How to sell access to an alpha group on Cherry

This guide covers how to sell access to an alpha group: a public room on Cherry that members pay to enter, priced in USDC, with the payment rule enforced by the room itself. Cherry is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto, so members sign in with a wallet and pay from that same wallet. No phone number, no email, no KYC, no card checkout.

It is written for callers, KOLs, and community owners who already run a free chat and want the paid tier in the same app as the calls. You earn from your community directly: 70% of every payment goes to your wallet, 30% to Cherry, as of 10 September 2026.

What you need to sell access to an alpha group

• A wallet signed in at chat.cherry.fun . The sign-in is a message signature, so nothing goes on-chain and there is no gas.
• A price and a cadence. New prices are set in USDC, and recurring pricing runs between 1 and 10,000 USDC per period. A room priced in SOL before USDC pricing arrived keeps its one-time SOL entry fee, which ranges from 0.0001 to 100 SOL.
• About 0.01 SOL. Activating recurring pricing costs a one-time setup fee of that size, which pays for creating the on-chain payment plan.
• Up to six lines describing what a member gets. The storefront editor caps each at 80 characters, so write them as promises, not paragraphs.
• Public visibility. A paid room cannot be private: it sells from its public page, and the app refuses the combination outright.

Note: Group chats on Cherry are not end-to-end encrypted, by design, so moderation, bots, and the paywall can work. DMs are. Say that to your members before they ask. Selling trading calls also carries obligations that vary by where you and your members live, and that judgment is yours to make.

Step 1: Create the public community

Open the search panel in the Cherry web app and pick “Public community” for a room where members talk back, or “Gated channel” for a broadcast where only you and your admins post. Name it, set an avatar, and leave “Visibility” on “Public”.

A channel is the right shape when the product is your calls rather than the conversation. Mango Inner Circle runs that shape as a free feed: 1,671 members and 50 posts as of 11 September 2026.

You know it worked when a collapsed “Access requirements” card appears with the word “Optional” next to it.

Step 2: Set the price and the billing cadence

Open “Access requirements” and switch on “Paid entry”. Type the amount into “Price (USDC)” and choose a “Billing” cadence: “Once”, “Daily”, “Weekly”, or “Monthly”.

“Once” is a lifetime entry fee, settled as a single transaction with two transfer legs, 70% to your wallet and 30% to Cherry, and a member who leaves can rejoin without paying again. The recurring cadences are billed through the official Solana Subscriptions and Allowances program: the member authorizes a plan once, and each period Cherry pulls the amount and splits it the same way.

Saving a recurring price opens a confirmation titled “Activate subscription pricing” with a “Pay & activate” button. That is the 0.01 SOL setup fee creating your plan on-chain, and members can subscribe once you have signed it.

Two details before you pick a number. Every price change creates a new plan and costs the setup fee again, while existing subscribers keep the terms they signed up on, because the program snapshots those terms at subscribe time. And if the room already has free members, the toggle “Charge existing members now” decides their fate: on, every member who has not paid is paywalled immediately; off, they keep free access.

You know it worked when the summary line beside “Access requirements” reads your price and cadence, for example “25 USDC/month”.

Step 3: Write the storefront

Every public group has a page at chat.cherry.fun/@<your handle> with a cover, a description, rules, benefits, member and message counts, and reviews. That page is what a paid room sells from, and search engines can index it.

Open “Storefront” and fill three fields. “Cover” takes a 3:1 banner. “Community rules” takes up to 2,000 characters: set the tone, say what gets someone removed. “What you get” takes up to six short benefit lines, and this is the part people read before they pay. Write the cadence of the room into them, not adjectives: how many calls a week, when the daily post lands, whether entries and exits are both published.

You know it worked when the page at your handle shows the “What you get” checklist above the join button, with your price on it.

Step 4: Comp your mods with guest passes

An invite from you or an admin is a guest pass. Accepting it gives the invitee lifetime free access, so they join the paid room without paying and without an expiry. The editor states it plainly in the invite sheet: “Free access”, and that your invite is a guest pass.

