If you have members who pay for their membership outside Steady — for example via Substack or a direct payment for a print subscription — you can give them access to your paid content on Steady by adding them as external members.

What you'll need

A CSV file containing the email addresses of the members you'd like to add.

In your Steady backend, go to Members > External members and click the + button.

Click Choose file and select your CSV. It should contain the email addresses of the members you want to give access to. If the CSV file contains additional columns apart from the email address, we will ignore those.

Select which membership plan these members should get access to.

Click continue to send out invitation emails. Once members accept the invitation, they will receive your post emails (assuming you selected members of that given plan in the post distribution settings).

Once imported, your members will receive an invitation email from Steady asking them to accept their free access. Members who have accepted will appear in your Members table with the status active. Members who haven't accepted yet will show as pending.

Please note: Once added, external members can't be removed before their access expires.

External members get access for 35 days from the date you import them. To grant them access for a longer period of time, upload the same CSV again. Then the access duration will extend for another 35 days. When you add the same member email, that user will not receive another email invitation.

No. Their membership is paid for outside Steady. You're simply granting them access to your content on Steady.

No — once added, external members can't be removed before their access expires.

They'll receive an invitation email and will be prompted to log in or create a free Steady account to accept. You can find more details in our help article: How to accept an invitation to a membership on Steady.

Yes, when you upload the same email address again before their access expires, that member will not receive another invitation email; instead their access duration will be updated. When you add the same member after their access has expired, they will receive another invitation email and have to accept the invitation again.

External members will receive the invitation email from Steady and post emails, assuming you select the membership plan on the post distribution settings. They will not receive any emails from an email automation, e.g. when their membership ended.