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Create your Telegram bot with BotFather

Your MemberBot storefront runs on your own Telegram bot — created for free, in Telegram, in about a minute. It stays under your name and username, so members only ever see your brand.

STEP BY STEP

BotFather hands you the token

OPTIONAL POLISH

• /setuserpic — give your bot a profile photo.
• /setdescription and /setabouttext — the text people see before pressing Start.

Connect your bot to MemberBot

Got your BotFather token? Connecting it is one paste. MemberBot verifies it with Telegram, stores it securely, and registers your bot live in the same webhook process — no server restart, no waiting, and no downtime for anyone already chatting with it.

Bots → paste your token

STEP BY STEP

CONFIRM IT WORKS

Open your bot in Telegram and press Start (or send /start). It should greet you right away:

Add your bot to your channel or group

To add paying members and remove expired ones, your bot must be an administrator of every channel or group a plan unlocks. Without admin rights it simply can't manage anyone.

GIVE THE BOT ADMIN RIGHTS

LINK THE CHAT TO A PLAN

Create your first plan

A plan is a membership you sell: a price, a length of access, and the channels it unlocks. Members buy it and get added automatically.

Plans → New plan

FILL IN THE FIELDS

Offer a few durations of the same tier so members can pick:

Go-live checklist

Four things must be true before your bot can take real money: a connected bot, the bot as admin in your chats, at least one plan, and one payment rail (or access codes). Run this checklist before you share your link.

BEFORE YOU SHARE THE LINK

When a test sale lands and the buyer is auto-added, you'll get a ping in Telegram:

Recurring vs one-time plans (and how renewals stack)

Two kinds of plans

Every plan has a duration in days (30 days, 365 days, or blank for lifetime). Whether that plan renews on its own depends entirely on how the subscriber pays.

Card rails — Stripe, Paystack, Flutterwave, Razorpay, PayPal and Mercado Pago — auto-renew. The plan's duration becomes the billing interval: a 30-day plan bills monthly, a 365-day plan bills yearly, forever until the subscriber cancels. Telegram Stars monthly plans are native auto-renewing Star subscriptions.

M-Pesa and crypto are one-time. There's no card on file to charge again, so access simply runs out when the duration ends. The subscriber just buys again to continue.

Buying again stacks time

If a subscriber buys the same plan again before it expires, the new duration is added on top of the remaining time — no days are ever lost. Renew a monthly plan with 5 days left and they now have 35.

Renewal reminders go to one-time members only. The bot DMs a reminder ~3 days before expiry (configurable in Settings) to members who must renew manually — one-time rails (M-Pesa, crypto) and anyone who cancelled an auto-renewing sub. Members on an active card/PayPal/Stars subscription aren't nudged, because they renew automatically (a failed auto-charge is handled by Payment Recovery instead).

Set prices, durations & lifetime access

The three fields that define a plan

A plan is mostly a name, a price, and a duration in days. Fill those in and the plan is ready to sell.

Duration = access length

30 = one month of access. 365 = a year. Leave the field blank or 0 and the plan is lifetime — it never expires and the member is never auto-removed.

Plans → a lifetime plan (duration left blank)

One price, every currency

You store the price once in your default currency. At checkout the platform converts it to whatever the chosen provider needs using live FX rates — so a subscriber paying in a different currency, or via a rail that only supports certain currencies, always pays the right amount.

Free trials & coupons

What "free trial" means here

There are two very different things people call trials, so let's be precise.

1. Your own MemberBot trial. The platform gives you — the creator — a 3-day Starter trial to try MemberBot's billing before you pay us. This is about your subscription to MemberBot, not something your subscribers get.

Coupons — discount codes for your subscribers

2. Coupon codes. Create discount codes in Sales → Coupons: choose a percent or fixed-amount discount, optionally scope it to a single plan, and set a usage limit and expiry. Flip a code on or off any time. Subscribers enter the code in your Mini App storefront — a coupon box on the price card shows the discounted total live before they pay, and it works across every payment rail. Coupons are a Starter+ feature, and are redeemed in the Mini App (there's no bot command for them).

