A paywall in Heartbeat controls whether a member can access your community when their subscription lapses. This article explains how paywalls work, when to use them, and how to avoid common issues with this feature.

What a paywall does

When a member's subscription is canceled or expires, Heartbeat can respond in one of two ways depending on how you've configured the offer:

• Block Community Access – The member is locked out of the entire community. They see a "This is a paid community" screen with an option to resubscribe.
• Remove Offer Access – The member loses access to the group(s) tied to that Offer but stays in the community in a churned state.

You set this behavior per Offer. Edit your Offer and look for the On Cancellation option.

If I have multiple Offers and the member is paywalled in one of them, what happens?

Heartbeat's paywall logic is community-wide, not per-Offer. If any of a member's subscriptions triggers a paywall, they lose access to the entire community.

Example: A member subscribes to Offer A and Offer B. Offer A has Block Community Access enabled. The member cancels Offer A but keeps Offer B active. Despite having a valid subscription to Offer B, the member is fully locked out of the community because Offer A's paywall is active.

To resolve this, you can either:

• Update your existing Offers to not have any active paywalls
• Remove the member from the paywalled Offer so they can continue accessing your community

What happens when a member is paywalled?

When a member is paywalled:

• They no longer receive notifications or weekly digest emails
• They still appear in DMs, @-mentions, and member counts
• They can still be targeted by automated workflows

Channel-level access vs. paywalls

If what you actually want is to restrict specific channels or content to paid members, rather than locking people out of the community entirely, that's handled through Access Groups, not paywalls.

Channels with no Access Group assigned are open to all community members by default. To restrict a channel to a specific tier or Offer, assign an Access Group to it.

Open Access Groups → 

Frequently asked questions

A member says they can't access the community even though they're subscribed. What's happening?

Check whether they have another subscription – past or present – tied to an offer with Block Community Access enabled. If a previous subscription on that offer lapsed, it may be overriding their current active subscription. 

Does rejoining with the same email fix a paywall?

A new subscription on a different Offer doesn't clear the paywall triggered by an old canceled Offer. You will need to remove the member from the paywalled Offer so they can rejoin.

What's the difference between paywalling and removing a member?

A paywalled member is still in your community – they just can't access it. They remain in your member list, can be targeted by workflows, and can resubscribe. Removing a member takes them out of the community entirely.