Solutions / Membership communities
Run a community people pay to belong to
Member sign-in, monthly dues, members-only content, and a connection to your Discord — one platform, instead of five separate subscriptions you connect and maintain yourself.
The case for building it
Why build this instead of stacking membership tools?
The usual community stack is a website builder, a membership plugin, a payment link, a Discord server, and a newsletter tool — five subscriptions held together with automations, and every connection point is a place where things drift out of sync: dues that didn't update, a lapsed member who kept access, an announcement that went to the wrong list. Kliv replaces the stack with one system where the member record, the payment, and the gate are the same fact.
Clubs have constitutions, and software should respect yours. Approval before a member joins, tiers with different privileges, committees with their own private spaces, a grace period before access closes — describe the rules your community already lives by and the system enforces them, instead of forcing your bylaws into a plugin's settings page.
Anatomy of the system
What the club actually knows
A membership community runs on rules older than its software: who may join, what each tier is owed, when dues lapse, which spaces are whose. The system's job is to hold those rules as data — so the gates follow the bylaws instead of a volunteer's memory.
Members
Every member is a record — tier, join date, dues status, committee seats, and their history with the club.
Tiers
Standard, patron, honorary — each with its own privileges, price, and renewal, including the complimentary ones.
The library
Recordings, archives, and resources — every item carries the minimum tier that may read it.
Events & RSVPs
The calendar, with capacity — who's coming, who's waitlisted, who brought a guest.
Spaces & committees
Private rooms for the board and each committee, scoped to their rosters.
Dues & invoices
The commercial side of belonging — renewals, receipts, and the grace period, attached to the member record.
Who sees what
Rules the database enforces
- Library items carry a minimum tier — below it, the row simply doesn't exist for that reader.
- Joining waits in an approval queue: no membership, no charge, until the board says yes.
- RSVPs require an active membership, and capacity is enforced when the seat is taken — not discovered only when the member arrives to a full room.
- Lapsed dues start a grace period: reminders go out, and when it ends access closes on its own.
This is a constitution turned into software. The member record, the payment, and the gate are the same fact — which is why nobody has to clean up access lists by hand after the renewal run.
What Kliv assembles
A shopping list of platform pieces — each one built in, each one composing with the rest.
Members & sign-in
Sign-up, profiles, and roles are built in — members see member things, the public sees the public site.
Dues & tiers
Monthly or yearly dues with tiers — lapse and access closes, renew and it reopens, automatically.
The members-only library
Recordings, archives, and resources behind the membership — enforced by entitlements, not an honor system.
Discord, connected
Announce new posts and events to your Discord server the moment they happen.
Your list, in sync
Push members to a Mailchimp audience for newsletters and campaigns.
Ways to charge
Three ways a community can charge
Dues are rarely one number. Most clubs run a base membership, a patron tier for the members who want to give more, and a guest option — three models the system should support natively.
Annual dues
$240/year
The standard member
The library, the calendar, member spaces, and a vote — whatever your bylaws attach to belonging.
- Unlocks
- Active dues open everything the standard tier is owed; the public site stays the free, public face of the club.
- Billing
- Renews yearly, with reminders before the date and a grace period after a failed card — recovery emails follow up on the failed payment automatically, so the treasurer doesn't have to.
- Refunds
- Refunds route through an approval step — a board decision, not a support ticket.
Patron tier
$600/year
The member who wants to give more to the club
Everything in standard, plus the patron library, recognition, and first seats at capped events.
- Unlocks
- The tier is data: patron-only items unlock, and switching tiers reopens the gates immediately — no re-joining.
- Billing
- Same renewal cycle as standard dues, one invoice, one billing page.
- Refunds
- The same approval-gated flow.
Day pass
$40 one-time
The guest deciding whether to join
One event: the RSVP, the details, the room that evening.
- Unlocks
- The pass opens exactly that event — a preview of the club, not full access for the price of a single night.
- Billing
- One charge, one receipt — and a guest record your membership drive can follow up on.
- Refunds
- Refundable until the event, through the same approval step.
Before launch
The first week, before you launch
Communities don't get a second first impression with their own members. The first week is for making sure the club's rules hold — before the announcement goes out.
Shape the club
Describe the constitution: the tiers, who approves new members, what's members-only, how the committees work. Kliv builds the first preview with the access rules already in place.
