A membership type — a tier — is the answer to two questions: what somebody pays, and what they get. Everything else about your members area follows from the tiers you set up, so it is worth an hour once and then almost no thought again. This note covers making one, and the settings that decide how somebody joins and how they pay. If you have not opened the tool before, How to make edits on an Avistra website shows the sign-in, and How to add members and look after them covers the list itself.
Making a membership type
Manage, then Members, then Tiers, then New tier.
- Name. What you call it. Full member, Associate, Student, Corporate.
- Price, and how often: a year, a month, or free, or arranged for one you settle outside the site.
- Rank. The one that needs explaining, and it is worth getting right.
What rank does
Rank is a ladder, and 0 is the bottom. A member sees anything marked for their own rank and anything below it.
So if Associate is rank 1 and Full member is rank 2, a full member reaches everything an associate reaches, plus whatever is marked full member. You do not have to tick a list of what each tier can see; you set the ladder once, mark a resource or an event with the tier it starts at, and the reaching takes care of itself.
If you only have one kind of membership, leave it at one tier, or none. Ranks are there when you need them.
One person, or an organization
A tier belongs either to one person or to an organization. An organizational tier includes a number of seats: the organization pays once, and the person who paid fills the seats from their own portal. Set the seats to 0 and they say how many they want and pay per seat.
Organizations only appear once your site says it has them, in Settings. Most sites never will.
What it includes
A few lines, one each. They show as a list on the join page, so this is sales copy rather than record-keeping: say what somebody gets for their money, in their words, not yours.
Under it is a tick for whether somebody can choose this tier on the join page at all. Turn it off for a tier you hand out yourself — an honorary membership, a staff one — and it still works, it is just not on offer.
How somebody joins
Members, then Settings. The first block is Joining.
New members need approving. Off, somebody joins and is in. On, they apply, you look at it in Applications, and only then is anything charged — the card is held, not taken, until you say yes. Use it where membership means something you vouch for; leave it off where it does not.
Membership types says who a membership belongs to: individual, organizational, or both. Set to individual, everything about organizations and seats stays out of sight.
How they pay
The amount always comes from the tier. This block only decides what somebody may choose when they join or renew, and you can offer any combination of the three:
- One payment, good for a year. Nothing renews on its own. They get a reminder before it runs out, and they renew if they want to. The gentlest option, and the right default for most.
- A subscription that renews every year. Charged automatically until they stop it.
- A subscription paid monthly. A twelfth of the year's price, unless the tier sets its own monthly amount.
Offer all three and somebody picks what suits them. Offer one and that is what joining means on your site.
Reminders
A member on a one-off payment hears from you before their year is out, by name, without you doing anything. That is the whole of what the site sends on its own. Nobody is chased, and nobody is cut off silently.
Taking money
Card payments need a Stripe account connected to the site. Everything above works without one — you can run a members area on tiers that are free or arranged, and take payment however you already do, marking the dues paid on the member's record when it arrives. Ask us and we will walk you through connecting Stripe if you want cards.
If you get stuck
Tiers are the part worth talking through rather than guessing at. Choose Support request in the bar, tell us what you charge and what each kind of member gets, and we will set it up with you. How to submit a support request on an Avistra website shows how.