Is there a back-end API where I can manage all of the users and their permissions automatically?

I think you want to run the subscription plugin rake task to import those subscriptions, though I don’t think there is a way to import the users subscriptions, just the products, so new users will be automatically added to the correct groups.

You’ll need to contrive a way to import the users. If there are more than a hundred or so, an import script will be easier then the API.