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Memberships and Communities — StudioM Platform Guide

Who this guide is for: Anyone who offers online courses, membership sites, or wants to build a community around their brand. Time to read: Approximately 12 minutes

What Are Memberships and Communities?

The Memberships feature lets you create and sell online courses and membership sites. Your students log in to a branded portal, access their content, track their progress, and receive certificates on completion.

The Communities feature lets you build a private online community for your clients, students, or audience — a space where members can post, comment, react, attend events, and engage with each other and with you.

The two features work together: a student who buys your course can also be invited into your community, creating a complete learning and engagement experience.

How to Get There

Navigate to: Memberships (left sidebar)

From there, choose: - Courses — build and manage your course content and student enrolments - Communities — create and manage your community groups

Need StudioM Support for This? Initial setup of your membership site URL and domain connection is handled by StudioM. Contact us when you're ready to launch your first course or community.

Memberships and Courses

How Courses Are Structured

Courses follow a simple hierarchy:

Course → Category (Module) → Lesson

  • Course — the top-level container (e.g., "Social Media Marketing Masterclass")
  • Category — a module or section within the course (e.g., "Week 1: Getting Started")
  • Lesson — an individual content piece within a category (e.g., "Lesson 1: Setting Up Your Profiles")

Quizzes and assignments can be added at the lesson or category level.

Creating a Course

  1. Go to Memberships → Courses → Products
  2. Click + Create Product
  3. Choose a course format:
  4. Sprint Course — short, focused content
  5. Marathon Course — long-form, multi-week content
  6. Membership — ongoing content delivery
  7. Custom — build your own structure
  8. Give your course a name and click Create Product
  9. Build your content structure by adding categories and lessons

Building Course Content

Adding a Category (Module): Click + Add Category → name it (e.g., "Module 1: Foundations")

Adding a Lesson: Click + Add Lesson within a category → add your content

Lesson Types:

Type What It Is
Video Upload a video file (up to 4GB) or embed from YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia
Text Written content using a full rich text editor
Audio Audio files for podcast-style or audio-only lessons
Quiz Interactive assessment with multiple choice or open-ended questions
Assignment Students upload work for your review and feedback

Drip Content (Releasing Lessons Over Time)

Instead of giving students access to everything at once, you can drip content — releasing lessons on a schedule:

  • Set a lesson to unlock X days after enrolment
  • Students see locked lessons but can't access them until the scheduled date
  • Creates a structured learning path and prevents students from rushing through

To configure drip settings: open a lesson → find the Drip settings → set the unlock schedule.

Quizzes and Assessments

Add quizzes to test student understanding:

  1. Click + Add Content next to a category
  2. Select Add Quiz
  3. Add a title and set whether a passing grade is required (e.g., 80%)
  4. Write questions
  5. Configure pass/fail messages shown to students

Quiz options: - Optional pass/fail grading with a percentage threshold - Students can retake quizzes - If a passing grade is required, students see their score but not the correct answers (to prevent gaming retakes)

Pricing Your Course — Offers

An Offer is the priced, purchasable version of your course. One offer can include multiple courses.

Creating an Offer

  1. Go to Memberships → Courses → Offers
  2. Click + Create Offer
  3. Name the offer and write a description
  4. Assign your course(s) to the offer
  5. Set the price:
Price Type How It Works
Free Students enrol at no cost; access is granted immediately
One-Time Students pay once and keep access permanently
Subscription Students pay monthly or annually; access continues while their subscription is active
  1. Toggle the offer status from Draft to Published
  2. Save

Need StudioM Support for This? Connecting your offer to a checkout/payment page requires your payment gateway to be set up. Contact StudioM Support if this isn't yet configured.

Enrolling Students

Automatic Enrolment via Workflow

The most scalable approach — when a contact pays for your course (or fills in a form, or is tagged), a workflow automatically grants them access:

  1. Go to Automation → Workflows
  2. Add a trigger (e.g., "Payment Received" or "Tag Added")
  3. Add the action: Course Grant Offer
  4. Select the offer to grant
  5. The student automatically receives a welcome email with their login link

Manual Enrolment

  1. Open the student's contact record in Contacts
  2. Find the Memberships section
  3. Grant access to a specific offer

When access is granted, the student receives an email with a magic link — a one-click login that takes them straight into the course without needing to set up a password first.

Tracking Student Progress

  1. Go to Memberships → Courses → Analytics
  2. See all enrolled students with:
  3. Last login date
  4. Course progress percentage
  5. Individual lesson completion status
  6. Click any student to see their detailed progress
  7. You can manually mark lessons as complete if needed

Use this data to identify students who are struggling (not logging in, stuck early in the course) and reach out proactively.

Completion Certificates

Students can receive a certificate when they complete a course:

  • Configure the certificate design in the course/offer settings
  • Certificates are issued automatically at 100% completion
  • Students can download their certificate from their portal

Certificates are a great incentive for completion and add perceived value to your course.

Customising Your Course Site

Your membership site can be branded to match your business:

  • Logo — add your logo to the header
  • Colours — primary and secondary colours for buttons, progress bars, and headings
  • Fonts — typography to match your brand
  • Themes — select and apply a visual theme for the overall look

Go to Memberships → Courses → Products → open your product → click Customise to access theme settings.

