You post a free workshop in your public event space. Your paying members never see it, because they’ve learned that events live in the members’ event space, and that’s the only place they look.
Meanwhile, the free folks browsing your community have no idea your members get live strategy sessions, hot seats, and Q&As every month.
Two event spaces. Two audiences. Nobody seeing the whole picture.
Circle fixed this when it added the option to limit an event’s RSVPs to specific access groups. Here’s how to restrict event RSVPs in Circle, run every event from one space, and turn your calendar into your best sales page, without handing out your replays for free.
What Changes When You Restrict Event RSVPs in Circle?
You can run every event from one event space and decide, event by event, who can RSVP. Everyone sees the calendar. Only the access groups you pick can register and attend live.
Before this, event spaces were all or nothing. Either a space was open to everyone in your community, or you built a separate event space tied to a separate access group so the right events reached the right people.
For a lot of us, that meant juggling several event spaces depending on who was supposed to see what.
Now the access decision lives on the event, not the space. One space, one calendar, and the RSVP rules set per event.
It looks small on paper. It isn’t. I’ve rebuilt my own events around it, and I’m making the same adjustments in two client communities right now.
Why Did Separate Event Spaces Cause Problems?
Members missed public events because they only checked their own event space, and free users never saw the member events that make a membership worth paying for.
Here’s how my community was set up. I had one live event space for all my members. That’s where strategy sessions, Ask Me Anythings, and hot seats happen, and it’s always worked well.
But not everyone inside is a paying member. I don’t run a free community space, because a free community is very hard to convert into a paid one. Instead, I give people a taste of what’s inside by delivering free resources in the community itself, like the Community Voice Guide, a short mini course on building a voice guide for using AI in your community.
I also host free events that are open to the public. Those lived in a separate public event space in the sidebar, so members could attend either kind of event and non-members could only attend theirs.
That setup had two problems:
- Members missed the public events. They’re trained to go to the live event space. Even with the events tab at the top and the branded app surfacing what’s coming up, public events that would genuinely help them got lost in the mix.
- Free users couldn’t see the member events. The best argument for joining was sitting behind a door they didn’t know existed.
How Do You Set Up RSVP Restrictions on a Circle Event?
Edit the event, turn off automatic recording posts, choose the access groups that can RSVP, and give everyone else a custom button that sends them to your checkout.
You set up the event the same way you always have. Three settings are what change.
Turn off automatic recording posts
If recordings post to the event automatically, anyone who can see the event can watch the replay. That’s the opposite of what you want on a members-only session.
What that looks like:
- Open the event in edit mode
- Find the toggle to automatically post recordings to the event and make sure it’s off
- Decide where the replay will live instead before the event runs
Choose who can RSVP
This is the new setting, labeled Restrict RSVP to access groups.
What that looks like:
- Turn on the restriction for the event
- Select every access group that should be able to register, which for me is two
- Leave everyone else able to see the event without being able to RSVP
Give everyone else a way in
A locked RSVP with nowhere to go is a dead end. Change the button text to something like become a member, and link it straight to your checkout.
When someone spots an event and thinks, I want to be in that room, the next step is one click away.
How Should You Use RSVP Restrictions to Grow Your Membership?
Put your free events and your member events on one calendar, and let non-members and lower tiers see exactly what they’d get by joining or upgrading.
This is where it earns its place. Events are where a community comes alive. They’re where members connect with you and with each other, and they’re often the exact reason people stay. Before this, almost none of that was visible to anyone outside your paid space.
Here’s what it looks like in practice. A free user comes in for a resource and sees that I’m running a live community audit this week, where I audit a member’s community on the spot. They can’t RSVP. They can click the button and become a member. That’s how warm leads turn into active members.
Free webinars for lead generation
Host them inside your main event space and restrict the RSVP to the right groups.
- No more separate public event space
- No more fragmented calendar
- One clean list of everything happening in your world
If you’re still building out what goes on that calendar, these event formats worth hosting for your community are a good place to start, and so is hosting a workshop in Circle.
Tiered memberships
Show your higher-tier events to your lower tiers without giving them access.
- Lower tiers see the coaching call and the mastermind session on the calendar
- The RSVP stays locked to the tier that pays for it
- The button points to the upgrade
They see the value, and they get that small nudge of FOMO when they realize the session is one upgrade away. It’s a simple way to increase revenue without creating any new content.
Will Other Members Be Able to Watch Your Event Replays?
Yes, if replays sit on the event. RSVP restrictions control who registers and attends live. They don’t control who can watch a recording attached to an event they can see.
I tested this, and it caught me off guard. If you open your event space to a broader group, every replay attached to every past event in that space becomes visible to them too.
I already keep replays in a separate library, so it didn’t touch my community. If you don’t, do this before you change a single access setting:
- Go through your past events and check where each replay lives
- Move any replay you don’t want widely seen into a separate replay library or space
- Set that space’s access to match who should watch, using your Circle space access settings
- Turn off automatic recording posts on future events
If you need a home for those replays, organizing a Circle resource library walks through building one that members can actually find their way around.
A couple of minutes of cleanup now saves you from a surprise later.
When Should You Keep an Event Out of Sight?
When the offer is truly exclusive. A private mastermind that costs several thousand dollars doesn’t belong on your lower tiers’ calendar, even with the RSVP locked.
Some offers sell better unseen. Their value is partly that most people never know the room exists.
So don’t throw everything into one space without thinking it through. Use your judgment on the handful of events that need to stay private, and use RSVP restrictions for the rest.
Try This Prompt
This sorts your event calendar before you touch a single setting.
“I run a [type of community] on Circle with these access groups: [list your tiers or groups]. Here are my upcoming and recurring events: [list each event and who it’s for]. Sort each event into one of three buckets: open RSVP to everyone, visible to everyone but RSVP restricted to specific access groups, or kept out of sight entirely. For each restricted event, suggest short button text that points non-members toward joining or upgrading. Give me the output as a table with columns for the event, the bucket, the access groups, and the button text.”
You make the final call on what stays exclusive. This just gets the list in front of you.
Your Calendar Is Already Your Sales Page
Most communities are selling the wrong thing. They describe the membership in a sales page nobody reads, while the proof sits on an events calendar only members can see.
You don’t need a new offer or a new piece of content. You need the people outside the door to see what’s already happening inside it.
Let them see the room. Let the button do the rest.
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More Like This
Listen: Why You Should Host Events for Your Community. What to put on the calendar once everyone can see it.
Watch: How to Use Invitation Links in Circle Free Access, Paywall Trials & Member Tags!. The other half of the upgrade path: getting people into the right access group.
Listen: How to Host a Workshop in Circle. A ticketed event that grew a client’s community by more than 100 members.
Watch: Circle Spaces 101. The space setup underneath your event and replay spaces.
Keep Going
coCreator Society is where community builders and membership founders work through this together, with the templates, the walkthroughs, and people who are one step ahead of you. Join coCreator Society
If you would rather not do this part alone, Rachel and the team build, migrate, and run communities for founders who need it done properly the first time. Talk to the team
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