If you choose not to run your payments through Heartbeat for your paid membership, you'll need to set up a couple of automations between your payment provider and Heartbeat community.
In this article, we'll cover 2 automations you can set up using Zapier and the Heartbeat API to get your external payments connected to Heartbeat.
Step 1: Set up your groups and content in Heartbeat
Create the groups that will control access to the paid content in your community. Learn more about how to create groups here.
Then create the content in your community that you'd like to limit access to with your group. You can use groups to limit access to courses, discussion channels, events, matchups, and more. Learn more about how to limit access to content here.
Once your groups are created and tied to your paid content, you're ready to create an invitation link for your group.
Step 2: Create an invitation link for your product.
Invitation links are how you invite people to join your community. Heartbeat invitation links allow you to control what groups a member joins the community with.
Create an invitation link with the group you created in step 1. This will be sent to people that pay for access so they are automatically added to the group upon joining the community. Learn more about creating invitation links here.
Step 3: Log into your Zapier account
Create or log into your Zapier account to get started. You can use another integrations platform if you'd like. The steps here will be very similar to those you'll take on platforms like Pabbly, SureTriggers or others.
Select the Create button to create a new Zap.
Step 4: Subscription creation trigger
The first automation you'll want to set up is for when someone starts a subscription for your product and makes their first payment. For the trigger, find your payment processor in their database. Then format your zap like below:
Trigger: Subscription created (this trigger name will vary depending on your payment processor. Look for a trigger that is most similar to when a customer starts a subscription for your product.)
Action: Invite users (select the invitation link you created in step 2. This will send the user an email invitation to the community. Accepting this invitation will automatically add them to the group you created in step 1, which gives access to all your paid content.)
Step 5: Subscription cancellation trigger
The second automation you'll need is for when someone stops paying and cancels their subscription. We'll want to remove them from the group in Heartbeat that gives access to the paid content in your community.
Trigger: Cancelled Subscription (select a trigger that will activate when a customer cancels their subscription or stops paying for your product.)
Action: Remove from group (select the group you created in step 1. This will remove them from the group, and therefore remove their access to any content in the community tied to the group.)
Repeat this 5 step process for each paid product you create in your community.
If you need help as you set up your automations, reach out to our support team at support@heartbeat.chat!
External Payments Limitation:
Heartbeat doesn't currently support managing upsells with external payment providers.
The workaround is listing the products (eg. courses or events) in a threaded post with a link to your external payments page. You can pin this post to the top of a channel or make the channel read-only so nobody else can post on that channel.
💡 Want to migrate payments to Heartbeat? We will migrate your payments from another Stripe account for free! Contact support at support@heartbeat.chat to get started.