Communities

What Is a Community?

A Community is a private online group where your members can: - Post updates and discussions - Comment, like, and react to posts - Attend virtual events - Earn points and badges (gamification) - Connect with you and with each other

Communities can be free or paid, public or private.

Creating a Community Group

  1. Go to Memberships → Communities
  2. Click + Create Group
  3. Set up:
  4. Group Name — what members will see
  5. Description — explain what the community is for
  6. Privacy — Private (invite/approval required) or Public (anyone can request to join)
  7. Customise the appearance (cover image, colours)
  8. Create your first channels — topic areas within the community (like channels in Slack)

Need StudioM Support for This? The domain/URL for your community is configured by StudioM. Contact us when setting up a new community.

Community Channels

Channels organise conversations within a community by topic. You decide the channel structure:

Example channels for a business coaching community: - 📢 Announcements - 💬 General Discussion - ❓ Questions and Answers - 🎉 Wins and Celebrations - 📚 Resources

Create channels when setting up your community or add them any time from the community settings.

Member Roles

Community members can be assigned different roles with different permissions:

Role What They Can Do
Owner Full control — manage all settings, members, and content
Admin Manage members and content; cannot delete the group
Moderator Review and approve posts; manage member behaviour
Contributor Post, comment, and react — standard member

Inviting and Managing Members

Inviting Members

  • Send invitation links via email or message
  • Share the community URL for members to request access (for private groups, you approve their request)
  • Use a workflow to automatically add contacts to the community when they purchase a course or are tagged

Approval Questions

For private groups, you can set questions that applicants must answer before you approve their membership — helpful for filtering who joins.

Removing Members

Go to Memberships → Communities → [Your Group] → Members → find the member → remove them.

Community Content

Posts

Members can post text, images, videos, and links. As the owner or admin, you can: - Pin important posts to the top - Feature posts to highlight them - Delete posts that violate community rules

Events

Create virtual events within your community: - Schedule a date and time - Add a description and optional link (e.g., Zoom link) - Members can RSVP - Event appears in the community calendar

Announcements

Use the Announcements channel (or any channel you designate) for official communications to all members.

Gamification

Encourage member engagement with a points and badges system:

  • Members earn points for posting, commenting, reacting, and completing lessons
  • Points contribute to a leaderboard — members can see how they rank
  • Award badges for milestones (e.g., "First Post", "Course Completer", "Top Contributor")

Go to Memberships → Communities → [Your Group] → Settings → Gamification to configure points and badges.

Linking Courses and Communities

Connect a course to a community so that students who complete the course (or enrol in it) are automatically invited to the community:

  1. Open your course product settings
  2. Find the Community Integration option
  3. Select the community group to link

This creates a seamless experience: buy the course → get access to the content → join the community of fellow students.

Community Notifications

Members receive notifications when there is new activity — new posts, replies to their comments, upcoming events, and more.

Control what notifications your community sends from: Communities → [Your Group] → Settings → Notifications

Troubleshooting

Issue What to Check
Student can't access course Check that their contact record shows the offer is granted; ensure they've clicked the magic link email
Magic link not working Check it hasn't expired; generate a fresh link from the contact record
Drip content not unlocking Check the drip settings and the student's enrolment date
Student can't log in Check they've set up their password; resend the welcome email from their contact record
Quiz not showing correct answers If a passing grade is required, correct answers are hidden by design to prevent gaming
Community member can't join Check the group privacy settings and whether their request needs approval
Can't post in a channel Check the member's role and channel permissions

Best Practices

  • Launch with at least 3 modules ready — students feel more confident when they can see the full structure from day one
  • Use drip content strategically — spreading content over time increases engagement and reduces the overwhelm that leads to dropouts
  • Send welcome emails — set up a workflow to automatically send a warm welcome when a student enrolls
  • Engage in your community regularly — a community where the owner is active grows faster; even brief daily check-ins make a difference
  • Pin your most important post — pin a "Start Here" or welcome post so new members always see it first
  • Celebrate completions — when a student finishes your course, reach out or post in the community to acknowledge it

Common Questions

Q: Can students access courses on their phone? Yes — the membership portal is mobile-friendly. Students can log in via their browser on any device. There is no separate app to download.

Q: Can I offer a free trial of my course before charging? Yes — set up a subscription offer with a trial period. Students get free access for the trial duration, then billing begins automatically.

Q: Can I sell access to multiple courses as one package? Yes — create an offer and assign multiple courses to it. The student purchases once and gets access to all the included courses.

Q: What happens to a student's access if their subscription is cancelled? Access can be automatically revoked when the subscription is cancelled. Configure this in your offer settings or set up a workflow that removes access when a subscription cancellation is detected.

Q: Is my community separate from my course, or do they share a login? Both use the same student portal login, so students only need one set of credentials to access both their course content and community.

Need Help?

Contact StudioM Support any time.

  • Email: support@makoa.us
  • Live Chat: Available inside the platform

Related guides: Payments and Invoicing · Workflows (Automations) · Client Portal