Operator manual

Getting started

Open Telegram, search for @MemblyBot, and send /start. Nothing is charged for opening an account.

The first time

Your first /start registers you as an operator and shows the welcome screen.

📖 How It Works is a four-line summary of the whole product:

Every time after that

Later /start calls show the home menu instead.

A fifth button, 🛠 Admin Panel, appears only if your Telegram account is also a Membly platform admin. Normal operators never see it.

Your bot list

🤖 My Bots and /bots both open the same list. Before you have created anything it looks like this:

Once you have bots, each one is listed with a status dot — 🟢 for active, 🔴 for paused — and a Manage button per bot.

If your account is not active

A platform admin can suspend or ban an operator account. If that has happened, /start dead-ends with one of these and nothing else works:

Create your bot

Membly does not give you a bot. You create your own with Telegram's @BotFather and hand Membly the token. That way the bot is yours: your name, your picture, your username.

The wizard has exactly two required steps. Start it with /newbot in the master bot, or with 🚀 Create My Bot / ➕ Create New Bot.

1. Get a token from BotFather

   Open @BotFather in Telegram and send /newbot. It asks for two things: a display name, which can be anything, and a username, which must be unique and must end in bot — for example AcmeVIPAccessBot. BotFather then replies with the token, a long string that looks like 123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11.

   

   

2. Paste the token into the master bot

   Back in @MemblyBot, send /newbot. The first step asks for that token:

   Step 1 of 2 · Bot token

   Create a bot with @BotFather. Send it /newbot and follow the prompts. Then paste the token here.

   It looks like: 123456:ABC-DEF1234ghIkl-zyx57W2v1u123ew11

   Only the token and a group are required — everything else has a sensible default you can change later.

   Cancel

   

   Membly checks the token against Telegram before accepting it, so a miscopied token is caught immediately rather than at launch.

3. Link your private group

   With the token verified, the wizard names your bot and asks for a group:

   Step 2 of 2 · Link a group

   Token verified — bot is @AcmeVIPAccessBot.

   Add @AcmeVIPAccessBot as an admin to your private Telegram group. You can link multiple groups if you want all of them gated.

   The bot only needs two admin permissions:
     • Invite Users via Link
     • Ban Users

   Once you've added it, tap Check again — I'll detect the group automatically. You can also send the group's chat ID (-100...) instead.

   🔄 Check again Cancel

   

4. Give it the two admin rights

   In your group, open the member list, add your new bot, then promote it to administrator. Turn on exactly two rights and leave the rest off:

   Permission	Why the bot needs it
   Invite Users via Link	Creates the one-time join link a member gets after paying. Without it, paid subscribers get no join link.
   Ban Users	Removes a member when their subscription expires. Without it, expired members keep access for free.

   

5. Let the wizard detect it

   Tap 🔄 Check again. When the bot is found with both rights, the wizard lists what it saw:

   Groups detected:
     ✅ Acme VIP Lounge

   

   If a group is found but the bot is not a full admin there, it is listed with the reason — "⚠️ Acme VIP Lounge (missing: Ban Users)" or "⚠️ Acme VIP Lounge (not admin — promote the bot)" — and you fix it and tap the button again. When several groups are detected and only some are set up correctly, the wizard adds: "Only groups with full permissions will be managed."

The wizard holds your progress for 30 minutes, which is enough time to walk over to BotFather and your group and come back. /cancel or Cancel discards it: "Setup cancelled. Your progress has been discarded."

Launch or customise

Once a properly permissioned group exists, the wizard stops asking questions and offers you a choice. That is the only hard gate in the whole flow.

⚡ Launch with defaults goes live immediately on a starter plan of Monthly, 30 days, $10, with no payout wallet yet. Your bot runs, your members can talk to it, and the dashboard checklist chases you for the wallet before anyone tries to pay. This is the fast path and you can change every part of it afterwards.

⚙ Customize plan & payouts walks the guided path instead. Every step below has a skip button that accepts the default.

1. Plan name

   Plan name

   What would you like to call your first plan?
   e.g. Starter, Premium, VIP

   You can add more tiers later from the dashboard.

   Use "Monthly" Cancel

   Maximum 100 characters.

   

2. Duration

   Plan duration

   Plan name: VIP

   How many days should this plan last?
   e.g. 30 (monthly), 90 (quarterly), 365 (annual).
   Send 0 or "lifetime" for a plan that never expires.

   Use 30 days Lifetime Cancel

   Send a whole number of days, up to 65535. Sending 0, the word lifetime, or tapping Lifetime creates a plan that never expires: one payment, permanent access.

