Your audience holds two lists, and telling them apart saves a lot of confusion later. The short version: a member can sign in, a contact cannot.
Member
Someone with an account in your member area. They have a password, they sign in, and they hold access to courses, hubs, community areas and events, whether they bought it, were given it, or received it through a group.
Members are the people your platform exists for.
Contact
Someone whose email address you hold. Somebody who filled in a form, came in through an import, was added by hand, or arrived through the API.
A contact has no password and no way in. They are on your list, not in your platform.
| Member | Contact | |
|---|---|---|
| Can sign in | Yes | No |
| Holds access to content | Yes | No |
| Can be emailed | Yes | Yes |
| Counts towards your plan | Yes | No |
| Has consent status | No | Yes |
| Sits in a sales pipeline | No | Yes |
Only members count towards the member limit of your plan. You can hold as many contacts as you like on any plan, which is exactly why the two lists are separate.
What contacts carry that members do not
A contact record is built for the stage before someone buys, so it tracks different things.
- Source. Where they came from: added manually, a form, an import, the API, or converted from a member.
- Consent status. Pending, no consent, active, unsubscribed, bounced or complained. This decides whether you are allowed to email them.
- Pipeline stage. New, contacted, qualified, won or lost by default, and you can rename these to match how you actually sell.
- Engagement score and last engaged, so you can see who is still paying attention.
- Form submissions, kept on the contact so you can read what they told you.
Tags and custom fields work on both lists.
Turning a contact into a member
When somebody buys, or when you want to give them access, open the contact and choose Convert to member.
The modal shows the name and email address you are converting. The only choice is whether to send the credentials by email, and that box is ticked by default. Once you confirm, they can sign in.
Two things happen quietly and are worth knowing.
- If an account with that email address already exists, it is linked rather than duplicated. The person keeps their existing password and history.
- Details you had on the contact, such as the phone number and your custom fields, move across to the member profile.
Conversion checks your plan limit, because a new member counts and a contact does not. If you are at your limit, the conversion is refused until you free a place or move up a plan.
A purchase does this for you. A buyer who was a contact becomes a member on their own, without you converting anything by hand.
The same person in both lists
A member can also exist as a contact, and often does. The contact record is what carries the email consent, so a member you also email keeps a contact record alongside their account, marked with the source "member".
That is not a duplicate to clean up. The two records serve different jobs: one holds access, the other holds permission to write to them.
Blocked addresses
Separately from both lists sits the list of blocked addresses: addresses that must not be emailed. An address lands there when someone unsubscribes, when mail bounces, when a complaint comes in, or when you block it by hand.
Blocking beats everything else. An address on that list receives nothing, even if the person is an active member.
Which list should I use?
- Someone downloaded a guide, came through a form, or you met them at an event: contact.
- Someone bought something, or you want to grant them access to anything: member.
Start people as contacts and convert them when they earn a way in. It keeps your member count honest and your plan cost down.