HubSpot can run your whole membership operation. Members and their renewal dates live in the CRM, and your site’s pages can be public or member-only.
Tools you already rely on can stay. They feed HubSpot through an app or an integration I write, set up around how your members join, renew and book events.
One record per member. Every field has one system that owns it, and none of it gets re-keyed.
Yes. HubSpot CRM holds the member data, takes the payments and runs the renewals. Anything you’d rather keep in another system feeds into the CRM, so HubSpot sits at the centre of everything that touches a member.
Payments work on any paid plan. Member-only pages and a member knowledge base both work on Professional.
Most membership teams I meet have one person keeping the systems in step. I call them the Human API.
Read The Human API →Export last week’s new members, tidy the columns and import them into HubSpot so the welcome emails can go out.
The Eventbrite list. Who turned up, and which of them are members, matched by hand because the email addresses don’t quite agree.
Build the renewal list in a spreadsheet and check it against GoCardless for failed direct debits.
Status (applicant, active, renewal due, grace, lapsed, and back again), join and renewal dates, tier, and calculated fields like days until renewal. Everything else runs off those.
Every renewal gets its own deal (due, invoice sent, paid, lapsed), so each member builds up a year-by-year history. Finance can see next quarter without asking. Lapsed members drop into a win-back list.
Payments run in HubSpot, or GoCardless, Stripe and Eventbrite report into the member’s record. A Marketplace app if one syncs the right fields, Zapier for a simple flow, custom code on HubSpot’s API for the rest (most of what I build).
Private pages and knowledge bases behind a login, with access set from lists in the CRM. Coming from WordPress, every member sets a new password, so that email gets tested first.
Before anything gets built, each piece of member data gets one system that holds the master copy. Everything else reads from it.
Payment and membership are separate fields. Cancelling a direct debit doesn’t cancel the membership, so a failed payment starts the chase and the member stays active until someone decides otherwise.
When membership and finance both think they own the renewal date, I’d sort that out in a meeting before anyone writes code.
| Member data | Owned by | What HubSpot gets |
|---|---|---|
| Contact details and consent | HubSpot | It’s the source |
| Status, tier and renewal date | HubSpot | It’s the source |
| Payment and direct debit status | HubSpot payments, GoCardless or Stripe | A status. A failed payment starts a workflow |
| Invoices and what’s been paid | Xero | A paid or unpaid flag, never the ledger |
| Event registration and attendance | Eventbrite, Zoom or EventEngine | Registered and attended, per event |
IIGCC’s membership team ran renewals by hand in Insightly, and every new member had to be entered there and in WordPress too.
EventEngine is my app for running events inside HubSpot. You create the event once, with the dates, venue or Zoom link and a capacity if you want one, and the page and registration form appear on your site in your own theme.
$249 a month for unlimited events, registrations and users.
See EventEngineMost membership projects run in this order, though the length of each step depends on how many systems you’ve got.
The rest is usually quicker on a call.
Yes. A member login belongs to a contact record, and access groups decide who sees what. Build a group from CRM filters and a lapsed member loses access without anyone touching it.
Member-only pages need Content Hub Professional. A member knowledge base or portal needs Service Hub Professional. Professional gives you 2 access groups, so 2 sets of member-only content, and Enterprise gives you 100. Count your tiers first. Memberships owned by an organisation and shared by several people need a custom object, which needs Enterprise.
Yes. HubSpot payments takes cards and BACS Direct Debit in the UK and bills them as subscriptions. BACS costs 1%, capped at £4, plus a 0.5% platform fee capped at £4 (free for the first year). UK cards are 1.7%. If you’re keeping GoCardless or Stripe, they feed HubSpot instead. Either way, a failed payment moves the renewal deal and gives someone a task to ring the member.
Yes. The company holds the membership, and each person is linked to it with a label: payer, admin or member. That needs a custom object, so Enterprise. It’s how IIGCC groups its 400 investor members.
Yes, and that’s how I set it up. Members, tiers, renewal dates and the renewals pipeline live in the CRM, so there’s no separate membership system or add-on to pay for. The old database or plugin gets imported and switched off.
No. WordPress stores them in a form HubSpot can’t import, so every member sets a new one. I send that email in batches, to friendly members first.
No. One working flow is enough to start taking hours back.
30 minutes. I’ll tell you on the call whether I can help, and roughly what it would take.
