[Shipped!] Enable team billing (seats, licenses, users, etc.) Completed

Post author
Duncan from Memberstack

[This post was migrated from our old community roadmap]

1) The problem → I want a company/administrator to be able to purchase a fixed or custom number of seats for their team.
2) Why is this important → It massively increases my LTV, retention, and sales volume.
3) What will happen if this goes unsolved → I have to manage these funky workarounds with coupons and free accounts. However, those are really imperfect since the sub-accounts don't lose access when the admin stops paying. I'll likely need to use another tool or build something custom.
4) Possible solutions → Create a team management UI for admin accounts. Admin should be able to select a plan with a dynamic or pre-set number of seats, and then invite/add members via this UI. Those sub-accounts should inherit permissions from the admin account's status.

Comments

40 comments

  • Comment author
    Duncan from Memberstack
    • Edited
    • Official comment

    We plan to implement this functionality into the product in the coming months. Right now, we need your feedback.

    Julian created a prototype + a demo video to show how the first version could work. 

    https://www.loom.com/share/8ca1143c714f444ba7f46bded4bf20c5

    Here's the link to test after watching: https://ms-team-accounts.webflow.io

    What do you think? Would this exact setup work for you business? What would need to change to be usable?

  • Comment author
    Duncan from Memberstack
    • Edited

    We would like to solve this use case in 2023. 

    Please upvote or comment to receive notifications. 

     
    13
  • Comment author
    Jonathan Fristedt

    Hello! Is this being worked on? The product I'm working on needs this function. :-)

    4
  • Comment author
    Duncan from Memberstack

    [This post was migrated from our community Slack]

    Hi Devs, I'm attempting to implement multi-seat purchasing & team billing of my 'Pro' plan. Ideally the user would buy say 10 seats and then assign them to various email addresses of their colleagues. From reading the last bullet of the Paid Plan section here https://docs.memberstack.com/hc/en-us/articles/7384849448091 it looks like this is not supported. So 2 questions:
    1. Is it roadmapped? I have a month or two to figure this out
    2. Has anyone else tried to build this with automation? I can kind of see a way through with a lot of custom code, the MS Admin API, and the Stripe API
    3
  • Comment author
    Duncan from Memberstack

    [This post was migrated from our community forum]

    1. Please build something that lets a person register multiple members at once - with a group discount.

    2. This is important to me because we just used Memberstack for our online conference (imported registrants from another registration system) and would like to use it as our registration system for our next conference. But we want to give people a cheaper group rate if they register 3 people or more. Right now, it seems like a person can only register themselves, but companies often have one person register multiple employees on their behalf. Out of about 900 registrations at our last conference, there were about 100 group registrations.

    3. My current workaround is … I really don’t have one. I could make a “group rate” membership plan that was cheaper or provide a coupon code but I’d have now way of controlling who used it and it won’t let multiple people register at once or detect if a person is part of a group. We could also have people call us to register them individually on their behalf at a cheaper rate but we have a lot of groups register and we don’t have the staff for this.

     

    3
  • Comment author
    Rok Bračko

    Is there a way to create a "Team plan" account that has multiple users. Which means that several users can log in to a specific website at the same time within one "Team plan" or account? As the owner of the "Team Plan" account, how do I manage access for individual users?

    Does each individual have to create their own account or can everyone use the same one (administrator account)?

    Can you please clarify this for me, because I have no idea how to handle this on my website, where I will be offering a "Paid Plan" (for individuals) and a "Team Paid Plan" (for a studio).

    Thanks in advance!

    Rok

    2
  • Comment author
    Growmate Ops

    Please guys, let's do it! It's a super important feature for a SAAS system, specially to do upsells. Probably, it will help the memberstack grow the revenue as well.

    2
  • Comment author
    Duncan from Memberstack

    Making progress! The front-end is currently in development. We're still a few weeks out from launching. 

    2
  • Comment author
    Duncan from Memberstack

    Hey Kevin! Thank you for this. When you say an "unlimited number of seats" do you imagine a company would would have the option to pay for an unlimited number of seats or that they could pay once for an unlimited number of seats?

