Member areas: manual account creation / require approval

We're working to build a members area for wholesale partners. As far as I can tell, through the Squarespace Members signup process, anyone can sign up for an account and be granted immediate access. This creates a problem for us, as we need to ensure the information beyond login is restricted to wholesale partners only.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to either mark applications as pending / requiring approval? Or, is there a way to disable the signup option all together and manually create member accounts?

Is there a way to edit the signup form itself to require additional info from prospective members?

Also, are there unique identifiers (member ID's) available somewhere in the admin backend?

Hi there! 😀 Ward, from MemberSpace here.

Right now, you cannot do that using Member Areas. Access is granted as soon as they join.

Have you checked out MemberSpace? We're a third-party tool that offers complementary services to fit more complex membership site needs. With MemberSpace, you have manually pre-approve your members. Whenever anyone tries to join a Member Plan you offer, they will be shown a message you choose until you manually approve them.

Also, with MemberSpace, you have the chance of customizing your sign-up fields to anything you want. 
MemberSpace is developed for non-developers 😉 and super user-friendly. Please find more information about us here, and let me know if you have any questions 🙂

I'm following this - I already use memberspace elsewhere but was hoping to simplify my Member areas as I now have 2-3 distinctly separate member sections within the website with different content for wholesale/B2B content.

I desperately need these features in place so anyone cannot sign up and get instant access to the hidden content. 

You would think that an option for approvals by the administrator would have been a basic option to include. I don't understand why SquareSpace has not included this?

Im just here to add that i'm also in dire need of these features as a wholesale distributor based out of texas

I need this feature as well

Same here. Quite disappointed in limited features of Members area so far. They need to up their game to stay competitive.

I second that. I made the mistake of creating my member area before checking on this. Now I have a member area that anyone can become a member of. I need some control over who can and cannot become a member as my payment structure is done outside of the SQSP environment. I don't think directly linking to the member area via email all the time is an acceptable option. 

i'm wondering -- did Squarespace not beta test the Members Area before they released it in the wild? it's obviously lacking a number of basic features one would expect from a membership area. 

Same. We want to grow our new business platform on Members Area but giving up as there's no roadmap or signs of improvement. We want to see manual approval option, zapier triggers and a better community function. 

👋 Hi @LachyNicolson! Ward, from MemberSpace here. 

Has anyone raised this as a suggested feature with SquareSpace?

I've done the same thing - created a 'free' members area for a not-for-profit client but need to

• Collect additional information about the 'group' they belong to and their role
• Have manual approval in place based on answers to the above

MemberSpace looks like it might do the job but I can't ask the client to swallow another $25/month having just got them to sign up to members areas...

On 4/26/2021 at 11:30 PM, glyndc said:

You would think that an option for approvals by the administrator would have been a basic option to include. I don't understand why SquareSpace has not included this?

Agree with this 100% 👏

I agree.

This is the main reason for NOT using Members Area. Squarespace need to communicate a roadmap here, otherwise this product is not interesting.

The inability to approve memberships will make SquareSpace unsuitable for my website.

👋 Hi there @breathedotdesign, @AnnWFoxPoint!

Ward from MemberSpace here. Have you checked out our platform? Among other important features, with MemberSpace, you can individually approve each member before they get access to your content, or you could also manually invite them instead of having them sign up for a Member Plan on your website. 

In case you have any questions, please let me know, and I'll be happy to answer them! 

It honestly feels like Squarespace has abandoned their membership platform, and months after the release has not addressed the numerous issues and limitations.

Hey, Etosha from Candid Wholesale. My company has a Squarespace extension that I think could help you out! It's an easy way to have approved buyers only access your wholesale catalog without setting up two Squarespace stores.

Candid syncs your product info, lets you bulk edit both MSRP & wholesale prices, personalize your catalog and then share with buyers – the whole thing usually takes 10-15 minutes. Hopefully this helps you on your wholesale journey! Find us: squarespace.com/extensions/details/candid-wholesale and candidwholesale.com 

This is extremely disappointing. I have two clients that want to use Member Areas but it makes no sense if just anyone can make an account. 

One of them is a fitness/martial arts training academy that already has a large membership of students and they want to have a private area for different types of students with a dedicated training calendar, store, and information reference area. For example splitting up the students between yoga and spin.  One store would have yoga related items and the other would have spin/cycling related items.  These stores would only be accessible to their members which would allow them to sell specific items at different pricing from their public facing store without creating discount codes that can be shared around.

The other is an ecommerce brand that does both B2C and B2B sales and they want to use it to manage their dealers and give them a separate store to order from.  Dealer pricing on the member store and public pricing on the public store.  They also don't want to use insecure discount codes.

Right now I have these setup to use a password protected area which is not ideal because there's no account tracking and having one password for everyone is not very secure.  For the B2B company, they need to reset their password monthly and send out a dealer email to let people know.  It's very inconvenient.  Their other option would be to build a second website which they don't want to do.

A membership approval and/or an internal accounts option would solve all of this.

I'm trying to set up MemberSpace for a wholesale portal/shop, but it doesn't seem to integrate with the customer's Squarespace account where their shipping and billing information is stored, so they would have to maintain two sets of login credentials. Even if they set them to the same password, resetting one doesn't change the other. I don't think this is a viable solution either...

👋 Hi @allisonbarret. Ward from MemberSpace here. 

Just to clarify, I believe that what you're trying to say (based on previous conversations) is that MemberSpace doesn't integrate with Member Areas. 

👉 We are a completely separate membership system from Member Areas, the native Squarespace membership option.  Currently, it is not possible to connect with that or their commerce accounts. But you can use MemberSpace as an alternative to Member Areas, if you'd like to get more complex features, like member approval, manually inviting members, and more. 

Let us know if you have any questions! I'll be happy to help out 🙂

🙏 Thank you!

On 1/6/2021 at 7:31 PM, wanderwithme said:

As far as I can tell, through the Squarespace Members signup process, anyone can sign up for an account and be granted immediate access. This creates a problem for us, as we need to ensure the information beyond login is restricted to wholesale partners only.

This is one of a number of known issues with Member Areas. I've raised this internally. It cannot be resolved immediately, but I'm hopeful that this will be addressed in the near future.

Yes I discovered that anyone can sign in the hard way, creating a members area for survivors of assault to find that an abuser had become a member. 
So that was very quickly the end of that members area. 
In other words there is a safety issue fir other members if someone ‘off the street’ can simply join up.