on and off and add, edit and remove members; moderators and staff can view the member list.

How it works

• A membership gives one person access to every session of one webinar until its Paid Until date.
• Members don't register in advance. They sign in on the session's page with their email address and a code, and they're registered for that session the first time they enter it.
• The membership is checked each time a member opens the session's page or its watch page, so an expired or removed membership stops working at their next visit.
• You add and extend memberships yourself on the Members tab. Nothing adds or extends them automatically, for example after a payment in your shop.

Turn on Members Only

1. Open the webinar and click Settings.
2. On the Settings tab, turn on Members Only.
3. In Subscribe Link, enter the page where people buy or renew a membership, for example your shop's product page. It must start with https:// or http://.
4. Click Save Changes.
5. Add your members on the Members tab (Manage members).

The change applies to all of the webinar's sessions, including one that's in progress. When you turn Members Only off, the subscribe link is kept for next time.

What stays public and what's for members

Stays public	Only for members
The webinar on your public site, if its visibility is Public, with a Pentru abonați ("For subscribers") badge	Entering a session: its page asks for a sign-in instead of showing the registration form
The webinar page, its description, cover and session dates	The video: its address is only given to signed-in members with an active membership
The landing pages of its funnels	The chat, polls, offers, reactions and online count of its sessions

On your public site, the webinar's sign-up buttons become Participă ca abonat ("Join as a subscriber"), or Participă ("Join") in the list of sessions. They lead to the session's sign-in page. Registrations through the attendee app's registration form and through the mobile app are refused for members-only webinars.

Manage members

Go to Webinars → (your webinar) → Members. The tab is on every webinar; when Members Only is off, a notice at the top says that anyone can register and watch.

The list shows each member's Name, Email (click it to open the contact), Paid Until, Status and Note. The status is Active while the paid-until date is in the future, and Expired after that.

Add a member

1. Click Add Member.
2. Enter the Email the person will sign in with. Upper and lower case don't matter.
3. Optionally enter a Name. It's only used if the contact doesn't have a name yet.
4. Set Paid Until. It starts at one month from today, and access ends at the end of that day.
5. Optionally add a Note, for example "Paid by bank transfer".
6. Click Add Member.

If the email address is new, a contact is created for it. If the person is already a member, their Paid Until is replaced with the date you entered, even if it's earlier than before.

TIP

Adding a member doesn't send them anything. Send them the link to the webinar page or to a session yourself.

Extend, edit or remove a member

• +1 month extends the membership by one month: from its current paid-until date while it's active, or from today once it has expired.
• Edit changes the Paid Until date and the Note.
• The trash icon removes the membership after you confirm Remove Member. The person loses access at their next visit; their contact is kept.

Paid Until is a calendar day: access ends at 23:59 that day, in the time zone of the computer used to set it. Adding, changing and removing members is recorded in the Audit Log.

What members see

When a member opens a session of the webinar, from your public site or from a link you sent:

1. The page shows Eveniment exclusiv pentru abonați ("Subscribers-only event") and asks for their email address. They click Trimite codul ("Send the code").
2. They receive the Member Sign-In email with a 4-digit code and a sign-in link. They type the code and click Conectează-te ("Sign in"), or click the link in the email. The code expires after 10 minutes and stops working after 3 wrong attempts; they can ask for a new one with Retrimite codul ("Resend the code").
3. If they haven't accepted your terms before (for example when registering for another webinar), they tick the box accepting your terms, your privacy policy and the processing of their personal data, then click Continuă ("Continue").
4. With an active membership, they go to the lobby and from there to the watch page, like any other attendee (Registration & Attendee Experience).

Members stay signed in on that browser, so their next sessions skip the code. Someone who signed in with the wrong address can start over with Folosește alt email ("Use a different email") on the code screen, or Nu ești tu? ("Not you?") on the subscription screens.

For YouTube videos, members-only sessions use a player that hides YouTube's own controls and links, with its own play, sound and full-screen buttons.

The sign-in email

The code arrives in the Member Sign-In email, template ID member_sign_in. It's always on and separate from the mobile app's Magic Link Sign-In email. It has two variables: {{verification_code}} (the 4-digit code) and {{magic_link_url}} (the sign-in link, which brings the member back to the session).

If you send email through your own Newsman account (Integrations), create a template with the ID member_sign_in there before you launch; you can start from a copy of your magic_link template. See Email Notifications.

WARNING

Without that template, the sign-in email isn't sent, and members can't get in.

What non-members see

• No membership for that email address: Abonamentul tău nu este activ ("Your subscription isn't active"), a note that no active subscription was found for their email, and an Abonează-te ("Subscribe") button.
• Expired membership: the same heading with the date it expired, and a Reînnoiește abonamentul ("Renew your subscription") button.
• Before signing in: below the email field, Nu ai încă abonament? Abonează-te ("Don't have a subscription yet? Subscribe").

These Abonează-te and Reînnoiește abonamentul links and buttons lead to your Subscribe Link and only show when you've set one. The page also reminds people to sign in with the email address they subscribed with. Anyone who opens a watch page directly without an active membership is sent back to the sign-in page.

Emails to members

• Members don't get a registration confirmation when they enter a session.
• Members aren't registered in advance, so they don't get reminder emails before a session. The "starting now" and "replay available" emails of a session only reach members who have already entered it.
• Send members the links to upcoming sessions yourself, for example through your newsletter.

Limits

• Don't attach registration forms or imports to a members-only webinar. Funnel forms and the Newsman import still register people without checking for a membership, and send them a registration confirmation. They still can't watch without an active membership.
• The video itself isn't locked. A member can find the stream's YouTube address in their browser and share it, and it plays on YouTube for anyone who has it.
• One membership works on several devices at once.
• Members sign in on the web. The mobile app can't register people for a members-only webinar.