Membership applications and approvals
Membership applications let you vet a person or business before giving them access to a membership tier. The same workflow can support trade accounts, professional programs, partner programs, wholesale access, and other gated memberships.
New feature: Create a custom form, review each applicant, and approve access before Memberply activates benefits or asks an approved applicant to pay.
An application program is reusable and belongs to one Memberply membership tier. The tier can be free or paid. For a paid tier, payment occurs after the application is approved.
What this feature does
With membership applications, you can:
Create separate application programs for different customer groups.
Choose the questions, required fields, options, help text, and consent fields on each form.
Publish the application on a Shopify storefront page.
Search and filter submissions in an application inbox.
Review answers, business verification evidence, private notes, and status history.
Approve, reject, or request more information.
Activate free membership access after approval.
Invite approved applicants to purchase a monthly, annual, or one-time paid tier.
Schedule open enrollment for a paid tier when anyone should be able to purchase without applying.
Optionally expire an approval if payment is not completed in time.
Send configurable emails throughout the application and activation process.
Follow the setup guides
If the connected tier is paid, configure payment after approval.
If you need a public sign-up period, schedule open enrollment.
For an Australian store, configure ABN collection and verification.
Explore business customer program examples.
Create an application program
In Memberply, open Applications under Membership.
Select Application Forms, then New Application Form.
On the Details tab, enter a program name.
Select the free or paid membership tier applicants can access.
Optionally set the number of days an approval remains valid. Leave this blank if approval should not expire.
Add an introduction and submission confirmation.
Select the Form Builder tab, then build the form fields and mark required fields.
Save the program.
The form must include a required email field. Memberply automatically maps field types with an obvious meaning, including email, phone, website, city, state, postcode, country, and Australian Business Number. For ambiguous text and address fields, you can optionally identify details such as the applicant's name, business name, business description, or second address line.
Australian Business Number checks
Australian stores can enable ABN verification for a program. Enabling it adds a required Australian Business Number field and maps the business identifier automatically.
The ABN field always validates the number's structure. When Memberply's official ABN Lookup connection is enabled, Memberply also checks available registration details and compares them with the submitted business name. Treat the result as an aid to review, not as a replacement for your own eligibility checks.
ABN verification is not shown to stores outside Australia.
Publish the storefront form
Open the saved program and copy the Storefront program ID from the setup panel near the top of the editor.
Publish the program.
Select Open Shopify theme editor in Memberply, or in Shopify admin open Online Store > Themes > Customize.
Open or create the page where customers should apply.
Add the Membership application app block from Memberply.
Paste the program ID into the block settings.
Customize the heading, button copy, messages, and colors, then save the theme.
For paid tiers, add Memberply's Subscription Details app block to the membership product template. For customers who still need approval, Memberply disables the product's purchase buttons and explains that an approved application is required. Pending applicants see Application pending, while approved customers and customers purchasing during open enrollment can use the normal purchase buttons.
Only published programs accept applications. Each form is generated from the fields configured for that program, so different programs can collect different information.
Review applications
Open Applications > Inbox to search and filter submissions. Select Review for a pending application or View for an application with another status to see all answers and any available business verification result.
Each application form can optionally notify the store contact email when a new application is submitted, so your team does not need to monitor the inbox manually.
Before approval, select Edit details to correct or clear submitted answers. This includes fields that were required when the applicant completed the form. Email and verified business identifiers remain locked because they control customer matching and verification.
From the application detail page, you can:
Approve the applicant. Memberply records the decision and queues the correct activation or purchase-authorization operation for the tier.
Request information to mark the application as waiting for more details.
Reject the application.
You can add an optional private note to any decision. Private notes are visible only to your team and appear in the application's status history.