   

3. Price

   Plan price

   Plan: VIP · 30 days

   What's the price in USD?
   Enter 0 for a free/trial plan, or more than $0.20 so the payment covers gas fees. Examples: 0, 5, 10.50

   Use $10 Cancel

   Priced in USD, paid in USDC or USDT. 0 makes the plan free — useful for a trial tier — and skips the wallet questions entirely, because a free plan never sweeps anything. Any other price must be more than $0.20: that is the platform's minimum fee, so at or below it you would receive nothing.

   

4. Chains and currencies

   Chains & currencies

   Plan: VIP · 30 days · $10.00

   Choose the payment options subscribers can use.
   Tap currencies under each chain. A chain is enabled when at least one currency is selected.
   After this, you'll set one EVM payout address, plus a TRON address if selected.

   No payout wallet yet? Skip this — the bot still launches, and the dashboard checklist will remind you before anyone tries to pay.

   Selected:
     None yet.

   ✅ USDC ⬜ USDT Next: set payout addresses Skip — set payouts later Cancel

   Each chain gets a header row and a row of currency toggles under it. Tap to switch a pair on or off. Only pairs that can actually settle are offered, so you will never see USDC on TRON.

   

5. Payout addresses

   Payout addresses

   Set the payout addresses for the payment options you selected.
   One EVM address is used for every selected EVM chain.

   Selected payment options:
     Base: USDC, USDT

   Addresses:
     EVM address: Not set
       Applies to: Base · USDC, USDT

   Set EVM address Next: review Skip — set payouts later Cancel

   Tap Set EVM address and send the address:

   Set EVM address

   Applies to: Base
   Currencies: USDC, USDT

   Send EVM address: an EVM address: 42 characters starting with 0x, e.g.
   0xAbCd1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef1234

   Must be a wallet you control. Subscription payments for these options will be swept here.

   ← Addresses Cancel

   

6. Review, then launch

   Review & launch

   Bot: @AcmeVIPAccessBot

   Group(s):
     Acme VIP Lounge

   Plan:
     VIP · 30 days · $10.00

   Payout wallet:
     EVM address: 0xAbCd…1234
       Applies to: Base · USDC, USDT

   Everything look right? Tap Confirm & Launch to go live.

   🚀 Confirm & Launch Cancel

   If you skipped the wallet steps, the payout section says so instead: "Not set yet — you'll add it from the setup checklist. Subscribers can't complete a payment until it exists." On a free plan it reads "None. Not needed for free/trial plans."

   

7. Live

   Your bot is live!

   @AcmeVIPAccessBot is now running and ready to accept subscribers.

   Share link: https://t.me/AcmeVIPAccessBot

   Next: tap Finish Setup to add your payout wallet — subscribers can't pay until one exists — and to tune your plan, welcome message and info buttons.
   Set the public bot name, picture and description in @BotFather > /mybots > Edit Bot.

   ✅ Finish Setup Manage This Bot Create Another Bot

   At launch, you and everyone who is currently an admin of the linked groups are given lifetime access, so nobody who already runs the community gets locked out by their own paywall.

   

If something fails during launch, the half-created bot is rolled back and the token is freed for a clean retry: "Something went wrong while launching your bot. Your progress was rolled back — send /newbot to try again, or contact support if it keeps happening."

The dashboard

The dashboard is your control panel for one bot. Open it from 🤖 My Bots and then Manage, or with /selectbot <id>. Whichever bot you open becomes the "selected bot" that commands like /plans and /members act on.

The header line is a status dot, your bot's label, its username, and its state — for example 🟢 Acme VIP @AcmeVIPAccessBot - Active, or 🔴 … - Paused.

Every button

Before your first subscriber

While nobody has ever subscribed, the dashboard shows a pre-flight list instead of metrics:

Once people are subscribing

The summary block replaces it. Lines only appear when they have something to say:

"Gross revenue (30d)" is what members paid in the last 30 days, before the platform fee. "Pending payments" is checkouts in progress. "Expiring ≤7d" is who you should be talking to this week.

The setup checklist

After launch, everything the wizard did not ask for lives here. Reach it from ⚙ Finish setup, ✅ Finish Setup on the launch message, or ✅ Setup Checklist in Settings.

Four items block paid subscriptions and are always offered first: payout wallet, a paid plan, a linked group, and group admin permissions. Welcome message and welcome photo are optional polish. When there is nothing left the screen simply says "Everything is set up. Nothing left to do.", and when only optional items remain it says "Your bot can take payments."

