CRM and email automation workflows for your Hub

Membership.io is primarily designed as a content and community platform, rather than a CRM or email marketing system. Automations such as contact tagging, email sequences, and lifecycle management are intentionally handled outside the platform using dedicated tools.

Understanding this approach will help you:

• Avoid unreliable or complicated setups

• Choose the right tools available to you for each job

• Build workflows that scale as your business grows

What Membership.io automates natively

Inside your Hub, Membership.io automates the core activities that power your content and community — including content delivery, Hub access, and AI-powered support.

You can check our Help Center for more.

CRM-style automations are handled outside the platform

Automations you might expect from all-in-one platforms, such as tagging a contact, triggering email sequences, or moving a member through lifecycle stages, are intentionally kept outside the platform.

This design decision ensures that Membership.io remains fast, scalable, and focused on content delivery and community management. Trying to replicate CRM logic in a content platform often results in unreliable workflows, broken integrations, and frustrated members.

How Successful Creators Structure Their Membership.io Stack

Rather than relying on a single all-in-one platform to handle everything, experienced Membership.io users often build their stack using specialized tools — each focused on doing one job well (a.k.a. a decoupled approach).

You can find examples in our helpful article about the recommended CRM and email automation workflow.

Common questions

Can I still automate emails to my members?

Yes. Use your CRM or email platform to send onboarding emails, reminders, nurture sequences, and re-engagement campaigns.

In most setups, these emails are triggered by billing events from Stripe (via Zapier or native integrations), while Membership.io handles Hub access and in-Hub communication. This ensures email automation is reliable and avoids tying marketing workflows to content access changes.

Will I lose any functionality compared to all-in-one platforms?

No. While all-in-one platforms bundle many features together, that often comes at the cost of flexibility or reliability. With Membership.io, your content delivery and community management stay in shape, and you can still pair them with top tools for billing and marketing so each part of your business runs the way you want.

Do I need technical expertise to set this up?

No. Most users successfully implement this approach with basic Zapier knowledge and standard configurations for Stripe, CRM, or an email platform.

If you need help, please feel free to reach out to our support team at help@membership.io!