3. Loyalty discounts (automatic). Separately, your loyalty / rewards tiers give a standing checkout discount to subscribers who earn enough points — no code needed. Use coupons for promos you hand out, and loyalty for rewarding regulars.

Want to comp a specific person?

For one-off free access — a partner, a refund, a giveaway winner — don't build a coupon. Generate an access code instead and they redeem it in the bot with /redeem. It's instant and needs no payment.

Organize plans with categories (and route to bots)

Categories keep your storefront tidy

Every plan belongs to a category. Categories group related plans together — Fitness, Trading Signals, Newsletter — so subscribers see a clean, organized menu instead of one long list.

Two categories, each routed to a different bot

Categories route to bots

If you run more than one bot, each category maps to exactly one bot. That mapping decides who sees what: a subscriber chatting with Bot A only sees and pays for Bot A's categories. Bot B's plans never show up there.

This is how one MemberBot account cleanly powers several separate products — each with its own bot, its own audience, and its own set of plans — without them bleeding into each other.

Access codes & magic links

Give access without a payment

Access codes are one-time codes you generate in the dashboard. A subscriber redeems one in your bot with /redeem <code> and the linked plan activates instantly — no payment required. Perfect for comps, partners, giveaways, and refunds.

Each code is single-use and tied to a specific plan, so the redeemer gets exactly that plan's duration and channels — the same automation as a paid buyer.

Magic join links

Separately, MemberBot gives you shareable deep-links to your bot (t.me/yourbot). Drop one in a post, bio, or email and anyone who taps it lands straight in your bot, ready to browse plans and buy. Unlike access codes, a join link doesn't grant free access — it just opens the storefront.

How members are added and removed automatically

The whole lifecycle runs itself

Once a plan is set up, you never touch Telegram's member list by hand. The bot handles the entire join-to-removal cycle for you.

Step by step

Renewing re-grants access

If a member renews (or stacks another purchase), the bot re-grants access and cancels the removal — they never notice a gap. Lifetime plans skip expiry entirely: no reminder, no removal, ever.

Payments overview — how it works

How payments work on MemberBot

MemberBot never touches your money. You bring your own payment provider keys, and subscribers pay you directly. We take no cut — you keep 100% of every sale (minus whatever your provider charges in its own fees).

Every payment follows the same four-step path, no matter which rail you use:

Subscriber taps a plan → picks a rail → pays → provider confirms via webhook → bot grants access

A subscriber taps a plan in your bot or Mini App storefront, chooses a payment rail, and pays. The provider confirms the charge by calling your per-tenant webhook URL. Once confirmed, the bot mints a single-use invite link so exactly that person joins your channel or group.

The rails, and which renew automatically

Card rails auto-renew subscriptions; Stars, M-Pesa and crypto are one-time charges the subscriber repeats to renew. After you paste a rail's keys, use the Test connection button on its setup page to confirm they work before going live.

Where to paste keys and find your webhook URL

One place for every provider: Dashboard → Payments

All payment setup lives in Dashboard → Payments. Each provider is its own card. Open a card, paste the keys that provider gave you, and hit Save.

Your keys are safe

Every key is encrypted at rest. After you save, the card shows only a partially masked value (like sk_live_••••••••) — never the full secret again. A card that isn't set up yet shows a Not set up badge.

Finding your webhook URL

Webhook-based rails (Stripe, PayPal, Paystack, Flutterwave, Razorpay, Mercado Pago) each show a unique per-tenant URL right on the card:

It looks like https://yourworkspace.memberbot.app/webhooks/stripe/123. Copy it and paste it into that provider's webhook settings so the provider can tell MemberBot when a payment succeeds.

