From within your dashboard, you can change your members' experience when signing up for the community and completing their profile. These settings will also apply to any members added to the community via the dashboard.

All of these settings can be handled in the dashboard Settings, in Sign-Up Settings.

Any changes to your community sign-up settings will be logged in the admin activity log so you can track all changes to this setting.

This is where you configure the settings for how a member would sign up for the community for the first time.

With this setting, users can visit your community, sign up, and create an account themselves, without any barrier.

With this setting, users can visit your community, sign up, and create an account themselves unless their domain is blocked. If you have competitors or domains that you want to block sign-ups from, you can add a blocklist domains list to your Open community from the Sign-Up Settings page in the dashboard.

Toggle the 'Block Specific Email Domains' on from the Sign-Up Options box.

You must also decide how to handle any users signing up with email addresses on this blocklist:

With this setting, users can visit your community but only sign up and create an account if they are using an email address from an approved email domain.

As the admin, you can add or manage all domains on the allowlist in the dashboard from Settings —> Sign-Up Settings —> Sign-Up Options. You must also decide how to handle any users signing up with email addresses from non-approved domains:

With this setting, users can visit your community and apply to join through a native application form built directly in Gradual. Admins can customize the application form in the dashboard and review, accept, or decline applications from within Gradual.

As the admin, you can manage this from the dashboard in Settings → Sign-Up Settings by selecting Via Native Application Form.
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From there, you can edit the application form and review submissions in Members → Application Forms and Members → Application Requests.

Applicants can only submit one application every 30 days using the same email address. If they try to apply again within that 30 day period, they will see that their application is still pending.

Once an application is accepted, the user will receive an approval email and can then sign in using that same email address to complete account setup.

Admins can review submitted applications in the dashboard, accept applicants as standard members, limited approval members, or guests, or decline the application.

With this setting, users can visit your community but must sign up via an external form or application. You must provide the URL where the form or application is hosted, and track the applications through the external URL form or service. These applicants will not populate on the Gradual member list, but you can manually invite them to the community through this process.

With this setting, users can visit your community but cannot sign up or create an account themselves. You, as the administrator must manually invite them to the community through this process.

This is where you configure the settings for work email requirements and enable a welcome email.

This is an option if you would like to suggest users use a work email when signing up, but do not require it. This will populate a prompt in the email address field that reads "Enter your work email address" to encourage users to use their work email when signing up.

The system will accept all email domains with this setting enabled.

This is an option if you would like to require a work email when signing up. This will populate a prompt in the email address field that reads "Enter your work email address" and will not accept free email domains unless specified exceptions are added.

You may add up to ten free email domain exceptions by selecting from the full list. The system will accept only sign-ups from the free email domains that are on this exceptions list.

You can enable or disable the automatic welcome email from the community that is customized with your logo, and community name. If enabled, this email will be sent automatically within minutes of the user signing up for the community, and work to introduce them to your community and confirm their sign-up.

Some customers prefer to disable this email and send one of their own as the text cannot be customized or changed beyond using your community name and logo.

If your sign-up flow routes some users to a Pending Approval or Unapproved state, you can customize the page messaging they see from the dashboard.

Navigate to Customization → Page Messages to manage these messages. This area includes separate sections for:

For Pending Approval and Unapproved, there are separate message settings for:

Each version includes:

For Application Gate, if your community uses Via Native Application Form or Via External Sign-Up or Application, there are also separate message settings for:

Each version includes:

Admins can preview the member-facing page before publishing changes, and the preview follows the community’s light or dark theme settings. You can edit the copy, save changes, and use Reset to default at any time to restore the default messaging.

For Application Gate, admins cannot customize the lock icon, the Back to sign in button label or behavior, or the Apply to join button label.

When a user lands on one of these pages, they will see the message that matches their current sign-up state.

If your community has re-signup rules in place for unapproved users, the Unapproved page will continue to display when re-signup is blocked permanently or when the user tries to sign up again before any cooldown period has ended.

When a user lands on this page, they will see the message that matches their current status.

These settings limit or allow members to edit their initial profile information like first name, last name, company, and job title.

This is an option if you'd like members to be able to edit their initial profile information within Gradual.

This is an option if you'd like members to only edit their initial profile information in an external form. You must provide the URL where the form or application is hosted, and track the changes through the external URL form or service. Any changes requested by users to their profile will need to be made by the administrator.

This is an option if you'd like to restrict members from editing their first name, last name, company, or job title after sign-up is complete.

Gradual will automatically list Company as Company, and Job Title as Job Title in the initial sign-up questions and prompts. If you'd like to change the display names for these two fields you can do so here.