Group health

Membly checks group permissions when you link a group, and never again on a schedule. If someone demotes your bot in Telegram, invites and removals stop silently. This screen is where that becomes visible.

A healthy group reads "✅ Acme VIP Lounge — invite and remove both working". A group that has not been looked at since it was linked says "not checked since the group was linked".

Re-check permissions asks Telegram again for every linked group and saves what it finds, so the dashboard warning clears the moment you have actually fixed it. If the answer is good it says "All linked groups have the permissions they need."; if not, "Some groups still need attention. Grant the missing rights in Telegram, then tap Re-check." A paused bot cannot be asked, so resume it first: "@AcmeVIPAccessBot isn't running right now, so I can't read its group permissions. Resume the bot from the dashboard, then tap Re-check."

Settings

Pause, resume, delete

Pausing stops your child bot from running. Resuming starts it again. Neither touches your plans, wallets or members.

Deleting is permanent and asks first:

Plans

A plan is one thing a member can buy: a name, a length, and a price. Open the list from the dashboard's Plans button or with /plans. Eight plans are shown per page, with « Prev and Next » when you have more.

In a row, ✅ means enabled and ❌ disabled, and 🔒 secret marks a coupon-only plan. Tapping a plan opens its detail screen:

The fields

A plan uses either a trial or an intro price, never both. Setting one clears the other and tells you so: "Free trial was cleared because a plan can use either a trial or intro pricing." Dropping the price to or below an existing intro price clears the intro price for the same reason.

Public or coupon-only

Hide from list (coupon-only) takes a plan off your public list. It then reads "🔒 Coupon-only: hidden from the plan list until a member redeems a matching coupon." and only appears for members who have redeemed a code for it. Show publicly puts it back: "🌐 Public: visible to all members."

Recurring or one-time

By default a plan is "🔁 Recurring: members can renew/extend." Switching it with Make one-time (no renewals) gives "1️⃣ One-time: granted once per member, no renewals." — a member can buy it once and never again.

Enable, disable, retire

Disable stops new signups and renewals but leaves current subscribers alone. It asks first, naming the number affected: "This plan has 128 active subscriber(s); they keep access until expiry, but no new signups or renewals. Disable?"

🗑 Retire is the stronger version, and it is what you use for a plan you are finished with:

If checkouts are in flight it warns about those too: "2 checkout(s) are in flight against this plan right now. Consider waiting for them to clear before retiring it."

Adding a plan

+ Add Plan asks four things: name, days, price, then visibility.

Coupon codes

Coupon codes belong to a single plan. Open a plan and tap Coupons. A code does one or both of two jobs: it unlocks a coupon-only plan, and it discounts the price.

Creating a code

+ Add Code walks four questions.

1. The code itself

   Enter a coupon code (3-32 chars, A-Z, 0-9, dash, underscore).
   Examples: VIP2026, ACCESS_01, MEMBER-ONLY:

   Cancel

   Lower case is accepted and stored upper case. A code must be unique within one bot.

2. How many people can claim it

   Code: VIP2026

   How many members can claim this code? Enter 0 for unlimited, or a whole number like 1, 10, or 50:

   Cancel

   0 is unlimited; the ceiling is 4294967295. The detail screen then reads "3 of 50 claimed" or "3 claimed / unlimited".

3. What kind of discount

   Code: VIP2026

   Plan price is $10.00. Should this code also discount it?

   % off the plan price $ off the plan price No discount (unlock only) Cancel

   The kind is asked before the number, because "10" alone could mean 10% or $10. A code carries one lever or the other, never both. On a free plan this question is skipped — there is nothing to reduce.

4. How much

   For a percentage: more than 0, at most 100, up to two decimal places. For a fixed amount: more than 0, up to six decimal places. Membly then tells you the real effect, for example "25% off — members pay $7.50 instead of $10.00."

5. Single-use or retained

   Code: VIP2026

   Should this be a single-use plan?

   • 🔥 Single-use: after a member redeems this code and activates the plan, the plan disappears from their list. They'd need a new code to get it again.
   • 🔁 Retain (default): the member keeps the plan after redeeming and can renew/re-use it.

   Note: this is separate from the claim limit above — that controls how many members can use the code; this controls what happens after each member uses it.

   🔥 Single-use (plan disappears after use) 🔁 Retain (member keeps the plan) Cancel

Managing a code

Tapping a code opens its detail screen with everything on one page — code, plan, claims, discount, status and mode — and three actions:

How a member redeems one

In your child bot they tap Unlock Coupon or send /coupon, and get:

On success the plan appears for them, with "Your discount is applied automatically at checkout." if the code carries one, or "This coupon-only plan is now available on your account." if it only unlocks. A bad or exhausted code is rejected without revealing anything: "That coupon code is not valid, expired, or inactive for this bot." or "That coupon code has been used up."