Set up Stripe

Stripe — recurring card subscriptions, worldwide

Stripe is the best all-rounder: recurring card subscriptions in many currencies, available in most countries. You'll need two values from your Stripe dashboard — your Secret key and a Webhook signing secret.

Payments → Stripe

Set up PayPal

PayPal — recurring subscriptions, worldwide

PayPal offers recurring subscriptions and works globally. You'll need two values from a LIVE PayPal REST app: your Client ID and Secret.

Payments → PayPal

Set up Paystack

Paystack — cards & bank for African markets

Paystack is a strong choice across Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, and more), supporting cards and bank payments with recurring billing via plans. You need one value: your Secret key.

Payments → Paystack

Set up Flutterwave

Flutterwave — cards, bank & mobile money, pan-African

Flutterwave covers a wide swath of Africa with cards, bank transfers, and mobile money, plus recurring payment plans. You'll enter two values: your Secret key and a Secret hash (used to verify incoming webhooks).

Payments → Flutterwave

Set up Razorpay

Razorpay — cards, UPI & netbanking for India

Razorpay is the go-to for India, supporting cards, UPI, and netbanking with recurring subscriptions. You'll need two values: your Key ID and Key secret.

Payments → Razorpay

Set up Mercado Pago

Mercado Pago — cards & wallet for Latin America

Mercado Pago is the leading option across Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and more), supporting cards and wallet payments with recurring preapproval. You need a single value: your Access token.

Payments → Mercado Pago

Set up M-Pesa (Safaricom Daraja)

Take mobile-money payments in Kenya

M-Pesa lets your Kenyan subscribers pay straight from their phone — no card, no app switch. MemberBot connects to Safaricom's Daraja API and triggers an STK push: the subscriber types their number, a prompt pops up on their handset, and they approve it with their M-Pesa PIN. Payment usually confirms in 1–2 minutes.

What you'll paste in

Grab these five values from your Safaricom Daraja developer account, then open Dashboard › Payments › M-Pesa:

What the subscriber sees

Accept Telegram Stars

The zero-setup payment method

Telegram Stars (⭐) is the fastest rail to switch on — no keys, no provider account, nothing to paste. Just toggle the Stars provider ON and your subscribers can pay natively inside Telegram, with no card and no leaving the chat.

What the subscriber sees

One-time vs. auto-renewing

Telegram is smart about duration:

Cancelling

Subscribers cancel a Star subscription inside Telegram (Settings → Stars → subscriptions) or by tapping on their Status card. Access continues until the paid period ends.

Accept crypto (NOWPayments)

Take BTC, USDT, ETH and 100+ coins

MemberBot accepts crypto through NOWPayments, which gives your subscribers a hosted checkout invoice covering Bitcoin, USDT, Ethereum and 100+ other coins. Payment confirms once the network settles — usually a few minutes. Charges are one-time (access expires and the subscriber pays again to renew).

Where it goes

Payments → Crypto

Currencies & exchange rates

One default currency, many rails

You price everything in a single default currency and MemberBot handles the rest. Every plan price is stored in your default currency, then converted to whatever a payment provider needs at charge time using live daily exchange rates.

So a plan priced at $10 can be charged in KES over M-Pesa, in Stars over Telegram, or in USDT over crypto — all from the one number you set.

How a price travels

Your timezone

Next to the currency picker in Settings is your workspace timezone. Dates your members see — renewal reminders, "valid until", expiry notices — are shown in this timezone, so pick the one your audience lives in. It defaults to UTC.

Recover failed & abandoned payments

Turn "almost paid" into paid

Plenty of subscribers start checkout and get distracted before finishing. Payment Recovery Growth+ automatically nudges anyone who began a payment but didn't complete it — so you win back revenue that would otherwise vanish.

What a nudge looks like

Clean records, automatically

Payments that sit in pending without confirming don't linger forever. After a few hours they auto-fail, so your dashboard shows an accurate picture instead of a pile of half-finished attempts.

