A private members club replaced a PDF waiting list and email newsletter with a full membership platform — events, access tiers, and community in one place.
Duration
10 weeks
Year
2024
Services
Membership tiers
3
Build duration
10 weeks
Platform type
Private / Gated
Integration
Stripe + Email
The challenge
The client operated a private members club for creative professionals in London. Membership was managed through a combination of email threads, a spreadsheet, and a PDF waiting list that prospective members were asked to fill out and return. Event invitations went out via Mailchimp. Members had no way to see upcoming events, manage their own membership details, or connect with other members without going through the club's small staff team — which was consuming significant administrative time.
The club had three membership tiers with meaningfully different access levels: a standard tier with access to regular events, a senior tier with access to closed dinners and portfolio reviews, and a founding member tier with permanent discounted rates and guest invitation rights. Managing these distinctions across a spreadsheet and email system meant that access errors — wrong tier members receiving invitations to restricted events, or vice versa — were a recurring operational problem.
The solution
We built a private web application that replaced the entire member management stack. The application handled the full member journey: waiting list application and review, membership approval and onboarding, subscription management via Stripe, event browsing and RSVP, and a member directory with opt-in profiles.
Access control was built around the three membership tiers using role-based permissions. Each event in the system was assigned a minimum tier requirement. Members could only see and RSVP to events their tier unlocked — not see a locked event and be told they couldn't attend, but genuinely not see it at all until their tier qualified. Founding members had a separate invitation flow allowing them to nominate guests for specific events, with the club's team receiving approval requests before guest access was granted.
The member directory allowed members to create optional profiles with their discipline, current projects, and contact preference — email or introduction only. The directory was only visible to logged-in members at the correct tier, and was not indexed by search engines. Staff had a separate admin interface for approving waiting list applications, manually adjusting tier status, and managing the event calendar.
Key features
Three membership tiers with distinct event access permissions. Event visibility is filtered at the data layer — restricted events are not returned in API responses for lower-tier members, not just hidden in the UI.
Prospective members complete a structured application form. Applications enter a review queue visible to staff. Approved applicants receive an onboarding email with payment link. Declined applicants receive a courteous holding response.
Members manage their own billing through a Stripe Customer Portal integration. Annual and monthly billing options with automatic renewal. Tier upgrades trigger immediate access changes. Cancellations preserve access until the paid period ends.
Founding members can nominate guests for specific events through the platform. Nominations trigger a staff approval workflow. Approved guests receive a single-use event access link that expires after the event date.
Opt-in member profiles with discipline, current work focus, and contact preference. Fully gated to logged-in members. Not crawlable by search engines. Excludes personal contact details — introductions only.
Outcome
Administrative time spent on membership management dropped substantially in the first month after launch, with the staff team citing the elimination of email-based RSVP management as the most significant time saving. Member feedback on the waiting list process improved markedly — applicants previously had no visibility of where they were in the process, which generated a high volume of chasing emails. The platform's application status tracking resolved this without adding staff workload. Event RSVP rates increased, which the client attributed to members being able to browse and commit to events at any time rather than responding to a Mailchimp email within a narrow window.
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