How to set up member gating and approval workflows in Webflow with Memberstack while managing multiple email domains?

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  A J · January 18, 2026 19:08

  Hey Mathew Martini,

  1. That's right, that gives you full control to view the webflow form submission and then create the members in Memberstack if you want to approve them.
     🖋️ Side note - If you want to automate this process, you can do so, for example have the Make workflow to get form submission (filter the emails / have any logic via which you want to approve members) and create member in Memberstack via the same workflow without assigning them any password and the members will still receive the Welcome email that you have setup via Memberstack email settings.
     🖋️You can enable Passwordless login for users if that fits for your project as well, so that you don't have to set a password and then send them the credentials.
     🖋️Alternatively you could direct the users to a forgot password page which can act as a page where the approved users set their password for the first time.
     🖋️ You can explore which approach suits your project the best.
  2. No such thing as dumb question 💯
     🖋️ To gate any page, you don't have to have it on a subdomain, any page / folder on the root domain can be gated. So, for example, you can gate access to a page like ground-crew.com/sign-up just via normal gated content settings.
     🖋️ In case you want to offer Social authentication / enable custom SSO and want to enable custom domain, only then you would want to set some aspects related to DNS settings and auth providers settings accordingly but this is not a required / related thing just to gate pages like ground-crew.com/[page]
     🖋️ As far as I know, you should be able to set up the custom email address to your preferred one in Memberstack without any issues.

  Hope this gives you some idea.

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  Mathew Martini OP · January 18, 2026 19:12

  Thanks for the response A J! That's helpful. To be clear, we would like to use social authentication for sure.

  Regarding the member approval options, let me know if I am thinking about this correctly:

  • If I actually go with the first option for approval, there is no easy way (within Memberstack at least) to send people an email so they can be directed to the logged in experience. I would have to set up some sort of external automation, or manually email members (via another email tool) letting them know they are "accepted" with a link to login/get to the gated part of the site, correct?
  • For the second option (standard Webflow form), we could do the following options for account creation:
    ✒️Manually enter them in the dashboard, and set up the welcome email so there is a link to forgot password page so they can set up a password & login.
    ✒️ Manually enter them in the dashboard, and set up the welcome email to have a link to a passwordless login page.
             ✏️ Does this mean every time someone logs in they need to get a code via email?
    ✒️ Manually enter them in the dashboard, and then contact them some other way (outside of Memberstack) providing their login credentials.
    ✒️ Contact them some other way (outside of Memberstack) with a secret link to a standard sign up page, where they can sign up with social auth or with email + password.

  Let me know if I am thinking about that correctly, and if you have any ideas for how we could automate letting members know they have been accepted with the first option (switching their plan after sign up) that would be great!

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  A J · January 18, 2026 19:21

  Welcome Mathew Martini,

  👉 With the first approach, you might want to disable the 'Welcome emails' in Memberstack dashboard so that they don't get the email when they sign up and are waiting for approval (i.e. specific plan to be assigned to them by your team).

  • Yes, there is not an in-built way to trigger emails in this case, but you can setup an automation via Make / Zapier to listen to plan added event in Memberstack, which will trigger every time a plan is added to any member, then you can filter out which plan members should receive the approval email with the log in link and setup an email module to automate this process.

  👉 Yes, with the second approach:

  • That's right.
  • Yes
    ✏️ Yes, a one-time code will be sent to their email every time they login.
    ✏️ Alternatively, you could also have them login via passwordless the first time and give them an option to set a password via Profile forms later if your users would prefer that.
  • Yes, you could do that, I had suggested the other approaches just to save you some time in case you will have to create loads of members and share the unique credentials for them. But if this fits for your project, you can take this approach as well
  • With this one, if you want visitors to access the standard sign up page, I am not sure you can gate this URL since non-members will have to get access to this page in order to signup, so not sure if that can be a secret link as such, since if anyone does know your site and browses / tries to access signup pages, they could.

  Hope this gives you some idea.

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  Mathew Martini OP · January 18, 2026 19:28

  Thanks for the clarification A J. In case you are curious, this is the solution I think we'll move forward with after some more thought, that provides the least additional steps / automations:

  1. Collect sign ups via Beehiiv (already in place)
  2. Approve them in Beehiiv (they have a built in approval feature)
  3. Once approved Beehiiv will send an automated welcome email with a secret link to the sign up page, where they then create an account via google, facebook, or email and are instantly granted access to the site.

  • 📀 I got the "secret link" phrase from the help center article (Step 2 → Once you decide to approve a member, you can send them a link to a secret sign-up form). I realize this is not totally secure, but this is truthfully expected to be a pretty low-volume site, and it's really not the end of the world if some random people sign up (we can always manually watch out for random members by setting up a notification for all new account creations to glance at manually, as we'll know most of the community on a first name basis).

  📀 Note: If I set the page to not be indexed, I think that should prevent most non-technical people from stumbling across a hidden login page that can't be accessed without a direct URL?
  📀 OR we could password protect the sign up page for extra security (provide password & link in welcome email), and change the password every so-often.Again appreciate your help, I'll surely be back here with more questions as I dive in!

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  A J · January 18, 2026 20:50

  awesome flow 🥳

  And agreed with the sign up page approaches you share, if it isn't a serious requirement to keep it hidden, any of the approach should work, especially since its gonna be a low-volume site in terms of members.

  Welcome 😇

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  Mathew Martini OP · January 18, 2026 20:51

  Hi A J, I'm already back with another question!

  With my scenario described above, I realized one thing I overlooked is having a login button on the landing page, so once members create an account via the "secret" link, if they just type in the root domain next time they still have a way to navigate to the logged in site.

  My question is, would that allow for anyone to sign up? Or can you have a log in screen that DOES NOT allow for sign up as well?

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  A J · January 18, 2026 20:53

  Hey Mathew Martini,

  Your login page does not need to have any sign-up links or buttons in case they have those.

  And in case you mean the social auth buttons, if you have not specifically enabled signup to be enabled via a login social auth form, it won't act as a sign up form (as mentioned in the screenshot below).

  Let me know if you mean something else.

  

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  Mathew Martini OP · January 18, 2026 20:54

  Yep, this is exactly what I was wondering. Thanks for the clarification!

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