1. Review a Stage plan
Open the membership picker on the creator's Stage. It loads that Stage's active plans fresh and shows the current plan name, optional description and benefits, and available monthly or annual prices. It also has explicit loading, unavailable, no-plan, login, already-subscribed, and Stage-admin states.
Do not rely on a generic tier name or price from a Help article. The live Stage plan and Stripe checkout are the current sources of truth.
Free membership path
- Review the live Stage plan
- Sign in and complete your profile
- Successful free join updates access
Paid membership path
- Review the live Stage plan
- Sign in and complete your profile
- Continue to Stripe Checkout
- Webhook reconciliation confirms paid access
2. Free vs. paid membership
Joining any plan requires a signed-in account with a completed audience profile. The Stage and plan must exist, the plan must belong to that Stage and remain available, monetization must be enabled, and the viewer must not be banned.
| Path | Offer | Checkout | Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Stage plan | Both the monthly and annual prices are zero | No Stripe checkout | Membership and included entitlements update after a successful join |
| Paid Stage plan | An available monthly or annual price | Stripe subscription checkout | Paid membership follows Stripe and webhook reconciliation |
| Product or course | An eligible fixed price or inclusion in a Stage plan | One-time Stripe checkout or membership entitlement | Purchase or enrollment is verified after checkout |
| Tip | An eligible viewer and supported Stage or content target | One-time Stripe checkout | The tip is recorded after successful payment processing |
A member who already has an active paid subscription to a Stage cannot start another paid subscription to that same Stage through the join endpoint.
3. What a plan includes
- Creator-defined copy
- The plan name, optional description, and benefit text come from the creator's current plan configuration.
- Available price options
- A paid plan can expose a monthly price, an annual price, or both. The unavailable interval is disabled.
- Annual saving
- The picker calculates a saving only when an available annual price is lower than 12 monthly payments.
- Actual access
- Included channels and content create entitlements. Stage capabilities, publication state, readiness, bans, purchases, and enrollment can add other access requirements.
- Public content
- Public content stays public. A benefit label does not make every Stage feature or item members-only.
4. Manage subscriptions
Account Subscriptions requires login and loads your current Stage relationships. It separates audience membership from Stage-admin access.
- Audience subscriptions and Admin access are separate views.
- The card uses the real Stage identity and shows Active or Cancels Soon.
- Audience cards can show the plan name, description, configured monthly and/or annual prices, and creator-authored benefits.
- Access Until appears when paid cancellation is scheduled and a current-period end is available.
- Visit Stage is available for audience memberships; Manage Stage is available for admin access.
5. Cancel membership
Select Cancel Subscription on an audience card and confirm the consequence shown in the modal. The result depends on whether the active membership is free or backed by a paid Stripe subscription.
| Access type | Cancellation | Access result |
|---|---|---|
| Free membership | Removed immediately after confirmation | Membership and entitlements from that plan are revoked immediately |
| Paid Stripe membership | Stripe is asked to cancel at the current period end | Access remains until the returned period-end date; repeat cancellation is disabled after scheduling |
| Admin access | No audience cancellation or self-leave action | Access remains controlled by Stage ownership and admin settings |
The current account page has no undo or resume cancellation, change-plan, resubscribe, or admin self-leave control. A paid cancellation request can also fail if Stripe is unavailable; use the state shown after the page refresh as the result.
6. Products, courses & coupons
- Offer paths
- A product or course can have one or more positive fixed-price options, inclusion in active Stage plans, or both.
- Buyer requirements
- The buyer must be signed in with a complete profile. The item and price must be public and eligible, the Stage must support monetization, and the creator must have a connected payment account.
- Duplicate access
- An existing product purchaser or course enrollee cannot buy the same object again through the purchase endpoint.
- Access confirmation
- Paid checkout completion creates the purchase or enrollment and grants access. The return view checks authoritative access and can show finalizing, success, retry, or unable-to-verify states.
- Coupon boundary
- Coupon entry appears only for fixed-price product or course purchase. A code is normalized, validated, and reserved at checkout; cancellation or expiry reconciliation releases the reservation. Membership coupons are not implemented.
7. Tips & Stripe
- Tips are one-time USD payments with a minimum of $5 and no more than two decimal places.
- An optional tip message can contain up to 500 characters.
- The viewer must be authenticated, eligible, not banned from the Stage, and using a target whose creator enabled tips on a monetized Stage with a connected account.
- Supported targets are the Stage, creator posts, full videos, short videos, articles, and podcast episodes—not courses, products, comments, or every page.
Stripe collects card details through its hosted checkout. Vibeler receives provider identifiers, payment status, amount and currency, and the limited records needed to grant access and reconcile the transaction. The audience account does not display full card numbers or expose saved-card and payment-method management.
8. Refunds & current limits
Vibeler currently records successful and failed subscription invoice events, but it does not expose an audience failed-payment repair flow. Stripe refund and dispute webhook events are reconciled to Vibeler payment records, and account payment history shows payment, refund, and dispute markers for the viewer's paid activity.
- Account Subscriptions includes a payment-history ledger for memberships, purchases, course enrollments, tips, refunds, and disputes, but it does not provide invoice or receipt download, a saved-card list, or an audience payment-method editor.
- The current audience account has no change-plan, undo or resume cancellation, resubscribe, or failed-payment retry control.
- Membership coupons and paid free-trial enforcement are not implemented in the current audience checkout.
- Audience members do not have a self-serve refund request or dispute action. Eligible creator admins can refund the remaining amount of a payment from Studio, but Vibeler has no published Stage refund-policy field and no mediation workflow.
- Stripe refund and dispute webhooks reconcile Vibeler payment status for purchases, courses, tips, subscription payments, and email coverage charges. Full product/course refunds and active or lost disputes revoke one-time access; won disputes can restore it.
- Partial refunds are marked on the payment record and visible in the account ledger, but Vibeler does not yet expose receipt downloads or a detailed partial-refund revenue breakdown.
- Commission comes from the Stage's live creator-platform plan and Stripe processing fees are separate. This static guide does not quote a fee or promise how much reaches the creator.
9. Read next
Continue with the guide that matches your next audience action.