    1
  • Comment author
    John Matias

    Expiring Free Memberships:

    I have situations where I often need to provide access to one or two additional persons at a company. For example, I have a paid "yearly member" and they ask for access for someone on their team. So I'll create the additional member manually and assign them a free membership. I then have to add notes in a few places (Stripe, my CRM, etc) as well as a calendar event so that I can check to see if the membership has been renewed and if not then I need to cancel and close the free member associated with the paid member. If I could assign the person to a free membership that expires automatically then at least I don't have to worry about that piece of the puzzle.

    1
  • Comment author
    Yousef Mardini
    • Edited

    I've built something similar to this functionality in Memberstack but it required using their webhooks and a separate API to manage adding/removing persons. Essentially, you add a free-plan with the permissions of normal paying members. You can gatekeep this plan through Memberstack's webhook, removing anyone that attempts to add themselves without the permission of an admin. Not too difficult but definitely would require some coding.

    1
  • Comment author
    Ollie Law

    We have three seperate clients interested in this feature now. To me, for Memberstack to be a tool that's used in a B2B / corporate environment, this feature is critical. Otherwise, it's important to share that Memberstack is B2C (or individual memberships) focused only. 

    Whilst this no doubt comes with more work for Memberstack, it allows them to add a new pricing structure to their fees ('Business' dashboards that specifically allows this and similar functionality).

    1
  • Comment author
    Duncan from Memberstack
    • Edited

    We're entering the research phase for this feature. 🎉

    There are a BUNCH of things that "team accounts" could mean, so any additional context/inspiration you can provide will help us move more quickly.

    Thanks all! Stay tuned for more updates. 

    1
  • Comment author
    Dean Fankhauser

    We really want this at PromptPal. We see companies signing up and their respective teams using one account. Ideally we'd give the option for companies to create a team account seat allocation. 

    We hope this will be available soon, as we're looking to implement this in about 4 weeks.

    1
  • Comment author
    Duncan from Memberstack
    • Edited

    Dean Fankhauser I don't have an ETA at this time. It's possible this feature will go into development at the end of the quarter or early next quarter. So it's very unlikely that we can start and finish this feature in the next 4 weeks considering the rest of our roadmap 😞 

    1
  • Comment author
    Sydney Hawkins

    I'm trying to do something like this—but, the use case is studio management.

    2+ accounts (e.g., Parent1, Parent2, Child1, Child2) linked with a single ID. Memberstack would recognize them as a family. The parents are admins with permissions. The children just have profiles, really. I'm determined to kick Jackra**it's archaic software to the curb.

    1
  • Comment author
    Jayess
    "Ah, that’s a shame - I suppose the workaround in the meantime would be to either limit companies to logging in with one email address for now or manage sub-users with a custom API behind the scenes?
     
    Happy to jump on a discovery call if that would be useful for your team to get more information about my use case, if it’s going into development?
     
    In fact, just thinking this through, can you see any issues with the below as an approach? The only difference between a company’s plan is the size of company - they all get the same features/content. There won’t be a concept of “free” users. (At least not for this user type.) 
     
    1. Primary user signs up and purchases their plan. (e.g. Paid - LargeCo). They get a custom field to identify their company on creation. They get Stripe invoices, receipts, etc. 
    2. They can add/remove users via a user management screen. This talks to a custom API which uses the Memberstack REST API. 
    3. Each user they add is assigned a free plan. (Inherited Free - LargeCo). They get the same custom field added. 
     
    The only issue I could see is:
     
    1) how to go about changing an organisation’s billing user if the primary user leaves?
    2) I’d need to remove all plans when they expire (which looks like it’s possible with the REST API assuming I can get a callback from Stripe).
     
    I’m expecting to need some sort of API anyway, so this isn’t the end of the world for me - not as neat as a MemberStack solution but should get us through I think? " - James
     
    1
  • Comment author
    Edward Atkinson

    This prototype is SUPER exciting!