Payout wallets

A payout wallet is an address you control, per currency and chain. When a member's payment is confirmed, Membly sweeps it to that address, minus the platform fee. Until a wallet exists, members cannot complete a payment at all.

Open Settings then Wallets. Each wallet is one row labelled currency, chain and a shortened address, for example USDC / Base - 0x1234...abcd.

What you can be paid in

USDC does not exist on TRON, so that combination is never offered. TRON as a whole is disabled unless the platform has switched it on, so most operators only ever see Base and BSC.

Adding a wallet

+ Add Wallet asks for currency, then chain, then the address:

Addresses are checked properly, not just for shape. A mixed-case EVM address that fails its EIP-55 checksum is rejected as a likely typo. On success: "Wallet added for USDC / Base. Subscriber payments will sweep to this address after verification."

Changing or removing one

Open a wallet and tap Edit Address. The prompt shows the current address and warns you: "Use a wallet you control; do not paste a subscriber/customer address". 🗑 Delete asks to confirm, and says plainly: "This cannot be undone."

Turning payment options on and off

Chains & Currencies in Settings is the same information as a grid of toggles:

Enabling a pair asks for a payout address for it and creates the wallet. Disabling asks to confirm and deletes it: "Disable this currency? Subscribers will no longer be able to pay with it." Enabling more options gives members more ways to pay; if your checkout abandonment is high, too few enabled networks is one of the two usual causes.

What a sweep is

Each checkout gets its own fresh payment address, derived for that one payment and valid for a limited window. When the member's deposit is confirmed there, Membly sweeps it: the platform fee is deducted and the remainder is sent on to your payout wallet for that currency and chain. You do not do anything; you just receive it. Your earnings after fees are reported on the Revenue page of Analytics.

Members

Open Members from the dashboard, or send /members. Ten members are shown per page, newest activity first, each line naming their plan and expiry date.

Every line carries the numeric Telegram ID, because usernames change and IDs do not. That is the ID you use for the actions below.

Adding by hand

Telegram IDs are numeric, between 1 and 9007199254740991. Anything else is rejected. If a member does not know their ID, they can forward any message to @userinfobot.

If the join links cannot be generated, the grant is rolled back rather than half-applied: "Subscription was not activated because no invite links could be generated. Fix the child bot/group permissions and try again." If the links work but the DM does not reach them, you are told so and given the fallback: "Ask the user to open the bot and tap Get Invite Link, or share the link manually."

Removing by hand

On success: "User 111222333 has been removed from every group and their subscription has been cancelled." If even one group refuses, nothing is cancelled and you are told to fix the cause: "Could not remove them from every group automatically. Fix the child bot/group permissions, then try again." That message almost always means the missing Ban Users right.

Tracking people who were already there

Track Existing accepts a numeric ID or an @username. Username lookup is best-effort: Telegram's Bot API can only resolve accounts that have interacted with the bot before, so if it fails you will be asked for the number instead. The result is a subscription with no expiry: "Tracking @samantha with no expiry."

The CSV export

The file arrives as members-<username>-<id>.csv with a caption counting the rows. Columns are:

Text cells are neutralised so a member cannot smuggle a spreadsheet formula into your accounting file through their own display name.

Refunds

Members request refunds from your child bot. You review and execute them with /refunds. Nothing is refunded automatically, and the money only ever goes to the address the member gave — never back to whatever address the deposit arrived from, which may be an exchange.

The queue is oldest first and shows at most 25 requests at a time. A ⚠️ prefix means the request is more than 7 days old. Requests from the same member are grouped under them. A deposit that arrived on the wrong network is marked ⤺ wrong chain and is refunded in the token and chain it actually landed on, not the one the invoice asked for.

Approving one

Approve #4181 does not send anything. It pins the destination and the amount you are looking at, then asks a second time:

Freezing the amount and destination at approval time is deliberate: inside the confirmation window neither a changed refund address nor a late extra deposit can alter what you agreed to send.

What approval does

Confirm refund broadcasts the on-chain transfer, then revokes access:

So one confirmed refund does three things: sends the tokens on-chain, cancels the subscription, and removes the member from every linked group. If a group cannot be reached you are told exactly which, and asked to do it by hand: "Could NOT remove them from 1 of 2 group(s): -1001234567890. Remove them manually." The member is notified automatically with the transaction hash.