Make it yours
Your name, your colors, your tone — and your words for things. If your club has circles instead of committees, the system says circles.
Load your real data
Import the member roster, set everyone's tier, move the first recordings into the library, connect the Discord. The announcement email is drafted, not sent.
Try to break it
Sign in as a lapsed member and try the library. RSVP to a full event. Fail a renewal on purpose and watch the grace period, the reminders, and the closing gate run without a volunteer touching anything.
Then rehearse a year
In the Sandbox, with simulated money and simulated time, fast-forward through a full renewal year: January's dues run, the reminder emails, one card failing in March and recovering in April, one member lapsing on schedule and the gates closing exactly when the bylaws say. When you launch, the software has already survived a full simulated year before your first real member arrives.
Bespoke, without the bespoke risk
Custom software used to mean a budget, a contractor, and a maintenance contract. This is a different deal.
Enterprise-grade parts
Sign-in, permissions enforced at the database, billing, audit, email — the components under your bespoke system are the same hardened pieces every Kliv app runs on. You compose proven infrastructure; you don't commission code from scratch.
Changes ship in order
When your process changes, say so — the change is built in conversation, you review it in a live preview, and nothing reaches your users until you publish. Commerce changes can even be rehearsed in the Sandbox with simulated money and time.
Nobody can sunset it
Off-the-shelf tools get re-priced, redesigned, and retired on a vendor's schedule — and your workflow goes with them. Your Kliv app changes only when you change it. It's your product, not a seat in someone else's.
Say it in one sentence
“Build a members club site with monthly dues, a members-only library and event calendar, and post an announcement to our Discord whenever something new is posted.”
This is genuinely how it starts — describe it, then refine in conversation.
Build or buy
Why not just use a membership platform?
| Off the shelf | With Kliv | |
|---|---|---|
| Your constitution | A join button and a payment — approval steps, grace periods, and honorary members are your problem. | Approval queues, grace periods, and comped tiers modeled as rules the database enforces. |
| Tier logic | Their tier picker, their idea of a privilege. | Tiers as your bylaws define them — including the patron library and the committee that isn't a tier at all. |
| Cost per member | Per-member pricing — growth raises the bill. | You own the system; dues land on your own Stripe account. |
| The stack | Website builder, membership plugin, payment link, Discord, newsletter tool — connected one piece at a time. | The member record, the payment, and the gate are one fact — there's nothing between them to fall out of sync. |
| Your roster | An export button on someone else's database. | Members are rows in yours — with their history, tiers, and dues status intact. |
Your constitution
Off the shelf: A join button and a payment — approval steps, grace periods, and honorary members are your problem.
With Kliv: Approval queues, grace periods, and comped tiers modeled as rules the database enforces.
Tier logic
Off the shelf: Their tier picker, their idea of a privilege.
With Kliv: Tiers as your bylaws define them — including the patron library and the committee that isn't a tier at all.
Cost per member
Off the shelf: Per-member pricing — growth raises the bill.
With Kliv: You own the system; dues land on your own Stripe account.
The stack
Off the shelf: Website builder, membership plugin, payment link, Discord, newsletter tool — connected one piece at a time.
With Kliv: The member record, the payment, and the gate are one fact — there's nothing between them to fall out of sync.
Your roster
Off the shelf: An export button on someone else's database.
With Kliv: Members are rows in yours — with their history, tiers, and dues status intact.
Common questions
Can members manage their own dues?
Yes — every member gets a billing page inside your site to update cards, switch tiers, and read invoices. When a payment fails, the platform retries it and emails them until it's recovered.
What happens when a membership lapses?
The gates close by themselves. Access is granted by entitlement, so members-only content, spaces, and perks follow the state of the membership automatically — no removing people from lists by hand.
Does it work with the Discord we already have?
Yes. Connect your server and the site announces new posts and events into the channels you pick, the moment they happen.
Can we give honorary or comped memberships?
Yes — an entitlement can be granted without a charge, so honorary members walk through the same gates as paying ones. The distinction lives on the record, not in a shared password.
How does the approval step work?
Applications wait in a queue. Nothing is charged and no access opens until someone approves — and on approval, the membership, the first invoice, and the welcome email happen together.
Can we run monthly and annual dues side by side?
Yes — both are subscriptions in the same catalog, and a member can switch without re-joining. The tier decides what opens; the billing interval is just how it renews.
