Hey everyone, I had a question about the new portal system and what the best setup would be for a subscription-only product.
My goal is this:
I want non-paying users to be able to see the Pickaxe in the sidebar, but I do not want them to have any guest uses. I only want paying subscribers to actually have access.
What’s the best way to structure this?
Option 1:
Have a guest portal with 0 uses, and then have the upgrade flow point them to a members access group.
Option 2:
Have no guest portal at all, and only use a members portal that contains the Pickaxe.
Basically, I want people to be able to see the product exists, but not actually use it until they subscribe.
Would love to know what setup you all think is best, or if there’s a cleaner way to handle this with the new portal system.
Option 1 is the pattern we designed for “show it in the sidebar but keep it locked” use cases.
How to set it up:
1. Keep a Guest Portal that includes the pickaxe, but set its guest allowance to 0 runs and toggle on the “Show locked cards” copy. That keeps the tile visible everywhere, but anyone without an entitlement will see the lock banner instead of a chat box.
2. In that Guest Portal, point the Upgrade CTA to the subscription product (or directly to the Member Access Group). Most teams add a line of copy in the locked state that says something like “Subscribe to unlock unlimited chats” so the intent is obvious.
3. Create a Members Access Group + Members Portal with the same pickaxe, attach your subscription price to that MAG, and leave the usage limit there at whatever you want paid folks to get.
4. When someone buys, they are dropped into the MAG, the members portal immediately replaces the locked card, and their allowance resets based on the plan. People who have not subscribed keep seeing the teaser card but can never spend guest runs because none exist.
If you remove the guest portal entirely (Option 2) the pickaxe disappears from the sidebar for non subscribers, so you lose that top of funnel moment. Keeping the 0 run guest portal gives you the marketing presence plus a frictionless upgrade flow, while still guaranteeing only paying members can actually launch the pickaxe.
Thanks for the response. I tried setting it up exactly this way, but on my end it is not working as described.
I set the Guest Portal to 0 runs and connected the upgrade path to my Members Portal, which has a monetized product tied to it. On the front end, I can see the pickaxe tool in the left sidebar with the locked screen, which part is working as expected.
When I click into it, I see the message telling me to buy the product to unlock the tool, and I can also see the price. The issue happens after that. When I click Get Started, sign up with an email address, and confirm it, I am immediately granted access to the tool without having to pay anything.
I checked my Access Groups and everything appears to be configured correctly. My Stripe account is attached, and when I first set this up I also ran a test transaction with a different account and that purchase flow worked properly.
I have now tested this on multiple computers and am seeing the same result each time.
At this point I am not sure if this is:
a bug
intended behavior
or something I may still have configured incorrectly
Could someone from the Pickaxe team clarify this? If this is a bug or something that changed on the backend, I would really appreciate it being looked into. Right now the 0-run locked guest portal setup does not appear to actually force payment before access on my project. I have a screen recording of this if you want me to email it to you, let me know.
Hi @motheraigaia,
Would you be open to a quick call? This might be related to the access group configuration, and we can figure it out quickly together.
Could you please send an email to info@pickaxe.co with a link to this thread? We’ll pick it up from there and set up a call with full context.