Configuring Paid Membership

Configuring Paid Membership

Understand what Paid Membership controls

Open Community Settings and go to Paid Membership when you want to collect payments for access to paid spaces in your community. 



This section is important for a superhost, because it's where you set up the payment portal that powers subscription-based access. Zoho CommunitySpaces supports this by linking your community to a checkout portal through the available payment gateways, Razorpay and Stripe. 

Know what to keep ready before setup

Before you begin, decide whether you want to connect an existing payment portal or create a new payment portal during setup. If you are creating a new one, keep the portal name, country, state, and currency ready, and make sure you can sign in to the payment gateway account you want to connect. 

Open paid membership settings

To begin:

  1. Click the gear icon in the right menu and select Settings.
  2. Click General under Paid Membership.
  3. Click Configure. 

This takes you to the payment portal setup flow for the community. 

Choose an existing payment portal or create a new one

In the setup popup, choose whether to use an existing portal or create a new payment portal.

If you already have a payment portal, select it and continue with the gateway connection step.

If you do not have one yet, create a new payment portal from the same setup window. 

Create a new payment portal

To create a new payment portal:
  1. Click Create payment portal. 
  2. Enter the portal name. 
  3. Select the country. 
  4. Select the state. 
  5. Select the currency. 
  6. Click Save. 

This creates the payment portal that your community will use for paid membership checkout. 

Notes
Once saved, you cannot modify this configuration. 

Connect the portal to a payment gateway

After creating the portal:
  1. Click Connect to set up Razorpay or Stripe. 
  2. In the redirected page, sign in to your payment gateway account. 
  3. Complete the gateway connection flow. 

Once the gateway is connected successfully, the payment portal becomes ready for use in the community. 

Know what happens after setup

After Paid Membership is enabled at the community level, the next step is to go to the relevant paid space and configure its membership details, such as the membership name, price, and validity period, then publish that space when you are ready to start collecting payments. 



In other words, the community-level setup prepares the payment infrastructure, and the actual paid offering is completed inside each paid space. 

Understand the important limitation

Once the payment details are configured, they cannot be modified. So, review the selected portal, location details, currency, and connected gateway carefully before finalizing the setup. This is one of the most important decisions for a superhost in this section, because it affects how paid access is collected for the community going forward.