You can keep part of your video library for the people you choose, and leave the rest open to everyone. Most channels gate a portion of what they have rather than all of it: a members section, a course, a conference archive, a service that only the congregation should see.

This works whether or not money is involved. Plenty of gated content is not paid. If you do sell access, the payment runs through your own checkout, or through Roku Pay on Roku. See Selling access below.

Members-only is enforced by your Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV and Android TV apps. Apps built before the feature existed need a rebuild first, see Which apps this works on below.

You mark a playlist as Members only in your dashboard. On the television that row appears with a padlock. When a viewer opens it, the TV shows a short code. They go to a page on their phone, enter that code together with the access code you gave them, and the television unlocks by itself a few seconds later. Nobody types an email address or a password with a remote. On Roku, the viewer types the access code on the TV instead. See Members-only content on Roku.

Go to Playlists & Order in your dashboard. Each playlist has a Members only switch. Turn it on for the rows you want to keep back.

Everything you leave off stays open to everyone. The switch applies to all your apps together, whatever your video source is.

After you change it, your app content is re-imported in the background. It takes a moment, and you do not have to wait on the page.

Go to Members in your dashboard and create a code. You decide who gets it and how it reaches them: your own checkout can email it, you can read it out on air, you can print it on a membership card, you can hand it to a class.

Two optional settings on each code:

One code opens everything you marked as members only. You do not need a separate code per playlist.

On the TV, the locked row shows a padlock and a short code, six characters long. The alphabet has no O, 0, I, 1 or L in it, so a code read across a room does not turn into a different code when it is typed.

The viewer opens the activation page on their phone, enters the code from the screen along with the access code you gave them, and the television picks it up on its own within a few seconds. There is no login screen on the TV, which is deliberate: typing an email and password with a remote is the fastest way to lose a viewer.

The code on screen is valid for fifteen minutes. If the viewer takes longer, the television shows a fresh one and they use that instead.

On Roku there is no code on the screen. The viewer types your access code with the remote, because Roku only allows sign-in on the device. See Members-only content on Roku.

Revoke a code from the Members page. It takes effect on every television using it at the next check, without anyone touching the hardware.

A revoked or expired code stays visible in your list so you can see what you handed out. It opens nothing. If you have content locked and no usable code, your dashboard shows a warning stripe, because a lapsed code sitting in the list looks like a working one.

Access codes are the middle one, and the one most people use.

Tappla does not host your videos and does not collect your payments. If you sell access, you sell it on your own website with the checkout you already use, for example Stripe, a membership system or a donation platform. After the purchase, your checkout emails an access code, or your site unlocks the television through the partner API. Tappla takes no share of what your viewers pay.

On Apple TV, Fire TV and Android TV the purchase never happens inside the TV app, and the app shows no purchase button or payment link. Roku is the exception, see the table. The app stores have their own rules for paid content, and this is where selling on your website and unlocking in the app is allowed:

More on the model: SVOD on your own TV apps.

A device, a hashed token, and a tag saying the device is entitled. That is the whole record a linked television leaves behind: no name, no email address, no payment details, because none of that is needed to open a television. The token is stored only as a hash, so our own database cannot hand anyone a working credential.

Your memberships and your customer list stay in whatever system you already run them in. Tappla does not process payments, and the billing behind a members area runs on your side.

Locking is enforced by the app on the television, not by the dashboard, so what matters is which app your viewers have installed.

An app built before members-only existed still shows and plays a locked row. The padlock and the gate come from the app, so an older build does not know about them. Before you lock content, ask our support team through the chat which of your apps enforce it, and we rebuild the ones that do not.

No. The feature is about who gets in, not about whether anyone paid. A congregation, a team, a school and a members club all use it the same way. If you do charge, see Selling access above.

On Roku, yes, through Roku Pay with their Roku account, once you connect your Roku subscription and have a new Roku build. On Apple TV, Fire TV and Android TV, no: the purchase happens on your website, and the app only unlocks what was bought.

The dashboard produces one tier: locked content plays for anyone who has been let in. Multiple tiers exist in the system and are available through the API, so if you need them, talk to us.

Yes, once per television. Each device is unlocked separately, which is also what makes the device limit meaningful.

The television re-checks on its next launch and on a regular poll, so access ends at the next check rather than mid-playback.