Refunds & disputes

You hold the money — and the controls

MemberBot never holds your subscribers' money. Because you bring your own payment keys, funds flow straight into your provider account. That means refunds and disputes are handled where the money actually lives: your provider's own dashboard (Stripe, PayPal, and so on).

Stopping auto-renewal

To end an auto-renewing subscription, the subscriber taps "Cancel auto-renewal" on their Status card. For Telegram Stars subscriptions, they cancel inside Telegram instead. Either way, access continues until the paid period ends — cancelling never cuts someone off mid-period.

Keeping your payment accounts

Payment processors decide for themselves what they will process. Most of the big ones publish a prohibited business list, and adult or sexually explicit material is on nearly all of them — along with drugs, weapons, and anything that looks like fraud.

They rarely warn you. An account is usually closed after a review or a complaint, and funds can be held for a period while that is settled. This is not a judgement about your business; it is a term you agreed to when you opened the account, and it is worth knowing where you stand before it costs you.

What they actually look at

Only what they, or someone complaining to them, can see — not what you send inside your channel:

• Your storefront name and description
• Your plan names and descriptions
• Your cover image, logo and featured images
• Your bot’s opening message

Your dashboard checks the wording of these automatically and shows a notice if it is likely to be a problem for a processor you have connected. It is advice, not a block — nothing is ever disabled and nothing stops you selling.

Which methods this affects

Being subtle without being vague

The aim is a public page that sells without stating a category a processor screens for. Your channel is where the content lives; your storefront only has to explain what someone gets and why it is worth paying for.

• Describe the experience and the access — how often you post, what is included, what is exclusive — rather than the explicit nature of the material.
• Avoid words that exist to signal a category: 18+, NSFW, nudes, XXX, porn, fetish, and platform names known for it.
• Keep the cover, logo and featured images suggestive at most. These are the first thing a reviewer opens.
• Say the same thing in your bot’s welcome message. It is public the moment anyone presses Start.

If your business needs explicit marketing

Then the honest answer is to sell through the methods that permit it — crypto, Telegram Stars, or manual transfer — rather than wording your page to slip past a card processor. Getting the account closed later costs you the account, the funds held at the time, and often the ability to open another one under the same name.

You can enable and disable each method independently under Payment providers.

Sell membership on Discord — how it works

MemberBot runs paid membership on your own Discord server too — right alongside Telegram. A single plan can unlock a Telegram channel, a Discord role, or both at once, and members pay one price to get everything.

ACCESS IS A ROLE

On Discord, access = a role. You map each plan to a role; when a subscriber links their Discord account, MemberBot assigns that role and keeps it while they're paid. When the membership lapses, the role comes off automatically — the same lifecycle as Telegram's invite & kick.

WHAT YOU NEED (one-time, ~5 min)

• A Discord server you administer.
• A free Discord app + bot — created in the Developer Portal (next article).
• A role that paying members receive.

Members pay through your Telegram Mini App storefront, then tap Link Discord on their subscription to receive the role. Set it all up in the two articles below.

Set up your Discord app, bot & server

This is the one-time setup on Discord's side. Do it once and you never touch the Developer Portal again. It takes about five minutes.

1 · CREATE THE APP & BOT

2 · OAUTH2 (so members can link their account)

Add this redirect in the Developer Portal → OAuth2

3 · INVITE THE BOT TO YOUR SERVER

4 · CREATE THE ROLE & FIX THE HIERARCHY

In Server Settings → Roles, create a role for paying members (e.g. "Members"). Then drag your bot's own role above it — Discord won't let a bot assign a role that sits higher than its own.

5 · COPY YOUR IDs

You now have four things: bot token, server (guild) ID, OAuth client ID, client secret — plus a role ID. Next article: paste them into MemberBot.

Connect Discord & add a role to a plan

With your Discord app ready, connecting it in MemberBot is a few pastes — applied live, no restart.

