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Multi Tier Access Membership

Offering an Access Membership with Subify, Shopify Flow, and Sami B2B Lock: A Step-by-Step Guide

Updated over 2 months ago

If you want to offer exclusive access to certain products, collections, or even your entire store for paying members, Subify, Shopify Flow, and Sami B2B Lock work together to make it happen.

Examples:

  • Bronze, Silver, and Gold memberships with varying levels of access to exclusive products.

  • Tiered access to VIP collections, with premium tiers unlocking additional perks.

Although Subify handles the membership side of things, Sami is responsible for managing the access, while Shopify Flow helps tag customers based on their tier.


Step 1: Create Your Membership Product on Shopify

Before configuring your membership plan in Subify, you need to create the membership product in Shopify.

  1. Go to your Shopify dashboard.

  2. Create a new product for the membership you're offering. For this example, we’ll call the product "VIP Access Membership".

  3. Add details like the pricing, description, and what exclusive access members will receive (e.g., certain products, collections, or special offers).

If you offer multiple tiers (e.g., Bronze, Silver, Gold), create product variants for each tier and price them accordingly.


Step 2: Create a New Plan and Add Your Product

In your Subify dashboard, navigate to the Subscription Plans section. This is where you will create and manage all your membership plans.

  1. Select the membership product you created in Shopify (e.g., VIP Access Membership).

  2. Set the purchase option to Subscription only to ensure the product is available only as a recurring membership.


Step 3: Create Your Selling Plan

Under the selling plan options, select how often you want customers to be charged for the membership. In our example, we’ll set it to Monthly, as customers will be charged once a month for membership fees.

If you offer different membership frequencies (like monthly, yearly) create separate selling plans only for the frequency variants (e.g., Monthly, Yearly). You will need to price each frequency variant correctly in Shopify and then connect the correct variant to the corresponding selling plan in Subify.


Step 4: Enable Tier-Based Tagging with Shopify Flow

To apply different tags for each tier, you need to use Shopify Flow.

In Shopify Flow, create a new Workflow.

Flow 1: Tag Customers Based on Membership Tier

Trigger: Subscription Contract Created

This is Shopify's trigger which you can find here:

Condition: Look for the Variant Title following this process:

Add a variable > Subscription Contract > lines > variantTitle (Bronze)

Action: Tag the customer (e.g., Bronze Member).

Put a 5 second "Wait" after "Subscription contract created" trigger. Flow checks this status almost immediately and it may not be able to catch the status if there's no "Wait" int the process.

Repeat the process for other tiers (e.g., Silver Member, Gold Member). This ensures that each member is tagged according to their membership tier.


Flow 2: Remove Tags for Inactive or Unsubscribed Members

To remove tags when a customer unsubscribes, pauses, or becomes inactive:

Trigger: Subscription Contract Updated

Condition: Subscription Status Not equal to Active.

Action: Remove all membership tier tags (e.g., remove "Bronze Member", "Silver Member", etc.).

This ensures that customers lose access if they no longer have an active subscription.


Step 5: Set Up Locks with Sami

Now that Shopify Flow is tagging your active members, Sami will handle the actual restriction of access to specific areas of your store. Here’s how to set it up:

Install Sami from the Shopify App Store if you haven't already:

Go to the Sami dashboard and create a new Lock. You can create locks on products, collections, pages, or even your entire store.

In the Lock Conditions:

  1. Who can access the content: Selected customers & Can access

  2. Choose the condition as "is tagged with" -> "Bronze or Silver or Gold"

Once your lock is configured, save it. Sami will now control access based on whether a customer has a specific tag from Shopify Flow. You also have the option to Redirect customers to specific pages:

Now when a customer is not Logged in or is not subscribed to your membership, they will see the following Lock on the products you specified.


Step 6: Finalize and Launch

After configuring your membership product, enabling tags, and setting up Sami locks, it’s time to go live.

  • Review your setup: Make sure that the tags are correctly applied to members, and test the locks in Sami to confirm that only tagged customers have access.

  • Place a test order: Go through the checkout process as a customer to verify that the membership tags are correctly applied and that the lock functionality is working as expected.

Once everything is verified, you can launch your access membership.


Customization

After the membership plan is live, you can fully customize the widget to match your store’s branding and enhance the customer experience.

  • Go to the Widgets tab in Subify.

  • Customize the widget layout, color schemes, and labels to align with your store’s design.

By default, Subify places a "Subscription" label on the widget. For a membership, you might want to update this:

In the widget customization options, find the label and change it from "Subscription" to "Membership" to clearly communicate to customers that they are signing up for a service membership.

This will ensure the widget reflects the nature of the membership program clearly.


Troubleshooting

If the widget doesn’t display correctly or if you run into any issues, Subify has built-in resources to help:

  • Visit the Widget Troubleshooting Guide in the Subify dashboard for solutions to common issues.

  • If you need further assistance, you can reach out to our 24/7 customer care team using the chat icon located at the bottom right of your page.

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