How to approve Wix members automatically (and bulk approve pending members)

To approve Wix members automatically, keep member signups set to "Only people I approve" and install Member Approval Rules from the Wix App Market: anyone who signs up with an address on your list, or with Pro a whole domain such as school.edu, is approved as soon as they confirm their email address. Everyone else waits in one pending list on the app's page, where you can filter them and approve or block many members at once, with no code.

Wix itself approves and blocks pending members one at a time and has no list of pre-approved emails; both are open feature requests. Without an app, the options are inviting contacts to become members or writing Velo code, and both are covered further down.

• Automatic approval from your list: type addresses one per line or import them from a CSV file; with Pro, add whole domains or an ending such as .edu.
• Bulk approve and bulk block for members pending approval, in the free plan too.
• Safe by default: a listed address is approved only after the person confirms they own it, and blocking touches only people who are still pending.
• Free plan: automatic approval for up to 25 listed addresses, plus bulk approve and block. Pro adds domains and lists of any length.

Approve Wix members automatically in five steps

We made Member Approval Rules for this (GRAMSHIFT Studio, on the Wix App Market). It works with your site's own member signup, so members keep signing up the way they do today.

1. In your site's signup settings, keep who can be a site member set to "Only people I approve".
2. In Signup & Login Security, under "Ask new members to confirm their email", choose "Everyone who signs up". This is what stops someone from getting in by typing an address from your list.
3. Install Member Approval Rules and open it from your site's dashboard.
4. Add the email addresses you expect, one per line, or click "Add addresses from a CSV file". With Pro, add a domain such as school.edu (subdomains included) or an ending such as .edu.
5. Type an address into "Try an address" to see the result, turn on "Approve listed people automatically" and click Save.

From then on, when someone on the list signs up and confirms their email address, the app approves them within seconds. Everyone else stays pending, and Wix notifies you of their request as usual.

Bulk approve or block members pending approval

The app's page lists everyone waiting under "Waiting for approval", newest first and up to the newest 500 people, with each person's name, email and signup date. Filter by "On your list" or "Not on your list", tick the people you want or select them all, and click Approve or Block. The page then shows how many were done and how many are still waiting. Bulk approve and bulk block are in the free plan.

Blocking asks you to confirm first and only touches people who are still pending, so a member who is already approved is never blocked by this action, even if the list on your screen is out of date. Blocked people can't log in and can't sign up again with the same email address; Wix says a block can take a few hours to apply everywhere. You can unblock someone later in your site's member list.

When someone on your list is still waiting, a short mark says why: "Email not confirmed" (the app approves them once they confirm), or a reason the app leaves to you, such as "Before automatic approval" or "Automatic approval is off". With Pro, addresses from 9,226 disposable email domains are marked too, and you can show only those.

Why typing an address from your list is not enough

Anyone can type any address into a signup form, so the app approves a listed address only after Wix has confirmed that the person owns it: Wix emails the address a confirmation code that the person has to enter. Until then they stay pending, marked "Email not confirmed" on the app's page. If people on your list stay unconfirmed for over an hour, the app's page warns you and links to the confirmation setting. Wix does not ask people who sign up with Google or Facebook to confirm their email, because it trusts those accounts; if one of them stays marked "Email not confirmed", approve them yourself on the app's page.

Everyone else, earlier signups and missed notices

Nothing changes for people who are not on your list: they stay pending and you approve or block them, one at a time or in bulk. The app never approves anyone who is not on your list. It approves only people who sign up after you save with automatic approval on; members who were already waiting stay with you, and you can approve them in bulk from the same page.

If Wix does not tell the app about a signup, the app catches up: every time someone signs up, someone confirms their email or you open its page, it checks the pending members from the last 7 days who signed up while automatic approval was on. If your site lets anyone sign up, nobody waits for approval, so the app shows a warning with a button to your signup settings.

Plans, privacy and what your site needs

The free plan includes automatic approval for up to 25 addresses on your list, bulk approve and bulk block, CSV import, the test box and 30 days of activity. Pro adds whole domains, lists of any length and the disposable-address marks.

The app does not record your members' email addresses. It keeps one row per new member in a collection on your own site: the member ID, the result, the reason, the time and, when a domain matched, that domain. Names and emails are read from Wix when you open the page, and rows older than 30 days are removed when you open it. The addresses and domains you put on the list are saved in the app's settings on your site (privacy policy).

Your site needs the Wix Members Area (Wix adds it together with the app if it is missing), member signups set to "Only people I approve", new members asked to confirm their email, and the CMS, where the app keeps its settings. You do not write any code. More answers are on the support page.

What Wix can do on its own

Wix lets you choose whether everyone can sign up or only people you approve, and then you approve or block each request yourself. Its feature request Pre-Approving New Members says: "Currently, (if you have manual approval enabled) it is not possible to pre-approve site members in advance." A second request, Managing Members with Bulk Actions, says: "Currently, you can block and approve your site members individually. It is not possible to block or approve multiple members in bulk." Both are marked as collecting votes. Deleting many members at once is possible in Wix; approving or blocking many is not.

The closest built-in step is turning contacts into members: you choose contacts in your dashboard and Wix emails each of them an invitation to create a password. That starts from your side with people you already have as contacts. It does not check people who sign up on their own later, and it has no domain rule such as everyone @school.edu.

With code

Velo has approveByEmail() in wix-members-backend, which "Approves a pending member using an email address." A developer can build automatic approval on it: keep the list, decide when to run the check after each signup, make sure only confirmed addresses are approved, catch signups that were missed, and write a page to approve or block many people. You then write and maintain all of that yourself.

For Wix forms, see How to limit a Wix form to one submission per email and How to only allow business emails on a Wix form.

Which way to choose

• Approve the people on your list or domain automatically, and approve or block pending members in bulk, without code: Member Approval Rules. Up to 25 listed addresses and the bulk actions are free.
• You write code and are happy to maintain it: Velo's approveByEmail() with your own list and timing.