1 · CONNECT YOUR SERVER

In the dashboard, open the Discord section and fill in the four values from the setup article, then switch Enable Discord on.

Discord → paste, enable, save

2 · ATTACH THE ROLE TO A PLAN

Open Plans, edit (or create) a plan, and paste the Role ID into Discord role ID. A plan can have a Telegram channel and a Discord role, or just one — your call.

3 · HOW MEMBERS GET THE ROLE

A member subscribes as usual, then opens the Mini App and taps Link Discord on their subscription. They authorize once — MemberBot adds them to your server and grants the role. It's removed automatically when the subscription ends.

The member's subscription in the Mini App

Manage your members

Your Customers list, at a glance

The Customers (Members) section is the roster of everyone who has ever paid you. Each person shows their real name and username — not a faceless "User 12345" — alongside the plan they bought, when it expires, and the total they have paid you over their lifetime. Use the search box to jump to anyone by name, @username, or plan.

Every member with plan, expiry, and status

Open a member to take action

Click any row to open that person. From there you can:

• Extend their expiry manually — grant extra days if you comped them, refunded a hiccup, or want to reward a loyal subscriber. The bot keeps their channel access in sync automatically.
• Revoke access — remove them from your private channels right now, before their date is up.
• Add private notes — jot context only you can see (VIP, refunded once, referred by Sam). Notes stay attached to the member.

Block a user & spam protection

Keep bad actors out

Occasionally someone abuses your bot, your channel chat, or tries to game payments. From a member's profile you can block or mute them. A blocked user cannot pay you and cannot join your private channels — the door is simply shut.

Automatic spam defenses

You do not have to police everything by hand. MemberBot ships with built-in guards:

Migrating from another tool

Bring your paying members with you

Switching from another membership tool (like InviteMember) does not mean starting over — your existing subscribers can carry across so their remaining time follows them, and nobody re-pays for days they already own.

Two ways to move members in

How an assisted migration works

Cancel a subscriber's auto-renewal

Members cancel their own auto-renewal — you do not need to do it for them, and doing it in your payment provider alone can leave the two sides out of step.

The member opens your bot, taps /status, and uses Cancel auto-renewal on their status card. Telegram Stars subscriptions are cancelled inside Telegram itself, on the same card.

They keep the access they have already paid for until the current period ends — cancelling stops the next charge, it does not cut them off. When the paid-through date passes they are removed automatically.

If a member asks you to cancel for them, cancel the subscription in your own provider's dashboard (Stripe, PayPal and so on). Their access will then lapse at the end of the period they paid for.

Set up your Mini App storefront

Your in-Telegram store

The Mini App is your storefront inside Telegram — subscribers browse your plans and pay in one tap without ever leaving the chat. To switch it on, you register your workspace's Web App URL with Telegram once.

Find your Web App URL

Mini App → your Web App URL

Register it in @BotFather

Customize your storefront

Make the store yours

Open the Storefront editor (Settings → Mini App) to brand the Mini App so it looks like your business, not a template. Every change is reflected in a live preview link that runs on your own subdomain. Yes, you can upload images — they're hosted for you, no external link needed.

Storefront editor with live preview on your subdomain

Share your join link

One link, everywhere

Once your Mini App is live, you have a single link that opens your store: t.me/yourbot or the Mini App deep link t.me/yourbot/join. Put it anywhere your audience already is, and every tap lands them one step from paying.

Where to share it

• Social posts — drop the link in your announcements and pinned posts.
• Bio / link-in-bio — Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube.
• QR code — turn the join link into a QR for slides, flyers, or a live stream overlay.

Copy your join link or grab a QR

Run your business from Telegram (staff dashboard)

Your Mini App is not only a shop for members — if you are staff, it is also a small dashboard for you, so you can check the business from your phone without opening a browser.

Open your own storefront in Telegram. Because your login is linked to your Telegram account, you will see a staff card on the home screen with month-to-date earnings, the change on last month, and shortcuts to your Dashboard, Transactions and Members.