Decisions remain editable until membership activation. Rejected and needs-information applications can be approved later. An unused paid approval is an approved paid application for which the customer has not completed payment. It can be changed to needs information or rejected. Memberply then removes the customer's purchase permission, clears the approval expiry date, and prevents the previous private purchase link from passing checkout validation. Active applications must be managed from the Members page because membership access has already been activated.
When approval begins, the application shows Processing approval. This prevents the application from appearing approved before the required membership activation or Shopify purchase authorization has completed.
Memberply retries temporary Shopify failures automatically. If approval still cannot be completed after the retry limit, the application returns to Pending and records the failure in its status history so it can be reviewed and approved again.
Memberply prevents a second active application for the same email address and program. This helps avoid duplicate submissions while an application is still being considered or while approved access is awaiting payment.
Free and paid tiers
Free tier: Memberply creates or matches the Shopify customer, activates the membership, and applies the tier's membership tags and metafields without requiring checkout payment.
Paid tier: Memberply creates or matches the Shopify customer and records purchase authorization for that exact tier. The approved customer signs in, opens their private purchase page, chooses an available payment option, and adds the authorized membership to the cart. Membership access and benefits begin only after payment succeeds.
When Shopify confirms that an authorized paid order has been paid, Memberply activates the exact application associated with the membership line. That approval cannot be reused for another order. If the customer has other approved applications, their separate purchase authorizations remain available.
Memberply checks paid approvals in the background. It repairs missing Shopify purchase authorizations and completes an activation if a paid Shopify order contains the exact private application ID but the original event was interrupted. It never activates an application by guessing from the customer or membership tier alone.
If an approval reaches its optional expiry date before payment, Memberply removes its Shopify purchase authorization, changes the application to Approval expired, and sends the expiry email. Other valid approvals for that customer are preserved.
Application emails
Memberply sends application emails through its transactional email service. Each application program has separate templates for submission confirmation, requests for more information, rejection, free-tier activation, paid-tier purchase approval, approval reminders and expiry, and paid-tier activation.
Submission, decision, activation, and expiry emails are enabled by default. The purchase reminder and approval-expiring templates are optional and remain disabled until you enable them. When enabled, Memberply sends one purchase reminder after an approved applicant has waited 24 hours without paying. If the approval has an expiry date, it also sends one approval-expiring email during the final three days. Each lifecycle email is queued once per application, and temporary delivery failures are retried.
To customize an email:
Open Applications > Application Forms and select a saved form.
Select the Emails tab and choose a template.
Edit the sender name, subject, and email body. Use the preview to check the layout.
Select Save and send test. The test goes to your store email address.
After the test succeeds, select Enable this email, then Save email.
You can enable or disable each customized template and use these placeholders in the subject or body:
{{first_name}}{{business_name}}{{program_name}}{{membership_name}}{{store_name}}{{purchase_url}}{{approval_expires_at}}
The paid approval email includes the applicant's private purchase link. Opening the link does not bypass checkout protection. The applicant must sign in with the approved Shopify customer account, and Shopify validates the approval again at checkout.
After changing a template, send a test copy before enabling it. Test copies go to the store email address recorded in Memberply. If the email content changes again, another successful test is required. Temporary delivery failures are retried automatically and do not undo an approval or membership activation.
Paid application checkout protection
Paid application tiers require Memberply's checkout validation rule. This rule prevents an applicant from sharing a purchase link and blocks direct or manually constructed carts that do not match an active approval.
Memberply automatically creates or updates Memberply checkout protection when a program is published. The rule is enabled and configured to block checkout if validation encounters an error. Existing stores only need to reconnect Memberply and approve the latest Shopify permissions. After approval, Memberply automatically creates or repairs the rule for published paid application programs.
At checkout, Memberply independently checks that the buyer is signed in, the cart identifies the approved application, the approval belongs to the exact membership tier, and the approval has not expired. The application purchase page does not grant membership access by itself.
The membership tier controls its own pricing and benefits. The application program controls who can apply, what information they provide, and whether business verification or approval expiry applies.
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