How to create a members-only section on my e-commerce site?

[IKC]

Hello,

Trying to create a members only section.  Essentially my customer would apply to become a customer, I would approve them, set up an account then send an invite for them to setup a password.  Once this is done, only at this point I want them to be able to see all the products and pricing and have the ability to check out.  If you are visitor that is not approved then you will only get to see the home page, contact us, about us and some other basic info pages.   Only approved members I want them to be able to see products.  In the settings I was able to enable only account holders can checkout, but I want to also limit viewing products to account holders only.  How can I do this?

[Danishecom]

@IKC would you please like to tell me why you want to enable this type of security? if your site hits 100 only 1 person going to sign up and see your product. 

[IKC]

@Danishecom We are/can only sell to licensed professionals the product we want to sell which we have to vet out and approve.  Once approved they can see the products and pricing.  We don't want to sell to the general public, nor can the general public do anything with our product.  Our sales model is B2B not B2C.

[Nick]

Hi @IKC,

Nick here from Shopify. Great question! 

I'm thinking one of the most effective ways you could accomplish this is by using an app from the Shopify App Store. There are some lock style apps that enable you to protect certain pages are areas of your store, essentially giving you what you're looking for with an approved member style of store access. There are a few apps which do this and the one which springs to my mind is Locksmith. I'll link some of the other one's below so you can investigate and research which one might be best for you:

• Locksmith
• Wholesale Lock Manager
• MagicPass Wholesale
• Bold Memberships

If you wanted to go the route of building something custom into your store, you could also do that. It would be quite technical and more than likely require you to hire someone to build this in for you. It would be a higher up front cost, but once it is built-in, it wouldn't include a monthly charge which the apps would. You can check out the Shopify Experts directory for this here. 

I hope this helps and don't hesitate to ask if you have any other questions! 

Thanks, Nick

[IKC]

B2B Login Access Managment app ended up working exactly how I needed it to so far.  

[KabirDev]

In the below video, you can get an idea how you can accomplish to make your store members only. You should edit the main liquid file like theme.liquid of your theme if you would like to lock up your entire store.