Link your account first: Settings > My Account > connect your Telegram account. Without that link the app cannot tell that you are staff.

What you see follows your team role. A seat without the revenue permission sees active member counts instead of money. The staff view is read-only apart from generating access codes.

Sell one-off services & products

Beyond subscriptions

Alongside recurring memberships you can sell one-off services — a one-time payment for something that isn't a channel subscription: a 1:1 session, a shoutout, a digital file, a setup fee, a paid DM, whatever you offer. Manage them in Sales → Services (a Starter+ feature).

How it works

Send a broadcast

A broadcast is a single message pushed to every one of your members at once — the fastest way to announce new content, a price change, or a limited-time offer. Starter+

How a broadcast lands in each member's chat

Send one in three steps

Good moments to broadcast

• New content, episode, or drop is live
• A time-limited promo or discount code
• Scheduled maintenance or an access change
• A milestone worth celebrating with your community

Every member who has started your bot receives the message directly in their Telegram chat — no channel post required.

Loyalty rewards

Loyalty rewards turn spending into a game your subscribers want to play. Members earn points from what they spend — roughly 1 point per $1 — and climb tiers that unlock a checkout discount. Growth+

Mini App → Rewards & loyalty tiers

Default tiers

Customize everything

Open the Mini App section and find "Rewards & loyalty tiers". There you can change each tier's name, icon, points needed, and discount percentage to fit your pricing and brand.

The discount applies automatically at checkout in the Mini App once a subscriber reaches a tier, so there is nothing for them to redeem manually.

AI support assistant

The AI support assistant answers your subscribers' questions right inside the bot — about payments, access, and common Telegram issues — so you are not fielding the same messages all day. Growth+

The assistant replying to a subscriber in-chat

What it knows

Answers are grounded on two sources:

• A built-in FAQ covering payments, access, and Telegram basics
• Your own knowledge base — add the specifics of your community, plans, and policies

Turn it on

Because it runs on your OpenAI key, you stay in control of usage and cost.

AI re-engagement

AI re-engagement automatically reaches out to lapsed and churned members with a friendly, personal-feeling nudge to win them back — no manual list-building required. Growth+

A win-back nudge sent to a churned member

How it works

The system watches for members whose access has ended or is slipping, then sends a warm message encouraging them to resubscribe. It works automatically in the background once your bot is running.

Why it matters

• Recovering an existing member is far cheaper than acquiring a new one
• A timely nudge catches people who simply forgot to renew
• It runs on autopilot, so no churned member slips through unnoticed

Combined with the AI support assistant, re-engagement rounds out a bot that both keeps current members happy and quietly reclaims the ones who drifted away.

Analytics: revenue, growth & churn

The dashboard turns your bot's activity into numbers you can act on — revenue, new subscribers, growth, churn, active-member count, and per-category breakdowns — all with time-range filters.

KPI cards on the dashboard home

What you can see

Where to find it

Headline KPIs sit on the dashboard home. For deeper detail, open the dedicated analytics view and adjust the time-range filter to compare this week, this month, or a custom window.

Use the per-category breakdown to spot your best-performing plans and double down on what your audience actually pays for.

Run multiple bots

You are not limited to a single bot. Add more bots and route specific plan categories to each one, so every bot shows only its own plans — perfect for separate brands, languages, or product lines.

Add a bot

Bot limits by plan

All bots run inside the same account and dashboard, so revenue and analytics stay consolidated in one place.

Add team members (seats)

Bring your team into the dashboard by inviting them as dashboard users. Each teammate gets a role that controls exactly what they can do.

Teammates with their assigned roles

Two roles

Invite a teammate

Seats by plan

Get admin alerts on Telegram

Get your business alerts as Telegram DMs from your own bot — new payments, code redemptions, milestones, and a daily expiry digest — so you stay on top of things without opening the dashboard.

