Connecting ManyChat to your memberarea

Your ManyChat bot keeps doing what it already does: answering comments, running the conversation, collecting the email address. The app adds a set of steps you can drop into any flow. Those steps talk to your memberarea, so a chat can save the contact, create the account, unlock a product or send a personal checkout link without anyone leaving the conversation.

Connecting takes three things: an API key from your memberarea, the app installed on your ManyChat page, and your address entered once in the app settings.

Before you start

The API is part of every paid plan, Starter included, and it is switched on during the free trial. Only an expired trial answers "The API is not included in this MemberArea plan" instead of doing the work.

You also need a ManyChat account that can install apps.

Create an API key

1. In your memberarea, open Settings, then API.
2. Press Add API Key.
3. Name it something you will recognize later, for example "ManyChat".

If you would rather hand out only what the app uses, press Limit to specific permissions once, then tick these:

• Members: View and Manage
• Contacts: View and Manage
• Groups: View and Manage
• Courses: View and Manage
• Events: View and Manage
• Payments: View and Manage
• Automations: View and Run
• ManyChat: Manage

Save, then copy the key. It is shown once.

Install the app in ManyChat

Open the install link below and pick the page you want to connect. ManyChat installs the app for that page and opens its settings.

Install the MemberArea app in ManyChat

Enter your address and key

The app settings ask for two things:

1. Your MemberArea address, host only: yourname.memberarea.io, without https:// and without a path.
2. Your MemberArea API key, the one you just copied.

Save. From here on the steps are available in the flow builder.

Check that it worked

Open any flow, add an action step, and look through the step catalogue. MemberArea appears there as its own category with eighteen steps in it.

Pick Grant access and open its Product dropdown. It fills with the real products from your memberarea, loaded live while the dialog is open. If the dropdown fills, the connection is healthy: address, key and permissions are all correct.

If the list stays empty, it usually means there is no active product yet. A product that is still a draft is not offered. Publish one and reopen the list.

Let events start a flow

The steps above are one direction: ManyChat asks your memberarea to do something. The other direction, where a paid order or a finished course starts a flow, needs one more thing. ManyChat hands each installed app an App Key for the page it runs on, and your memberarea needs that key to reach the page.

1. In ManyChat, open the settings of the installed MemberArea app and copy the App Key. It has three parts separated by colons and starts with the page id, like 1234567890:4180:abc123.
2. In your memberarea, open Settings, then Integrations, and open ManyChat.
3. Paste the key into ManyChat App Key and press Connect page.

The page appears in the list as Connected. From that moment every event is offered, so in ManyChat you only have to build a flow whose starting step is one of the MemberArea events. Nothing has to be switched on per event.

A flow can only reach someone ManyChat already knows as a subscriber. Your memberarea looks the person up by the link an earlier step created, then by email address, then by phone number. Someone who has never written to your page cannot be messaged, which is Facebook policy rather than a limit of this app.

To stop a page from starting flows, remove it from the same list. The account, its members and their access are untouched by that.

When the key changes

Rotating or deleting the key in your memberarea takes effect immediately, and every step then answers "This ManyChat connection is not signed in to a MemberArea". Paste the new key into the app settings in ManyChat and the flows continue where they left off. Nothing else needs rebuilding.