An invite from a regular member works differently: the invitee is added and then paywalled until they pay. That asymmetry is what stops a paid room from being resold by its own members one invite at a time.

Use it for moderators and for guests whose presence is worth more than one subscription.

You know it worked when the invited wallet can read messages and appears in the member list without having paid.

Step 5: Collect reviews from members who paid

The storefront shows a star average and a review count, and those ratings come from inside the room. Only active members can leave one, an owner cannot review their own group, and brand-new wallets are refused, which is the guard against a rival buying a burner and review-bombing you.

The app asks for you: once a member has sent messages and added reactions, a prompt above the composer invites them to rate the group. The Group Info sheet also carries a “Rate this group” row. Ratings are 1 to 5 with optional text up to 500 characters, and the average updates live for everyone in the room.

You know it worked when your storefront shows a star average and a review count above zero.

What happens after the first period

Cherry collects the next period from the member’s standing authorization before anything is taken away, and only a refused payment, a cancellation, or an empty USDC balance leads to a paywall. A member who cancels keeps access until the paid period ends.

A paywalled member stays in the room and keeps their place in the chat list, but the content is withheld: message history, new messages, and even the last-message preview. Renewing lifts it in one step. Members cancel and resume from the Subscriptions list in their profile, so you never become the billing desk for your own group.

Troubleshooting

The private toggle is refused. A payment rule and private visibility cannot coexist. Remove “Paid entry” first, then flip visibility.

A member says they paid and cannot get in. The payment and the join are separate steps, and the payment is recorded first, so the member can retry the join without being charged again.

Someone paid and then failed a token check. They should not have been able to: Cherry checks every other rule before it asks for payment. Under “Any one” logic the fee alone is enough to get in, which is usually what a room that sells access wants.

You raised the price and were charged the setup fee again. Expected: a new price is a new on-chain plan. Existing subscribers stay on their old terms.

Free members still read everything after you turned on pricing. Recurring pricing only paywalls them when “Charge existing members now” was on at save time.

Related guides

• Paid communities and channels is the reference for the payment rule, the split, and the storefront.
• USDC subscriptions for group chats goes deeper on the recurring billing flow and what members see.
• Create a token-gated group chat covers the rule editor if you want holders in free and everyone else paying.
• Channels explains the broadcast-only room shape used by paid alpha feeds.
• Telegram alternative for crypto communities compares hosting the paid tier here against running it as a Telegram add-on.
• Whop alternatives for crypto covers the wider set of ways to charge for a community.

Ready to charge for yours? Create a group at chat.cherry.fun and switch on “Paid entry”.

FAQ

How do I charge for a crypto group?

Create a public group in the Cherry web app, open “Access requirements”, switch on “Paid entry”, type a price in USDC, and pick a billing cadence. Members pay from the wallet they are signed in with, and 70% of each payment lands in your wallet as of 10 September 2026.

How do I create a paid group chat in crypto without a payment bot?

On Cherry the payment rule is part of the room. Pressing Join opens the payment in the member’s wallet, the member signs it, and membership activates when the transaction confirms on-chain, so there is no invoice bot, no card checkout, and no role sync to a second app.

Can I charge a monthly fee for a crypto group?

Yes. Set “Billing” to “Monthly” and the price is pulled in USDC every period through the Solana Subscriptions and Allowances program, between 1 and 10,000 USDC per period. Daily and weekly cadences use the same mechanism.

How much does Cherry take from a paid group?

As of 10 September 2026 the split is 70% to the group owner and 30% to Cherry, applied to one-time entry and to every recurring pull. Activating recurring pricing also costs the owner a one-time 0.01 SOL setup fee that creates the on-chain plan.

What happens to members who stop paying?

They stay in the group and lose the content. When a paid period ends without a successful renewal, Cherry paywalls the member: message history, new messages, and the chat-list preview are withheld until they renew.

Sources

• Solana docs, Subscriptions Delegation Program overview
• Mango Inner Circle on Cherry