A live payment alert DM'd to you by your bot

Set it up

What you'll be alerted about

• New payments — as subscribers pay
• Code redemptions — when a member redeems an access code
• Milestones — notable growth moments
• Daily expiry digest — who is about to lapse, summarized once a day

The expiry digest is a quiet daily heads-up — a perfect prompt to fire off a broadcast or lean on AI re-engagement before members drift.

Team roles & permissions

Every team seat has a role, and a role is a set of permissions you control — so you can let someone answer members without giving them your revenue or your payment keys.

Five roles are ready to use and all of them are editable: Admin (everything), Manager, Support, Finance and Viewer. You can also create your own.

Go to Settings > Team Access to invite a seat, choose its role, or edit what any role can do. Permissions cover members, payments, plans, broadcasts, settings, notifications and more.

Roles apply everywhere, not just in the dashboard: bot commands like /newcode and /kick check the same permissions, and admin alerts are sent to whichever roles hold the notifications permission.

Your MemberBot plan & member limits

Your MemberBot subscription is a platform plan you pay us for — completely separate from the money your subscribers pay you. What you pay is metered by one number: your count of active members across all of your bots.

The tiers & their caps

Higher tiers also unlock more team seats and advanced features (see "What's included on each plan"). Your current plan and live usage are shown under Dashboard › Billing.

Your usage meter, shown on Billing

What's included on each plan

Every plan includes your own white-label bot, all commerce payment rails, multi-currency, the Mini App storefront, member management, analytics, and support. Higher tiers unlock more automation and capacity.

Feature by tier

Capacity by tier

• Bots: Entry 1 · Starter 1 · Growth 5 · Scale 10 · Pro 20 · Enterprise unlimited.
• Team seats: Entry 1 · Starter 1 · Growth 5 · Scale, Pro & Enterprise unlimited.

How the gating works

When you change plans, gated features unlock or lock automatically to match your new tier — nothing to reconfigure. Growth+ features simply reappear the moment you're on Growth or above, and any data you'd already set up (loyalty rules, AI prompts, recovery settings) is kept and reactivated. If you're weighing tiers, the shorthand is: Starter unlocks the manual growth tools (codes, broadcasts, services), while Growth and up add the automated ones (AI and loyalty) plus room for a bigger team and more bots. Analytics and human support never sit behind a paywall — they're on Entry too.

Upgrade, downgrade, or change plan

Changing plans takes about ten seconds and happens entirely in the dashboard.

Billing → your current plan and the Change plan button

What happens to features

On an upgrade, higher-tier features (AI, loyalty, recovery, extra bots and seats) unlock right away. On a downgrade, features above your new tier lock, and any bots or seats beyond the new limit stay in place but can't be added to.

Monthly vs annual & the free trial

You choose how often you're billed, and every new workspace starts free.

The free trial

Every new workspace gets a 3-day free trial on Starter — full access to give MemberBot a real test drive. To start it you add a payment method up front, but you're not charged during the trial: billing only begins when the 3 days end, and you can cancel any time before then from the Billing page and pay nothing. When the trial ends it converts to Starter automatically, so your bot keeps running without a gap.

Monthly vs annual

• Monthly — pay as you go, cancel or change any time.
• Annual — one payment for the year, roughly two months free versus paying monthly.

Switch your billing cycle whenever you like from the Billing page; the new cycle is prorated at checkout via Paddle, PayPal, M-Pesa or crypto, so you're only ever charged for the difference. Annual is the best value if you're committed to running your membership long-term, while monthly keeps things flexible if you're still finding your footing.

Choosing your cycle on the Billing page

What counts as an active member?

Only one thing decides where you sit against your plan cap: how many active members you have right now.

The rule

• Counts: any subscriber with live, unexpired access to one of your bots.
• Doesn't count: members whose access has expired, or who have been removed.

Because expired members drop off automatically, your count naturally rises and falls with your live subscriber base — you're never billed for people who have already churned.