    Here is the only thing I see missing....any one of these would help with larger groups:

    - sign-up the group via a unique URL

    - sign-up the group via a unique code

    - send out bulk invitations (e.g. admin can drop in 200 email addresses into a field, and then invitations are sent out in bulk)

    My use case is groups of 0-30, 31-100, and 101-150.

    For the larger groups, the admin inputting in each individual email address is going to become quite tedious. How about if the admin signs up the group, they can then share a unique URL or a unique code for input with the group, and then the group can do the sign-up on their own?

    Or bulk email invitations?

    Please share a timeline for this release! Thank you for your work on it.

    1
  • Comment author
    Matt Lombardi

    This would be an absolute game changer for our ability to scale with Memberstack!! 

    1
  • Comment author
    Edward Atkinson
    • Edited

    Hi Duncan from Memberstack , I provide teaching and educational services to groups/cohorts in institutions, community, high schools, and universities. So I have entire classes, or entire years of a class, or multiple sections of different classes, all signing up at the same time for annual memberships.

    So I frequently have groups of 50-60, up to about 150, but in the near-ish future may be getting into even larger groups (multiple hundreds) that sign up as one giant cohort.

    Are there limits on the # of members?

    1
  • Comment author
    Ben Satchwell

    How are you tracking with this functionality? It's key for what we need as we'll only be offering corporate/team memberships, not individuals.

    1
  • Comment author
    Luka Karaula
    • Edited

    The sooner this feature gets implemented the better. Memberstack has a good reputation and this feature may be a deciding factor for some.

    The pricing option that would universally work best is to 1. choose number of seats/team members, 2. set price per seat/team member. Outseta has it figured out ;)

    and then 3. (Optional) set tiers with discounts. Up to 10 members full price. 10-25 members 10% lower price. 25-50 members 20% lower. Etc.

    Duncan from Memberstack how close are you guys to releasing team pricing?

    1
  • Comment author
    Kevin Dutra

    I think either is valid. From my personal perspective I won't be charging for seats but I do want an admin on the customer side to have the ability to manage access for their team.
    Potentially the longer term ask would be around the ability to define user roles and access controls for those users, instead of inheriting permissions from the admin account as mentioned in the initial post.

    0
  • Comment author
    John Matias

    I have situations where I often need to provide access to one or two additional persons at a company. For example, I have a paid "yearly member" and they ask for access for someone on their team. So I'll create the additional member manually and assign them a free membership. I then have to add notes in a few places (Stripe, my CRM, etc) as well as a calendar event so that I can check to see if the membership has been renewed and if not then I need to cancel and close the free member associated with the paid member. If I could assign the person to a free membership that expires automatically then at least I don't have to worry about that piece of the puzzle.

    0
  • Comment author
    Kevin Dutra

    I think either is valid. From my personal perspective I won't be charging for seats but I do want an admin on the customer side to have the ability to manage access for their team.
    Potentially the longer term ask would be around the ability to define user roles and access controls for those users, instead of inheriting permissions from the admin account as mentioned in the initial post.

    0
  • Comment author
    Kevin Dutra

    Wanted to voice my support for this item. It would enable me to sell into a large organization and expand over time.
    I'd also note that having an unlimited number of seats makes sense as an option.

    0
  • Comment author
    Duncan Hamra

    Hey Kevin! Thank you for this. When you say an "unlimited number of seats" do you imagine a company would would have the option to pay for an unlimited number of seats or that they could pay once for an unlimited number of seats?

    0
  • Comment author
    Duncan Hamra

    https://discourse.webflow.com/t/subscription-option-that-allows-multi-seat-management/206696/3

    0
  • Comment author
    Zack Mazzoncini

    We need this functionality as well. Any updates on when it will be available or work arounds?

    0
  • Comment author
    Permanently deleted user

    From @marc-lee-pack-1:
    In the memberstack core product, I would really like to see support for corporate accounts whereby a customer (membership type) can have an 'admin' who can self manage: billing, member provisioning (adds/removes).
    In lieu of that capability, we’re building a very basic companion web app that will allow corporate customers to self manage their members outside of members tack and facilitate the flow of additional 3rd party data to members.

    0

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