The overpayment case

If a member simply sent too much, only the excess is returned and their access is untouched. The confirm screen says so up front — "The subscriber keeps their access (this only returns the overpayment)." — and afterwards: "Overpayment returned — the subscriber keeps their access."

If something goes wrong mid-flight you get a reference code rather than a raw error, and a clear instruction: "Check the queue before retrying — the transfer may or may not have been broadcast."

Analytics

Analytics on the dashboard, or /stats, opens a four-page report for the selected bot. /revenue jumps straight to the third page. Move between pages with the named navigation buttons; each page runs only its own queries, so it stays fast.

The pages diagnose as well as report. If nothing has happened yet, they say so — "No active subscribers yet, so MRR and LTV stay at zero until the first payment is verified." If more checkouts are abandoned than paid, the Growth page names the two usual causes: "the plan price is too high for the audience, or too few payment networks are enabled (Settings → Chains & Currencies)." And if churn passes 10%: "Churn is above 10% — try a Broadcast to your expiring members before their access ends."

Both revenue lines matter and they are different numbers. "Gross" is what members paid. "Your earnings" is what reached you after the platform fee.

Broadcast

A broadcast is one message sent to a slice of your subscribers. Open it with Broadcast on the dashboard or /broadcast. Delivery is queued and paced, so a large audience takes a few minutes to land and nobody gets it twice.

1. Pick an audience

   Four choices, exactly as labelled above. Your last three broadcasts are listed for reference so you do not repeat yourself.

2. Write the message

   📣 Broadcast — Acme VIP

   Audience: Expiring within 7 days

   Send the message you want your subscribers to receive. Plain text only — it is delivered exactly as typed.
   Maximum 3,500 characters.

   Cancel

   Plain text, delivered as typed. No formatting, no attachments.

3. Check the preview

   📣 Preview — Acme VIP
   Audience: Expiring within 7 days
   Recipients: 9
   ———
   Your access ends this week. Renew any time with /renew.
   ———
   Send it? There is no unsend. To change the text, just send it again.

   Send to 9 Cancel

   The recipient count is real, not an estimate. Sending a different text is as simple as typing it again — the preview is replaced rather than added to. If nobody matches, you are told before you write anything: "No one matches "Expiring within 7 days" right now, so there is nothing to send. Pick a different audience:"

4. Send

   ✅ Broadcast queued — Acme VIP
   Audience: Expiring within 7 days
   Queued for 9 subscriber(s).
   Messages go out through the delivery queue over the next few minutes. Each subscriber receives it once, even if this is retried.

   The audience is re-counted at send time, so the number queued is the number actually enqueued rather than a stale preview figure.

Pricing and fees

Membly has no monthly cost. It takes a percentage of each paid payment, and only when you get paid. 💸 Pricing & Fees on the home menu shows your own rate:

Redeeming a fee code

A fee code is issued by Membly and lowers your platform fee. Tap Redeem Fee Code:

On success it tells you both numbers: "Fee code FIRST-KEY applied. Your platform fee is now 0.5% (was 1%)." The other outcomes are equally plain:

That fee code has already reached its redemption limit.

The code was valid but too many operators got there first.

You already redeemed that fee code.

One redemption per operator per code.

That fee code applies 2%, but your current fee is already 1%.

A fee code only ever lowers your rate; it will not raise it.

That fee code is not valid or active.

Wrong code, or it has been switched off.

Fee codes are nothing to do with the coupon codes you give your own members.

Command reference

Eleven commands are published to Telegram's command menu, so they appear when you type / in a chat with @MemblyBot. Several more work but are deliberately kept out of the menu, because the buttons are the better route.

Published in the menu

Works, but not in the menu

Running a bot-scoped command with nothing selected gives you a way in rather than an error: "No bot selected. Open My Bots and choose the bot you want to manage."

Troubleshooting

I got an "Enforcement degraded" message, but the bot really is an admin

Check Group health before you change anything. If it reports the group as "invite and remove both working", nothing is broken and you can ignore the warning.

This happens most often right after you first launch a bot, and especially if you promoted the bot to admin before linking the group. Telegram queues up membership events and delivers the whole backlog the moment your bot starts running. The older event — the one from the seconds when the bot was still a plain member — is replayed first and triggers the warning, then the newer "is now an admin" event immediately corrects the stored permissions. The warning message is a snapshot of a moment that has already passed.

Two things to know. The warning is sent once per group and is not repeated, so a second identical message means a second, separate event. And there is no "all clear" message when rights come back — the only way to confirm the current state is Group health or Re-check permissions.