Live members count; expired ones don't

The soft cap

The cap is soft. If you cross it, existing members keep their access — nothing is ever cut off abruptly. There's a short grace window; only if you stay over it will new joins pause until you upgrade. You'll be nudged in the dashboard well before that point.

Update your profile & password

Manage your own login and admin details under My Account. This is where you keep your workspace secure and make sure your bot can reach you with the alerts that matter — new payments, code redemptions, and payment failures all arrive as a direct message from your own bot.

My Account → profile & security

What you can change

My bot isn't responding

If your bot has gone quiet — no reply to /start, no menu, nothing — it is almost always a token problem. Telegram talks to your bot through a secret token, and if that token changed or was revoked, MemberBot can no longer receive updates for it.

Quick checklist

Why revoking breaks it

When you tap "Revoke current token" in BotFather, the old token stops working immediately. Any bot still configured with the old token will look connected but receive nothing. Paste the fresh token, save, and test again.

Members aren't being added or removed

Auto-add and auto-remove depend entirely on your bot's admin rights in the channel or group. If a paying subscriber isn't let in, or an expired one is still lurking, the cause is nearly always missing permissions or an unlinked chat.

The two must-haves

Bot must be admin with both add-members and ban/remove rights

Still stuck?

Confirm the subscriber's payment actually shows as Confirmed — a pending payment won't trigger an add. And check the plan is linked to the correct channel, not an old test one.

I'm not getting admin notifications

Admin alerts — new payments, joins, expiries, redemptions — are sent as a direct message from your bot to you. If they're not arriving, the bot either doesn't know who you are, or isn't allowed to DM you yet.

Fix in two steps

What a working admin alert looks like

Common mix-ups

• Expecting alerts in a group — they only go to linked admins by DM.
• Linked the wrong ID (a personal account vs. the one you use with the bot).
• Blocked the bot at some point — unblock it, then /start again.

A payment didn't go through or is stuck pending

A payment moves from Pending to Confirmed only when the provider tells MemberBot it succeeded. For cards and PayPal, that confirmation arrives via a webhook — so a missing or wrong webhook URL is the number-one reason payments hang.

Fix checklist

M-Pesa STK push isn't arriving

The STK push is the pop-up on the subscriber's phone asking for their M-Pesa PIN. If it never shows, the issue is almost always the phone number, an expired prompt, or your Daraja setup.

The prompt the subscriber should see within seconds

Checklist

A member lost access sooner than expected

If a member paid and then lost access far sooner than you expected, the cause is almost always the plan's duration rather than a failed renewal.

Access is calculated from the plan's duration in days at the moment the payment is granted. A plan set to 1 day gives 24 hours of access, then the member expires and is removed automatically — exactly as configured. They will still appear under people who have paid, which is what makes it look like the renewal broke.

Check it first: Settings > Subscription Plans, and look at the duration in days on the plan they bought. If it is short, that is your answer.

Important: changing the plan afterwards does not extend anyone who has already expired. New purchases get the new duration; to restore someone who already lapsed, go to Users > Customers, open the member and use Extend to add days back.

If the duration is correct and they still lost access early, check Sales > Payments for a refund or chargeback on their payment — a reversed payment revokes access on purpose.

A member says their invite link has expired

Telegram shows a member "this invite link has expired" when they are banned from that chat — it never tells them they are banned. So a member who was removed in the past, then paid again, sees an expiry message while your side shows a perfectly valid link.

This happens because removing a member bans and then immediately unbans them. If the unban does not stick, the ban stays and every future link they are given reads as expired.

What to do: the fix is automatic — the next time access is granted, the bot clears any stale ban before creating the link. Ask the member to open your bot and tap /status, which re-issues a fresh link and lifts the ban first.

If it still fails, open your channel in Telegram, go to Members > Removed users, and remove them from that list manually. Then have them tap /status again.