How to get an email notification when a user joins?

You can do it without zapier but you do need to have a script of some kind that is triggered using the webhook and takes the payload and emails it to you. You can’t just program webhooks to send you an email.

For the example you give, you could also enable must approve users but then that would restrict login until you approve the new user manually.

For more about webhooks, take a look at: Discourse API Docs